But there--we should see! The police would take but little notice of our precious permit, and we had better look out! They were cantankerous and surly, and evidently wished us all the bad luck they prophesied. According to them, there was no t’samma in the whole Reserve; we should die of thirst. We asked them how they came to know this, considering that they professed never to have been in the forbidden area. They said they had “heard so.” We had no _dop_ to placate them with, though we made coffee all day long for them. They were living on mutton, or goat, rather, when their half-bred greyhound lurchers failed to bring down a buck for them, that is to say; for they were out of cartridges too. And when I say “mutton”--I mean just that--not with its attendant “fixings” of potatoes, or carrots, or turnips, or caper sauce, or even bread, but just _vleesch_ along with every meal, every day! They had been out of Boer meal for weeks, so there was no bread, or even mealie pap, to accompany it; the meat was hacked off in shapeless chunks, and half-boiled in a Kaffir pot, or thrown in the embers, and torn apart by the teeth as a native would tear it--cinders and all! Coffee they had not seen for weeks, using as a substitute a vile-smelling and vile-tasting decoction made from the root of the _wit boom_ (carrion-tree). Yet these men had property, broad farms (even though of poor land) and plenty of flocks and herds, and undoubtedly a goodly number of sovereigns tied up in a skin bag, and buried somewhere in or near the hovel they called a “home.” The only time they relaxed their sour visages was when, after tobacco and coffee and the loan of all the meal we could spare had failed to make them more companionable, we had the happy idea of inviting them to try our rifles. Then they became quite jocose, and as we had plenty of rifle cartridges, we had a regular Bisley of it there in the sand-dunes. They were good shots, but only when they could choose their own position--that is to say, lying down. This, of course, not only gives them a better chance at game, but is their normal posture. Stand and shoot they could not, and their attempts at doing so were weird and wonderful. The abundance of water at Abiqwas Pits made us careless, for the next day, after passing a most desolate little homestead called Klip Aar, we discovered that each man had left it to the other to see to filling the water-casks, with the result that they were all empty, and we were in the middle of a long waterless stretch. The driver said he knew of an old water-hole a mile or two from the trail, and that evening late we turned off towards it. Though we had only been without water since morning we were parched, for the heat had been at its very height. We found the “pit” all right, a well of about 40 feet deep, covered with a sheet of galvanised iron, and a splash from a dropped stone showed we had come to the right place for a cool, deep drink.