been very short of water; and
even his arms showed the tattoo-marks that were usually hidden by the
grime inseparable to life in the desert.

"Yes," I answered, "it's beautiful, the most beautiful mountain I know
in Africa. I wonder what's on top? I've had a go at climbing it myself
several times but, of course, it can't be done. The Bushmen couldn't,
Erongo himself only had his werf half-way up when he fought the
Damaras. No one has ever climbed it!"

"You don't know heverythink if yer thinks yer does," sniffed old Jim;
"you're wrong. I've bin up it meself!"

"Rubbish, Jim!" I said; "don't talk rot. How far have you been up,
anyway? As far as the bottom of the big fall, I suppose?"

"To the top and all over it," said old Jim. "Oh, I knows yer don't
believe. But it's gospel. You don't know heverythink!"

"No, that's true, Jim," said I meekly, for I wanted his yarn. "I know
you sailormen can climb better than I ever shall but how did you do it?
Ropes? Ladders? . . . How?"

"No," he answered slowly, turning his quid in his cheek, and spitting
with great precision at a blue-headed lizard that had emerged from a
crack in the rock and sat eyeing us. "Got yer!" he went on as the small
reptile retired in considerable discomfiture.

"No, neether ladders nor ropes. If yer reely wants ter know, I were
carried up!"

"Oh, you can chuckle, but so it were! Twenty year or more agone I came
here fust. There was four of us white men; me as cook, two prospectors,
and the perfesser.

"He was a queer bloke, that perfesser, clever, too, but bless yer he
didn't know heverythink! I'd bin with him a long time, and he used ter
tell me more'n he tole the other fellers . . . a clever sort of
chap . . . but he didn't know heverythink. And he 'ad one great
pecooliarity: he was everlastingly afeard of getting old! He must ha'
bin well over fifty, but he used ter get himself up outrageous young:
and when I docked his shavingwater he cussed most wonderful!

"'Cleanliness, and stric' observance of rules of life that is the only
way ter keep young, Blake,' he would say ter me.

"Well, in them days, bein' young, I didn't see much in what he said,
and if I got a wash once a month I was werry well satisfied; and arter
a while this 'ere washing business of his got on my nerves. 'Cause, as
yer know, when water's been used fer a bath, yer can't werry well use
it fer anything but washing up, or biling pertaters, or sich like, and
he was the wast