c Portuguese. The rhythmic sentences seemed to have had an almost
hypnotic effect upon us, for neither of us afterwards remembered how
and when we fell asleep.

I was awakened by Karelse shaking me. It was just break of day. I felt
heavy, sleepy, and confused, and for a moment remembered nothing.

"Coffee, baas," said the Hottentot; and as I sipped it I remembered. I
looked round. Jason was sleeping like a log. Our strange visitor had
gone. "Where is the other baas?" I inquired of Karelse. He stared at
me, and then looked over at Jason. "No, no," I said impatiently, "the
old baas that came in the night?" Karelse's face was a study. He had
evidently seen no one, though the boy's fire had been not twenty yards
from our own. Had I dreamt the whole thing? I strode over and roused
Jason. He woke with a startled exclamation. His first words assured me
the old man had been there. "Damn that mad chap," he said. "His
horrible old yarn made me dream badly. Where is he?" Karelse stared
from one to the other, his yellow face a queer ashen grey. He was
plainly frightened. "Come," said I to Jason, "let us go and have a
sluice: there is water in plenty." I led the way to the pool. It had
been too dark for us to see it properly when we had arrived the evening
before. We bent over the dark, clear water. Sheer and black the pit
went down, and it was plainly of great depth. And from the brink the
granite kopje rose abruptly. Jason and I looked at each other, then at
Karelse.

"Karelse," I asked, "have you ever been here before?"

"No, baas," he faltered; "there is always plenty of good water here,
they say, but the place has a bad name and no one comes here. They say
it is haunted."

"What do they call the place?" I asked.

"Dood Drenk," he said "the Drink of the Dead!"

THE WATERS OF ERONGO

North-East of Swakopmund, and somewhere where the line that runs the
copper ore down from Otari has a station called Omaruru, there stands a
mass of huge table-topped mountains. At the time of which I write they
were known as the Erongos, so named after a famous chief of the Gainin
Bushmen, who had made something of a stand there against the invading
Damaras that eventually "ate up" both him and his tribe.

Even in that land, where most mountains are table-topped, and where the
flat plateau above and the plain beneath represent geological epochs
that are divided by aeons of years, these Erongo Mountains are
remarkable; for they hav