A Rip Van Winkle of the Kalahari, and Other Tales of South-West Africa

by Fred C. Cornell

Soon we had the bag nearly full, and cutting them up on our waterproof ground-sheet, we quickly had a quantity of watery pulp, at which the animals nuzzled greedily, and which revived them to a remarkable extent almost at once; so much so indeed, that we had very little difficulty in hurrying them forward again. The last drop of water had long since gone, and I was now consumed with thirst, and sick with misgiving as to what might be found at the pan Inyati had seen. Now we could see it, and, as yesterday, the flocks of partridges were all flying in that direction. How I envied them their wings, and how I grudged them the precious water they would be drinking! At length, footsore, weary, with eyes scorched by the blinding glare of the sun on the bare sand, and with lips cracked and tongues swollen with thirst, we staggered out of the dunes into a wide pan covered with bush and sprinkled with big trees huge cameel-doorn of thick verdant foliage, which gave the whole expanse a park-like appearance. They were full of gay-plumaged birds, butterflies were flitting everywhere, here and there were fine stretches of thick grass, in fact, after all we had suffered in the furnace of shade-less sand behind us, the place was a veritable paradise. And at length, where the trees were thickest, we espied tall green reeds growing thickly, and a few minutes later our fears were at an end, for here was water in plenty.

It was thick and muddy, and fouled by wild animals, whose spoors showed thick all around it; but to us it was absolute nectar, and it needed all Inyati's persuasion to prevent me from drinking to excess and probably dying on the spot.

We had to control the horses too, and let them drink but little at a time, or they too would probably have drank till they dropped dead in their tracks.

In this pleasant oasis we stayed for three days, resting, recuperating, and living on the fat of the land. Game there was in abundance, so much so, indeed, that they were a cause of anxiety, for the water in the vlei was decreasing rapidly from the number of animals that drank there nightly, and it was obvious that it would not last for very long unless rain fell. Signs were not wanting that the season had been exceptionally dry, for the vlei had at one time been of large extent, and now nothing but the one small pool remained. At it also drank myriads of partridges, the air being literally thick with the huge swarms of them that came in the early morning and again at night, so tame and fearless that they scarcely troubled to get out of our way, and we kept our pot going by simply knocking them over with a stick.

We soon explored the pan or oasis which was almost circular in shape and about a mile in diameter, and completely encircled by dunes; most of them as barren and forbidding as those we had already passed through, though to the south there was a certain amount of vegetation. This, however, was useless to us, as our way was east or north-east, and in this direction all Inyati's reconnoitering failed to discover anything but bare dunes, as far as the eye could reach.

Pleasant as the shade and greenery of the oasis was, it was evident that our stay could not be a lengthy one; moreover, lions were increasingly numerous, and for the first time in our trip began to cause us serious anxiety. So bold were they that fires had to be lit at nightfall and kept going all night; and their roars made sleep impossible.

The nights were now dark and moonless, and on the third of our stay the lions were exceptionally troublesome. We could see little beyond the light of the fires, but roars and growls came from all quarters, and there were evidences that a large herd of some kind of buck was passing through the oasis, and these the lions were attacking.

Inyati was nervous and uneasy, not, as he explained, on account of the lions, his "little gun" would see to them, but as to what was happening at the water-hole, from which we had removed our camp some distance on account of the lions.

"Gemsbok, master, a big herd of them, that is what it is," he said, as we listened to the terrific roars in the direction of the water. "They seek not water, for they seldom drink, but if it comes in their way they may do so; moreover, they will be likely to trample the pool into mud to cool their hooves. Luckily our water-skin is full, and the horses have drunk well; but I fear what the morning will show."

All night we could hear the buck moving about and passing through there must have been thousands of them. All night, too, the roaring continued, culminating shortly before daybreak with the most terrific uproar in the direction of the pool it was possible to imagine.