"Well, thank God you stuck to your task and went on," said Guy. "Otherwise you might have lain there, and died actually within five minutes’ walk of salvation. It’s a wonderful thing, whichever way you look at it." "Yes, I doubt whether Tom would have got through another day," said Mr. Blakeney. "Thirst, in this thirsty country, kills a man. The heat and the terrible anxiety both add to the danger. In most parts of the veldt you know that if you walk for a certain distance you will strike water. Here, if you get bushed, as you easily can, it’s a matter of impossibility to find your way to perhaps one waterpit in hundreds of square miles of country. In 1879 a friend of Selous, the famous hunter, a Mr. French, died of thirst in very similar country, near the Chobe River, in less than two days. And in the same year, in the same country, three Kaffirs died of thirst within twenty-four hours of the time they had left the last water. This was in September, before the rains fall, when the heat is always terrific. Thank God once more that you are so well out of it, Tom. I shall always be chary of letting you hunt in thirst country again, and it’s a lesson never to go out without full water-bottles. There’s just one other thing. Many hunters, including Selous, in hunting in such country, always have a piece of cord fastened to the cheek ring of their horse’s bridle, and attached at the other end to the hunting belt. By this precaution, which in future we will all adopt, you can’t lose your horse, as Tom had the bad luck to do. I’ll see to the cords at once, and to-morrow you shall begin to use them." They stood at the water, where they were now outspanned, for a full twenty-four hours longer. By this time the oxen and horses, which had suffered a good deal from the trek through the thirst, had recovered. During that day, at Tom’s particular request, Poeskop rode back along the wagon spoor with the freshest pony, and recovered and brought in the head of the bull eland which Tom had first shot. It was a magnificent head, and Tom was rightly proud of it; and, in addition, it would be a reminder to him of a very perilous episode in his life history. Poeskop turned up late at night with the trophy. He found the body of the bull picked nearly clean by vultures. The skin of the head was spoiled, but the horns were, of course, intact, and Tom welcomed them with an exceeding great joy. Taking five shillings from his purse, he gave it to the little Bushman. "There, Poeskop," he said; "you’ve done a good day’s work, and I’m much obliged to you. I can see by the look of the pony that you’ve had a tough ride of it." The Bushman, tired though he was, grinned his hugest and most pleasant grin. "The baas is very welcome," he said, "and I am well paid for my trouble. And when the baas gets home again and sticks up the horns, as he says he will, he will remember Poeskop and the hunt in the thirst-land."