Whilst I meditated thus, turning over the comparative advantages
or disadvantages of various possible hunting grounds in my mind, my
attention was caught by a kind of cough that seemed to proceed from the
farther side of a large gardenia bush. It was not a human cough, but
rather resembled that made by a certain small buck at night, probably
to signal to its mate, which of course it could not be as there were no
buck within several miles. Yet I knew it came from a human throat, for
had I not heard it before in many an hour of difficulty and danger?

"Draw near, Hans," I said in Dutch, and instantly out of a clump of
aloes that grew in front of the pomegranate hedge, crept the withered
shape of the old Hottentot, as a big yellow snake might do. Why he
should choose this method of advance instead of that offered by the
garden path I did not know, but it was quite in accordance with his
secretive nature, inherited from a hundred generations of ancestors who
spent their lives avoiding the observation of murderous foes.

He squatted down in front of me, staring in a vacant way at the fierce
ball of the westering sun without blinking an eyelid, just as a vulture
does.

"You look to me as though you had been fighting, Hans," I said. "The
crown of your hat is knocked out; you are splashed with mud and there is
the mark of a stick upon your left side."

"Yes, Baas. You are right as usual, Baas. I had a quarrel with a man
about sixpence that he owed me, and knocked him over with my head,
forgetting to take my hat off first. Therefore it is spoiled, for which
I am sorry, as it was quite a new hat, not two years old. The Baas gave
it me. He bought it in a store at Utrecht when we were coming back from