Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 21, 2025
It was about a quarter to seven o'clock when, having breakfasted and completed our final preparations, Piet and I swung ourselves into our saddles and started for the water-hole at an easy canter, Jan's instructions being to follow with the wagon until he should reach a certain signal which we would leave behind us, and which was to be the intimation that he had trekked far enough and must outspan until he received further orders.
"You must make haste, boys, for we have a worse bit than this to cross, and cross it we must, before we outspan for the night." Scarcely had he disappeared in the distance than the oxen, suddenly pulling together, hauled the waggon out. Denis uttered a loud shout of triumph, and away it went rumbling after them. The promise of their leader was soon fulfilled.
"I cannot think why Lang-Jan is hurrying on so," said Constance at last, "unless he thinks it will be a very hot day again. The oxen gave out as we were coming down, and we had to outspan about five miles off." "I was cross," said a younger sister. "You need not tell us that. We have not forgotten," laughed another.
For there were no horses in front of it, and Denry saw that the double shafts had been pushed up perpendicularly, after the manner of carmen when they outspan. The pantechnicon was running away. It had perceived the wrath to come and was fleeing. Its guardians had evidently left it imperfectly scotched or braked, and it had got loose.
As it chanced I reached the town about eleven o'clock on this very morning of the 12th of April and, trekking to the Church Square, proceeded to outspan there, as was usual in the Seventies. The place was full of people, English and Dutch together, and I noted that the former seemed very elated and were talking excitedly, while the latter for the most part appeared to be sullen and depressed.
I want one of them to carry my medicine chest for me, and to take me to the injured man's hut. Then you had better take the wagon down and outspan near the river, where the grass is good, but where our oxen are not likely to get among the mealies, and then come to me, for I shall probably need you to interpret for me."
Everyone who was there can still hear the old bell-buoy at Swakopmund. There were some skirmishes outside Swakopmund early in February. On the 23rd the Commander-in-Chief took the field; leaving the base shortly after dawn, he carried out a driving movement which pushed the enemy back from the outspan at Nonidas to his posts much further into the desert.
So there was much kissing and many good-byes; Ralph and Suzanne saying that they would soon be back, which indeed was the case with one of them, till at last they were off, Jan riding with them a little way towards their first outspan by the sea, fourteen miles distant, where they were to sleep that night.
"But he wants me to accompany him on this expedition, that I may become as great a hunter as he is, and that is just what I should like to be. I am sure, therefore, that he will not allow me to stay with your family longer than the one night we shall outspan at the farm, as we have had so many delays that he is in a hurry to push on."
They bade him, if he met you, to bid you follow after them as quickly as you could, and to say that they would wait for you, if you did not arrive before, at the Three Sluit outspan on this side of the Pondo country, at which you stopped some months ago." "Yes," answered Richard, "I remember, but that outspan is thirty miles away, so I must be getting on, or they will come back to hunt for me."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking