he coming of a little herd of
about a dozen giraffes, and he crouched among the bushes, watching them
drink; the towering bull of about eighteen feet in height began by
straddling out its forelegs in the most ungraceful way, till it could
lower itself enough to reach the water with its lips.

Another time he was startled by the coming of a huge white rhinoceros,
which careered through the bushes in a fierce, determined way,
displaying its great power and indifference to every other beast of the
forest.

Lions, too, came once and pulled down an antelope, making the wagon
cattle extremely uneasy, but going away after their banquet, and
troubling the camp no more.

But the river remained as full as ever, the waters rushing furiously
down, and Dyke grew angry at last against his brother.

"Joe knows I'm overdue," he said, "and he ought to have come to see why
I am detained. Why, after that rain he ought to have known that the
river would be full. It's too bad. I thought better of him; but
perhaps he'll come to-day."

And with this hope the boy climbed one of the biggest rocks to where he
could gaze across the river and over the plain on the other side,
looking out in expectancy of seeing the big weedy horse his brother rode
coming toward the ford, but he watched in vain day after day, while Jack
kept the fire going, and cooked and ate and slept without a care, not
even seeming to give a thought to the wife waiting at Kopfontein, or,
judging from appearances, to anything else but his own desires.

"I should like to kick him--a lazy brute!" Dyke said to himself; "but
there's nothing to kick him for now. He does all there is to do. I
suppose I'm out of temper at having to wait so. Here's a whole week
gone, and the river higher than ever."

Dyke had one other novelty to study--a novelty to him, for previously he
had seen but little of them. This novelty was a party of baboons of all
sizes, from the big, heavy males down to the young ones, which
approached from some distance on the other side, clinging to their
mothers' backs and necks. These strange, dog-like creatures came down
from a high clump of rocks or kopje regularly every evening in the same
way; and though they had been heard and seen frequently during the
daytime, chattering, barking, and gambolling about, chasing one another
in and out, and over the stones, as if thoroughly enjoying the sport,
toward the time for their visit to the river all would be