eir oxen, in a stretch of three
days' and three nights' continuous travel.

There were wagons in front of them and wagons behind them; they were
about the middle of the expedition. At the distance of two days and two
nights from Kanne, and a whole day and night from Inkouane, their oxen
could go no farther; they had had no drink at the wretched pits of
Kanne, where water oozes through the sand at the rate of about half a
bucket an hour; three of them lay dead in their yokes already--the rest
were foundered and could trek no more. The poor brutes lowed piteously
and incessantly; they came frantically round the wagon, smelling at the
nearly empty water-barrel, and licking the iron tires of the wheels to
give relief to their parched tongues. There was only one thing to be
done.

"Hendrika," said her husband, "I must take two of the boys and go on
with the oxen. We shall reach Inkouane (it was now afternoon) early
to-morrow morning. I will take a _vatje_, [A little vat or hand-barrel,
holding about two gallons, usually slung by an iron handle under the
wagon] fill it, and ride back as fast as possible. You have enough
water to last till evening to-morrow. They say there is plenty at
Inkouane; I shall be here to-morrow evening again, having watered the
horse; and the oxen should be in by next morning. I hate leaving you
and the child, but what else can be done?"

"Nothing else can be done better, Piet," answered his wife
energetically. "Get the oxen up and go on at once. Don't lose a
moment; and, mind, be back here not later than sundown to-morrow.
Barend is tired and feverish already, and I shall have trouble to make
the water last till then. Go at once, and the Heer God be with you."

Hendrika's blue eyes were full of hope and courage; she could trust her
husband, and he would, no doubt, be back by nightfall of next day.

Taking two of their three native servants with him, and leaving Andries,
a little Hottentot, behind with his mistress, with the strictest
injunctions to have but one drink between that time and his return, Piet
Van Staden kissed his wife and child, thrashed up the foundered oxen,
and set forth as fast as he could get them along.

It was a dreary waste of country that Hendrika and her boy were left
in--one of the most forbidding parts of the wild, forbidding desert
between Khama's and the Lake River. Hot and sandy and flat it was; a
low growth of parched Mopani trees sprang here and there