CHAPTER V

NOIE


That a girl should set out alone to bathe through a country inhabited
chiefly by wild beasts and a few wandering savages, sounds a somewhat
dangerous form of amusement. So it was indeed, but Rachel cared nothing
for such dangers, in fact she never even thought of them. Long ago she had
discovered that the animals would not harm her if she did not harm them,
except perhaps the rhinoceros, which is given to charging on sight, and
that was large and could generally be discovered at a distance. As for
elephants and lions, or even buffalo, her experience was that they ran
away, except on rare occasions when they stood still, and stared at her.
Nor was she afraid of the savages, who always treated her with the utmost
respect, even if they had never seen her before. Still, in case of
accidents she took her double-barrelled gun, loaded in one barrel with
ball, and in the other with loopers or slugs, and awakened Tom, the
driver, to tell him where she was going. The man stared at her sleepily,
and murmured a remonstrance, but taking no heed of him she pulled out some
thorns from the fence to make a passage, and in another minute was lost to
sight in the morning mist.

Following a game path through the dew-drenched grass which grew upon the
swells and valleys of the veld, and passing many small buck upon her way,
in about twenty minutes, just as the light was really beginning to grow,
Rachel reached the sea. It was dead calm, and the tide chancing to be out,
soon she found the very place she sought--a large, rock-bound pool where
there would be no fear of sharks that never stay in such a spot, fearing