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Updated: May 11, 2025
At length in a crevice near the pool I found my revolver with a number of cartridges, my hunting knife, and a few odds and ends of clothing, all in a canvas haversack that still remained strong and sound, and at the bottom my belt and the diamond tied up with Inyati's bracelet.
There was no water now, for Inyati's fears had been well-founded. The little pool had been trampled into black mud by countless gemsbok, and the various half-eaten carcasses strewn about showed that the lions had taken heavy toll of them.
This, however, was useless to us, as our way was east or north-east, and in this direction all Inyati's reconnoitering failed to discover anything but bare dunes, as far as the eye could reach.
But morning found them dead beat; they stood stock still as the sun rose, and neither coaxing nor flogging could get the poor brutes a step farther. According to Inyati's reckoning we were still four hours from the water, and it was obvious that once we left them we could never hope to save them, for we could never bring back enough water to keep them alive.
Later, as I sat in my tent writing up my diary by the light of a feeble candle, and with the gloomiest of thoughts for company, I heard Inyati's voice outside. "Master," he said, in a low tone but little above a whisper, "the dogs are full of meat, and sleeping; and there is that which I would show thee."
I had seen no human being for so long: dead Inyati's face had been the last that I had gazed upon; then, after long I had seen the skeleton in the pool the road of skulls and now at last I gazed upon a human form again, it was again that of the dead.
I learnt that Inyati's country lay far to the north-east, across the dreaded waterless stretches of the unknown Kalahari. He had fled from it years ago, his life forfeit to the priests or "devil-men" as he called them for some cause that he did not explain, or that my limited knowledge of his language did not permit of my understanding.
But, though I could see nothing, Inyati's keen eyes made out a thin wreath of smoke from a prominent dune still some distance away; and in spite of our fatigue we struggled on, till, with the sun glaring down full upon us, we stood on the flank of the huge slope of sand.
I compared them, and found them identical, and now I noted that the rude attempt at a snake's head into which their fastenings were fashioned, was undoubtedly an imitation of the head of the idol above me. This, then, doubtless was Inyati's land, and this one of the priests he had spoken of.
Besides, though Inyati's awful fate appeared but too certain, I felt impelled to follow the direction he had gone for there might, after all, be a faint hope that he had lived through the storm.
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