The First Drift, which, as they were coming up stream, was their last, is broader, and not as deep as the others; but in those days it was full of boulders, and the water raced down in three separate channels, although the surface showed but one broad stream. The drift is now higher up, where the bed is even, and the current is not so strong. They have also a wire rope across, and a ferry-boat; but it was not so in ’87. They have done a good deal to improve things, but still the river is king, and asserts itself upon occasion; as when it took a thousand tons of solid masonry from the Cerro de Pasco dam a hundred yards below this drift, and carried samples of dressed stone and Portland cement to the barbel and crocodiles of Ingwenye Umkulu, thirty miles away; or when, later still, it rose in protest against the impudence of man, and swept battery houses off like corks, and flung the huge girders of the railway-bridge from its path, and tossed fifty-ton boulders like pebbles into the Oriental water-race, seventy feet above the river’s bed.
They crossed the first channel safely; and they even got through the second and worst. The little Hottentot Piet sat tight, and handled his team with the most perfect skill. At times it seemed impossible that horses or trap could withstand the surging mass of water that piled up against them; but they did. A cheering word or a timely touch of the whip seemed once or twice to avert catastrophe.
Nairn’s horse had made a perfect leader, and faced the water like a steamboat; but the other seemed to be losing heart, and but for Piet’s whip would have headed down-stream in the second channel.
They were into the third channel, and were going slowly and steadily through, when one front wheel came block up against a boulder, and the near leader again headed down. Whip, voice and rein failed, and as Piet made one more determined effort, something gave, and he dropped back in his seat, calling out:
“Baas, baas, the rein’s broken!”
Nairn jumped up instantly, but the frightened girl clung to him, crying out:
“Oh, don’t leave me! Mr Nairn, for the love of God, don’t leave us!”
Her one hand grasped the collar of his coat, the other held his right hand. He loosened her grasp, and holding both her hands tightly, forced her back into the seat.
“Hold that!” he said, placing her one hand on the rail, and stooping until his face almost touched hers. “Sit still, and wait for me. I won’t desert you!”
Vaulting over into the driver’s seat, he seized the sjambok and jumped into the river. The near leader, free of the check of the rein, was giving before the stream, and had turned fairly down the river. Nairn was swept off his feet in an instant, but, anticipating this, he had grasped the wheeler’s near trace, and was able to work his way forward until he was abreast of the swerving leader. Keeping with his right hand a firm grasp of the lower trace, he shouted to the quaking animal, and struck it sharply on the neck and jaw with the sjambok. The suddenness of the attack startled the horse, and he plunged up stream again. At the same moment Piet’s whip whistled overhead, and his voice rang out; the other three horses strained together, and the spider rose over the stone, and, lurching and bumping, came through the third channel.