and game was scarce. In a
little while she must be digging for roots in the hard sunbaked soil,
and her babe would be crying at her lean, starved breast. All day
yesterday had she been sucking water from a moist hole in the ground,
and discharging it from her mouth into ostrich shells and a calabash--a
sufficiently fatiguing operation in thirsty soil. But these things
alone hardly troubled Nakeesa. They were natural incidents of Bushman
life, and scarce needed regrets. Something deeper and more bitter lay
within her soul--something that even her cowed, submissive nature
constantly rebelled against.

Twelve months since, Nakeesa's father had handed her over to Sinikwe,
who, for the consideration of two solid brass cartridge cases (articles
much prized by Masarwas as snuff-boxes) and the half of a slain eland,
had bought her as wife. Now Nakeesa had no great admiration for
Sinikwe. He was a good hunter, it was true; all Masarwas are. But he
was lazy, and not very amiable; he was ugly even for a Bushman; and she
had had another youth in her eye. Kwaneet--the pleasant, merry
Kwaneet--who had shown her several little kindnesses at Makwa Pool, and
had presented her with many titbits of flesh, while their respective
families squatted near that water, was the man of her secret choice.

Kwaneet, too, knew this, and was anxious to link his fortunes with
Nakeesa's; but, most unfortunately, Sinikwe had acquired the coveted
cartridge cases from an English hunter, and had secured his wife.
Kwaneet, it is true, could easily have slain an eland, and had offered
to do so; but though, like Sinikwe, he carried at his neck--as every
decent Masarwa should--his own well-polished brass cartridge case, as
snuff-box, he had not two spare ones to offer Nakeesa's father; and so
he had lost Nakeesa, and Sinikwe had taken her.

Nakeesa's eyes, as she squatted over the fire this morning, ranged over
typical Kalahari scenery. In front of her lay an open grassy clearing,
yellow with sun-parched winter grass. This and other glades in the
vicinity Sinikwe meant to set fire to in a day or two, in order to renew
the vegetation, as the first rains came on, and so attract the game.
Beyond the clearing, and upon the left hand and right, stretched the
pleasant open forest of the desert--groves of giraffe-acacia (_kameel
doorn_), through which still wander freely in these pathless, waterless
solitudes the tall giraffe, the portly eland, the brill