I mused upon the Bible narrative of Jacob and Esau with a new and very poignant sympathy for Esau.  I wondered what would become of my Jacob.  Jacob, I mean the original, prospered exceedingly as a result of his deal in porridge, and, as thought I, probably would his artful descendant who so appropriately bore his name.  As a matter of fact I do not know what became of him, but bearing his talents in mind I think it probable that, like Van Koop, under some other patronymic he has now been rewarded with a title by the British Government.  At any rate I had eaten the porridge in the shape of worthless but dearly purchased shares, after labouring hard at the chase of the golden calf, while brother Jacob had got my inheritance, or rather my money.  Probably he was now counting it over in sovereigns upon the ship and sniggering as he thought of the shareholders’ meeting with me in the chair.  Well, he was a thief and would run his road to whatever end is appointed for thieves, so why should I bother my head more about him?  As I had kept my honour—­let him take my savings.

But I had a son to support, and now what was I to do with scarcely three hundred pounds, a good stock of guns and this little Durban property left to me in the world?  Commerce in all its shapes I renounced once and for ever.  It was too high—­or too low—­for me; so it would seem that there remained to me only my old business of professional hunting.  Once again I must seek those adventures which I had forsworn when my evil star shone so brightly over a gold mine.  What was it to be?  Elephants, I supposed, since these are the only creatures worth killing from a money point of view.  But most of my old haunts had been more or less shot out.  The competition of younger professionals, of wandering backveld Boers and even of poaching natives who had obtained guns, was growing severe.  If I went at all I should have to travel farther afield.

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.