But how did Andries manage it? He heard no shot, he saw none of my flares. He could not tell me; as a matter of fact he, himself, did not know. His feat could only be explained through some theory of unconscious cerebration. Andries was elderly, stout and somewhat lethargic, he had never read any book but the Bible, and of that there was quite a lot he did not understand. But the trackless desert was to him as familiar as my study was to me, and he had been able to pilot his wagon-ship straight to that spot--through the inky darkness--with as little uncertainty as though the sun had been shining. The experience of a lifetime would not have taught me to perform that marvel which Andries did quite as a matter of course. CHAPTER FOURTEEN. L'ENVOI. My eyes have gazed their last upon the face of the desert. Although I love her still,--although the memory of her burning ardour, her splendid indifference and her wealth of illusive charm is my abiding and most valued possession, we shall meet no more. She is not a mistress to be lightly courted. As Brunhild slew Siegfried so would the Desert inevitably slay one who remained her lover after desire had outlasted strength. Her lioness-like caresses are not for those whose blood slows down as it nears the ocean of eternal silence--even as the force and fury of the Gariep sink to tranquillity when the mighty stream nears the Atlantic--and extinction. Good-bye, Andries,--best of comrades. I have not told of all our adventures--of how we pursued the springbuck at full gallop across the trackless plains in your springless, home-made rattletrap, behind four wild, half-trained horses,--until we were black and blue. I have not told of how we were lured by men who desired our death to a spot sixty miles deep in the waste, and of how we had to struggle back again in the burning heat because we found the promised water to be brine, and the edges of the pools containing it thickly caked with salt. I have not told of your consistent unselfishness in giving me the best chances in the matter of shooting, nor of how generously you placed the riches of your desert lore at my disposal. The world for us is not the same as it was--even a few years ago, for at our time of life a very few years make a considerable difference where physical endurance is concerned. Although on the verge of middle life we could still, in the days I have told of, gallop ten miles at a stretch and hold a rifle straight at the end of the race--we could endure thirst, hunger and fatigue without wilting.