“If you are alive, Baas, please wake up soon, as I have finished reloading Intombi, and it is time to be going.  I think I hit Jana in the eye, but so big a beast will soon get over so little a thing as that and look for us, and the bullet from Intombi is too small to kill him, Baas, especially as it is not likely that either of us could hit him in the other eye.”

Now I sat up and stared.  Yes, there was Hans himself looking just the same as usual, only perhaps rather dirtier, engaged in setting a cap on to the nipple of the little rifle Intombi.

“Hans,” I said in a hollow voice, “why the devil are you here?”

“To save you from the devil, of course, Baas,” he replied aptly.  Then, resting the gun against the stone, the old fellow knelt down by my side and, throwing his arms around me, began to blubber over me, exclaiming: 

“Just in time, Baas!  Only just in time, for as usual Hans made a mess of things and judged badly—­I’ll tell you afterwards.  Still, just in time, thanks be to your reverend father, the Predikant.  Oh! if he had delayed me for one more minute you would have been as flat as my nose, Baas.  Now come quickly.  I’ve got the camel tied up there, and he can carry two, being fat and strong after four days’ rest with plenty to eat.  This place is haunted, Baas, and that king of the devils, Jana, will be back after us presently, as soon as he has wiped the blood out of his eye.”

I didn’t make any remark, having no taste for conversation just then, but only looked at poor Marut, who lay by me as though he was sleeping.

“Oh, Baas,” said Hans, “there is no need to trouble about him, for his neck is broken and he’s quite dead.  Also it is as well,” he added cheerfully.  “For, as your reverend father doubtless remembered, the camel could never carry three.  Moreover, if he stops here, perhaps Jana will come back to play with him instead of following us.”

Poor Marut!  This was his requiem as sung by Hans.

With a last glance at the unhappy man to whom I had grown attached in a way during our time of joint captivity and trial, I took the arm of the old Hottentot, or rather leant upon his shoulder, for at first I felt too weak to walk by myself, and picked my path with him through the stones and skeletons of elephants across the plateau eastwards, that is, away from the lake.  About two hundred yards from the scene of our tragedy was a mound of rock similar to that on which Jana had appeared, but much smaller, behind which we found the camel, kneeling as a well-trained beast of the sort should do and tethered to a stone.