tter, that is wahr! That will never do," said the old man
naively. "What do you advise then?"

"Watch well, and either contrive to catch them yourself on some of the
remaining fields or say nothing till we are safely back in
Luderitzbucht," counseled Dick.

"Never can I so long contain myself with these thieves. Think you the
company spoke of a flotation of 500,000, of half a million pounds, that
these hounds would have caused my name and my report to rob from the
public! Never can I contain myself long, but as you wish, friend, I
will try unless indeed some better plan offers."

Dick crept back quietly to his little patrol tent and tried to sleep,
but pain and excitement kept him wide-eyed; and he had scarcely dropped
off when his Hottentot driver awakened him to tell him that two of the
mules had broken their reins and cleared in the night, apparently
making their way back in a bee-line towards Luderitzbucht.

"I have found their spoor, baas," he said; "but they have gone far and
fast and it will need a horse to catch them."

"Saddle mine, quickly, and I will go back myself," ordered Dick, with a
muttered blessing or two on the defaulters; and within a few minutes he
was cantering over the spoor of yesterday, along which the mules had
bolted. He soon found where they had left the trail, and in the now
clear light of dawn their spoors showed clearly in the soft sand. At
last he caught sight of them grazing on a small patch of Bushman grass
growing in the hollow between two dunes, and after a considerable
amount of trouble managed to secure them, and making them fast to a
convenient bush he climbed a big dune to have a look round and try and
mark out for himself a straight cut back to camp.

He recognized his whereabouts instantly, for scarcely five hundred
yards away rose the big dune that had been the scene of Grosman's
forethought two nights back. The sight of it brought back Dick's
indignation afresh.

"Beastly swabs," he thought, "why they never even take the trouble to
find out if there really are any diamonds in the blessed fields or not?
From what I've seen at Kolman's Kop, this place looks extremely likely.
I wonder whether, after all, they have been a bit too clever? I'll have
a look, anyway."

Between him and the dune where the bogus find had been made there
stretched a wide, flat space of comparatively firm ground a so-called
anp, or shallow vlei, in which at some time water had accumulated. Here
t