“He fired at me, look!  Well for Hans his mother bore him short”; and he pointed to a hole in the filthy hat.  “Then before that Arab could load again, poor coward Hans got his knife into him from behind.  Look!” and he produced a big blade, which was such as butchers use, from his belt and showed it to us.  “After that it was easy, since fire is a wonderful thing.  You make it small and it grows big of itself, like a child, and never gets tired, and is always hungry, and runs fast as a horse.  I lit six of them where they would burn quickest.  Then I saved the last match, since we have few left, and came through the gate before the fire ate me up; me, its father, me the Sower of the Red Seed!”

We stared at the old Hottentot in admiration, even Mavovo lifted his dying head and stared.  But Hans, whose annoyance had now evaporated, went on in a jog-trot mechanical voice: 

“As I was returning to find the Baas, if he still lived, the heat of the fire forced me to the high ground to the west of the fence, so that I saw what was happening at the south gate, and that the Arab men must break through there because you who held it were so few.  So I ran down to Babemba and the other captains very quickly, telling them there was no need to guard the fence any more, and that they must get to the south gate and help you, since otherwise you would all be killed, and they, too, would be killed afterwards.  Babemba listened to me and started sending out messengers to collect the others and we got here just in time.  Such is the hole I hid in during the Battle of the Gate, O Mavovo.  That is all the story which I pray that you will tell to the Baas’s reverend father, the Predikant, presently, for I am sure that it will please him to learn that he did not teach me to be wise and help all men and always to look after the Baas Allan, to no purpose.  Still, I am sorry that I wasted so many matches, for where shall we get any more now that the camp is burnt?” and he gazed ruefully at the all but empty box.

Mavovo spoke once more in a slow, gasping voice.

“Never again,” he said, addressing Hans, “shall you be called Spotted Snake, O little yellow man who are so great and white of heart.  Behold!  I give you a new name, by which you shall be known with honour from generation to generation.  It is ‘Light in Darkness.’  It is ’Lord of the Fire.’”

Then he closed his eyes and fell back insensible.  Within a few minutes he was dead.  But those high names with which he christened Hans with his dying breath, clung to the old Hottentot for all his days.  Indeed from that day forward no native would ever have ventured to call him by any other.  Among them, far and wide, they became his titles of honour.