PRESTER JOHN

JOHN BUCHAN
TO

LIONEL PHILLIPS
Time, they say, must the best of us capture,

And travel and battle and gems and gold
No more can kindle the ancient rapture,

For even the youngest of hearts grows old.
But in you, I think, the boy is not over;

So take this medley of ways and wars
As the gift of a friend and a fellow-lover

Of the fairest country under the stars.
J. B.

CONTENTS
i. The Man on the Kirkcaple Shore

ii. Furth! Fortune!
iii. Blaauwildebeestefontein

iv. My Journey to the Winter-Veld
v. Mr Wardlaw Has a Premonition

vi. The Drums Beat at Sunset
vii. Captain Arcoll Tells a Tale

viii. I Fall in Again with the Reverend John Laputa
ix. The Store at Umvelos'

x. I Go Treasure-Hunting
xi. The Cave of the Rooirand

xii. Captain Arcoll Sends a Message
xiii. The Drift of the Letaba

xiv. I Carry the Collar of Prester John
xv. Morning in the Berg

xvi. Inanda's Kraal
xvii. A Deal and Its Consequences

xviii. How a Man May Sometimes Put His Trust in a Horse
xix. Arcoll's Shepherding

xx. My Last Sight of the Reverend John Laputa
xxi. I Climb the Crags a Second Time

xxii. A Great Peril and a Great Salvation
xxiii. My Uncle's Gift Is Many Times Multiplied

CHAPTER I
THE MAN ON THE KIRKCAPLE SHORE

I mind as if it were yesterday my first sight of the man. Little
I knew at the time how big the moment was with destiny, or

how often that face seen in the fitful moonlight would haunt
my sleep and disturb my waking hours. But I mind yet the

cold grue of terror I got from it, a terror which was surely
more than the due of a few truant lads breaking the Sabbath

with their play.
The town of Kirkcaple, of which and its adjacentparish of

Portincross my father was the minister, lies on a hillside above
the little bay of Caple, and looks squarely out on the North

Sea. Round the horns of land which enclose the bay the coast
shows on either side a battlement of stark red cliffs through

which a burn or two makes a pass to the water's edge. The bay
itself is ringed with fine clean sands, where we lads of the

burgh school loved to bathe in the warm weather. But on
long holidays the sport was to go farther afield among the

cliffs; for there there were many deep caves and pools, where
podleys might be caught with the line, and hid treasures

sought for at the expense of the skin of the knees and the
buttons of the trousers. Many a long Saturday I have passed

in a crinkle of the cliffs, having lit a fire of driftwood, and
made believe that I was a smuggler or a Jacobite new landed

from France. There was a band of us in Kirkcaple, lads of my
own age, including Archie Leslie, the son of my father's

session-clerk, and Tam Dyke, the provost's nephew. We
were sealed to silence by the blood oath, and we bore each the

name of some historicpirate or sailorman. I was Paul Jones,
Tam was Captain Kidd, and Archie, need I say it, was Morgan

himself. Our tryst was a cave where a little water called the
Dyve Burn had cut its way through the cliffs to the sea. There

we forgathered in the summer evenings and of a Saturday
afternoon in winter, and told mighty tales of our prowess and

flattered our silly hearts. But the sober truth is that our deeds
were of the humblest, and a dozen of fish or a handful of

apples was all our booty, and our greatest exploit a fight with
the roughs at the Dyve tan-work.

My father's spring Communion fell on the last Sabbath of
April, and on the particular Sabbath of which I speak the

weather was mild and bright for the time of year. I had been
surfeited with the Thursday's and Saturday's services, and the

two long diets of worship on the Sabbath were hard for a lad
of twelve to bear with the spring in his bones and the sun

slanting through the gallery window. There still remained the
service on the Sabbath evening - a dolefulprospect, for the

Rev. Mr Murdoch of Kilchristie, noted for the length of his
discourses, had exchanged pulpits with my father. So my mind

was ripe for the proposal of Archie Leslie, on our way home to
tea, that by a little skill we might give the kirk the slip. At our

Communion the pews were emptied of their regular occupants
and the congregation seated itself as it pleased. The manse seat

was full of the Kirkcaple relations of Mr Murdoch, who had
been invited there by my mother to hear him, and it was not

hard to obtainpermission to sit with Archie and Tam Dyke in
the cock-loft in the gallery. Word was sent to Tam, and so it

happened that three abandoned lads duly passed the plate
and took their seats in the cock-loft. But when the bell had

done jowing, and we heard by the sounds of their feet that
the elders had gone in to the kirk, we slipped down the stairs

and out of the side door. We were through the churchyard in a
twinkling, and hot-foot on the road to the Dyve Burn.

It was the fashion of the genteel in Kirkcaple to put their
boys into what were known as Eton suits - long trousers, cut-

away jackets, and chimney-pot hats. I had been one of the
earliest victims, and well I remember how I fled home from

the Sabbath school with the snowballs of the town roughs
rattling off my chimney-pot. Archie had followed, his family

being in all things imitators of mine. We were now clothed in
this wearisome garb, so our first care was to secretesafely our

hats in a marked spot under some whin bushes on the links.
Tam was free from the bondage of fashion, and wore his

ordinary best knickerbockers. From inside his jacket he
unfolded his special treasure, which was to light us on our

expedition - an evil-smelling old tin lantern with a shutter.
Tam was of the Free Kirk persuasion, and as his Communion

fell on a different day from ours, he was spared the
bondage of church attendance from which Archie and I had

revolted. But notable events had happened that day in his
church. A black man, the Rev. John Something-or-other, had

been preaching. Tam was full of the portent. 'A nagger,' he
said, 'a great black chap as big as your father, Archie.' He

seemed to have banged the bookboard with some effect, and
had kept Tam, for once in his life, awake. He had preached

about the heathen in Africa, and how a black man was as good
as a white man in the sight of God, and he had forecast a day

when the negroes would have something to teach the British in
the way of civilization. So at any rate ran the account of Tam

Dyke, who did not share the preacher's views. 'It's all