Allan Quatermain was an English-born professional big game hunter and occasional trader in southern Africa who supported colonial efforts to spread civilization; he also favoured native Africans having a say in how their affairs are run. He became a quintessential imperial outdoorsman who finds English cities and climate unbearable, and thus prefers to spend most of his life in Africa, where he grew up under the care of his widower father, a Christian missionary.
Adventures in Africa
Quatermain was frequently accompanied by his native servant, the Hottentot Hans, a wise and caring family retainer from his youth whose sarcastic comments offer a sharp critique of European conventions.
Quatermain in 1888
Quatermain became ensnarled in the vengeance of Zikali, the dwarf wizard who plotted and finally achieved the overthrow of the Zulu royal House of Senzangakona, founded by Shaka and ending under Cetewayo.
He had married his childhood friend, Stella Carson in one of his earliest adventures in Africa but she died giving birth to their son, Harry. He widowed twice and eventually lost his only son while working in the smallpox ward of a hospital shortly after getting his medical degree. He longed to get back into the wilderness. His adventures were published by H. Rider Haggard.
Having persuaded Sir Henry Curtis, Captain John Good, RN, and the Zulu chief Umslopogaas to accompany him they set out from the coast of east Africa into the territory of the Masai and while staying with a Scottish missionary are attacked by a group of these tribesmen whom they overcome with heroism. There follows a voyage along an underground river to a lake in the kingdom of Zu-Vendis, a warlike white race entirely isolated ruled jointly by two sisters, Nyleptha and Sorais; both fall passionately in love with Curtis and this together with the rejection by Sorais of the nobleman Nasta results in a civil war between them (Sorais and Nasta's forces against those of Nyleptha, Curtis and Quatermain). After a battle Queen Nyleptha is victorious but then threatened by the treachery of the priests who plan to murder her in the palace. Umslopogaas and one loyal warrior manage to save her from this, killing Nasta and the chief priest Agon. Sorais, defeated and jealous, takes her own life: Nyleptha and Curtis become King and Queen; Quatermain feeling tired and old, decided to fake a brave death from a wound suffered in the battle.
His friend Lady Ragnall was informed about Allan's death by George Curtis Sir Henry Curtis's brother. In 1889 Allan returned to England to seek Lady Ragnall and her supply of taduki.
However this made him addicted and resolved to opium. By 1898 he was to be found in Cairo frequenting in an opium den. It was where Mina Harker was ordered by Campion Bond to find him and bring back in the service of England. Quatermain was reluctant, but when Mina was assaulted by rapists he did not hesitate to attack them.
Together they left the den and Mina ran with him until the docks, an angry mob after them, where Captain Nemo showed up and took them below the sea.
Service to the Empire
In June 27, they arrived to Paris to find a certain missing English doctor. There Mina contacted Chr. C. Auguste Dupin who would tell them about the incident of the Rue Morgue some decades earlier and the reappearance of the ape-like monster. Mina posed as a prostitute in order to lure a possible suspect. Quatermain and Dupin were to watch after her, but Quatermain was attracted by a pharmacy, and went to buy a bottle of laudanum. When he returned, Mina was missing.
Helped by a prostitute, Dupin guided Allan to Henry's apartment in Rue Richelieu where they heard voices and cries. They found an ape monster threatening Mina; Quatermain managed to put the bottle into its mouth, and made it sleep over a window.
After Jekyll was apprehended, Murray, Quatermain and Nemo were sent to the Correctional Academy for Wayward Gentlewomen by Campion Bond to apprehend Hawley Griffin. Murray presented herself and Quatermain as parents who wished to inspect the place before lodging their daughter.
During their stay there, Quatermain slept in the guestroom with Nemo who accompanied them as a manservant. Then they saw Griffin trying to rape Pollyanna Whittier. The two men tried to catch him but he hit Quatermain with a lamp, and crushed Nemo's nose. Murray threw a bucket of white paint on him (belonging to the decorators who were working there) and delivered him to the Empire.
When the team was assembled, Bond briefed the team about the reason he intended them. Fu Manchu had stolen the Cavorite of Professor Selwyn Cavor who would man the first expedition to the moon.
While Quatermain and Jekyll's first task was to see their contacts in Limehouse. Quatermain first saw a Chinese woman who redirected them to Ho Ling at Shanghai Charlie's