Elsie would lie sleeping in the wagon, undisturbed by the least jolt, for the surface of the plain was as soft as down. Her father would walk ahead under the liquid stars, which seemed to look down upon him with more than human sympathy and understanding. During his captivity Stephanus had never seen the sky at night; thus, the memory of what had always strongly influenced him became idealised in his awakened and alert soul. Now, the vastness and the thrilling mystery of the night skies seemed to have fused with his purpose, and his spirit inhabited the infinite.
The travellers had brought enough water in kegs for their own personal needs, but day by day the agonies of the wretched cattle increased. The Hottentot driver and leader became more and more uneasy, feeling themselves in danger of that worst of all deaths,—a long-drawn death of thirst in the desert. But Stephanus was sustained by his lofty trust, and never doubted that they would issue safely from their difficulties.
Each forenoon as the mocking mirage was painted athwart the northern sky, the clear, wide stream of the far-fountained Gariep, with its fringe of vivid green boskage, seemed as though lifted out of the depths of the awful gorge and hung across the heavens for their torment.
One morning they saw the red-mounded dunes quivering far ahead in the ratified air, slightly to their right. Stephanus and the Hottentots knew this region by repute, and accordingly recognised the fact that their last and most terrible effort was now at hand,—that now they would have to plough their way through some ten miles of sand so light and loose that the wheels of the wagon would sink in it to the axles. Once through the sand-hills, they would be within a day’s journey of that cleft in the black mountains through which the cattle might be driven to the river.
The day smote them with fury. The sand became so hot that it blistered the soles of their feet through the veldschoens. The wind, heavily charged with fine, red sand, was moaning and shrieking across the waste. Their only chance lay in keeping moving, for the drifting sand would have buried the wagon, if stationary, in a few hours. But the moment came when the unhappy cattle were unable to advance with the wagon another step, so had to be outspanned.
The oxen staggered away for a few paces and sank exhausted to the ground. It was clear that without water, not one of them would ever rise again. It was now the eighth day since they had last drunk their fill. The Hottentots surrendered themselves to despair. Stephanus knelt in the sand and lifted heart and voice in supplication to his God.