It was so dark that I could not see anything, though I could smell a great deal, so I lit a match.  It was a ‘tandstickor’ match, and burnt slowly and dimly, and as the light gradually increased I made out what I took to be a family of people, men, women, and children, fast asleep.  Presently it burnt up brightly, and I saw that they too, five of them altogether, were quite dead.  One was a baby.  I dropped the match in a hurry, and was making my way out of the hut as hard as I could go, when I caught sight of two bright eyes staring out of a corner.  Thinking it was a wild cat, or some such animal, I redoubled my haste, when suddenly a voice near the eyes began first to mutter, and then to send up a succession of awful yells.  Hastily I lit another match, and perceived that the eyes belonged to an old woman, wrapped up in a greasy leather garment.  Taking her by the arm, I dragged her out, for she could not, or would not, come by herself, and the stench was overpowering me.  Such a sight as she was—­a bag of bones, covered over with black, shrivelled parchment.  The only white thing about her was her wool, and she seemed to be pretty well dead except for her eyes and her voice.  She thought that I was a devil come to take her, and that is why she yelled so.  Well, I got her down to the waggon, and gave her a ‘tot’ of Cape smoke, and then, as soon as it was ready, poured about a pint of beef-tea down her throat, made from the flesh of a blue vilder-beeste I had killed the day before, and after that she brightened up wonderfully.  She could talk Zulu,—­indeed, it turned out that she had run away from Zululand in T’Chaka’s time,—­and she told me that all the people whom I had seen had died of fever.  When they had died the other inhabitants of the kraal had taken the cattle and gone away, leaving the poor old woman, who was helpless from age and infirmity, to perish of starvation or disease, as the case might be.  She had been sitting there for three days among the bodies when I found her.  I took her on to the next kraal, and gave the headman a blanket to look after her, promising him another if I found her well when I came back.  I remember that he was much astonished at my parting with two blankets for the sake of such a worthless old creature.  ’Why did I not leave her in the bush?’ he asked.  Those people carry the doctrine of the survival of the fittest to its extreme, you see.

“It was the night after I had got rid of the old woman that I made my first acquaintance with my friend yonder,” and he nodded toward the skull that seemed to be grinning down at us in the shadow of the wide mantel-shelf.  “I had trekked from dawn till eleven o’clock,—­a long trek,—­but I wanted to get on; and then had turned the oxen out to graze, sending the voorlooper to look after them, meaning to inspan again about six o’clock, and trek with the moon till ten.  Then I got into the waggon and had a good sleep till half-past two or so in the afternoon, when I rose and cooked some meat, and had my dinner, washing it down with a pannikin of black coffee; for it was difficult to get preserved milk in those days.  Just as I had finished, and the driver, a man called Tom, was washing up the things, in comes the young scoundrel of a voorlooper driving one ox before him.