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.