Part 15 (1/2)
”Alleh, ”do you hear what your English spook says? He says that he has wagons and _food, food, food!_”
Then Marais burst into tears and flung hi me down I wrenchedface upwards on the ground She seeled to a sitting posture
”Is it really you, Allan, or do I dream?” sheher to her feet, for she seeh no more than a child Her head fell uponher, I turned to the a the trees not ame with stones?” asked one of theo Those buck,” he added, with a wild laugh, ”co; but they will not walk into our pitfalls
They know the others”
Nohen I left ht with eese in the ht to carry I held up an to steal towards the elands
Taking what shelter I could, I got within a hundred yards of thehtened, in fact, by alloped, the big bull leading, and vanished behind some trees
I saw their line, and that they would appear again between two clumps of bush about two hundred and fifty yards away Hastily I raised the full sight on the rifle, which wasto God as I did so that ht not failhorns lying flat upon the back The shot was very long, and the beast very large to bring doith so sh 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 as 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 strea with perspiration
”Cut meat from the eland's flank; don't stop to skin it,” I said in ns
They understood, and a ais
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 theirthe with thear 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 hihter, four Prinsloos--a fa the husband of the poor worave 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 they constructed, placing it at a distance for safety's sake When rass fire set light to this outbuilding and all the powder blew up
After this, for a while they supplied the camp with food by the help of such a pits in which to catch game In time the buck came to know of these pits, so that they snared no ” or sun-dried meat they had made was all consumed, they were driven to every desperate expedient that is known to the starving, such as the digging up of bulbs, the boiling of grass, twigs and leaves, the catching of lizards, and so forth I believe that they actually ate caterpillars and earthworlect of the wretched Kaffir as left to watch it, and having no tinder, they failed to relight it by friction, of course even this food failed them When I arrived they had practically been three days without anything to eat except green leaves and grass, such as I saw the child chewing In another seventy hours doubtless every one of them would have been dead