For weeks I led a most strenuous life, never idle enough to have a dull moment, in spite of the fact that, except for my gang of natives, I was quite alone. Besides the clearing of the sand and débris from the pipe, the cartage of water and other routine work, there were a thousand tasks to see to: trees to fell for timbering shafts, or to be hewn into rough windlasses; charcoal to burn for the sharpening of picks; tanks to tinker and solder; the obtaining of fresh meat for a ravenous family of a dozen or more, each of whom, if left to himself, would eat half a buck at a meal; and in short the whole gamut of “jack-of-all-trades” tasks that have to be performed by a prospector in such a spot. There was an occasional break in the routine in the shape of a longer trip in search of other prospects, and more than one night spent far away on the wide veldt, with the path lost; but by remembering the cardinal fact that a line due south on the plateau would always bring me to the escarpment which could be followed “home,” I always got back with no worse experience than being half frozen, for the nights were now very cold, and the days glorious with bright sunshine, and the air like dry champagne. One day, in trying to make my own way to Zwartmodder, across the veldt, I got badly out of the path, and night found me in dunes as wild as any I had seen in the Reserve, and in which a bitterly cold wind froze me to the marrow as I crouched under a bush till morning, clad in nothing but a thin shirt and trousers. I was, as I afterwards found, a bare ten miles from Zwartmodder; but in these very same dunes, only a few years back, a police trooper lost his way and died of thirst. One other trip that will never be forgotten was to the Noup Hills again, and into the famous Oorlogs Kloof, where, with Gert and a Bastard named Nicholas Cloete, I made one more bid for “Brydone’s diamonds,” and, failing them, for the _tijgers_ that infested the wild gullies there. But that I have striven all through this narrative to avoid all shooting yarns, I could let my pen run on for a full chapter over that particular hunt and the strange things I found there; but I must leave all that, and pass on to the end of May, when, after six weeks of systematic work and exhaustive search in all directions, I was in possession of data that made a trip to the nearest telegraph-station imperative. This meant Ukamas, the German township I have mentioned, and which so far I had avoided.