After a few years stay in Pretoria, Steve and his four special friends made up a party for a sort of picnic and shooting expedition combined.
They procured a roomy Cape cart and four horses, laid in a stock of tinned provisions for three weeks, and started one sunny morning in August.
It was a beautiful day, and our friends enjoyed the sunshine and fresh air greatly, after their long confinement in town and office. Steve’s cousin, as usual, took a leading part. He was driving. After a halt for breakfast and again for dinner—which was doubly relished for being partaken of in the open air—they went on at a good pace, so as to arrive in time, before dark set in, at a certain farm, the owner of which was known to Steve.
‘Well, I declare this is grand,’ remarked Steve as he lay back in the cart, comfortably settled and puffing away contentedly at his pipe. ‘I do enjoy driving at a good pace, with the wind fanning your chin—oh—ah—her—goodness gracious, where are we going to? I must remark here, and at once, that I don’t enjoy a journey to the centre of the earth, where you seem to be taking us, cousin mine. What in the name of goodness do you mean by driving us in here?’
‘But I am in the path.’
‘My dear fellow, don’t you know that when you come to a place like this, the farther you are out of the path the safer you are? Let me instruct you now, once for all, that while you are driving this company, when you come to a black-looking, soft, soapy, muddy hole like this, turn out of the path, and cross where you see the longest grass, and if a cart or waggon has never ridden there before so much the better.’
For the benefit of the reader, who is unacquainted with Transvaal roads, we will describe the sort of ‘black, soft, soapy, muddy hole,’ as Steve called it. In certain patches of the country stretches of a black, soft soil are found, something like what, I imagine, an Irish bog to be from descriptions that I have read of it. When rain has not lately fallen, it is hard and firm enough, but where a stream runs through it, then you have to be careful. Those who know what they are about, generally take good care to cross where no one else has crossed before, and where grass is growing, where the grass itself and its roots form a pretty safe bridge across. But where waggons or carts have been in the habit of crossing, the grass and roots have been cut up, down you go, horses and all, up to the nave and over. In just such a hole our young hunters now found themselves. The horses were up to their bellies in the soft mud, and could find no foothold to work themselves and the cart out. The cart itself was simply floating on the mud, the bottom of the cart lying like a boat on it, while a little of it ran in and blackened the tan-coloured shooting boots of the occupants. What were they to do now? To leave the cart meant a mud bath, and such mud!—black, sticky, oily mud!
I am afraid they would have made up their minds to spend the night in their uncomfortable position; but always when danger seems to be greatest, help is near at hand.
Fortunately for them, they were in sight of the farmhouse where they intended spending the night; and the kindly old Boer and his two sons were soon seen coming along with half-a-dozen oxen yoked to a long chain.
The chain was soon fastened to the harness of the leaders, which the rescuers could just reach, and the oxen pulled out cart and horses. But what a state they were in; the nice tan-coloured harness was painted black as far as the mud reached, so were the horses and cart. But fortunately night was coming on, and the entry of the visitors to the werf did not look so disreputable as it otherwise would have done.