hobble towards the patch of green, and a few minutes afterwards, to my great astonishment, I perceived that usually very dignified individual dancing and shouting like a maniac, waving something green as he did so. Off we all scrambled towards him as fast as our wearied limbs would carry us, hoping that he had found water.
"What is it, Umbopa, son of a fool?" I shouted in Zulu.
"It is food and water, Macumazahn," and again he waved the green thing.
Then I saw what he had found. It was a melon. We had hit upon a patch of wild melons, thousands of them, and dead ripe.
"Melons!" I yelled to Good, who was next me; and in another second his false teeth were fixed in one of them.
I think we ate about six each before we had done, and poor fruit as they were, I doubt if I ever thought anything nicer.
But melons are not very nutritious, and when we had satisfied our thirst with their pulpy substance, and put a stock to cool by the simple process of cutting them in two and setting them on end in the hot sun to grow cold by evaporation, we began to feel exceedingly hungry. We had still some biltong left, but our stomachs turned from biltong, and besides we were obliged to be very sparing of it, for we could not say when we should find more food. Just at this moment a lucky thing chanced. Looking across the desert I saw a flock of about ten large birds flying straight towards us.
"Skit, Baas, skit!" "Shoot, master, shoot!" whispered the Hottentot, throwing himself on his face, an example which we all followed.
Then I saw that the birds were a flock of pauw or bustards, and that they would pass within fifty yards
