nd! I thought we should never come
to the end of them, and yet I dared not let the mare out lest she should
bucket herself. Happily she and her companion, the stallion--a most
enduring horse, though not so very swift--had stood idle for the last
thirty hours, and, of course, had not eaten or drunk since sunset.
Therefore being in fine fettle, they were keen for the business; also we
were light weights.

I held in the mare as she spurted up the rise, and the horse kept his
pace to hers. We reached its crest, and before us lay the great
level plain, eleven miles of it, and then two miles down hill to
Maraisfontein.

"Now," I said to Hans, shaking loose the reins, "keep up if you can!"

Away sped the mare till the keen air of the night sung past my ears, and
behind her strained the good roan horse with the Hottentot monkey on its
back. Oh! what a ride was that!

Further I have gone for a like cause, but never at such speed, for I
knew the strength of the beasts and how long it would last them. Half an
hour of it they might endure; more, and at this pace they must founder
or die.

And yet such was the agony of my fear, that it seemed to me as though I
only crept along the ground like a tortoise.

The roan was left behind, the sound of his foot-beats died away, and I
was alone with the night and my fear. Mile added itself to mile, for now
and again the starlight showed me a stone or the skeleton of some
dead beast that I knew. Once I dashed into a herd of trekking game so
suddenly, that a springbok, unable to stop itself, leapt right over
me. Once the mare put her foot in an ant-bear hole and nearly fell, but
recovered herself--thanks be to God, unharmed--and I worked myself back
into the saddle whence I had been almost shaken. If I had fallen; oh! if
I had fallen!

We were near the end of the flat, and she began to fail. I had
over-pressed her; the pace was too tremendous. Her speed lessened to an
ordinary fast gallop as she faced the gentle rise that led to the brow.
And now, behind me, once more I heard the sound of the hoofs of the
roan. The tireless beast was coming up. By the time we reached the edge
of the plateau he was quite near, not fifty yards behind, for I heard
him whinny faintly.

Then began the descent. The morning star was setting, the east grew grey
with light. Oh! could we get there before the dawn? Could we get there
before the dawn? That is what my horse's hoofs beat out to me.

Now I could s