So we called philosophy to our aid, and sat down and had some grub by the ruins, our police friends bidding us good-bye and riding on ahead to look for the dead man. And looking at the melancholy wreckage, we got vicious--that blessed cart had let us down badly at Brakfontein, and again it had chosen a remote spot to turn and rend us! And Poulley, after some unpublishable remarks, said, “I’m not going to be beat by that blamed one-horse shay. I’m going to mend it, or bust!” Ransson filled his pipe and grunted and waded in to put the pieces together, and seeing that they would not be disheartened, I got my pony and rode back to the old deserted mine at Numees, where I had noticed several old crowbars lying about at the mouth of the adit. They were about 5 feet long, and heavy and strong, and might serve to lash together the splintered disselboom, for there was not a stick of straight wood big enough to cut a new one within days of us. And by dint of lashing, screwing, nailing, and patching for hours, we at length got the ruins to look something like a cart again, and could chance trekking. The oxen rested all these hours, and as the moon would be high and bright we decided to trek all night, and being utterly reckless now, we did the rest of the journey at top speed. We took risk after risk, but our luck held, and also the lashings, and towards morning we found ourselves again in the sands of Dabee River. We were dog-tired, but full of curiosity as to where our new guide would take us. Would it be under the big white reef in the ravine to the left, where I had always wished to try, or in the gully a mile eastward, where Ransson had always believed it to be? On we went by the light of the now sinking moon, over the white sand, where the waggon spoor of our last trip lay distinct and fresh, between the dark and solemn mountains, passing unexplored and mysterious ravines we had never penetrated, on and on over the old spoor, till at last our guide, who was leading, held up his hand for us to stop. It was the spot--the same spot we had worked at before, after all!... We were too tired even to swear, but flung off our saddles and slept like logs, where we fell. When we woke we found that Poulley’s head was within a foot of a tiny bush in which lay coiled the biggest puff-adder I have ever seen, so big indeed, and so strangely marked, that I believe it to have been a new variety.