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