II REJOIN MY FRIENDS 29 



I laid myself close alongside a large fire, and slept 

 soundly till daylight. 



The next morning, as soon as it was light, 

 accompanied by the Kafir who carried my rifle, I 

 made a start, and, though very tired and worn out 

 from privation, managed to reach the waggons late 

 in the afternoon, after an absence of five days and 

 four nights. How I enjoyed the meal that was 

 hastily prepared for me, and how delightful it was 

 to keep out the bitter cold with a couple of good 

 blankets, I will leave the reader to conjecture. It 

 was really almost worth all the hardship I had 

 endured. Mandy and my other friends had of 

 course been in a great state of anxiety about my 

 non-appearance, and had done everything they could 

 to recover me. On the night of the giraffe hunt 

 they had gone to the Kafir town at Pelatsi, and, on 

 promising the exorbitant payment of one blanket per 

 man, induced four Bechuana Kafirs and two Masaras 

 from there to go in search of me. With these men 

 Mandy, on the following morning, started back to 

 the place where we had originally diverged from the 

 waggon road the day after trekking away from 

 Shakani, and then showed them my horse's spoor, 

 which was easy to distinguish, being larger than that 

 of either of the other two. He then went with them 

 a considerable distance farther, and, finding that the 

 two Bushmen ran along the spoor at a quick trot, 

 and were able to follow it with the greatest ease, he 

 finally left them and returned to the waggons. 

 These Kafirs, of course, carried each a large calabash 

 of water, and had the meat of an entire duiker 

 antelope and the shoulder of a koodoo, so that 

 they had a moderate supply of provisions for at least 

 three days. On the evening of the next day these 



