“But, Mynheer Jan, how are we to get back there?”
This was just the trouble that stared all in the face, and had been in their thoughts ever since the tsetse-sickness first made its appearance among the stock. For in their thoughts, also, was the Karoo they had lately crossed with so much difficulty and danger. This when they had all the means of transport, waggons to carry their women, children, provisions, and other effects, with horses to ride upon. What would be the recrossing it without these, and afoot? Impossible, as Van Dorn well knew; and so declared, saying—
“Overland, brothers, we never could get back. We are more than three hundred miles from Zoutpansberg, the nearest settlement of our people, as you know. Some of us might hold out to reach it, but not all; only the strongest. The weak ones, our dear ones, would many of them perish by the way. Need I say more?”
“No—no!” promptly responded Rynwald, thinking of a wife and only daughter, the fair Katharina. “That’s enough, Mynheer Jan. We mustn’t attempt to go back over the Karoo; it would be our ruin, as you say.”
“Then how are we to go?” demanded Blom. “What other way?”
“By water,” answered the head baas. “We must make down the river, and on to the sea.”
“What river are you speaking of?”
“The Limpopo. The stream we’ve just left should run into it, not a great way below; and the Limpopo itself empties somewhere to the northward of Delagoa Bay. I have heard there is a Portugese settlement, a small port near its mouth, where whalers and coasting vessels occasionally call. If we can reach that, ’twill give us a chance to get down the coast to Port Natal, and then over the Drakenbergs back home.”
“That would be a long voyage,” suggested Blom, “full of all sorts of dangers, too.”
“In time not near so long as by land, and not half as many dangers either—if we have luck.”