They say that men soon wear themselves out in the city of gold and sin; that the gravestones there are mostly those of the young. What is to be the effect of this burning fever-spot on our body-politic, of this--to change the metaphor--roaring maelstrom-mill into the hopper of which so large a proportion of the youth of our country is flung? But in the nights that are coming,--when the rock-python pursues the coney along the shattered pediments of the "Corner House," the unchanging desert will lie, still void under the abiding scrutiny of the stars. Bushmanland can never alter. The fire dimmed and died. One by one my companions sank into slumber. The horses were resting,--except unquiet Bucephalus, who stamped and whinnied at intervals. The oxen lay tethered to their yokes. Ever and anon one of them uttered the deep, pathetic bovine sigh,--that suspiration which seems to express perplexed resignation to the selfish dominance of man,--to that hopeless slavery which is the doom of the once-lordly bovine race. I seized my kaross and climbed the steep side of the nearest dune-tentacle. Then I laboured along its soft, sinuous surface towards the gross, inert body of Typhon, until far beyond the reach of camp-sounds. In the yielding sand I made a lair. In this I laid me down--apparently the only waking thing in Bushmanland, for most utter silence reigned. Probably the soaring flames of our camp fire had frightened away even the jackals and the night-jars from a wide surrounding area. The stars seemed to sink earthward; so brightly did they glow in the vault of liquid purple that the face of the desert was masked in impenetrable gloom. That night the lips of the wilderness had no message audible to human sense. Typhon slept--coiled about the feet of his granite prisoner, whose bulk loomed menacingly against the wheeling galaxies. Did he, the belted captive, sleep, or did he, haply, share vigil with the one solitary, futile human soul which, maimed from the stress of days and deeds, claimed with him brotherhood through pain and unrest. But slumber seemed to brood over the desert like a dove and a far-off voice to whisper across the shrouded plain: "Warte, nur--balde Ruhest du auch." CHAPTER SIX. HOMEWARD BOUND--FACES AROUND THE FIRE--THE BUSHMEN--PIET NOONA AND THE SNAKE--THE LOVE OF THE DESERT--MY PREHISTORIC UNCLE AND AUNT--SCRUPLES-- THE HUNTER'S INSTINCT.