"Hunter Quatermain’s Story"
This is a short story contained in one volume with "Allan's Wife", "A Tale of Three Lions", and "Long Odds" (as "Allan’s wife and other tales").
It is a story narrated by Quatermain at a dinner party attended by Sir Henry Curtis, Bt, and Capt Good, Royal Navy (rtd), on Quatermain’s first trip to England since his childhood. He is asked to tell the story of the buffalo horns on the wall – he had given them to Curtis – and reluctantly agrees to do so.
The events concerned in the story took place 10 years earlier, when he was hunting elephant at Gatgarra, near the Choke River. Accompanied by the Hottentot Hans, and the Zulu hunter Mashune, he had been away from his base camp for two weeks. He returns to find it destroyed by a bushfire (through the negligence of his servants), and the bearers gone. The nearest source of new supplies was Bamangwato, Khama’s capital, some 300 miles away. Quatermain has no choice but to trek there. After a month’s travel, and within 40 miles of Bamangwato, they are down to their last five bullets. Hans heads off to shoot an antelope buck for supper. He doesn’t return. That night Quatermain shoots a lion which attacks their skerm. Next morning they find Hans’ body. He has been tossed and gored by a buffalo. The buffalo returns and kills Mashune, and Quatermain heads off alone to Bamangwato.
It is a basic enough story, with nothing unnatural or improbable. It is of interest though in being the account of the death of Hans, who features in a number of the Quatermain stories.