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

by Fred C. Cornell

I awoke to the tortures of the damned, crushed, broken and in agonizing pain, and with the aasvogels tearing at my face. Pinned to the earth as by some great weight, my hands were fortunately still free; and my revolver still in its holster; and a few shots sent the lewd, cowardly birds flapping away. The blood was streaming from my face, and again and again I fainted with sheer agony; moreover the fierce midday sun beat down intolerably full in my eyes, for I lay on my back and could move nothing but my arms. But gradually the sun passed, a cool shadow fell across me, and although I believed I was hurt unto death and indeed longed for death to end my agony some modicum of relief must have come with the shade, and with it strength and the desire to live. Moreover, it was borne upon me that from somewhere near me came the sound of running, gurgling water; tantalizing and maddening me in my pain and agony. I was lying on a slope with my head lower than my limbs, and all I could see was the sky above me; do all I could, I could not lift myself, and could not see what pinned my lower limbs to the sand.

But, maddened more, I believe, by thirst and hearing water running, than by the actual agony of my hurt, I at length began to work at the sand on either side of me with my hands, scratching it away until I had altered my position enough to enable me to turn somewhat, and raise myself a little on one elbow.

Then I found it was my dead horses that pinned me down, for both of them lay crushed and broken partly above me; and looking upwards I saw that a sheer cliff of smooth rock towered straight above me, from which the horses had evidently fallen.

I could hear the water plainer now, and though I swooned once or twice from agony, I gradually worked my limbs clear of the incubus pressing on them, and tried to stand up. But this I could not do, some injury to my spine preventing me, and it was as a beast, on all fours, that I at length made shift to crawl in search of the water I was dying for. Each yard I crawled was agony to me, but at last I came to a rock-encircled pool in which lay water clear and deep, and into which a tiny stream splashed and gurgled from an overhanging cliff. Sweet and pure the water was, and in great abundance. I peered into its dark depths and could see the white sand glimmering at the bottom, full ten or twelve feet below me as I judged.

I crawled to it, and I drank as I had never drank before; and I bathed my tortured face and limbs; finding that, miraculously, none were broken, though I was bruised and aching in every bone, and to stand erect was quite beyond me.

So I drank, and slept, and drank again, and later found strength and appetite sufficient to crawl back to where the dead horses lay, and to search among the scattered contents of my pack for some biltong, and the wherewithal to dress my wounds.

And thus for days I lived, and nursed myself gradually back to a measure of my former strength; dragging myself painfully from the water to the shadow of the rocks to sleep, feeling little anxiety as to where I was or what was to happen to me. I had water in plenty and food sufficient for the present, and after the awful experiences of the desert my one desire was to rest and sleep.

But with returning health came curiosity; and although I was still bent and could not walk upright, I managed to move about and to find out something of this strange prison into which I had been hurled in my frantic flight before the sandstorm.

Apparently I was in the hollow cup of an extinct crater, for on all sides towered perpendicular cliffs of dark granite-like rock, so smooth and unbroken for the most part that a baboon would scarce have found foothold upon them indeed, in many places they actually overhung. Almost circular, and about a quarter of a mile in diameter, the floor of this place was to a great extent covered in verdure, broken here and there with rocks, and except where I had fallen there was but little bare sand.

How I had escaped being smashed to pieces was inexplicable, for the sheer wall of rock that penned me in was, I judged, at least five hundred feet in height, and the horses' bones now picked clean by the aasvogels had been smashed by the terrible fall. A short examination of my little domain showed me that although escape from it was apparently hopeless especially in my maimed condition there was no need for me to starve, and indeed my prison was a very pleasant one. There were wild fruits in abundance, many of them unknown to me, but prominent among them the red, luscious, intoxicating berries that had saved my life in the desert; and these I now ate greedily, finding them much riper than when I had first tasted them, and their effect much more potent. They intoxicated me, perhaps maddened me, and dulled my intellect for the time; but they gave respite to my pain-racked frame, and gave me sleep. Sometimes for days I would give myself up to them, eating nothing else, and lying in a pleasant, dreamy stupor by the deep pool, staring into the dark, clear depths where the white sand glimmered so white.