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A short distance away a fair-sized bush offered a modicum of shade, and here we rested for the day for we had planned to travel only in the cool of the night as long as the moon served. And here Inyati showed me how to make water from the young green t'samma, taking those the size of an orange only, and roasting them in the ashes, and thus turning their pulp into a clear liquid like water.
Delicious cold water, being dashed in my face and trickling down my parched throat, brought me again to my senses. I lay, sore and bruised and with throbbing head and limbs, beside some tall reeds, between which water glittered in the light of the rising moon. Inyati bent over me and he uttered an exclamation of joy as I opened my eyes. "Master! master!
Mad with rage I sent bullet after bullet into the brute's head and body till the click of the hammer of my Winchester showed the magazine was empty, and the lion rolled over dead, with Inyati still in its mighty grip, and to all appearance dead also. Then I must have gone berserk mad.
But the shallow, hoof-trampled hollow was bone-dry; there was no sign of Inyati either, and my heart sank as I realized that my struggle had been in vain. Anyway, here I must rest and eat, and drink a little of my tiny stock of water, and on the morrow make my last struggle on foot, for it was evident that the horses could go no further, and were dying of thirst.
Not without cost to themselves, however; for there in the centre of what had been the pool lay a huge lion, dead, transfixed and impaled upon the long, sharp, straight horns of the magnificent gemsbok bull, that lay, with broken neck, almost hidden beneath the lion's formidable bulk. "Wow!" said Inyati; "I have heard of the like before.
The range is pierced by several neks, at one of which, lying between the main heights and the Inyati spur, Botha was checked by Kitchener on October 2. He then made a cast eastward to another nek and by abandoning his transport succeeded three nights later in getting round Kitchener's left. He easily kept Kitchener off in a rearguard action and made for Piet Retief.
With my field-glasses I scanned the bare and barren waste before us in all directions, but no sign of life or vegetation broke the monotony of its awful desolation. I looked at Inyati, peering from under his palm in the same direction, and he answered my unspoken question. "Yes, master, we must cross it. It runs for many days' journey north and south, and we cannot go round.
"Master," at length said Inyati, "think, and think well. To go back is still easy, to go forward may well be that we die even as these two have died!" "The desert is drier than when I struggled through it, more dead than alive, by the path these people came by and that way it would be madness to try!
And the thought came to me that though I knew nothing of this way of my return, yet the spell had not been perfect, for I forgot little of that other path I had trod with Inyati, and after; and I could, and would, return! For as my strength came back, and grew till it was the wonder of all, so did my longing to return increase.
The horses had struggled out after their leader, and stood trembling near me; luckily I had left them saddled and bridled in anticipation of an early start, but the other pack was lying there in the dunes. And thus I awaited the abatement of the storm, a prey to the most awful suspense. Inyati!
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