After a while one of the men wounded a buck, and they both rode into the donga after it.  I rode on, to cross the donga a little further on, so as not to have to follow in the track of the other two, and saw a red buck on the other side, which I wounded so badly that it seemed unnecessary to fire again, and I rode leisurely towards it.  But when I had crossed the donga the buck had disappeared, and I began to seek for the traces of blood, but I soon had to give up the search, not to lose sight of the other two men.  They, however, seemed to be a great distance off, as I did not overtake them, and I did not succeed in tracing them in the direction that the wounded buck had led them, as the track in the grass was invisible to my inexperienced eye.

I rode back to the donga, and deliberated on the course to take.  In all directions I heard shots, right and left, but I stood irresolute.  I had no watch with me to find the four quarters of the wind, but the sun had only just risen, and I made a guess with an imaginary compass.  It was lucky for me that I made such a good guess, and had paid great attention to the direction we had taken with regard to the sun.  I was certain that I should come upon the traces of the lager if only I kept within the sides of a right angle, unless the lager had at the start taken a sharp turn to the right or left.

But it was possible that in our excitement we might have crossed the waggon track which the lager was to follow; then the lager would be far to the right.  Standing thus like the ass between two bundles of hay, I was not in the mood to think lightly of my case, but had to act at once, so I chose the safest and more probable of the two sides of my right angle—­namely, the left, as I would then in any case not be moving towards Portuguese territory, and could always turn to the Krokodil River.

I felt pretty certain now, as it was more probable that we had not crossed the old waggon tract, and every moment I expected to hear the switching of the long whips.  But when I had gone some distance I was obliged to return to the donga, and retrace my way to the place where we had slept.  A clever Boer would have succeeded in finding the way back, but I soon lost my way altogether.  I lost the traces of the horse’s hoofs, and the dongas looked to me so different that in one place where a donga branched off I did not know which to follow.  An intense feeling of desolation took possession of me.  Lost in a wilderness without food or water!  I thought of the twelve or thirteen men who got lost in this wood on a hunting expedition, and of whom only one was saved.  A great fear came upon me.  Gradually I became calmer, and tried to form some plan of action.  I resolved to keep to the left, where I had already seen a solitary mountain.  Perhaps water was to be found there.

My gun was loaded with Dum-Dum bullets, specially prepared for bucks.  I had filed through the steel to the lead, so that the bullet would expand at once when it came into contact with bone.  I found a buck tame in its very wildness, but I missed it, for the aim of my gun, a fine sporting Mauser, had been bent by the branches of the trees.  It was a good thing that I did not come across a lion, or, rather, that a lion did not come across me.