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winked at me. You know that kind of wink. It was to let me know that there was now a new understanding between us, and that we could speak in future as one Marico liar to another.
    I didn’t like that.
    â€œKêrels,” I said in the end, “I know just what you are thinking. You don’t believe me, and you don’t want to say so.”
    â€œBut we do believe you,” Krisjan Lemmer interrupted me, “very wonderful things happen in the Bushveld. I once had a twenty-foot mamba that I named Hans. This snake was so attached to me that I couldn’t go anywhere without him. He would even follow me to church on a Sunday, and because he didn’t care much for some of the sermons, he would wait for me outside under a tree. Not that Hans was irreligious. But he had a sensitive nature, and the strong line that the predikant took against the serpent in the
Garden of Eden always made Hans feel awkward. Yet he didn’t go and look for a withaak to lie under, like your leopard. He wasn’t stand-offish in that way. An ordinary thorn-tree’s shade was good enough for Hans. He knew he was only a mamba, and didn’t try to give himself airs.”
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    I didn’t take any notice of Krisjan Lemmer’s stupid lies, but the upshot of this whole affair was that I also began to have doubts about the existence of that leopard. I recalled queer stories I had heard of human beings that could turn themselves into animals, and although I am not a superstitious man I could not shake off the feeling that it was a spook thing that had happened. But when, a few days later, a huge leopard had been seen from the roadside near the poort, and then again by Mtosas on the way to Nietverdiend, and again in the turf-lands near the Malopo, matters took a different turn.
    At first people jested about this leopard. They said it wasn’t a real leopard, but a spotted animal that had walked away out of Schalk Lourens’s dream. They also said that the leopard had come to the Dwarsberge to have a look at Krisjan Lemmer’s twenty-foot mamba. But afterwards, when they had found his spoor at several waterholes, they had no more doubt about the leopard.
    It was dangerous to walk about in the veld, they said. Exciting times followed. There was a great deal of shooting at the leopard and a great deal of running away from him. The amount of
Martini and Mauser fire I heard in the krantzes reminded me of nothing so much as the First Boer War. And the amount of running away reminded me of nothing so much as the Second Boer War.
    But always the leopard escaped unharmed. Somehow, I felt sorry for him. The way he had first sniffed at me and then lain down beside me that day under the withaak was a strange thing that I couldn’t understand. I thought of the Bible, where it is written that the lion shall lie down with the lamb.
    But I also wondered if I hadn’t dreamt it all. The manner in which those things had befallen me was all so unearthly. The leopard began to take up a lot of my thoughts. And there was no man to whom I could talk about it who would be able to help me in any way. Even now, as I am telling you this story, I am expecting you to wink at me, like Krisjan Lemmer did.
    Still, I can only tell you the things that happened as I saw them, and what the rest was about only Africa knows.
    It was some time before I again walked along the path that leads through the bush to where the withaaks are. But I didn’t lie down on the grass again. Because when I reached the place, I found that the leopard had got there before me. He was lying on the same spot, half-curled up in the withaak’s shade, and his forepaws were folded as a dog’s are, sometimes. But he lay very still. And even from the distance where I stood I could see the red splash on his breast where a Mauser bullet had gone.

Ox-wagons on Trek

    When I see the rain beating white on the thorn-trees, as it does now (Oom Schalk Lourens