tributing
twenty-five English sovereigns among various officials, beginning with
the acting-governor and ending with a drunken black sweep who sat in a
kind of sentry box on the quay.

Early next morning the Seven Stars sailed again, because of some quarrel
with the officials, who threatened to seize her--I forget why. Her
destination was the East African ports and, I think, Madagascar, where
a profitable trade was to be done in carrying cattle and slaves. Captain
Richardson said he might be back at Lorenzo Marquez in two or
three months' time, or he might not. As a matter of fact the latter
supposition proved correct, for the Seven Stars was lost on a sandbank
somewhere up the coast, her crew only escaping to Mombasa after enduring
great hardships.

Well, she had served my turn, for I heard afterwards that no other ship
put into the Bay for a whole year from the date she left it. So if I had
not caught her at Port Elizabeth I could not have come at all, except,
of course, overland. This at best must have taken many months, and was
moreover a journey that no man could enter on alone.

Now I get back to my story again.

There was no inn at Lorenzo Marquez. Through the kindness of one of his
native or half-breed wives, who could talk a little Dutch, I managed,
however, to get a lodging in a tumble-down house belonging to a
dissolute person who called himself Don Jose Ximenes, but who was really
himself a half-breed. Here good fortune befriended me. Don Jose, when
sober, was a trader with the natives, and a year before had acquired
from them two good buck wagons. Probably they were stolen from some
wandering Boers or found derelict after their murder or death by fever.
These wagons he was only too glad to sell for a song. I think I gave him
twenty pounds English for the two, and thirty more for twelve oxen that
he had bought at the same time as the wagons. They were fine beasts of
the Afrikander breed, that after a long rest had grown quite fat and
strong.

Of course twelve oxen were not enough to draw two wagons, or even one.
Therefore, hearing that there were natives on the mainland who possessed
plenty of cattle, I at once gave out that I was ready to buy, and pay
well in blankets, cloth, beads and so forth. The result was that within
two days I had forty or fifty to choose from, small animals of the Zulu
character and, I should add, unbroken. Still they were sturdy and used
to that veld and its diseases. Here it