Each wagon had a span of eighteen or twenty oxen, and as soon as the last pair was yoked, a small black boy, the voerlooper, would run to their heads, seize the leading rein and turn them towards the road. Then came a tremendous crack of the driver's whip, a stream of oaths and oxen's names, intermingled and ending in:
"Yak!"
One by one the four wagons took the road, raising clouds of red dust, the drivers and boys running alongside.
Usually passenger-wagons go first in the line, but the wagon with Poppy's adopted family in it, started last, because Swart-kop, a big black-and-white ox, had been particularly fractious, and had delayed the operation of inspanning, putting the driver into a terrible passion. Poppy waited until his cursings and revilings were only faintly heard on the air, then slipping quietly through the camp which had returned to peaceful sleeping, she plunged into the clouds of dust.
Throughout the night hours she padded along, her throat and ears and mouth filled with the fine dirt, her eyes running and sore; afraid to get too near the wagons for fear of being seen; afraid to be too far behind for fear of she knew not what.
Towards dawn they passed through a narrow sluit. The water was filthy at the drift when all the wagons had gone through it, but she left the road and found a clean place higher up where she thankfully drank and laved her begrimed face. As the dawn broke she could see that the veldt was well-bushed with clumps of rocks, and big ant-heaps here and there; there would be plenty of hiding-places when the wagons stopped.
Presently there were signs of a coming halt. The oxen slackened pace, the drivers began to call to each other, and the man who was evidently the Baas of the convoy went off the road and inspected the ground.
Then a long loud:
"Woa! An—nauw!" passed along the line, each wagon took to the veldt, drawing up at about fifty yards from the road.
Thereafter came the outspanning, with the identical accompaniments of the inspanning. When the oxen had gone to seek water and food in charge of their herders, the voerloopers departed to gather wood and mis (dry cow-dung) for the fires, and the drivers unrolled their blankets and lay upon them resting, but not sleeping, until a meal had been prepared; someone began to play a concertina at this time. Afar from the encampment Poppy had found a big dry hole in the heart of a clump of bushes. The thorns tore her face and her clothes as she struggled through them, but in the hole at last she fell down and succumbed to the passion for sleep which overwhelmed her. She lay like a stone all through the day, hearing nothing until the loud clap of a whip pulled her out of her dreams.