It was not a human cough, but rather resembled that made by a certain small buck at night, probably to signal to its mate, which of course it could not be as there were no buck within several miles.

Yet I knew it came from a human throat, for had I not heard it before in many an hour of difficulty and danger?
"Draw near, Hans," I said in Dutch, and instantly out of a clump of aloes that grew in front of the pomegranate hedge, crept the withered shape of the old Hottentot, as a big yellow snake might do.

Why he should choose this method of advance instead of that offered by the garden path I did not know, but it was quite in accordance with his secretive nature, inherited from a hundred generations of ancestors who spent their lives avoiding the observation of murderous foes.
He squatted down in front of me, staring in a vacant way at the fierce ball of the westering sun without blinking an eyelid, just as a vulture does.
"You look to me as though you had been fighting, Hans," I said.

"The crown of your hat is knocked out; you are splashed with mud and there is the mark of a stick upon your left side." "Yes, Baas.

You are right as usual, Baas.