Kafir, with two yellow Hottentot drivers, man and boy, was
harnessing, in the most primitive mode, four horses on to the six oxen
attached to the wagon; and the horses were flattening their ears,
and otherwise resenting the incongruity. Meantime a fourth figure, a
colossal young Kafir woman, looked on superior with folded arms, like a
sable Juno looking down with that absolute composure upon the struggles
of man and other animals, which Lucretius and his master Epicurus
assigned to the Divine nature. Without jesting, the grandeur, majesty,
and repose of this figure were unsurpassable in nature, and such as have
vanished from sculpture two thousand years and more.

Dick Dale joined the group immediately, and soon arranged the matter.
Meantime, Phoebe descended from the wagon, and welcomed Christopher very
kindly, and asked him if he would like to sit beside her, or to walk.

He glanced into the wagon; it was covered and curtained, and dark as a
cupboard. "I think," said he, timidly, "I shall see more of the past out
here."

"So you will, poor soul," said Phoebe kindly, "and better for your
health: but you must not go far from the wagon, for I'm a fidget; and
I have got the care of you now, you know, for want of a better. Come,
Ucatella; you must ride with me, and help me sort the things; they are
all higgledy-piggledy." So those two got into the wagon through the back
curtains. Then the Kafir driver flourished his kambok, or long whip, in
the air, and made it crack like a pistol, and the horses reared, and the
oxen started and slowly bored in between them, for they whinnied, and
kicked, and spread out like a fan all over the road; but a flick or
two from the terrible kambok soon sent them bleeding and trembling and
rubbing shoulders, and the oxen, mildly but persistently goring their
recalcitrating haunches, the intelligent animals went ahead, and
revenged themselves by breaking the harness. But that goes for little in
Cape travel.

The body of the wagon was long and low and very stout. The tilt strong
and tight-made. The roof inside, and most of the sides, lined with green
baize. Curtains of the same to the little window and the back. There
was a sort of hold literally built full of purchases; a small fireproof
safe; huge blocks of salt; saws, axes, pickaxes, adzes, flails, tools
innumerable, bales of wool and linen stuff, hams, and two hundred empty
sacks strewn over all. In large pigeon-holes fixed to the sides wer