As it chanced, in my saddle-bags I had some biltong that I had saved against emergencies.  I gave it to him, and he devoured it as a famished hyena might do, tearing off the tough meat in lumps and bolting them whole.  When it was all gone he licked his fingers and his lips and stood still staring at me.

“Tell me your story,” I repeated.

“Baas, I went to fetch the horses with the others, and ours had strayed.  I got up a tree to look for them.  Then I heard a noise, and saw that the Zulus were killing the Boers; so knowing that presently they would kill us, too, I stopped in that tree, hiding myself as well as I could in a stork’s nest.  Well, they came and assegaied all the other Totties, and stood under my tree cleaning their spears and getting their breath, for one of my brothers had given them a good run.  But they never saw me, although I was nearly sick from fear on the top of them.  Indeed, I was sick, but into the nest.

“Well, I sat in that nest all day, though the sun cooked me like beef on a stick; and when night came I got down and ran, for I knew it was no good to stop to look for you, and ’every man for himself when a black devil is behind you,’ as your reverend father says.  All night I ran, and in the morning hid up in a hole.  Then when night came again I went on running.  Oh! they nearly caught me once or twice, but never quite, for I know how to hide, and I kept where men do not go.  Only I was hungry, hungry; yes, I lived on snails and worms, and grass like an ox, till my middle ached.  Still, at last I got across the river and near to the camp.

“Then just before the day broke and I was saying, ’Now, Hans, although your heart is sad, your stomach will rejoice and sing,’ what did I see but those Zulu devils, thousands of them, rush down on the camp and kill all the poor Boers.  Men and women and the little children, they killed them by the hundred, till at last other Boers came and drove them away, although they took all the cattle with them.  Well, as I was sure that they would come back, I did not stop there.  I ran down to the side of the river, and have been crawling about in the reeds for days, living on the eggs of water-birds and a few small fish that I caught in the pools, till this morning, when I heard the Zulus again and slipped up here into this hole.  Then you came and stood over the hole, and for a long while I thought you were a ghost.

“But now we are together once more and all is right, just as what your reverend father always said it would be with those who go to church on Sunday, like me when there was nothing else to do.”  And again he fell to kissing my foot.

“Hans,” I said, “you saw the camp.  Was the Missie Marie there?”

“Baas, how can I tell, who never went into it?  But the wagon she slept in was not there; no, nor that of the Vrouw Prinsloo or of the Heer Meyer.”

“Thank God!” I gasped, then added:  “Where were you trying to get to, Hans, when you ran away from the camp?”