Skirting a huge, precipitous mountain of sand, we rode round the vlei, disturbing great flocks of heron, gulls, and wild-duck. Straight up out of a yellow protea-bush flew a brown bird with a dull orange-red breast--a wip-poor-will, or, as the coloured people say, the 'Christmas bird,' or 'Piet, mij vrouw.' Its call is more surely 'Piet, mij vrouw' than anything else. 'Do you know Le Vaillant's story?' said Marinus. I did. But Marinus loves to tell a story, and he has to listen to many; so I said: 'His story of what?' Then Marinus, being a dear, told me the tale: 'Le Vaillant and the faithful Hottentot chief, or Piet, as his master called him, were out shooting. Le Vaillant shot and killed a female bird. Piet brought up the bird. "Go back, you adorable Hottentot," said the traveller, "to the spot where you found this bird, for surely there you will find Monsieur le Mari." The "adorable Piet" began to weep; that Baas would excuse him, but this he could not do--never could he fire at the male bird. "Go--I insist!" said Le Vaillant. "No, no, Baas!" And the astonished Baas listened to the reason: that no sooner had Piet shot the female, when the male, to quote the old story, "began to pursue him with great fury, continually repeating, 'Piet, mij vrouw! Piet, mij vrouw!' This, in English, is, 'Piet, my wife! Piet, my wife!' Small wonder that Le Vaillant wrote of the misjudged, Dutch-ridden Hottentot as being "full of sensibility"!' The sun had begun to set when we reached the other side of the vlei, and a coloured woman, carrying a mass of blue lotus lilies up to Town for sale, told us 'we had v-e-ry far way still to go.' Marinus agreed that it was quite worth a hurried ride home, seeing this wonderful kaleidoscope of colouring reflected in the vleis. The sand-hills around were pink, and over the tops of some appeared the purple of the Muizenberg Mountains. In the north were the Stellenbosch Mountains, with the Helderberg, in a blaze of red, underlined by long patches of shining white sand-hills. But all the while the great blue shadow of Table Mountain crept over the Flats, over the vleis, until we watched it reach the north barriers. Slowly the blue mounted, absorbing the flush of sunset, reached the summits, and drove the pink into the fleecy, detached clouds above; these, like blazing balloons, floated over the bay. I sat up--to reality. 'I have been lost on these Flats, Marinus, and still remember with horror the growing darkness and the interminable miles of sandy road and dense wattle plantations. Let us get on.' So we rode and rode, through the brown rushes, splashing through water, over mealie patches, dozens of little German children from the tiny farms hidden in low wattle rushing out to see us pass. On we flew into the darkening blue shadow; behind us, whirlwinds of sand rising like white wraiths of pursuing Erlkings; and before, the smoke from the Kaffir location near the mouth of the Salt River curling into the mist.