So we came down and saddled up and started again, and all that miserable day it rained, and all that night and all the next day, making the difficulties of the track double, for the rocks were so slippery with the slimy silt that it was almost impossible to stand on them, and the horses floundered as though shod with roller-skates. We had nothing to eat but mealie pap, for our meal was too sodden to make the more comforting _roster-kook_, even when we succeeded in making a fire. On the morning when we arrived in sight of Zendling’s Drift there was a gleam or two of sunshine, but the banking-up of enormous thunder-clouds showed that we were in for something worse than we had had, and we hurried on to try, if possible, to get where the trees were thick and we might rig up some kind of shelter. I was ahead with the gun to try and get something for the pot, and was within a mile of the drift when the first big drops began to fall. Then came a flash of lightning, and, though I galloped, by the time I got to the drift I was in the midst of the most terrific thunderstorm I have ever experienced. The rain fell in sheets and the crash of the thunder was continuous, whilst all around the forked lightning stabbed and flickered and lit the murk with an incessant play of flame. The trees were worse than useless, and the water ran in at my shirt-collar and out of my boots, as for two hours I stood by my frightened horse and waited for the storm to abate, and hoped that we should not get struck--but doubted! Then Poulley came up half drowned, and with the “boy” in a state of the most abject terror. As soon as they reached me he threw himself on the ground and hid his face, cringing and muttering at every peal and flinching at every flash. Below, the river was rising fast, and between the peals of thunder the rush of the rapids could be heard joining with the howling of the wind and the swish of the rain in a monstrous symphony. At length there was a slight abatement, the clouds lifted somewhat and we could see Jackal’s Berg, a mile or so away, and the play of the lightning on the enormous iron reef that forms its “backbone” was a sight never to be forgotten. The lull was but temporary, and again the storm burst upon us with awful force, and it was nearly sunset when the heavy batteries moved slowly away towards the distant mountains, leaving us like drowned rats, but unhurt. Our mealie meal was a mass of sodden pap, our little remaining tea spoiled, and our sole ration a solitary tin of sardines, not much amongst three hungry men. Our matches, too, were sodden, and but for the “boy’s” flint and steel we should have been in a bad plight; but he soon recovered from his scare and made us a roaring fire, for wood was plentiful.