"So you shall, my boy," said Mr. Blakeney, with pleased face. "That's an excellent suggestion. But whatever your mother will say to me for allowing you to be hunting elephants in this way, I don't know."
Leaving Poeskop, who carried his native hatchet, to begin the task of chopping out the tusks of the slain elephants, Mr. Blakeney returned with the two lads to the wagon. The oxen were inspanned, and a trek was made that afternoon to the scene of the hunt. Here a fresh camp was formed, and the whole of the next day was spent in chopping out the remaining tusks and packing them away on the wagon.
Chapter IX.
IN THE THIRST-LAND.
"Baas," said Poeskop, on the evening of that day, as his masters sat together as usual at their cheery camp fire, "I saw something this morning which I didn't understand. I don't like it."
"What was it, Poeskop?" said Mr. Blakeney, looking with an amused smile at the Bushman's serious face, puckered just now into innumerable wrinkles.
"Well, my baas," returned Poeskop, "it was this. When I first went out this morning, at sun-up, to start cutting out the rest of the teeth, I found the spoor of some one who had been prowling round our camp and looking at all our elephants."
"Only some wandering native, I suppose," said Mr. Blakeney. "It's quite natural. This is a very thinly inhabited country, but there must be some tribe or other in the neighbourhood, even if they were only Bushmen or Berg Damaras. There's no harm in that, if they take nothing; and the ivory is all right, anyhow."
"Nay, baas," replied Poeskop, "it's not a kaal [naked] Kaffir. There are no natives within forty miles of us. What I did find was spoor of a man wearing velschoen. He's not a white man, but a Hottentot or Griqua. I don't like it, baas. There is some one spying upon us."
Mr. Blakeney knit his brows and thought. He was a little disturbed at Poeskop's intelligence; but after all they were a strong party, whom few would care to attack. And besides, who wanted to attack them? Then somehow the figure of Karl Engelbrecht rose before his mind's eye.