IN two hours' time, about four o'clock, I woke up. As soon as the first heavy demand of bodily fatigue had been satisfied the torturing thirst from which I was suffering asserted itself. I could sleep no more. I had been dreaming that I was bathing in a running stream with green banks, and trees upon them, and I awoke to find myself in that arid wilderness, and to remember that, as Umbopa had said, if we did not find water that day we must certainly perish miserably. No human creature could live long without water in that heat. I sat up and rubbed my grimy face with my dry and horny hands. My lips and eyelids were stuck. together, and it was only after some rubbing and with an effort that I was able to open them. It was not far off the dawn, but there was none of the bright feel of dawn in the air, which was thick with a hot murkiness I cannot describe. The others were still sleeping. Presently it began to grow light enough to read, so I drew out a little pocket copy of the "Ingoldsby Legends" I had brought with me, and read the. "Jackdaw of Rheims." When I got to where
"A nice little boy held a golden ewer,
Embossed, and filled with water as pure
As any that flows between Rheims and Namur,"
I literally smacked my cracked lips, or, rather, tried to smack them. The mere thought of that pure water made me mad. If the cardinal had been there with his bell, book, and candle, I would have whipped in and drank his water up, yes, even if he had already filled it with the suds of soap worthy of washing the hands of the pope, and I knew that the whole concentrated curse of the Catholic Church should fall upon me for so doing. I almost think I must have been a little light-headed with thirst and weariness and want of food; for I fell to thinking how astonished the cardinal and his nice little boy and the jackdaw would have looked to see a burned-up brown-eyed, grizzled-haired little elephant-hunter suddenly bound in and put his dirty face into the basin and swallow every drop of the precious water. The idea amused me so that I laughed or rather cackled aloud, which woke the others up, and they began to rub _i_ their _i_ dirty faces and get _i_ their _i_ gummed-up lips and eyelids apart.
As soon as we were all well awake we fell to discussing the situation, which was serious enough. Not a drop of water was left. We turned the water-bottles upside down and licked the tops, but it was a failure; they were as dry as a bone. Good, who had charge of the bottle of brandy, got it out and looked at it longingly; but Sir Henry promptly took it away from him, for to drink raw spirit would only have been to precipitate the end.
"If we do not find water we shall die," he said.
"If we can trust to the old don's map there should be some about," I said; but nobody seemed to derive much satisfaction from that remark, it was so evident that no great faith could be put in the map. It was now gradually growing light, and as we sat blankly staring at each other I observed the Hottentot Ventvo"gel rise and begin to walk about with his eyes on the ground. Presently he stopped short and, uttering a guttural exclamation, pointed to the earth.
"What is it?" we exclaimed, and simultaneously rose and went to where he was standing pointing at the ground.
"Well," I said, "it is pretty fresh Springbok spoor; what of it?"
"Springboks do not go far from water," he answered in Dutch.
"No," I answered, "I forgot; and thank God for it." This little discovery put new life into us; it is wonderful how, when one is in a desperate position, one catches at the slightest hope, and feels almost happy in it. On a dark night a single star is better than nothing.
Meanwhile Ventvo"gel was lifting his snub nose, and sniffing the hot air for all the world like an old Impala ram who scents danger. Presently he spoke again.
"I _i_ smell _i_ water," he said.
Then we felt quite jubilant, for we knew what a wonderful instinct these wild-bred men possess.
Just at that moment the sun came up gloriously and revealed so grand a sight to our astonished eyes that for a moment or two we forgot even our thirst.
For there, not more than forty or fifty miles from us, glittering like silver in the early rays of the morning sun, were Sheba's breasts; and stretching away for hundreds of miles on each side of them was the great Suliman Berg. Now that I, sitting here, attempt to describe the extraordinary grandeur and beauty of that sight, language seems to fail me. I am impotent even before its memory. There, straight before us, were two enormous mountains, the like of which are not, I believe, to be seen in Africa, if, indeed, there are any other such in the world, measuring each at least fifteen thousand feet in height, standing not more than a dozen miles apart, connected by a precipitous cliff of rock, and towering up in awful white solemnity straight into the sky. These mountains standing thus, like the pillars of a gigantic gateway, are shaped exactly like a woman's breasts. Their bases swelled gently up from the plain, looking, at that distance, perfectly round and smooth; and on the top of each was a vast round hillock covered with snow, exactly corresponding to the nipple on the female breast. The stretch of cliff which connected them appeared to be some thousand feet in height, and perfectly precipitous, and on each side of them, as far as the eye could reach, extended similar lines of cliff, broken only here and there by flat, table-topped mountains, something like the world famed one at Cape Town; a formation, by the way, very common in Africa.
To describe the grandeur of the whole view is beyond my powers. There was something so inexpressibly solemn and overpowering about those huge volcanoes-for doubtless they are extinct volcanoes--that it fairly took our breath away. For a while the morning lights played upon the snow and the brown and swelling masses beneath, and then, as though to veil the majestic sight from our curious eyes, strange mists and clouds gathered and increased around them, till presently we could only trace their pure and gigantic outline swelling ghostlike through the fleecy envelope. Indeed, as we afterwards discovered, they were normally wrapped in this curious gauzy mist, which doubtless accounted for one not having made them out more clearly before.
Scarcely had the mountains vanished into cloud-clad privacy before our thirst --literally a burning question--reasserted itself.
It was all very well for Ventvo"gel to say he smelled water, but look which way we would we could see no signs of it. So far as the eye could reach there was nothing but arid, sweltering sand and karoo scrub. We walked round the hillock and gazed about anxiously on the other side, but it was the same story, not a drop of water was to be seen; there was no indication of a pan, a pool, or a spring.
"You are a fool," I said, angrily, to Ventvo"gel; "there is no water."
But still he lifted his ugly snub nose and sniffed.
"I smell it, Baas" (master), he answered; "it is somewhere in the air."
"Yes," I said, "no doubt it is in the clouds, and about two months hence it will fall and wash our bones."
Sir Henry stroked his yellow beard thoughtfully. "Perhaps it is on the top of the hill," he suggested.
"Rot," said Good; "who ever heard of water being found on the top of a hill?"
"Let us go and look," I put in, and hopelessly enough we scrambled up the sandy sides of the hillock, Umbopa leading. Presently he stopped as though he were petrified.
"Nanzia manzie!" (here is water), he cried, with a loud voice.
We rushed up to him, and there, sure enough, in a deep cup or indentation on the very top of the sand-koppie, was an undoubted pool of water. How it came to be in such a strange place we did not stop to inquire, nor did we hesitate at its black and uninviting appearance. It was water, or a good imitation of it, and that was enough for us. We gave a bound and a rush, and in another second were all down on our stomachs sucking up the uninviting fluid as though it were nectar fit for the gods. Heavens, how we did drink! Then, when we had done drinking, we tore off our clothes and sat down in it, absorbing the moisture through our parched skins. You, my reader, who have only to turn on a couple of taps and summon "hot" and "cold" from an unseen, vasty boiler, can have little idea of the luxury of that muddy wallow in brackish, tepid water.
After a while we arose from it, refreshed indeed, and fell to on our biltong, of which we had scarcely been able to touch a mouthful for twenty-four hours, and ate our fill. Then we smoked a pipe, and lay down by the side of that blessed pool under the overhanging shadow of the bank and slept till mid-day.
All that day we rested there by the water, thanking our stars that we had been lucky enough to find it, bad as it was, and not forgetting to render a due share of gratitude to the shade of the long- departed Da Silvestra, who had corked it down so accurately on the tail of his shirt. The wonderful thing to us was that it should have lasted so long, and the only way that I can account for it is by the supposition that it is fed by some spring deep down in the sand.
