noon
At length up it came , and the sight and warmth of it put new heart into Benita . Her fears seemed to depart with the night , and she said to her father that this successful start was of good augury , to which he only answered that he hoped so . All that day they rode forward in beautiful weather , not pressing their horses , for now they were sure that Jacob Meyer , who if he followed at all must do so on foot , would never be able to overtake them . At noon they halted , and having shot a small buck , Benita cooked some of it in the one pot that they had brought with them , and they ate a good meal of fresh meat . Riding on again , towards sundown they came to another of their old camping-places , also a bush-covered kopje . Here the spring of water was more than halfway up the hill , so there they off-saddled in a green bower of a place that because of its ferns and mosses looked like a rock garden . Now , although they had enough cold meat for food , they thought themselves quite safe in lighting a fire .