Behold me, then, forgetting snow, forgetting heat, forgetting both dynamite and Fahrenheit—for we did want buck-meat badly—and leaving the old nag to wander at will and get itself blown to smithereens if need be, I climbed down and chased after Poulley, already panting his perspiring way up the steep side-gully. What idiots we were, to be sure—that buck simply laughed at us! We must have chased him for fully two hours, but at length we had to give him best. No roast buck for that Christmas, and, sadder and thirstier men, we had to scramble our way back into the alleged path where we had left our horses. When we got down into the oven-like gully again Ransson stood holding the two nags and smoking ruminatingly. “It hasn’t gone off yet,” he said—which was pretty obvious.
We got through the kloof at length and off-saddled, gingerly removing the dynamite to some distance, and covering it with melkbosch, for the only shade within about twenty miles at that time was given by a solitary Aloe dichotoma that stands at the entrance to the pass, and under whose square yard of shadow we all three had to squat.
The heat was so great that the oxen, when outspanned, made no effort to move, but simply stood in their tracks, lifting one foot after another from the burning sand.
We arrived at Kuboos on Christmas Eve, and decided to at least rest on Christmas Day before starting again.
We wanted meat badly, but the natives would not kill a sheep on Christmas Eve, and it began to look like a Christmas dinner of sardines and bully beef.
But Christmas morning brought us luck, for the granite rocks were covered with pigeons, and the twenty-odd that Poulley shot saved the situation. Of them, with a scrap of bacon and some tinned peas, we made a gorgeous stew: we had raisins and currants in the waggon, saved for this very occasion, and made a very creditable pudding in a prospecting-pan; we baked fresh roster-kook and later we feasted right royally.
We had even a tot of brandy each from our “medical stores,” and as we had what is much more precious in Namaqualand—plenty of good water—and a shady tree to lie under, we had a splendid time, and altogether spent a far saner Christmas than we should have done in civilisation. The dissipation of Christmas over, we started for the conglomerates. To reach there a cart was out of the question; indeed, we were not at all sure that horses would be able to get through with anything like a pack. So we travelled light, walking most of the way, and striking south-east into the valley between the T’Houms Mountains. Huge granite boulders the size of suburban villas choked the valley as we penetrated farther, making progress extremely difficult and tedious, and nightfall found us still struggling in this unnamed ravine.
LAUNCH OF THE “OUTRIGGER.”
