Perhaps you will get there if you can live to pass the desert, which has killed my poor servant and me.' "Then he groped in his shirt and brought out what I thought was a Boer tobacco pouch made of the skin of the Swart-vet-pens or sable antelope.
It was fastened with a little strip of hide, what we call a rimpi, and this he tried to loose, but could not.

He handed it to me.

'Untie it,' he said.

I did so, and extracted a bit of torn yellow linen on which something was written in rusty letters.

Inside this rag was a paper.
"Then he went on feebly, for he was growing weak: 'The paper has all that is on the linen.