We had then covered some fifty miles of wilderness.  If the reader will refer to the rough copy and translation of old da Silvestra’s map, he will see that the desert is marked as measuring forty leagues across, and the “pan bad water” is set down as being about in the middle of it.  Now forty leagues is one hundred and twenty miles, consequently we ought at the most to be within twelve or fifteen miles of the water if any should really exist.

Through the afternoon we crept slowly and painfully along, scarcely doing more than a mile and a half in an hour.  At sunset we rested again, waiting for the moon, and after drinking a little managed to get some sleep.

Before we lay down, Umbopa pointed out to us a slight and indistinct hillock on the flat surface of the plain about eight miles away.  At the distance it looked like an ant-hill, and as I was dropping off to sleep I fell to wondering what it could be.

With the moon we marched again, feeling dreadfully exhausted, and suffering tortures from thirst and prickly heat.  Nobody who has not felt it can know what we went through.  We walked no longer, we staggered, now and again falling from exhaustion, and being obliged to call a halt every hour or so.  We had scarcely energy left in us to speak.  Up to this Good had chatted and joked, for he is a merry fellow; but now he had not a joke in him.

At last, about two o’clock, utterly worn out in body and mind, we came to the foot of the queer hill, or sand koppie, which at first sight resembled a gigantic ant-heap about a hundred feet high, and covering at the base nearly two acres of ground.

Here we halted, and driven to it by our desperate thirst, sucked down our last drops of water.  We had but half a pint a head, and each of us could have drunk a gallon.

Then we lay down.  Just as I was dropping off to sleep I heard Umbopa remark to himself in Zulu—­

“If we cannot find water we shall all be dead before the moon rises to-morrow.”

I shuddered, hot as it was.  The near prospect of such an awful death is not pleasant, but even the thought of it could not keep me from sleeping.

CHAPTER VI

WATER!  WATER!

Two hours later, that is, about four o’clock, I woke up, for so soon as the first heavy demand of bodily fatigue had been satisfied, the torturing thirst from which I was suffering asserted itself.  I could sleep no more.  I had been dreaming that I was bathing in a running stream, with green banks and trees upon them, and I awoke to find myself in this arid wilderness, and to remember, as Umbopa had said, that if we did not find water this day we must perish miserably.  No human creature could live long without water in that heat.  I sat up and rubbed my grimy face with my dry and horny hands, as my lips and eyelids were stuck together, and it was only after some friction and with an effort that I was able to open them.  It was not far from dawn, but there was none of the bright feel of dawn in the air, which was thick with a hot murkiness that I cannot describe.  The others were still sleeping.