the trowel we had brought
with us and the help of our hands, in about an hour we succeeded in
delving out a patch of ground some ten feet long by twelve wide to the
depth of two feet. Then we cut a quantity of low scrub with our
hunting-knives, and creeping into the hole, pulled it over us all, with
the exception of Ventvoegel, on whom, being a Hottentot, the heat had no
particular effect. This gave us some slight shelter from the burning
rays of the sun, but the atmosphere in that amateur grave can be better
imagined than described. The Black Hole of Calcutta must have been a
fool to it; indeed, to this moment I do not know how we lived through
the day. There we lay panting, and every now and again moistening our
lips from our scanty supply of water. Had we followed our inclinations
we should have finished all we possessed in the first two hours, but we
were forced to exercise the most rigid care, for if our water failed us
we knew that very soon we must perish miserably.

But everything has an end, if only you live long enough to see it, and
somehow that miserable day wore on towards evening. About three o'clock
in the afternoon we determined that we could bear it no longer. It
would be better to die walking that to be killed slowly by heat and
thirst in this dreadful hole. So taking each of us a little drink from
our fast diminishing supply of water, now warmed to about the same
temperature as a man's blood, we staggered forward.

We had then covered some fifty miles of wilderness. If the reader will
refer to the rough copy and translation of old da Silvestra's map, he
will see that the desert is marked as measuring forty leagues across,
and the "pan bad water" is set down as being about in the middle of it.
Now forty leagues is one hundred and twenty miles, consequently we
ought at the most to be within twelve or fifteen miles of the water if
any should really exist.

Through the afternoon we crept slowly and painfully along, scarcely
doing more than a mile and a half in an hour. At sunset we rested
again, waiting for the moon, and after drinking a little managed to get
some sleep.

Before we lay down, Umbopa pointed out to us a slight and indistinct
hillock on the flat surface of the plain about eight miles away. At the
distance it looked like an ant-hill, and as I was dropping off to sleep
I fell to wondering what it could be.

With the moon we marched again, feeling dreadfully exhausted, and
suffering tort