"Not content with that, they had either through rage or curiosity upset the waggon, broken one wheel off, and scattered everything about. My Hottentot and Kaffirs no doubt had bolted on the first appearance of the elephants, without so much as firing a shot to try and drive them away. The oxen had also fled; and there we were, with a few biscuits, biltong, powder, shot, and guns, a hundred miles from help. This distance would have been `nix' (nothing) if we could only have procured water; but I knew of none within forty miles, and we had now been forty-eight hours without quenching our thirst. "I lay down on the ground in despair. The ivory I had collected was scattered all about; I thought I never should convey half of it to my home. "Home! How was _I_ ever to reach home? "I said to Karl, `You are stronger than I am, you go on, _you_ may get to water soon, but I am so weak I must stop here and die.' "`Ne, bas,' (no, sir), said Karl; `let us try on the other side.' "I thought, if I could only shoot a buck, I would not hesitate a moment about drinking his blood; in this idea a hope dawned upon me, and I struggled on. "Towards the middle of the day Karl pointed out a moving object some distance from us. We stopped to look at it, when Karl exclaimed, `Wasser soon, bas.' "`Why, how?' I asked. "`That is reitbok,' he said: `where reitbok is, there are reits (reeds); where reits, there wasser.' "I saw his reasoning, and that it was not likely that a reitbok would be very far from water. "This hope gave me fresh strength to go on: we followed the slight traces of this buck, and soon came to a regular beaten track that the buck had made in going to and returning from water. We soon came to the vlei: there was not much water, but still it was worth more than gold to me; I drank as I never drank before. "We stopped beside it all night, and I began to feel hungry, and to want something more than the dry biltong; when, just at daybreak, a reitbok came to drink; Karl was going to shoot him, but I would not let him, explaining that it appeared as though Providence had sent the buck yesterday to save us from dying of thirst. "`Perhaps He sent him to-day to save us from dying of hunger too, bas,' was Karl's irreverent answer. He was, however, allowed to retreat unharmed. "After four days' travelling on foot, I came to fresh waggon-spoor; we followed it up, when I found it was Eus and Maritz returning from a shooting-journey. They had some spare oxen, which they lent me; I returned with this help, mended my waggon, and had my revenge on the herd of elephants, killing three of them before I left." "Well," said Kemp, "when I go into a country where there is not much water, I always take my baboon." "You don't drink him, do you?" "No, but I make him show me water." "How do you do that?"