day the
waggon began to move again, and it was to the north-east that the
waggon-pole pointed thenceforwards, and the letter Bough had given Smoots
Beste for the Chief Resident Magistrate at Gueldersdorp was saved from the
kindling of the camp-fire by a mere accident.

The cat's-paw could not read, or the illegible, meaningless ink scrawl
upon the sheet within the boldly-addressed envelope would have aroused his
suspicions at the outset. So well had Bough, that expert in human frailty,
understood his subject, that the letter was a bogus letter, a fraud, not
elaborate--a mere stage property, nothing more. But yet he gave it in full
belief that it would be burned, and that, the boats of Smoots Beste being
consumed with it, according to the thick judgment of the said Smoots, it
would be as a pillar of fire behind that slim child of the old
voortrekkers, hastening his journey north-eastwards. It is typical of the
class of Smoots that it never once occurred to him to go north.

But Smoots Beste never bought a farm with the price of the oxen and the
high-bulwarked, teak-built, waterproof-canvas tilted waggon that had cost
such a good round sum. There was a big rainfall on the third day. It began
with the typical African thunderstorm--deafening, continuous rolls and
crashes of heavy cloud-artillery, and lightning that blazed and darted
without intermission, and ran zigzagging in a horrible, deadly, playful
fashion over the veld, as though looking for dishonest folks to shrivel.
One terrible flash struck the wheel-oxen, a thin double tongue of blue
flame sped flickering from ridge to ridge of the six gaunt backs ... there
was a smell of burning hair--a reek of sulphur. The team lay outstretched
dead on the veld, the heavy yoke across their patient necks, the long
horns curving, the thin starved bodies already beginning to bloat and
swell in the swift decomposition that follows death by the electric fluid.

Smoots Beste crawled under the waggon, and, remembering all he had heard
his father spell out from the Dutch Bible about the Judgment Day, and the
punishment of sinners in everlasting flame, felt very ill at ease. The
storm passed over, and the rain poured all through the night, but dawn
brought in a clear blue day; and with it a train of eight
transport-waggons, and several wearied, muddy droves of sheep and cattle,
the property of the Imperial Government Commissariat Department,
Gueldersdorp, being taken from Basutoland Ea