ce 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
with a rifle especially when he used a little single-barrelled,
muzzle-loading gun of mine made by Purdey which he named _Intombi_ or
Maiden. Of that gun, however, I have written in "The Holy Flower" and
elsewhere.

"What is it, Baas?" he asked. "Here there are no lions, nor any game."

"Look the other side of the bush, Hans."

He slipped round it, making a wide circle with his usual caution, then,
seeing the snake which was, by the way, I think, the biggest _immamba_
I ever killed, suddenly froze, as it were, in a stiff attitude that
reminded me of a pointer when it scents game. Having made sure that it
was dead, he nodded and said,

"Black _'mamba_, or so you would call it, though I know it for something
else."

"What else, Hans?"

"One of the old witch-doctor Zikali's spirits which he sets at the mouth
of this kloof to warn him of who comes or goes. I know it well, and so
do others. I saw it listening behind a stone when you were up the kloof
last evening talking with the Opener-of-Roads."

"Then Zikali will lack a spirit," I answered, laughing, "which perhaps
he will not miss amongst so many. It serves him right for setting the
brute on me."

"Quite so, Baas. He will be angry. I wonder why he did it?" he added
suspiciously, "seeing that he is such a friend of yours."

"He didn't do it, Hans. These snakes are very fierce and give battle,
that is all."

Hans paid no attention to my remark, which probably he thought only
worthy of a white man who does not understand, but rolled his yellow,
bloodshot eyes about, as though in search of explanations. Presently
they fell upon the ivory that hung about my neck, and he started.

"Why do you wear that pretty likeness of the Great One yonder over your
heart, as I have known you do with things that belonged to women in
past days, Baas? Do you know that it is Zikali's Great Medicine, nothing
less, as everyone does throughout the land? When Zikali sends an order
far away, he always sends that image with it, for then he who receives
the order knows that he must obey or die. Also the messenger knows that
he will come to no harm if h