For a few minutes he stood gazing languidly on the plain beyond the ridge. Despair had almost taken possession of his breast, when his eye suddenly brightened. He observed objects moving far away on the plain. With bated breath he stooped and shaded his eyes with his hand. Yes, there could be no doubt about it—a party of horsemen and bullock-waggons! He tried to cheer, but his dry throat refused to act. Turning quickly, he began to descend the hillside, and chanced to cough as he went along. Instantly he was surrounded by almost a hundred baboons, some of gigantic size, which came fearlessly towards him. They grunted, grinned, and sprang from stone to stone, protruding their mouths and drawing back the skin of their foreheads, threatening an instant attack. Considine’s gun was loaded, but he had lived long enough in those regions to be fully aware of the danger of wounding one of these creatures in such circumstances. Had he done so he would probably have been torn to pieces in five minutes. He therefore kept them off with the muzzle of his gun as he continued the descent. Some of them came so near as to touch his hat while passing projecting rocks. At last he reached the plain, where the baboons stopped and appeared to hold a noisy council as to whether they should make a great assault or not. He turned and levelled his gun.
“Come,” thought he at that moment, “don’t do it, Charlie. You have escaped. Be thankful, and leave the poor brutes alone.”
Obeying the orders of his conscience, he re-shouldered his gun and returned to his friend, whom he found reclining under a low bush, and informed him of what he had seen. The young Dutchman jumped up at once, and, mounting, rode round a spur of the hill and out upon the plain. In an hour they had overtaken their comrades, but great was their dismay on finding that they had long ago consumed every drop of water, and that they were suffering from thirst quite as much as themselves.
“Never mind,” said Lucas Van Dyk; “let me comfort you with the assurance that we shall certainly reach water in a few hours.”
The hunter was right. Some hours before sunset the oxen and horses quickened their pace of their own accord—sure sign that they had scented water from afar. Shortly after, they came in sight of a stream. The excitement of all increased as they pushed forward. They broke into a wild run on nearing the stream; and then followed a scene which is almost indescribable. The oxen were cast loose, the riders leaped to the ground, and the whole party, men, oxen, and horses, ran in a promiscuous heap into the water.
“Wow, man, Jerry, hae a care; ee’ll be squizzen atween the beasts,” said Sandy Black, as the active Jerry passed him in the race.
The Scot’s warning was not without reason, for next moment Jerry was up to the knees in the stream between two oxen, who, closing on each other, almost burst him. Easing off, they let him drop on hands and knees, and he remained in that position drinking thankfully. The whole place was quickly stirred up into a muddy compound like pea-soup, but neither man nor beast was particular. They struggled forward and fell on their knees—not inappropriately—to drink. One man was pushed down by an ox, but seemed pleased with the refreshing coolness of his position, and remained where he was drinking. Another in his haste tumbled over the edge of the bank and rolled down, preceded by an impatient horse, which had tripped over him. Both gathered themselves up, somehow, with their lips in the water,—and drank! Young Rivers, happening to gain the stream at a point where oxen and horses were wedged together tightly, tried to force in between them, but, failing in this, he stooped to crawl in below them. At that moment Slinger the “Tottie” gave a yell in Dutch, and said that a horse was trampling on him; whom Dikkop consoled by saying that he was fast in the mud—and so he was, but not too fast to prevent drinking. Meanwhile the Dutchmen and the knowing ones of the party restrained themselves, and sought for better positions where the water was clearer. There they, likewise, bent their tall heads and suggested—though they did not sing—the couplet:
“Oh that a Dutchman’s draught might be
As deep as the ro–o–olling Zuyder-Zee!”
The limit of drinking was capacity. Each man and beast drank as much as he, or it, could hold, and then unwillingly left the stream, covered with mud and dripping wet! Oh, it was a delicious refreshment, which some thought fully repaid them for the toil and suffering they had previously undergone. The aspect of the whole band may be described in the language of Sandy Black, who, beholding his friends after the fray, remarked that they were all “dirty and drookit.”