And the day
they landed at Port Elizabeth, it was an infinite relief indeed to
Guy to think he could now get well away for ever from that fellow
Kelmscott. Not being by any means over-burdened with ready cash,
however, Guy determined to waste no time in the coastwise towns,
but to make his way at once boldly up country towards Kimberley.
The railway ran then only as far as Grahamstown; the rest of his
journey to the South African Golconda was accomplished by road,
in a two-wheeled cart, drawn by four small horses, which rattled
along with a will, up hill and down dale, over the precarious
highways of that semi-civilized upland.
To Guy, just fresh from England and the monotonous sea, there was
a certain exhilaration in this first hasty glimpse of the infinite
luxuriance of sub-tropical nature. At times he almost forgot
Montague Nevitt and the forgery in the boundless sense of freedom
and novelty given him by those vast wastes of rolling tableland,
thickly covered with grass or low thorny acacias, and stretching
illimitably away in low range after range to the blue mountains
in the distance. It was strange indeed to him on the wide plains
through which they scurried in wild haste to see the springbok rush
away from the doubtful track at the first whirr of their wheels,
or the bolder bustard stand and gaze among the long grass, with his
wary eye turned sideways to look at them.
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