mentioned that they thought of trying a
new bit of veldt, rather away from the beaten track, if but they could
find water in the desert, and good guides and spoorers--they were bent
on entering the wild and little-known tract of country north of the road
to the Mababi veldt. "Well," said the elder of the traders--Kenstone
was his name--"you'll find game there after the rains--giraffe, gemsbok,
hartebeest, eland, koodoo, roan antelope, and perhaps a few elephant, or
a rhinoceros or two. But it's a wild, barren veldt; the country as you
go north is a good deal broken, and, unless the rains have been good,
water is terribly scarce there. As for myself," (gazing rather moodily
at the camp-fire, and stroking his thick, brown beard), "I once went
into that veldt, and never wish to see it again. I had a most uncanny
adventure there--an experience I never again wish to repeat if I live to
a hundred. In all the years (and they are close on five-and-twenty now)
I have been in the hunting veldt, I never spent so incomprehensible and
horrible a time as the few days I am thinking of. Ugh!" and the big man
shivered as he spoke.

Naturally the curiosity of his audience was at once excited. The
younger trader, Smallfield, spoke first.

"Why, George," he said, "I never heard you speak of that country. I
never even knew you had been in it. What's the yarn? It must be
something out of the common if it gives _you_ the blues. You're not
sentimental, as far as I remember."

"No, Jim," returned Kenstone, "I never mentioned the thing to you or to
any one else, bar, perhaps, two or three folks. It's eleven years gone
since it all happened. My old partner, Angus (he's down in the Colony
now), who was with me at the time, knows all about it, and I reported
some of the circumstances to a Transvaal Landdrost when we got back.
Otherwise I have never talked about the matter--I should only be
chaffed, and it's not a pleasant topic at the best of times. It gave me
a very nasty _schrijk_ [Fright] at the time, I remember. However, it's
all far enough away now; if you and these gentlemen would like to hear
the yarn, as it's Christmas-time, and we're so well met, why, I'll break
my rule and tell you all about it. And mind, what I tell you are solid
facts. You know I don't `blow,' Jim, or spout tall yarns for the
benefit of down-country folks or bar-loafers at Kimberley. What I saw I
saw, and, please God, hope never to see again."

All