d them still on the sand-dunes, and by
this time the weird journey was beginning to tell upon the white men.
The silence and mystery of the night, the vast expanse of sand shown so
vaguely in the moonlight, the soft-treading, grotesquely-shaped camels,
which seemed far less real and tangible than the black shadows thrown
by them across the sand, and by day the blinding glare of the sun
thrown back from the all-surrounding sand so fiercely that in spite of
their sun-goggles they were nearly blinded, combined to make them high-
strung and irritable. On the fourth night it fell to young Frank
Halloran to take first watch. He had grumbled at it as unnecessary, for
so far they had seen no living creature not even a bird. But though he
grumbled he kept a sharp look-out, for he was conscious of a queer
uneasy feeling that someone or something was watching him in turn. The
moon was bright, but a slight haze seemed to hang over the sand, making
objects a short distance away look vague and indistinct. He could see
nothing, peer as he would into the soft, dim distance, but he could not
shake off the uneasy feeling. Time wore on, half his watch was over.
What was that? Surely something moving? His rifle came to his shoulder,
the report rang out, and his comrades were awake instantly. Nothing
could be found. His brother rated him for shooting at what was probably
a jackal, if, indeed, it had not been pure imagination. But daylight,
though it showed nothing to the white men, showed something to the
wonderfully trained eyes of the Hottentots. "Bushman!" said Gert, the
elder of the two. The spoor came from the east and led back in the same
direction. Halloran was quite elated. He took it for proof that they
were on the right track. . . .

All this can be gathered from the notes in Halloran's handwriting,
which are to be found in the pocket-book that had belonged to Kramer.
The book had had a strange fascination for him, and he had used it for
his own diary. Indeed, these short and sometimes disconnected sentences
are the only real record of the grim tragedy that followed.

The little caravan got through the sand-belt safely in six days, and
without further alarms from the Bushmen. Then came stony kopjes with
stunted bush, and here and there traces of game and lions. Water could
not be far off. On the tenth day they had found the oasis, and by
sending the Hottentots on ahead with presents they had met with no open
hostility from the Bu