He knew of no water nearer.
It would be impossible to reach the spring that night.

It was late when they started.

Oxen travel slowly.

Half the distance would be as much as they could make by sundown.
To reach the water they would have to travel all night; but they could not do that for many reasons.

The oxen would require to rest--the more so that they were hungered; and now Von Bloom thought, when too late, of another neglect he had committed--that was, in not collecting, during the flight of the locusts, a sufficient quantity of them to have given his cattle a feed.
This plan is often adopted under similar circumstances; but the field-cornet had not thought of it: and as but few locusts fell in the kraals where the animals had been confined, they had therefore been without food since the previous day.