lightning-like way _immambas_ have, hissing and flicking its tongue.

I was too quick for my friend, however, for snatching up the gun that I
had lain down beside me, I let it have a charge of buckshot in the
neck which nearly cut it in two, so that it fell down and expired with
hideous convulsive writhings.

Hearing the shot Hans came running from the waggon to see what was the
matter. Hans, I should say, was that same Hottentot who had been the
companion of most of my journeyings since my father's day. He was with
me when as a young fellow I accompanied Retief to Dingaan's kraal,
and like myself, escaped the massacre.[*] Also we shared many other
adventures, including the great one in the Land of the Ivory Child where
he slew the huge elephant-god, Jana, and himself was slain. But of this
journey we did not dream in those days.

[*] See the book called "Marie."--Editor.

For the rest Hans was a most entirely unprincipled person, but as the
Boers say, "as clever as a waggonload of monkeys." Also he drank when he
got the chance. One good quality he had, however; no man was ever more
faithful, and perhaps it would be true to say that neither man nor woman
ever loved me, unworthy, quite so well.

In appearance he rather resembled an antique and dilapidated baboon;
his face was wrinkled like a dried nut and his quick little eyes were
bloodshot. I never knew what his age was, any more than he did himself,
but the years had left him tough as whipcord and absolutely untiring.
Lastly he was perhaps the best hand at following a spoor that ever I
knew and up to a hundred and fifty yards or so, a very deadly shot