Our homeward course lay more to the westward, for we travelled along the coast until close to Port Nolloth. We found fresh water at various spots, trickling out of sand hummocks in the immediate vicinity of the sea. We had a comparatively easy journey, for there were no steep, rocky ridges to cross. CHAPTER THIRTEEN. KAMIEBIES--THE BLOSSOMING WILDERNESS--THE OSTRICH POACHERS--HAIL STORMS--THE SPRINGBUCK BEHIND THE DUNE--HOW ANDRIES FOUND ME. Reliable information reached me to the effect that the Half-Breed ostrich poachers had again been at their nefarious work. So we decided, Andries and I, to make a swoop upon the camp which these people had established in southern Bushmanland. This camp was in the vicinity of some wells, the water of which was brackish to such an extent that only men or animals who had gradually accustomed themselves to its flavour and properties, could consume it. Thus the gang of poachers had for a long time been able to defy us. After rain, however, the water grew somewhat less brackish. On the rare occasions when rain fell heavily, the proportion of brack decreased so much that the water became, for a few weeks, more or less fit for ordinary consumption. The reason was a phenomenal one; the rains had set in a month before their usual time throughout the western desert and the mountain tract. It was then the end of March, and rain had been falling, off and on, for the previous fortnight. Rarely, indeed, did the drought break before the middle of April. There was also news of the springbucks. The great migration was not due to take place for months, but word had reached Andries to the effect that in the desert somewhere to the east of Kamiebies a moderately large herd had been seen. If the news were true, that herd must have been the first wave of an early-coming tide. Thus we might be able to settle accounts with the poachers and provide our year's supply of "bultong" in the course of one expedition. The annual migration of springbucks across the desert is, I am positive, an institution of immemorial antiquity. The reason for it is obvious. The fawns are born in winter, and it is necessary that at the time the does should have green food to eat. But Bushmanland, excepting its extreme western fringe, is far drier in winter than in summer. In winter the feathery plumes of the "toa" crumble away to dust and the stumps of the tussocks turn jet-black. Then the plains become unmitigated desert.