Chapter Twenty Three.
In Want of Water—The Honey Guide Plays me a Trick—How I am Saved—Zenuta.
On rising the next morning, and disposing of some biltongue, we again started on our journey, and got through many hours of the day with but little incident to recount, save that we were consumed by a terrific thirst, having, since the previous evening, been unable to procure water. The rain which had fallen in the neighbourhood of the kraal appeared never to have reached this spot, for the bed of a small stream we had passed was perfectly cracked and arid from want of moisture. So, while a tropical sun was shining down upon our heads, we had to proceed without being able to procure a drop of water to cool our parched lips, only finding relief in sucking or chewing different fruits and leaves of a watery nature, which Umatula pointed out to us.
Having heard our guide once or twice exclaim, “If I had but a chacma here,” I at last asked him what a chacma was, and why he wanted one at that particular moment.
“The chacma,” he answered, “is a baboon, one of the most destructive of the whole species to our crops, for he knows where to find the best as well as we do.”
“By old Davy Jones himself,” ejaculated Thompson in English to me, “but what good would a blessed ape, with these propensities, serve us here?”
The question was answered immediately by Umatula, who had stopped on observing Jack was speaking, and now continued—
“Though our enemy in this, we make him a friend sometimes by taming him; for the chacma is passionately fond of a root called babiana, which is always full of a watery juice; so, when lacking water in dry weather like the present, we lead these creatures by a piece of hide, and they will direct us to these roots, from which, on digging them up, we extract the fluid.”