We reached its crest, and before us lay the great level plain, eleven miles of it, and then two miles down hill to Maraisfontein.
"Now," I said to Hans, shaking loose the reins, "keep up if you can!" Away sped the mare till the keen air of the night sung past my ears, and behind her strained the good roan horse with the Hottentot monkey on its back.

Oh! what a ride was that! Further I have gone for a like cause, but never at such speed, for I knew the strength of the beasts and how long it would last them.

Half an hour of it they might endure; more, and at this pace they must founder or die.
And yet such was the agony of my fear, that it seemed to me as though I only crept along the ground like a tortoise.
The roan was left behind, the sound of his foot-beats died away, and I was alone with the night and my fear.

Mile added itself to mile, for now and again the starlight showed me a stone or the skeleton of some dead beast that I knew.

Once I dashed into a herd of trekking game so suddenly, that a springbok, unable to stop itself, leapt right over me.