Baas, speaking to you, not with the voice of Hans the old drunkard, but with that of the Predikant, your reverend father, who made so good a Christian of me and who tells me to do so from up in Heaven where the hot fires are which the wood feeds of itself, I beg you not to try to throw away the Medicine again, or if you wish to do so, to leave me behind on this journey.

For you see, Baas, although I am now so good, almost like one of those angels with the pretty goose's wings in the pictures, I feel that I should like to grow a little better before I go to the Place of Fires to make report to your reverend father, the Predikant." Thinking of how horrified my dear father would be if he could hear all this string of ridiculous nonsense and learn the result of his moral and religious lessons on raw Hottentot material, I burst out laughing.

But Hans went on as gravely as a judge, "Wear the Great Medicine, Baas, wear it; part with the liver inside you before you part with that, Baas.

It may not be as pretty or smell as sweet as a woman's hair in a little gold bottle, but it is much more useful.

The sight of the woman's hair will only make you sick in your stomach and cause you to remember a lot of things which you had much better forget, but the Great Medicine, or rather Zikali who is in it, will keep the assegais and sickness out of you and turn back bad magic on to the heads of those who sent it, and always bring us plenty to eat and perhaps, if we are lucky, a little to drink too sometimes." "Go away," I said, "I want to wash." "Yes, Baas, but with the Baas's leave I will sit on the other side of that bush with the gun--not to look at the Baas without his clothes, because white people are always so ugly that it makes me feel ill to see them undressed, also because--the Baas will forgive me--but because they smell.