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 was that my twelve trained beasts came in.  By putting six of them to each wagon, two as fore- and two as after-oxen, and two in the middle, Hans and I were able to get the other ten necessary to make up a team of sixteen under some sort of control.

Heavens! how we worked during the week or so which went by before it was possible for me to leave Lorenzo Marquez.  What with mending up and loading the wagons, buying and breaking in the wild oxen, purchasing provisions, hiring native servants—­of whom I was lucky enough to secure eight who belonged to one of the Zulu tribes and desired to get back to their own country, whence they had wandered with some Boers, I do not think that we slept more than two or three hours out of the twenty-four.

But, it may be asked, what was my aim, whither went I, what inquiries had I made?  To answer the last question first, I had made every possible inquiry, but with little or no result.  Marie’s letter had said that they were encamped on the bank of the Crocodile River, about fifty miles from Delagoa Bay.  I asked everyone I met among the Portuguese—­who, after all, were not many—­if they had heard of such an encampment of emigrant Boers.  But these Portuguese appeared to have heard nothing, except my host, Don Jose, who had a vague recollection of something—­he could not remember what.