oreover, swiftly as we travelled, he travelled
just a little swifter, gaining say a few yards in every hundred. For the
last mile before we came to the river bank, half an hour later perhaps,
though it seemed to be a week, he was not more than fifty paces to our
rear. I glanced back at him, and in the light of the moon, which was
growing low, he bore a strange resemblance to a mud cottage with broken
chimneys (which were his ears flapping on each side of him), and the
yard pump projecting from the upper window.

"We shall beat him now, Hans," I said looking at the broad river which
was now close at hand.

"Yes, Baas," answered Hans doubtfully and in jerks. "This is very good
camel, Baas. He runs so fast that I have no inside left, I suppose
because he smells his wife over that river, to say nothing of death
behind him. But, Baas, I am not sure; that devil Jana is still faster
than the camel, and he wants to settle for his lost eye, which makes him
lively. Also I see stones ahead, which are bad for camels. Then there
is the river, and I don't know if camels can swim, but Jana can as Marut
learned. Do you think, Baas, that you could manage to sting him up
with a bullet in his knee or that great trunk of his, just to give him
something to think about besides ourselves?"

Thus he prattled on, I believe to occupy my mind and his own, till at
length, growing impatient, I replied:

"Be silent, donkey. Can I shoot an elephant backwards over my shoulder
with a rifle meant for springbuck? Hit the camel! Hit it hard!"

Alas! Hans was right! There _were_ stones at the verge of the river,
which doubtless it had washed out in periods of past flood, and
presently we were among them. Now a camel, so good on sand that is its
native heath, is a worthless brute among stones, over which it slips and
flounders. But to Jana these appeared to offer little or no obstacle. At
any rate he came over them almost if not quite as fast as before. By
the time that we reached the brink of the water he was not more than ten
yards behind. I could even see the blood running down from the socket of
his ruined eye.

Moreover, at the sight of the foaming but shallow torrent, the camel,
a creature unaccustomed to water, pulled up in a mulish kind of way and
for a moment refused to stir. Luckily at this instant Jana let off one
of his archangel kind of trumpetings which started our beast again,
since it was more afraid of elephants than it was of water.