I could not conceive that anyone would have the temerity to try and shoot with it, but Carl was immediately on his dignity when I said so, and wanted to know what was the matter with his gun. He said, moreover, that the hills were full of tijgers, and unless he could have cartridges for that gun he wouldn’t go a step farther; moreover he wanted some practice, as he had rarely tried the gun since he “straightened” it.
It appeared like aiding and abetting suicide, but at last I gave him them, and we scattered for cover, whilst he lay down and let her go. There was a most terrific bang, and I wondered what the coroner would say, but Carl was still there, though at least three yards back from where he had first fired, rubbing his shoulder thoughtfully. But he was no funk, and with half a dozen shots had found out what allowance to make for the kink, and could hit a bottle at a hundred yards. And Ford-Smith, himself a “weapon fancier,” and usually festooned with all sorts of weird shooting-irons, thereupon recognised him as a kindred spirit, and was soon swapping shooting yarns with this valiant gunner. He told Smith, if I remember rightly, that at a hundred yards he had to aim two yards to the right and two feet below the object, and I wondered how he would figure it out if a leopard charged him from a quarter that distance!
Next day, at Wag Brand, we had again to abandon our carts, packing sheer necessities upon two of the horses, and carrying a heavy load ourselves as we pushed forward along the pathless and precipitous slopes of the gorge, through which ran the Orange, and scarcely expecting to get the horses through. Within a few hundred yards of the start we had already come to grief, though luckily the accident was more ludicrous than serious.
For in negotiating a granite shoulder smoothly sloping into the water, the old white horse that was leading missed his footing, scrambled wildly as though on skates, reared up and fell with a terrible splash into the muddy water. His pack had been roped on with a long coil of Manila, and in his frantic struggles this came loose and he was soon tangled up like a fish in a net, and it looked like losing both him and our precious pack. I jumped in with a knife and slashed his pack away, and we got both out farther down. And then we stood and laughed till the baboons came out on the rocky peaks and hooted us, for the poor old horse was the most ridiculous-looking object imaginable. He had been white before he fell in, now he looked like an equine rainbow.
Part of his multitudinous load had been a bag of yellow sugar from Upington. I do not pretend to know what it was dyed with, or why it should have been dyed at all, but all one side of him was a deep mustard yellow; a box of permanganate of potash crystals had tinted most of the rest of him from rose pink to deep purple; and a ball of washing-blue, which the only fastidious member of the party had brought, to be able to wash his shirts a nice colour, had completed the picture.
Of course a good deal of our scanty stores were utterly spoiled, and it meant short commons for the trip, but we were lucky to have saved anything, and were thankful for small mercies.
With great caution we successfully negotiated the rest of the bad places, and came to the mouth of the Molopo, whence the going was easy. Lower down, by a lovely stretch of placid water, and opposite the huge red mountain known as “Zee-coe-stuk,” we found a number of Hottentots and Beeste Damaras with sheep, goats, and cattle, which Trollip shrewdly suspected had been stolen, for the few natives amongst these wild hills are vagrants and thieves, mostly descendants of the old free-booters who made this part of the Orange their fastness during the last century, or fugitives from justice. They were surly and suspicious, and would undoubtedly have liked to plunder the lot of us, but we were all well armed, and when they saw the quick-firing section and heavy artillery of Smith and Carl, they became quite civil. From them we succeeded in hiring a pack-cow, which lightened our load considerably, the old dear trotting along ahead of us in the most willing manner, climbing like a cat over rocks and stones, and with a half-grown calf running behind her.
A BREAKDOWN ON THE ROAD FROM PRIESKA.
Showing washing-machine, sieves, stores, etc. Note the canvas water-bag.