Feeling better for this, I started off early the next morning, and soon came across a solitary nigger, whom I commandeered. He was a stray porter, who had evidently deserted from some caravan, and was nearly starving. I gave him some meat, which he seemed uncommonly glad to get, and we went on together. We had a pretty long trek that day, and the next morning we started off again as soon as it was light for another long march, as it was thirty miles to the next camp where we could get water, and what with the delay caused by wagons capsizing, and trouble with the donkeys, it was ten o’clock at night before I got in. I arrived at my halting-place alone, my native follower having slipped quietly away into the darkness, and I never saw him again. I had brought some water with me in a bucket, but the jolting of the wagon had upset it, and having had no food all day, and suffering from the want of water, I was absolutely dead beat. The first thing I did was to outspan the donkeys and let them have a feed; then I took a bucket and went to look for water. The water-hole was about a mile away, and as it was pitch dark I had no easy job to find it. However, I succeeded at last, and just as I got there I was startled by something jumping up and brushing right past me. I knew from the sharp growl that it must have been a lion which I had disturbed when drinking. I was too done up to pay much attention to it, and having satisfied my thirst, I half-filled my bucket with water and made my way back to camp, where I had some trouble to find enough wood to make a fire. Eventually I managed to get one going and turned in. Before turning in I had noticed a fire at some little distance, which I put down to natives, and when I turned out in the morning, after having satisfied myself that the donkeys had not been interfered with by lions, I started off in the direction in which I had seen the fire in the hope of being able to get some help. The camp proved to be that of some East Indians, who were taking food to a party of railway surveyors who were out ahead, and they supplied me with some rice and let me have a couple of boys, and with this assistance I got started again, and managing to pick up a few boys here and there, I finally reached railhead, after a tiresome and worrying journey.