"Well," he said, "it is a terribly tough, as well as a very nasty, climb. I for one don’t want to attempt it very often. It’s worse than I bargained for. I think we’ll have to camp in the kloof till we’ve finished our gold search." Poeskop, who had stayed behind to make the ends of the ladder fast to two stout bushes which grew near the foot, and so prevent the unpleasant oscillation of the last fifty odd feet, now made his appearance. The sight of his queer little sharp-chinned face (now streaming from the toil of the climb), as it appeared over the edge of the cliff, sent Guy and Tom, and indeed Mr. Blakeney himself, into fits of laughter, to which the good-humoured Bushman freely responded. "What ho! Poeskop!" cried Tom; adding in Dutch, "How do you like the climb?" "Hard work, Baas Tom," responded Poeskop cheerily, as he squatted on his hams to rest, and wiped the sweat from his face with his usual handkerchief, a jackal’s tail. "But I’ve seen harder jobs even than this. If you had lived the life of a wild Bushman, as I did till I was a grown man, you’d soon understand that a day like this is mere child’s play. Nowadays I know that I get two good meals every single day of my life, rain or shine. When I was a lad the great puzzle of my life was to find or catch food at all. When your skorf comes to you as easily as it does to me now, a day’s work is just nothing at all. Why, baas, as a lad of ten or twelve, I’ve travelled three days at a stretch, fifty miles a day, without food or water, and thought nothing much about it." "Yes," said Tom reflectively; "I quite see your point. A hard day’s work to a well-fed, healthy man, who gets his breakfast and dinner ’regular,’ is a mere healthy exercise canter. Still, Poeskop, it was a tough climb, eh?" "Ja, baas," responded the Bushman, grinning; "but think of what you have in your pockets." Tom looked down at his breeches pockets, bulging with nuggets, and roared with laughter. "Quite so, Poeskop," he said; "it’s worth it all." They now started with Seleti and September, who had spent a quiet and perfectly uneventful day at the cliff top, and made their way rapidly down to the wagon. There, after their supper, they turned to their treasure, which meanwhile reposed in a Kaffir blanket, and Mr. Blakeney, having got out his scales, began to estimate the value of the day’s find. Altogether, not counting Guy’s big nugget, which they christened "Poeskop’s Pride," they had gathered forty-nine nuggets, giving a total weight of ninety-eight ounces. This amount of gold, at the value of £3, 15s. per ounce, would figure out therefore at a total of £367. These nuggets, varying in size and weight from a pea to more than five ounces, had scarcely any indication of quartz or other extraneous substance about them, and were manifestly nearly all pure and solid metal. Deducting £17 for wastage, Mr. Blakeney estimated their value at not less than £350.