e. He stood about twenty yards
away, his arms outstretched towards the desert as though in
supplication; a motionless and striking figure in spite of his
deformity.

"I'm going to turn in," I called; but he neither moved nor answered,
and when I looked again he had gone.

"He will be back directly," I thought, and curling myself up on my
blanket I fell asleep immediately.

All too soon my boys called me, and waking, I found that my guest had
gone.

"Which way?" I asked Jantje.

"Nie, baas; ek wiet nie," he said, shaking his head.

"Kambala," said I, impatiently, to the other man; "has the ou baas
gone?"

"Ee-wah t In-koos," he answered in the affirmative; "but where I know
not. Ask thou, master, these Bushmen, they know!"

There were two Bushmen in the camp, who had turned up but the day
before and I made Kambala bring the small, pot-bellied men to where I
sat. I knew their "talk."

"The baas with the scarred face," I said; "whither went he?"

"No! no!" they answered in their clicking tongue, "we know not! Who
knows? Not we 'Khoi Khoian.'"

"Ye are no 'Khoi Khoian' (Hottentots, as Bushmen often like to style
themselves), but San (Bushmen), and of these parts. Therefore, answer
me where is he, that scarred one?"

They squatted on their haunches before me, looking at me furtively from
their little slits of eyes, muttering to each other afraid.

"Master, we fear," they said reluctantly. "He is a great witch, that
'old one' we know him well. Often does he cross the dunes where even we
dare not go where no man goes!"

"Seek him," I ordered.

"No! no!" they said again, "he leaves no spoor and we fear. It is not
well to follow that 'old one'!"

And search as I could, no spoor did I find.

But what I did find, there on my blanket beside my pillow, was a big,
blue, uncut diamond, together with a scrap of paper bearing the one
word "Farewell."

THE SALTING OF THE GREAT NORTH-EASTERN FIELDS

THE SALTING OF THE GREAT NORTH-EASTERN FIELDS

CHAPTER I

To be "broke to the world" was by no means a new experience to Dick
Sydney, and as he sat on the sandy shore near Luderitzbucht and watched
the setting sun turn the broad ocean into molten gold, he was little
troubled by the fact that his last mark had been spent an hour or two
back for a very belated and necessary breakfast, and that he was now
absolutely penniless. Always an optimist, Dick easily outdid the
immortal Micawber in his faith i