“Hallo,” said Borcherds. “Bit pleased with yourself, ain’t you?”
“What d’ye mean?” I asked, none too sweetly.
“Oh, we heard you singing for the last hour or more,” he said. “Thought you might have struck someone with some whisky.”
Singing!
We did not give up the search till our food absolutely petered out. The Hottentots lived for days on dassies, which none of us would eat, though they are perfectly clean and good eating. They cooked them by the simple process of throwing them in the fire. The hair burnt off, but formed a sort of shell round the carcass, and when it was sufficiently roasted, they simply knocked the charred part off and ate the rest. I never saw them make the least attempt to clean one.
When we finally trekked, our rations for the journey back to the cart consisted of two tins of sardines, about four pounds of Boer meal, and a tin of golden syrup.
We decided to attempt to get the old horse down the Bak River, and thence up the Orange bank, to a path that would get us back to the cart, and so, at daybreak one morning, we reluctantly bade farewell to our camp and took the back trail.
Most of the morning was spent in getting Stoffel down smooth granite slopes by strewing sand over them, and many a slip and scramble did the old thing get, but at length we stood on the bank of the Orange; where he gorged himself with grass, and we turned to and made a big pot of “mealie pap,” and divided the sardines and syrup amongst the eight of us. And leaving the “Bak” behind us, we reluctantly abandoned our first attempt after Brydone’s diamonds. I say “reluctantly,” for every man of us still believed that somewhere in the immediate vicinity of our late camp lay a diamond-mine.
Our journey back to the cart was a hungry but uneventful one. We found the driver on the point of clearing for Upington with the news of our being lost or captured by the Germans, for we were long overdue, and he had consoled himself by eating practically every bit of our remaining stores. Three days later we were back at Kakamas North Bank, where at the store Borcherds ransacked the whole stock for a pair of pants large enough for his ample proportions. For his only pair were in rags, our boots were in shreds, and altogether a bigger lot of ragamuffins rarely straggled over a frontier. Of course, we had had no news from the outside world since we left Kakamas on our way down, and our first anxious inquiry disclosed the fact that a messenger had been chasing me for days, with telegrams which he had brought all the way from Upington. We located him later, and one of the telegrams brought me news that immediately sent our despondent spirits up with a bound. Before leaving for the trip, I had vainly endeavoured to obtain the name of a certain individual who, years before, had sold a very large diamond at Steinkopf, which he said he had found somewhere near the Great Falls, and who, after obtaining a considerable sum for it, had gone back to Gordonia. And this wire, which had been following me for weeks, conveyed the welcome intelligence that he was a certain Hendrick, living at Kakamas—the very place in which the wire reached me! Here was luck with a vengeance, luck which might atone for all our misfortunes—for Steinkopf credited this man, above all others, with knowing where there were plenty more to be picked up!