“Oh! there is, or there was,” I explained.  “Why couldn’t the confounded ass wait quietly for us at Durban instead of fooling off butterfly hunting to the north of Zululand and breaking his leg or his neck there if he has done anything of the sort?”

“Don’t know, I am sure.  It’s hard enough to understand one’s own motives, let alone Brother John’s.”

Then we sat down on our stools again and stared at each other.  At this moment Hans crept into the hut and squatted down in front of us.  He might have walked in as there was a doorway, but he preferred to creep on his hands and knees, I don’t know why.

“What is it, you ugly little toad?” I asked viciously, for that was just what he looked like; even the skin under his jaw moved like a toad’s.

“The Baas is in trouble?” remarked Hans.

“I should think he was,” I answered, “and so will you be presently when you are wriggling on the point of a Mazitu spear.”

“They are broad spears that would make a big hole,” remarked Hans again, whereupon I rose to kick him out, for his ideas were, as usual, unpleasant.

“Baas,” he went on, “I have been listening—­there is a very good hole in this hut for listening if one lies against the wall and pretends to be asleep.  I have heard all and understood most of your talk with that one-eyed savage and the Baas Stephen.”

“Well, you little sneak, what of it?”

“Only, Baas, that if we do not want to be killed in this place from which there is no escape, it is necessary that you should find out exactly on what day and at what hour Dogeetah is going to arrive.”

“Look here, you yellow idiot,” I exclaimed, “if you are beginning that game too, I’ll——­” then I stopped, reflecting that my temper was getting the better of me and that I had better hear what Hans had to say before I vented it on him.

“Baas, Mavovo is a great doctor; it is said that his Snake is the straightest and the strongest in all Zululand save that of his master, Zikali, the old slave.  He told you that Dogeetah was laid up somewhere with a hurt leg and that he was coming to meet you here; no doubt therefore he can tell you also when he is coming.  I would ask him, but he won’t set his Snake to work for me.  So you must ask him, Baas, and perhaps he will forget that you laughed at his magic and that he swore you would never see it again.”

“Oh! blind one,” I answered, “how do I know that Mavovo’s story about Dogeetah was not all nonsense?”

Hans stared at me amazed.

“Mavovo’s story nonsense!  Mavovo’s Snake a liar!  Oh!  Baas, that is what comes of being too much a Christian.  Now, thanks to your father the Predikant, I am a Christian too, but not so much that I have forgotten how to know good magic from bad.  Mavovo’s Snake a liar, and after he whom we buried yonder was the first of the hunters whom the feathers named to him at Durban!” and he began to chuckle in intense amusement, then added, “Well, Baas, there it is.  You must either ask Mavovo, and very nicely, or we shall all be killed. I don’t mind much, for I should rather like to begin again a little younger somewhere else, but just think what a noise Sammy will make!” and turning he crept out as he had crept in.