ou behind me."

"You think a big sight too much of yourself," rejoined the Bushman.
"Who wants to be near such a black ole fool as you? You may go back to
the camp, and when you get there jus' tell Baas Hendrik that Swartboy
wants to see him. I've got something particular to tell him."

"Very well," answered the Kaffir, becoming more reconciled to his
position; "what for you want see Baas Hendrik? I'll tell him what you
want without making him come here. What shall I say?"

In answer to this question, Swartboy made a long speech, in which the
Kaffir was requested to report himself as a fool for having fallen into
a pit,--that he had shown himself more stupid than the sea-cows, that
had apparently shunned the trap for years.

On being requested to explain how one was more stupid than the other,--
both having met with the same mischance,--Swartboy went on to prove that
his misfortune was wholly owing to the fault of Congo, by the Kaffir
having committed the first folly of allowing himself to be entrapped.

Nothing, to the Bushman's mind, could be more clear than that Congo's
stupidity in falling into the first pit had led to his own downfall into
the second.

This was now a source of much consolation to him, and the verbal
expression of his wrongs enabled him for a while to feel rather happy at
the fine opportunity afforded for reviling his rival. The amusement,
however, could not prevent his thoughts from returning to the positive
facts that he was imprisoned; that in place of passing the day in
cooking and eating _duyker_, he had been fasting and fretting in a dark,
dirty pit, in the companionship of loathsome reptiles.

His mind now expanding under the exercise of a startled imagination, he
became apprehensive. What if some accident should have occurred to
Arend, and prevented his return to the camp? What if Groot Willem and
the others should have strayed, and not find their way back to the place
for two or three days? He had heard of such events happening to other
stupid white men, and why not to them? What if they had met a tribe of
the savage inhabitants of the country, and been killed or taken
prisoners?

These conjectures, and a thousand others, flitted through the brain of
the Bushman, all guiding to the conclusion that, should either of them
prove correct, he would first have to eat the reptiles in the pit, and
then starve.

It was no consolation to him to think that his rival in the other pit