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care, for if our water failed us we knew that very soon we must perish
miserably.

But everything has an end, if only you live long enough to see it, and
somehow that miserable day wore on towards evening. About three
o'clock in the afternoon we determined that we could bear it no
longer. It would be better to die walking that to be killed slowly by
heat and thirst in this dreadful hole. So taking each of us a little
drink from our fast diminishing supply of water, now warmed to about
the same temperature as a man's blood, we staggered forward.

We had then covered some fifty miles of wilderness. If the reader will
refer to the rough copy and translation of old da Silvestra's map, he
will see that the desert is marked as measuring forty leagues across,
and the "pan bad water" is set down as being about in the middle of
it. Now forty leagues is one hundred and twenty miles, consequently we
ought at the most to be within twelve or fifteen miles of the water if
any should really exist.

Through the afternoon we crept slowly and painfully along, scarcely
doing more than a mile and a half in an hour. At sunset we rested
again, waiting for the moon, and after drinking a little managed to
get some sleep.

Before we lay down, Umbopa pointed out to us a slight and indistinct
hillock on the flat surface of the plain about eight miles away. At
the distance it looked like an ant-hill, and as I was dropping off to
sleep I fell to wondering what it could be.

With the moon we marched again, feeling dreadfully exhausted, and
suffering tortures from thirst and prickly heat. Nobody who has not
felt it can know what we went through. We walked no longer, we
staggered, now and again falling from exhaustion, and being obliged to
call a halt every hour or so. We had scarcely energy left in us to
speak. Up to this Good had chatted and joked, for he is a merry
fellow; but now he had not a joke in him.

At last, about two o'clock, utterly worn out in body and mind, we came
to the foot of the queer hill, or sand koppie, which at first sight
resembled a gigantic ant-heap about a hundred feet high, and covering
at the base nearly two acres of ground.

Here we halted, and driven to it by our desperate thirst, sucked down
our last drops of water. We had but half a pint a head, and each of us
could have drunk a gallon.

Then we lay down. Just as I was dropping off to sleep I heard Umbopa
remark to himself in Zulu--

"If we cannot find water we shall all be dead before the moon rises
to-morrow."

I shuddered, hot as it was. The near prospect of such an awful death
is not pleasant, but even the thought of it could not keep me from
sleeping.



CHAPTER VI

WATER! WATER!

Two hours later, that is, about four o'clock, I woke up, for so soon
as the first heavy demand of bodily fatigue had been satisfied, the
torturing thirst from which I was suffering asserted itself. I could
sleep no more.

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