"Ladies and gentlemen" he said at last with a shake of his grizzled head "I am very sorry to disappoint you but I cannot do it. It is this way. At the request of Sir Henry and Captain Good I have written down a true and plain account of King Solomon's Mines and how we found them so you will soon be able to learn all about that wonderful adventure for yourselves; but until then I will say nothing about it not from any wish to disappoint your curiosity or to make myself important but simply because the whole story partakes so much of the marvellous that I am afraid to tell it in a piecemeal hasty fashion for fear I should be set down as one of those common fellows of whom there are so many in my profession who are not ashamed to narrate things they have not seen and even to tell wonderful stories about wild animals they have never killed. And I think that my companions in adventure Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good will bear me out in what I say."