“Hallo!” cries Hicks, running down to the edge and scrutinising the surface all alive with panting heads and spongy fleeces. “One’s down. Yes, there it is,” pointing to four kicking legs above the surface, but which immediately disappear. “In with you, Mopela—Piet—look sharp!” The first addressed pretends not to hear, but Piet, throwing aside his kaross, takes a header, and as he reappears he just catches sight of the drowning animal. In a twinkling he has seized it, and holding its head above water, he strikes out for the bank, dragging his cumbersome and struggling burthen. The animal had been suddenly taken with a fit and gone under—an occurrence which now and then happens, and but for Hicks’ promptitude would have been drowned. As it was, it lay upon the ground, and after some gasping staggered to its legs, tottered a little way, then lay down again, and finally picked itself up and began nibbling a little grass, and in a few minutes had quite recovered.
The operation is repeated in precisely the same way as at first, and after the flock had been through four times, it wore a very different appearance to what it had done before; every fleece looking almost snowy white by contrast as the animals are slowly driven off to their ordinary pasturage, nibbling as they go.
“Piet, go and tell Umgiswe to bring on his lot,” says Mr Brathwaite. “There are under five hundred, and it won’t take us very long,” he adds, for the benefit of his lieutenants, “that is if they jump well. ’Tisn’t twelve o’clock yet, so there’ll be lots of time for them to dry.”
Twenty minutes’ rest, and then a sound of approaching bleating told that the other flock was at hand.
Then arises a deafening and hideous din as the sheep are driven into the cul de sac. Yelling, and shouting, and whistling, white and black alike contributing towards the general row, waving karosses, cracking whips, and beating the ground with branches. The voerbok spasmodically rushes on ahead, plunges into the water and swims through; but the sheep, suddenly deserted by their leader, stop half-way down the passage, and, in spite of the pressure from behind, and the earsplitting shindy, steadfastly refuse to budge.
“We’ve bungled it somehow,” says the old farmer, in a cool, matter-of-fact tone. “No use bothering them any more just now. Bring round the goat, and we’ll try again.”
Two of the Kafirs start off on that intent, but it takes some time to “collect” the truant, who runs hither and thither, bleating idiotically. At last he is brought back to his post of honour at the head of the flock; the driving and the row recommences, and the goat leaps into the water manfully; but he is leading a forlorn hope, indeed, for not one of the sheep will follow him—devil a sheep—though they are on the brink of the water. There they stick, firmly and stubbornly.
“Come on, Claverton, we must pitch some of them in,” cries Hicks, and the two promptly shove their way through the closely-wedged flock, which stands packed like sardines, wheezing and panting in the heat. In a twinkling they have seized half-a-dozen of the obstinate brutes and shied them in; but the rest show no signs of following, and so they go on, till at last they pause, breathless and bathed in perspiration, for two of the Kafirs to take their places; and finally, by relays of labour, the whole flock is through.
“Whew! but that’s warm work,” exclaims Claverton, as, after a short rest, the word is given to bring them on again. “Perhaps they’ll jump this time.”
His conjecture proves correct. Whether it is that they find their plunge cool and refreshing on this hot day, or that they are tired of resistance, or a little of both, is uncertain; but as again, amid whistling and din, the stupid animals are driven down to the water’s edge, they follow their leader, at first gingerly and by twos and threes, and then so fast that Hicks takes up his position at the jumping place to check them; in process whereof, having imprudently got too near the edge, he is upset bodily into the water, and disappears from mortal view, to emerge, spluttering and puffing and making awful faces, as he scrambles up the bank, dripping like a half-drowned rat.