footsore, half starved, and utterly worn out; and, in addition, I was
suffering from a sharp attack of fever, which half blinded me and made
me weak as a babe. Our ammunition, too, was exhausted; I had only one
cartridge left for my eight-bore rifle, and Hans and Mashune, who were
armed with Martini Henrys, had three between them. It was about an hour
from sundown when we halted and lit a fire--for luckily we had still a
few matches. It was a charming spot to camp, I remember. Just off the
game track we were following was a little hollow, fringed about with
flat-crowned mimosa trees, and at the bottom of the hollow, a spring
of clear water welled up out of the earth, and formed a pool, round the
edges of which grew an abundance of watercresses of an exactly similar
kind to those which were handed round the table just now. Now we had no
food of any kind left, having that morning devoured the last remains
of a little oribé antelope, which I had shot two days previously.
Accordingly Hans, who was a better shot than Mashune, took two of the
three remaining Martini cartridges, and started out to see if he could
not kill a buck for supper. I was too weak to go myself.

"Meanwhile Mashune employed himself in dragging together some dead
boughs from the mimosa trees to make a sort of 'skerm,' or shelter for
us to sleep in, about forty yards from the edge of the pool of water.
We had been greatly troubled with lions in the course of our long tramp,
and only on the previous night have very nearly been attacked by them,
which made me nervous, especially in my weak state. Just as we had
finished the skerm, or rather something which did duty for one, Mashune
and I heard a shot apparently fired about a mile away.

"'Hark to it!' sung out Mashune in Zulu, more, I fancy, by way of
keeping his spirits up than for any other reason--for he was a sort of
black Mark Tapley, and very cheerful under difficulties. 'Hark to the