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Updated: May 2, 2025
"In future, be sure to let me know every symptom of danger you may discover, no matter how trifling," said Brook. "Yes, sir." "It was a very tremendous yell, wasn't it, Dally?" asked John Skyd slily, as the waiter-cook was turning to resume his duties at the fire. "Wery, sir." "And alarmed us all dreadfully, didn't it?"
The Skyds, and one or two others who, like themselves, had built too near the edge of streams, were the first to suffer. "This won't do," said John Skyd, on the evening of the second day, as he and his brothers sat in front of their cavern gazing at the turbid river, which, thick and yellow as pea-soup, was hurrying trees, bushes, and wrack in formidable masses to the sea.
"Ha!" exclaimed John Skyd, with a grim smile "but after all it might only have been the shriek of a baboon." "I think not, sir," replied George, with a smile of intelligence. "Perhaps then it was the cry of a zebra or quagga," returned John Skyd, "or a South African ass of some sort." "Wery likely, sir," retorted George.
Meanwhile Skyd and Dobson were driving lucrative bargains in another part of the field, speaking wonderful Kafir in the midst of a Babel of Dutch and English that was eminently suggestive of the ancient "tower" itself. Besides the difficulties of language there were troubles also in reference to trade, for Kafirs, although savage, are fastidious.
The fire was in front of a large, but not deep, cavern, in the recesses of which three slumbering figures were visible. Drawing cautiously nearer, George discovered that the man at the fire was John Skyd, and of course jumped to the conclusion that the three slumbering figures were his brothers and friend.
Junkie Brook, with that vigour of character which had asserted itself on the squally day of his nativity, joined Frank Dobson and John Skyd in a hunting expedition beyond the Great Orange River; and when the Orange Free State was set up by the emigrant Dutchmen, he and his friends established there a branch of the flourishing house of Dobson, Skyd, and Company.
"Nothing whatever," answered John Skyd, "save that it is between one and two hundred miles more or less inland among the mountains, and that its name, which is Dutch, means the River of Baboons, its fastnesses being filled with these gentry." "Ay, I've heard as much mysel'," returned Sandy, "an' they say the craters are gey fierce. Are there ony o' the big puggies in the Albany district?"
Honest Sandy Black admitted that he held the same opinion. "Well, we shall try our best," said the elder Skyd, with a laugh; "I've a great belief in that word `try'. Goodbye, Sandy." He held out his hand.
Expectation was raised to the highest pitch, and when it was heard that the Commissioners had reached Capetown preparations were made in Grahamstown to give them a warm reception. Mounted on a pair of sturdy ponies Hans Marais and Charlie Considine galloped over the plains of the Zuurveld in the direction of Grahamstown. The brothers Skyd had preceded them, Edwin Brook was to follow.
They had been steadily tracing the spoor of poor Junkie, had lost and re-found it several times and, during their pursuit, had crossed the waggon-tracks of Skyd and his party, whom they followed up, in the faint hope that they might have heard or seen something to guide them in their search. In this they were disappointed.
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