A LONG DAY 
215 
as a signal of my whereabouts to the boys and save them the 
trouble of following all the deviations of my track, which had 
gone backwards and forwards in the chase. When the buck 
O 
was about roasted I hauled him out, and, making an underlie of 
green branches, started to feed at a rate that soon left the two 
hind legs and backbone bare, and probably would have gone on 
eating had not my attention been attracted by the shouting of 
my boys, who, now it was growing dark, had lost the direction 
by not being able to distinguish the smoke, and could not yet 
see the fire in the laagte. Answering by a shot, they soon came 
running up, expressing the greatest delight at finding me, as they 
feared that I had gone so far that they would be obliged by 
darkness to give up the search till next day. 
I handed the buck carcase over to them, and with a few 
hurried bites the meat was despatched, and we started for home 
after sharing the water they carried fairly amongst us. 
On this hurried march home we were fortunate enough to 
blunder right into a pan of water that enabled us to still our 
raging thirst and fill the calabashes again for further use on the 
way. I have before mentioned that this dry atmosphere, 
coupled with heavy exertion, draws largely on the fluid 
substances of the body, so that after a hard running like the 
past, we found it necessary to consume such a quantity of water 
at the pan that it will hardly bear the strain of relating. For 
myself I should never have found the camp that night, as while 
running I had neither time nor opportunity to take any 
bearings, but the faithful boys, although following all the time at 
a trot, had by methods known only to themselves so securely 
located the spot, that all I had to do was to urge them on. We 
reached camp at 12.30 a.m. to find Hammar and the others in 
some consternation at our protracted absence, and, worse by far, 
that none of them had killed any game. This day I had been 
actually travelling seventeen full hours and had been running a 
good part of the time, so must have covered a deal of ground 
on this twenty-eighth day of August. I slept very little till four 
o’clock, kept awake by pain in the legs and over-excitement, 
