"So that you could say, `Ah, you should see the veldt where the sun
shines brightly for weeks together.'"

"Sun shines!" cried Dyke. "Here, look at my face and hands."

"Yes; they're burnt of good Russia leather colour, like mine, Dyke.
Well, what do you say? Shall we pack the wagon, give it up, and trek
slowly back to Cape Town?"

"Yes, I'm ready!" cried the boy eagerly.

"Get out, you confounded young fibber! I know you better than that."

"No, you don't," said Dyke sulkily.

"Yes, I do, Dicky. I know you better than you know yourself. You're
not of that breed, my boy. You've got too much of the old dad's
Berserker blood in your veins. Oh, come, now: withdraw all that!
British boys don't look back when they've taken hold of the plough
handles."

"Bother the plough handles!"

"By all means, boy; but, I say, that isn't English, Dyke. Where would
our country's greatness have been if her sons had been ready to sing
that coward's song?"

"Now you're beginning to preach again, Joe," said the boy sulkily.

"Then say `Thank you,' my lad. Isn't it a fine thing for you to have a
brother with you, and then, when there isn't a church for hundreds of
miles--a brother who can preach to you?"

"No; because I know what you're going to say--that we ought to go on and
fight it out."

"That's it, Dicky. Didn't some one say that the beauty of a British
soldier was that he never knew when he was beaten?"

"I'm not a soldier, and I am beaten," cried Dyke sourly.

"Not you. I know you better. Why, if I said `Yes; let's give it up,'
and packed up all we cared to take, and got the wagon loaded to-night,
you'd repent in the morning when we were ready to start, and say, `Let's
have another try.'"

"Well, perhaps I might say--"

"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Joseph Emson; "what a young humbug you are, Dicky.
Fancy you going back with me to the old dad, and us saying, `Here we
are, back again, like two bad shillings, father. We've spent all our
money, and we're a pair of failures.'"

"Well, but it is so hot and tiresome, and the ostriches are such
horribly stupid beasts, and--"

"We're both very tired, and disappointed, and thirsty, and--"

"I am, you mean," said Dyke. "Nothing ever seems to worry you."

"Hah! I know you, Dicky, better than you know me. I feel as keenly as
you do, boy. No: we will not give up. We haven't given the ostriches a
fair trial yet."

"Oh, haven't we!"

"No; not half. I know we've