The words were hardly out of his mouth before a loud moo proclaimed the vicinity of cattle.  They ran toward the sound, and in a rocky hollow they found nine bullocks; and alas! at some little distance another lay dead.  Those that were alive were panting with lolling tongues in the broiling sun.  How to save them; how to get them home a distance of eight miles.  “Oh! for a drop of water.”  The poor fools had strayed into the most arid region for miles round.

Instinct makes blunders as well as reason.—­Bestiale est errare.

“We must drive them from this, Jacky, though half of them die by the way.”

The languid brutes made no active resistance.  Being goaded and beaten they got on their legs and moved feebly away.

Three miles the men drove them, and then one who had been already staggering more than the rest gave in and lay down, and no power could get him up again.  Jacky advised to leave him.  George made a few steps onward with the other cattle, but then he stopped and came back to the sufferer and sat down beside him disconsolate.

“I can’t bear to desert a poor dumb creature.  He can’t speak, Jacky, but look at his poor frightened eye; it seems to say have you got the heart to go on and leave me to die for the want of a drop of water.  Oh!  Jacky, you that is so clever in reading the signs of Nature, have pity on the poor thing and do pray try and find us a drop of water.  I’d run five miles and fetch it in my hat if you would but find it.  Do help us, Jacky.”  And the white man looked helplessly up to the black savage, who had learned to read the small type of Nature’s book and he had not.

Jacky hung his head.  “White fellow’s eyes always shut; black fellow’s always open.  We pass here before and Jacky look for water—­look for everything.  No water here.  But,” said he languidly, “Jacky will go up high tree and look a good deal.”  Selecting the highest tree near he chopped a staircase and went up it almost as quickly as a bricklayer mounts a ladder with a hod.  At the top he crossed his thighs over the stem, and there he sat full half an hour; his glittering eye reading the confused page, and his subtle mind picking out the minutest syllables of meaning.  Several times he shook his head.  At last all of a sudden he gave a little start, and then a chuckle, and the next moment he was on the ground.

“What is it?”

“Black fellow stupid fellow—­look too far off,” and be laughed again for all the world like a jackdaw.

“What is it?”

“A little water; not much.”

“Where is it?  Where is it?  Why don’t you tell me where it is?”

“Come,” was the answer.

Not forty yards from where they stood Jacky stopped and thrusting his hand into a tuft of long grass pulled out a short blue flower with a very thick stem.  “Saw him spark from the top of the tree,” said Jacky with a grin.  “This fellow stand with him head in the air but him foot in the water.  Suppose no water he die a good deal quick.”  Then taking George’s hand he made him press the grass hard, and George felt moisture ooze through the herb.