When they had
died the other inhabitants of the kraal had taken the cattle and
gone away, leaving the poor old woman, who was helpless from age and
infirmity, to perish of starvation or disease, as the case might be. She
had been sitting there for three days among the bodies when I found her.
I took her on to the next kraal, and gave the headman a blanket to look
after her, promising him another if I found her well when I came back. I
remember that he was much astonished at my parting with two blankets for
the sake of such a worthless old creature. 'Why did I not leave her in
the bush?' he asked. Those people carry the doctrine of the survival of
the fittest to its extreme, you see.
"It was the night after I had got rid of the old woman that I made my
first acquaintance with my friend yonder," and he nodded toward the
skull that seemed to be grinning down at us in the shadow of the wide
mantel-shelf. "I had trekked from dawn till eleven o'clock,--a long
trek,--but I wanted to get on; and then had turned the oxen out to
graze, sending the voorlooper to look after them, meaning to inspan
again about six o'clock, and trek with the moon till ten.
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