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mentioned that they thought of trying a new bit of veldt, rather away from the beaten track, if but they could find water in the desert, and good guides and spoorers--they were bent on entering the wild and little-known tract of country north of the road to the Mababi veldt. "Well," said the elder of the traders--Kenstone was his name--"you'll find game there after the rains--giraffe, gemsbok, hartebeest, eland, koodoo, roan antelope, and perhaps a few elephant, or a rhinoceros or two. But it's a wild, barren veldt; the country as you go north is a good deal broken, and, unless the rains have been good, water is terribly scarce there. As for myself," (gazing rather moodily at the camp-fire, and stroking his thick, brown beard), "I once went into that veldt, and never wish to see it again. I had a most uncanny adventure there--an experience I never again wish to repeat if I live to a hundred. In all the years (and they are close on five-and-twenty now) I have been in the hunting veldt, I never spent so incomprehensible and horrible a time as the few days I am thinking of. Ugh!" and the big man shivered as he spoke. Naturally the curiosity of his audience was at once excited. The younger trader, Smallfield, spoke first. "Why, George," he said, "I never heard you speak of that country. I never even knew you had been in it. What's the yarn? It must be something out of the common if it gives _you_ the blues. You're not sentimental, as far as I remember." "No, Jim," returned Kenstone, "I never mentioned the thing to you or to any one else, bar, perhaps, two or three folks. It's eleven years gone since it all happened. My old partner, Angus (he's down in the Colony now), who was with me at the time, knows all about it, and I reported some of the circumstances to a Transvaal Landdrost when we got back. Otherwise I have never talked about the matter--I should only be chaffed, and it's not a pleasant topic at the best of times. It gave me a very nasty _schrijk_ [Fright] at the time, I remember. However, it's all far enough away now; if you and these gentlemen would like to hear the yarn, as it's Christmas-time, and we're so well met, why, I'll break my rule and tell you all about it. And mind, what I tell you are solid facts. You know I don't `blow,' Jim, or spout tall yarns for the benefit of down-country folks or bar-loafers at Kimberley. What I saw I saw, and, please God, hope never to see again." All
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