Indeed, he was awake, for I could see the glow from the pipe he smoked.
"Baas," whispered the voice of Hans, "I have found out everything.

They are loading the _Maria_ with slaves, taking them in big boats from the island." "So," I answered.

"But how did you get here?
Are the hunters asleep without ?" He chuckled.

"No, they are not asleep; they look with all their eyes and listen with all their ears, yet old Hans passed through them; even the Baas Somers did not hear him." "That I didn't," said Stephen; "thought a rat was moving, no more." I stepped through the place where the door had been on to the stoep.
By the light of the fire which the hunters had lit without I could see Mavovo sitting wide awake, his gun upon his knees, and beyond him two sentries.

I called him and pointed to Hans.
"See," I said, "what good watchmen you are when one can step over your heads and enter my room without your knowing it!" Mavovo looked at the Hottentot and felt his clothes and boots to see whether they were wet with the night dew.
"_Ow!_" he exclaimed in a surly voice, "I said that nothing which walks could reach you, Macumazana, but this yellow snake has crawled between us on his belly.