“Skit, Baas, skit!” “Shoot, master, shoot!” whispered the Hottentot, throwing himself on his face, an example which we all followed.

Then I saw that the birds were a flock of pauw or bustards, and that they would pass within fifty yards of my head.  Taking one of the repeating Winchesters, I waited till they were nearly over us, and then jumped to my feet.  On seeing me the pauw bunched up together, as I expected that they would, and I fired two shots straight into the thick of them, and, as luck would have it, brought one down, a fine fellow, that weighed about twenty pounds.  In half an hour we had a fire made of dry melon stalks, and he was toasting over it, and we made such a feed as we had not tasted for a week.  We ate that pauw; nothing was left of him but his leg-bones and his beak, and we felt not a little the better afterwards.

That night we went on again with the moon, carrying as many melons as we could with us.  As we ascended we found the air grew cooler and cooler, which was a great relief to us, and at dawn, so far as we could judge, we were not more than about a dozen miles from the snow line.  Here we discovered more melons, and so had no longer any anxiety about water, for we knew that we should soon get plenty of snow.  But the ascent had now become very precipitous, and we made but slow progress, not more than a mile an hour.  Also that night we ate our last morsel of biltong.  As yet, with the exception of the pauw, we had seen no living thing on the mountain, nor had we come across a single spring or stream of water, which struck us as very odd, considering the expanse of snow above us, which must, we thought, melt sometimes.  But as we afterwards discovered, owing to a cause which it is quite beyond my power to explain, all the streams flowed down upon the north side of the mountains.

Now we began to grow very anxious about food.  We had escaped death by thirst, but it seemed probable that it was only to die of hunger.  The events of the next three miserable days are best described by copying the entries made at the time in my note-book.

“21st May.—­Started 11 a.m., finding the atmosphere quite cold enough to travel by day, and carrying some water-melons with us.  Struggled on all day, but found no more melons, having evidently passed out of their district.  Saw no game of any sort.  Halted for the night at sundown, having had no food for many hours.  Suffered much during the night from cold.

“22nd.—­Started at sunrise again, feeling very faint and weak.  Only made about five miles all day; found some patches of snow, of which we ate, but nothing else.  Camped at night under the edge of a great plateau.  Cold bitter.  Drank a little brandy each, and huddled ourselves together, each wrapped up in his blanket, to keep ourselves alive.  Are now suffering frightfully from starvation and weariness.  Thought that Ventvoegel would have died during the night.