"Hurrah!" shouted Frank, at this moment, waving his cap on the shelf of rock above. "Three cheers for old Lion. It is all right now." "All right as regards the meat, Frank," said Nick, "but how about the drink? A fellow in this wicked world requires to drink as well as to eat--at all events, I do." "Meat," repeated Frank, peering over the edge of the precipice, which might perhaps be a dozen feet in height. "Have you got any meat? Did you kill anything when you fired just now?" "To be sure we did, Frank," said Warley. "We're not given to miss in our part of the world. We've brought down as nice a young steinbok as you'd wish to eat. If you'd only find us some water to match, we should be quite set up." "Water! why, that is just what we _have_ found. Here has old Lion lighted on a well of water, the most delicious that any fellow ever drank of." "Water! what, up there? You don't say so. Hurrah! here goes." Laying down their guns, the three thirsty travellers speedily climbed the stony heights, and stood by their companion's side, when their eyes were gratified by a very strange as well as a very welcome spectacle. In the very middle of the plateau of rock surmounting the precipitous ascent appeared a circular hole, some three or four feet in diameter, and so deep, that its bottom could not be discerned. The cavity was evidently natural; nor indeed did either the Hottentots or the Bushmen-- the only tribes by whom the spot was ever visited--possess either the tools or the patience necessary for so laborious a work. It was doubtless what is sometimes called, though most erroneously, a freak of nature--one of those beneficent provisions, more than one of which we shall have to notice in the course of this story, by which the providence of God supplies the wants of His creatures in the desolate wastes; without which help they must inevitably perish. The hole had retained the rain, with which it had been filled a week or two previously, and the water being sheltered by the surrounding rocks from the burning rays of the sun, was sweet, clear, and deliciously cool to the taste. The cup was passed round and round again, before the thirsty travellers were satisfied, and even then they were half disposed to envy Lion's simpler mode of satisfying his drought, viz., by plunging head over ears into the well, and imbibing at every pore the refreshing moisture.