ifty yards away. Hastily I raised the full
sight on the rifle, which was marked for two hundred yards, lifted it,
and waited, praying to God as I did so that my skill might not fail me.

The bull appeared, its head held forward, its long horns lying flat upon
the back. The shot was very long, and the beast very large to bring down
with so small a bullet. I aimed right forward--clear of it, indeed--high
too, in a line with its backbone, and pressed the trigger.

The rifle exploded, the bullet clapped, and the buck sprang forward
faster than ever. I had failed! But what was this? Suddenly the great
bull swung round and began to gallop towards us. When it was not more
than fifty yards away, it fell in a heap, rolled twice over like a shot
rabbit, and lay still. That bullet was in its heart.

The two Kaffirs appeared breathless and streaming with perspiration.

"Cut meat from the eland's flank; don't stop to skin it," I said in my
broken Zulu, helping the words out with signs.

They understood, and a minute later were at work with their assegais.
Then I looked about me. Near by lay a store of dead branches placed
there for fuel.

"Have you fire?" I asked of the skeleton Boers, for they were nothing
more.

"Nein, nein," they answered; "our fire is dead."

I produced the tinder-box which I carried with me, and struck the flint.
Ten minutes later we had a cheerful blaze, and within three-quarters of
an hour good soup, for iron pots were not wanting--only food to put into
them. I think that for the rest of that day those poor creatures did
little else but eat, sleeping between their meals. Oh! the joy I had in
feeding them, especially after the wagons arrived, bringing with them
salt--how they longed for that salt!--sugar and coffee.

CHAPTER IX. THE PROMISE

Of the original thirty-five souls, not reckoning natives, who had
accompanied Henri Marais upon his ill-fated expedition, there now
remained but nine alive at the new Maraisfontein. These were
himself, his daughter, four Prinsloos--a family of extraordinary
constitution--and three Meyers, being the husband of the poor woman I
had seen committed to the grave and two of her six children. The rest,
Hernan Pereira excepted, had died of fever and actual starvation, for
when the fever lessened with the change of the seasons, the starvation
set in. It appeared that, with the exception of a very little, they had
stored their powder in a kind of outbuilding which t