Truly we were in the dark; and as the air grew colder towards daybreak, everything looked, if possible, blacker still.
"Morrow morning," said Joeboy, suddenly coming back to where I trudged alongside one of the wagons, whose drivers appeared to be all asleep.
I looked in the direction he indicated, and there was a faint dawn low down on the horizon.
"Then we're going wrong, Joeboy," I said; "that's the east." "Um!" he said.

"Too much that way.

Going right now." I looked back in the direction of the Boer camp, but nothing was visible there.

It seemed as if the darkness lay like a cloud upon the earth; but, upon turning again to look in the way the heads of the oxen were pointed, I could see what looked like a hillock in the distance.

Fixing my eyes upon it, I could gradually see it more distinctly, and in a few minutes' time made out that what had seemed like one hillock was really two--the one natural, the other artificial: in other words, the pile of ironstone and granite in one case, the built-up stronghold in the other.
"Joeboy," I said, beckoning him to one side after a furtive glance at the black foreloper, "we're a long way off, and the Boers will miss the wagons and see us soon." "Um?
Yes," he said coolly.
"Do you think that you can get the bullocks to go faster ?" "Um?
No," he said.