“It was here,” said Du Plessis, “that the spoor of my cousin was last seen. His servants tracked him to this spot, and from there no trace of him could be found. It’s a mystery I cannot fathom. He could not possibly have climbed this way.”
We looked up at the dark grim rock walls above us, narrowing so that a foot or two of pale blue sky could alone be seen, and the thing seemed an impossibility. No living man could have made his way up that terrible chimney.
Retracing our steps from this dark ravine, we tried in another direction. All the remainder of that day, and for four long days thereafter, we explored with infinite care and toil the mass of mountain on the south-east, east, and northern side of the place where, from the movements of the pelicans, the lost vlei apparently lay. We had to leave our horses behind on these expeditions; we toiled, climbed, descended, struggled, and fell, often at the risk of our necks and limbs, but were met everywhere by precipices and ravines which absolutely barred us in these directions. The mass of mountain, which trended away to the north-east for some miles, was, although much broken up, accessible with great labour, until we had approached within less than half a mile, as we reckoned, of the mysterious place we sought. Here, sheer and perfectly hopeless precipices shut us out, exactly as had been the case on the open part of the mountain we had first examined. It seemed clear that Verloren Vlei lay within a ring-fence of utterly inaccessible cliff wall.
On the fifth evening after our arrival, we lay wrapped in our sheepskin karosses by the fire, stiffened, sore, and thoroughly disheartened; and yet, evening after evening, just at the glorious time of sunset, the pelicans had come swinging over in their majestic hundreds from the south-east, had skeined and circled in the glowing sky, and had sunk into the heart of the mountain, and at dawn of day as regularly had they departed. The vlei must be there; it was heart-breaking to be baffled in this way.
I lay long that night in my wagon, thinking out some solution of the puzzle, until sleep at last overcame me. While I lay asleep, I had a very singular dream. I dreamed that I sat upon a high cliff of rock, looking down upon a fair lake of water, which lay girt in part by a sandy shore, and surrounded by a ring of mountains. It was sunset, and one end of this lake was white with pelicans. At other parts were gathered flocks of wild-duck, and round about flew bands of the swift desert sand-grouse—Namaqua partridge, as the colonists call them. And occasionally the flights of sand-grouse stooped in their pretty way and drank at the margin of the water. But I saw yet another sight in that singular valley. I saw a tall figure walking by the edge of the lake. Its back was towards me, and, for the life of me, I could not see its face. I gazed and gazed; but the face never turned; and then suddenly the scene vanished, and my dream was over. Again I dreamed, and again I saw the spreading water beneath me, and the wildfowl; but there were no pelicans and no sand-grouse. I saw, too, a figure walking along the shore. This time the figure was different. It was shorter, and the walk was brisker; but again the man’s back was towards me, and his face was hidden. And then, again, the dream faded, and I saw no more.
Next morning, Du Plessis and I sat at breakfast, still stiff and sore, yet in better heart. Our night’s sleep had restored our flagging spirits. We had agreed to rest after our five days of hard work, and have a quiet day at our camp. We were later this morning, and the last of the pelicans were vanishing for their day’s excursion as we sat down to breakfast I was surprised, therefore, as I looked towards the mountain, to see a string of wildfowl—evidently duck—circle a few times in the clear morning sky, and then drop down into the mountains again, exactly from where the pelicans sank and rose. I nudged Du Plessis, whose nose was in his coffee, and pointed. “Wild-duck!” he ejaculated—“the first time we have seen them, too. There is the vlei, truly enough.”
Half an hour later, about nine o’clock, flights of sand-grouse came overhead, and made straight for the heart of the mountain. More and more followed; there must have been many scores of them. They were the first we had seen at this camp.
My dream instantly came into my mind. I attached little importance to such things, yet the coincidence of the wildfowl and the sand-grouse was remarkable, and I told Du Plessis what I had dreamed. Quite in a chaffing way, I said: “We’re going to discover your vlei and its secret after all, Koenraad. Dreams do sometimes come true. I wonder, though, what on earth the two men’s figures could mean?”
Du Plessis was much more serious, and said with a solemn face: “It is not right to laugh at dreams, my friend; the Heer God sends them for some good reason, undoubtedly. I had nearly given this search up as hopeless. We must; yes, allemaghte! we must try again.”
We strolled after breakfast, taking our pipes with us, to the chimney-like cul-de-sac where Tobias Steenkamp’s footprints had been last seen, four years before. The place looked more than ever dark, narrow, and forbidding; and as we stood upon the sandy floor of the ravine and gazed upward to the faint patch of sky showing between the cliffs, two hundred feet above, the sharp contrast made it yet more awesome. For half an hour we looked about us, examining carefully every cranny and projection within our vision. Suddenly a boyish expedient of mine flashed into my mind. I had in my young days in Derbyshire ascended a steep and very narrow fissure in a cliff among my native dales, by copying faithfully the example of a sweep’s boy, whom I had watched climbing the great kitchen chimney. Why not make the attempt here? It looked a tremendous risk, but still it might be accomplished up in the far corner where the cliff-walls ran but a foot or two apart. I had hazarded my limbs many a time as a boy in search of birds’ nests: why not here in pursuit of this mystery which so strangely baffled us? I told my plan to Du Plessis; he evidently thought very little of it. However, as we strolled back to camp, I thought out and discussed my scheme, and, so far as I could, prepared for it in the afternoon. We had at the wagons a long coil of stout rope some one hundred and fifty feet in length. It seemed too short for my purpose, and I fastened to it, therefore, with the greatest care, another seventy feet of strong ox riems—halters of raw hide—carefully lashed one to the other. I thus had over two hundred feet of rope.