After leaving a note with Klaas, now her humble slave, for Miss Anstrade, who had retired some time previously to her tent, and after seeing the oxen tied up to the trek-tow, they set off with their guns, guided by the stars. Frank, with his old hunter’s instinct fully revived, walked along through the deepening gloom without a tumble, but Webster damaged his clothing and his skin by repeatedly running into thorn-bushes, whose long, white thorns, curved like the talons of an eagle, laid fast hold of him.
Now and then a startled antelope would bound away, or a porcupine or ant-bear roll grunting across their track, while the notes of plovers and ducks flying overhead broke complainingly on the quiet air, and the far-off barking of dogs at the “Doppers’” camp accentuated the silence. Before morning they saw the faint, ghostly gleam of water below them, and lay down to wait for the first break of day, when they rose to take their bearings, so that they should not miss the route on their return, a catastrophe very likely to happen even to experienced hunters in the bush country. Separating, they each selected a hiding-place by the water, and before long the cracks of their rifles rang out sharply, Hume securing a fine sable antelope, while Webster, over-estimating the size of a buck, which loomed large in the mist, had no luck. After shifting ground, and walking for an hour, they each met with success. Some time was spent in gralloching the quarry, after which a fire was lit; they had a bathe, and then roasted a steak of venison on the glowing coals. Then they covered the bodies with bushes, and picking up their course, returned to the outspan, which they reached at noon.
They stood at the border of the bush struck with dismay and surprise. The open space so crowded the night before was now deserted. A few thin streaks of smoke rose from a number of white ash-heaps, two or three ringed crows croaked and gabbled hoarsely from a withered thorn, but there was no other sign of life.
“Why,” said Webster, tilting his broad hat back, “you’ve made the wrong port.”
Hume walked out into the open, and stood by a heap of ashes.
“This is the spot,” he said; “here are the marks of our scherm poles; and there,” pointing to the dent of a small heel, “is her spoor.”
“Then, where is she?”
Hume pointed to the broad tracks of the waggon-wheels leading north.
“What the devil! then she has moved away. Those swabs of niggers have mutinied and cleared. And we were fools enough to trust them. Thank God, they can’t be far.”
“No, they can’t be far.”