“Oh, we heard you singing for the last hour or more,” he said. “Thought you might have struck someone with some whisky.” SINGING! * * * * * We did not give up the search till our food absolutely petered out. The Hottentots lived for days on dassies, which none of us would eat, though they are perfectly clean and good eating. They cooked them by the simple process of throwing them in the fire. The hair burnt off, but formed a sort of shell round the carcass, and when it was sufficiently roasted, they simply knocked the charred part off and ate the rest. I never saw them make the least attempt to clean one. When we finally trekked, our rations for the journey back to the cart consisted of two tins of sardines, about four pounds of Boer meal, and a tin of golden syrup. We decided to attempt to get the old horse down the Bak River, and thence up the Orange bank, to a path that would get us back to the cart, and so, at daybreak one morning, we reluctantly bade farewell to our camp and took the back trail. Most of the morning was spent in getting Stoffel down smooth granite slopes by strewing sand over them, and many a slip and scramble did the old thing get, but at length we stood on the bank of the Orange; where he gorged himself with grass, and we turned to and made a big pot of “mealie pap,” and divided the sardines and syrup amongst the eight of us. And leaving the “Bak” behind us, we reluctantly abandoned our first attempt after Brydone’s diamonds. I say “reluctantly,” for every man of us still believed that somewhere in the immediate vicinity of our late camp lay a diamond-mine.