The strange narration ended as it began, not abruptly, but in indistinct mutterings.
Half fascinated, Jason and I had followed every word of the strange archaic Portuguese. The rhythmic sentences seemed to have had an almost hypnotic effect upon us, for neither of us afterwards remembered how and when we fell asleep.
I was awakened by Karelse shaking me. It was just break of day. I felt heavy, sleepy, and confused, and for a moment remembered nothing.
"Coffee, baas," said the Hottentot; and as I sipped it I remembered. I looked round. Jason was sleeping like a log. Our strange visitor had gone. "Where is the other baas?" I inquired of Karelse. He stared at me, and then looked over at Jason. "No, no," I said impatiently, "the old baas that came in the night?" Karelse's face was a study. He had evidently seen no one, though the boy's fire had been not twenty yards from our own. Had I dreamt the whole thing? I strode over and roused Jason. He woke with a startled exclamation. His first words assured me the old man had been there. "Damn that mad chap," he said. "His horrible old yarn made me dream badly. Where is he?" Karelse stared from one to the other, his yellow face a queer ashen grey. He was plainly frightened. "Come," said I to Jason, "let us go and have a sluice: there is water in plenty." I led the way to the pool. It had been too dark for us to see it properly when we had arrived the evening before. We bent over the dark, clear water. Sheer and black the pit went down, and it was plainly of great depth. And from the brink the granite kopje rose abruptly. Jason and I looked at each other, then at Karelse.
"Karelse," I asked, "have you ever been here before?"
"No, baas," he faltered; "there is always plenty of good water here, they say, but the place has a bad name and no one comes here. They say it is haunted."
"What do they call the place?" I asked.
"Dood Drenk," he said "the Drink of the Dead!"
THE WATERS OF ERONGO
North-East of Swakopmund, and somewhere where the line that runs the copper ore down from Otari has a station called Omaruru, there stands a mass of huge table-topped mountains. At the time of which I write they were known as the Erongos, so named after a famous chief of the Gainin Bushmen, who had made something of a stand there against the invading Damaras that eventually "ate up" both him and his tribe.