Hope had departed from his heart, and he no longer felt a desire to live.
Hendrik and Arend, although sympathising with him in their common misfortune, exchanged looks of congratulation. They would now be permitted to go home.
Chapter Sixty Six.
News of the Lost.
The sky had been overclouded all day, and continued so as the sun went down. Over them descended a night as dark as Erebus.
Perceiving the impracticability of getting that night to the house of the boer,—a distance of ten or fifteen miles,—the disappointed trackers dismounted, and staked their horses upon the grass, determined to wait for the return of another day.
The night was passed in fitful slumbers around a camp-fire, where they were only visited by a flight of large moths, and some laughing hyenas, that by their harsh cachinations seemed to mock them in their misery.
They were in a district of country from which the most noble of its denizens seemed to have been driven, and the most despicable only remained. When morning dawned they again climbed into their saddles and continued on towards the kraal of the boer.