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Updated: June 6, 2025
I reached the top of the koppie, and looked in the direction where the friendly white tent of the waggon should be, but there was no waggon, only a black burnt plain stretching away as far as the eye could reach. I rubbed my eyes, looked again, and made out on the spot of the camp, not my waggon, but some charred beams of wood.
They met no man, black or white, and supported themselves upon game, which they shot and ate raw or sun-dried, till at length all their powder was done and they threw away their heavy roers, which they could no longer carry. It was at this juncture that from the top of a tall tree Klaus saw a certain koppie a long way off, which he recognised as being within fifteen miles or so of Marais's camp.
When I came to I found myself back at the koppie, with Good bending over me holding some water in a gourd. "How do you feel, old fellow?" he asked anxiously. I got up and shook myself before replying. "Pretty well, thank you," I answered. "Thank Heaven! When I saw them carry you in, I felt quite sick; I thought you were done for." "Not this time, my boy.
Ascending a sloping, ancient path that was never precipitous, they came to the place, a flat tableland that perhaps measured an acre and a half, which by some freak of nature had been scooped out of the side of the koppie, and was backed by a precipitous cliff in which were caves.
In the centre of this plain was another large koppie of which the river Ukufa, or Death, washed one side. Around this koppie, amid a certain area of cultivated land, stood the "town" of the Christian branch of the Sisa.
Now hearken " and she told the road which he must follow across the Quathlamba, if he would hope to reach the white koppie camp by dawn.
Now they rested awhile, but not long enough to grow stiff, then hastening down the slope they reached the plain, and headed for the white-topped koppie which shone in the moonlight some six miles away. On they crept, Suzanne now limping painfully, for her ankle had begun to swell, and now crawling upon her hands and knees, for Zinti had no longer the strength to carry her and the child.
As I, old Suzanne Botmar, tell it the shadow of that white-topped koppie falls upon this house and beneath my feet is the very spot where the brave schimmel died. Ralph and Jan would not leave it no, not even when the British hoisted their flag in Natal, making us English again after all that we had undergone to escape their usurping rule.
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.
So we ran too, for the koppie. As soon as they understood what we were after, which they did not at first, owing to the dimness of the light, they did their best to get there before us. But we had the start of them, and with the exception of one unfortunate man who stumbled and fell, we were well on to the koppie before they arrived.
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