All about us appeared these valleys covered with scattered bush running this way and that, so that we could not tell which of them to follow or to cross.

The thing seemed hopeless, for how could we expect to find a little body of men in that immensity?
Hans shook his head and even the fierce and steadfast Robertson was discouraged.
"I fear my poor lassie is gone," he said, and relapsed into brooding as had become his wont.
"Never say die! It's dogged as does it!" I replied cheerfully in the words of Nelson, who also had learned what it meant to hunt an enemy over trackless wastes, although his were of water.
I walked to the top of the rise where we were encamped, and sat down alone to think matters over.

Our condition was somewhat parlous; all our beasts were now dead, even the second donkey, which was the last of them, having perished that morning, and been eaten, for food was scanty since of late we had met with little game.

The Strathmuir men, who now must carry the loads, were almost worn out and doubtless would have deserted, except for the fact that there was no place to which they could go.

Even the Zulus were discouraged, and said they had come away from home across the Great River to fight, not to run about in wildernesses and starve, though Umslopogaas made no complaint, being buoyed up by the promise of his soothsayer, Goroko, that battle was ahead of him in which he would win great glory.
Hans, however, remained cheerful, for the reason, as he remarked vacuously, that the Great Medicine was with us and that therefore, however bad things seemed to be, all in fact was well; an argument that carried no conviction to my soul.
It was on a certain evening towards sunset that I went away thus alone.
I looked about me, east and west and north.