four cronies, he was drinking success to his trip in a parting and friendly glass. He was a man of medium height, straight and well proportioned. His face was tanned to the hue of copper, and he wore a short sandy beard, cut to a point. He took the letter which Gerard tendered him, glanced through the contents, then nodded.

“All right; I start in two hours’ time. How’s Kingsland?”

Gerard replied that, to the best of his belief, the latter was extremely well.

“Good chap, Kingsland!” pronounced the transport-rider, decisively. “Say, mister, what’ll you drink?”

“Well—thanks—I think I’ll take a lemonade,” answered Gerard; not that he particularly wanted it, but he did not like to seem unfriendly by refusing.

“Right. And what’s yours?”

“Oh—a brandy and soda,” said Harry.

“Mister, you ain’t one of them Good Templar chaps, are you?” said another man to Gerard.

“I don’t know quite what they are, I’m afraid.”

“Why, teetotalers, of course. Chaps who don’t drink.”

“Oh no. I’m not a teetotaler, but I don’t go in much for spirits.”

“Quite right, young fellow, quite right,” said another. “You stick to that, and you’ll do. There’s a sight too many chaps out here who are a deal too fond of ‘lifting the elbow.’ Take my advice, and let grog alone, and you’ll get along.”

“Well, here’s luck!” said the transport-rider, nodding over his glass. “Now, you turn up at my waggon in two hours’ time. It’s away on the flat there at the outspan just outside the town; any one’ll tell you. Got any traps?”

“Yes.”

“Well, better pick up a couple of boys and trundle them across. And if I were you I should get a good dinner here before you start. I believe that’s the gong going now. So long!”

Having taken the transport-rider’s advice, and with the help of the landlord procured a couple of native boys as porters, the two were landed, bag and baggage, at Dawes’s waggon. That worthy merely nodded, with a word of greeting, and having seen their luggage safely stowed among the bales and cases which, piled sky-high, constituted his cargo, gave orders to inspan. Then Gerard, always observant, noted how the oxen, to the number of sixteen, were driven up and ranged into line by one native, and kept there while another and Dawes placed a noosed reim, or thong of raw hide, round the horns of each, and in a trice the yoke was adjusted to each neck, for the animals were veteran roadsters, and each knew his place. The yoking was a simple process. Two flat wooden pegs, called “skeys,” passed through the yoke on each side of the neck, which was kept in its place between them by a twisted strip of raw hide passing underneath just below the throat, and hitched in a nick in the “skey.” The motive power is that of pushing, the yoke resting against the slight hump above the animal’s withers.

“Trek—Hamba—ke!” cried the native driver, raising his voice in a wild long-drawn yell. “Englaand—Scotland—Mof—Bokvel—Kwaaiman—Tre-ek!”

The long whip cracked like pistol shots, again and again. As the driver ran through the whole gamut of names, each ox instinctively started forward at the sound of its own, and the ponderous, creaking, loaded-up structure rolled heavily forward. Other waggons stood outspanned along the flat, but mostly deserted, for their owners preferred the more genial atmosphere of the hotel bar, and the native servants in charge had all foregathered at one fire.

“Like to ride, eh? or would you rather walk?” said Dawes, lighting his pipe. “Maybe, though, you’ll find it a bit jolty riding, at first. It’s a fine night, though.”

Gerard answered that they would rather walk; and, indeed, such locomotion was infinitely preferable to the slow rumbling roll of the waggon, crawling along at just under three miles per hour. And the night was fine indeed. The air was deliciously cool, the dim outline of the rolling downs was just visible in the light of the myriad shining stars which spangled the heavens in all the lavish brilliance of their tropical beauty. Here and there a grass fire glowed redly in the distance. Now and again the weird cry of some strange bird or beast arose from the surrounding veldt, and this, with the creaking ramble of the waggon, the deep bass of the native voices, chatting in their own tongue, made our two English lads realise that they were indeed in Africa at last. There was a glorious sense of freedom and exhilaration in the very novelty of the surroundings.

“Well, this is awfully jolly!” pronounced Gerard, looking round.

“Eh! Think so, do you?” said John Dawes. “How would you like to be a transport-rider yourself?”

“I believe I’d like nothing better,” came the prompt reply. “It must be the jolliest, healthiest life in the world.”

“So?” said the other, with a dry chuckle. “Especially when it’s been raining for three days, and the road is one big mudhole, when your waggon’s stuck wheel-deep, and no sooner do you dig it out than in goes another wheel. Why, I’ve been stuck that way, coming over the Berg”—the speaker meant the Drakensberg—“and haven’t made a dozen miles in a fortnight. And cold, too! Why, for a week at a time I’ve not known what it was to have a dry stitch on me, and the rain wouldn’t allow you to light a fire. Jolly healthy life that, eh?”

“Cold!” broke from both the listeners, in astonishment. “Is it ever cold here?”

“Isn’t it? You just wait till you get away from this steaming old sponge of a coast belt. Why, you get snow on the Berg, yards deep. I’ve known fellows lose three full spans of oxen at a time, through an unexpected fall of snow. Well, that’s one of the sides of transport-riding. Another is when there hasn’t been rain for months, and the veldt’s as bare as the skull of a bald-headed man. Then you may crawl along, choking with dust, mile after mile, day after day, the road strewn like a paper-chase, with the bones of oxen which have dropped in the yoke or been turned adrift to die, too weak to go any further—and every water-hole you come to nothing but a beastly mess of pea-soup mud, lucky even if there isn’t a dead dog in the middle of it. My word for it, you get sick of the endless blue of the sky and the red-brown of the veldt, of the poor devils of oxen, staggering along with their tongues out—walking skeletons—creeping their six miles a day, and sometimes not that. You get sick of your own very life itself.”

“That’s another side to the picture with a vengeance,” said Harry.

“Rather. Don’t you jump away with the idea that the life of a transport-rider, or any other life in this blessed country, is all plum-jam; because, if so, you’ll tumble into the most lively kind of mistake.”

Thus chatting, they travelled on; and, at length, after the regulation four hours’ trek, by which time it was nearly midnight, Dawes gave orders to outspan.

The waggon was drawn just off the road, and the oxen, released from their yokes, were turned loose for a short graze, preparatory to being tied to the trek-chain for the night. Then, while the “leader” was despatched to fill a bucket from the adjacent water-hole, Dawes produced from a locker some bread and cold meat.

“Dare say you’ll be glad of some supper,” he said. “It’s roughish feed for you, maybe; but it’s rougher still when there’s none. Fall to.”

They did so, with a will. Even Harry Maitland, who had started with an inclination to turn up his nose at such dry provender, was astonished to find how cold salt beef and rather stale bread could taste, when eaten with an appetite born of four hours’ night travel.

“Now, you’d better turn in,” said the transport-rider, when they had finished. “You’ll get about four hours’ clear snooze. We inspan at daybreak, and trek on till