“OUTRIGGER” ON WHICH WE CROSSED TO THE GERMAN POST AT ZENDLING’S DRIFT.
Only well on to midday the next day did we leave it to clamber up a mountain slope as steep as a roof. Then came half a day of incessant effort, without a vestige of a path, to heights where a vast panorama of peaks lay spread beneath us, all of them nameless, untrodden, unknown. At length a game path was struck which led us to a lovely little pool of water surrounded by thick grass, and it would be hard to say which of the two our ponies enjoyed the more. Late in the day, and after severe clambering, we reached a peak and looked down into a basin below, completely surrounded by almost precipitous walls of conglomerate. It was our “plum,” the place we believed would make our fortunes; and plunging down the precipitous slope at imminent risk of breaking our necks, we found ourselves at the tiny pool of water known as “Quagga,” where we intended making our camp. There was a sufficiency of water, though it was getting black and smelt bad, and by it we rigged up a few bushes as a bivouac—for we brought no tent.
Our hopes were high, for, as I have before mentioned superficially, the conglomerates were identical with the Rand banket; but again we were doomed to disappointment, many days of most laborious work, crushing and panning bed after bed, utterly failing to find even a “colour.”
At length a nugget the size of a pin’s head rewarded us, and we decided that Ransson should remain at the spot and further test its possibilities, whilst Poulley and I would take a rapid trip round our former peggings.
As our stores were principally at Kuboos, from whence we occasionally got a mule-load over the extremely difficult mountain path, we travelled on the scantiest of rations, each man carrying a little tea, sugar, coffee, and meal on his saddle, and depending on our guns for anything more substantial. The difficult ravine which we had previously traversed by moonlight was safely negotiated, though daylight showed us that it was every whit as formidable as we had imagined. We passed the night at the tiny pool of water below the big copper nugget, and as we had seen no sign of game, our supper was not a heavy one. Next day we were off well before sun-up, anxious to shoot something for the pot, but it was not till late in the afternoon that Poulley spotted a klomp of springbok on the sandy, kopje-studded plains over which we were now travelling. The wavering mirage made shooting difficult, but at length he bagged one, and we slung it over the saddle and hurried on, for we were belated, and wished to reach the Orange before dark. We cut into a sand-river that looked like bringing us out by the Tatas Berg, but it turned out to be more than usually tortuous, and it was late at night when we reached the welcome river. Too tired to eat, we did not take the precaution to clean the buck, with the result that, getting up ravenous the next morning, and longing for a good buck steak, we found our hard-earned quarry green, putrid, and quite uneatable. Even Sam, the “boy” with us, could not face it, and as we were extremely sharp-set, and longing for something other than heavy roster-kook, I suggested dynamiting a pool for fish.
So we stripped, and I threw a charge with a short fuse and detonator into a deep-looking pool near by. As usual, however, there was little to show for such a splash—nothing, in fact, but half a dozen springers, the size of herrings.
I was busily swimming about, catching these and throwing them to Poulley on the bank. Suddenly he crouched down.
“Hush!” he said. “Bob your head under, or pretend to be a rock or something—there’s a wild goose!” And he hopped off to the trees where the guns lay, doing good time, considering he was Adam-naked and the ground was covered in thorns.
Meanwhile I tried to look as much like a rock as possible, for wild geese are the most wary of birds, and I floated round with little but my nose above the water, mentally cooking that goose, and eating him without sage and onions. Then Poulley came creeping back with the gun, and started out on a spit of rock towards the rapids. Then I heard the goose “get up and get,” and saw it going down beyond a small island the wrong side of the rapids—within easy range, if we could only get to the island.
Poulley beckoned me and said, “You swim better’n I do—wade across and get it.” And, like an ass, I thought I could. The rapids looked little more than fifty yards of waist-deep water, though lower down the whole width of the river was a mass of broken foam, and I thought that, with a long pole to steady me, I could get over easily. So I got a stick and my hat, and started. I put the pole in, and one leg up to the knee, and immediately found the current much stronger than I expected; a second step, and I was thigh-deep on a slippery rock, and trying to lean upstream to counteract the force of the water; a third—and I was engulfed in a whirling torrent, and well on my way to the Atlantic. I kept the gun above water instinctively, and spinning like a top, my head also came above water, giving me a glimpse of Poulley staring open-mouthed at me from the bank, which was already well behind, whilst the water dragged and buffeted me, striking me against rock after rock. I was handicapped by the gun, which I did not wish to lose; but realising that in a few more seconds I should be in the main rapids, and that it was better to lose the gun than my life, I was just about to let it go, when I brought up violently against a rock well out of water and was able to grab a projecting point. I hung on and got the gun out, and eventually dragged myself out of the swift current on to the rock, whence I was able to make my way to a point near enough the bank for Poulley to throw me a rope and help me out again.