“Take notice that my father being dead, I am now the Walloo, and one to be obeyed. Go about your tasks fearing nothing, since Heu-Heu is no more and the most of the Hairy Folk are slain. I depart to rest, taking with me these, my guests and deliverers,” and she pointed to me and Hans. “Afterwards I will talk with you, and with you also, my lord Issicore. Bear the late Walloo, my father, to the burial place of the Walloos.” Then she turned and, followed by us and the members of her household, went to her home. Here she bade us farewell for a while, since we were all half dead with fatigue and sorely needed rest. As we parted, she took my hand and kissed it, thanking me with tears welling from her beautiful eyes for all that I had done, and Dramana did likewise. “How comes it, Baas,” said Hans as we ate food and drank of the native beer before we lay down to sleep, “that those ladies did not kiss my hand, seeing that I too have done something to help them?” “Because they were too tired, Hans,” I answered, “and made one kiss serve for both of us.” “I see, Baas, but I expect that to-morrow they will still be too tired to kiss poor old Hans.” Then he filled the cup out of which he had been drinking with the last of the liquor from the jar and emptied it at a swallow. “There, Baas,” he said; “that’s only right; you may take all the kisses, so long as I get the beer.” Exhausted as I was I could not help laughing, although to tell the truth, I should have liked another glass myself. Then I tumbled on to the couch and instantly went to sleep. It is a fact that we slept all the rest of that day and all the following night, waking only when the first rays of the sun shone into our room through the window place. At least, I did, for when I opened my eyes, feeling a different creature and blessing Heaven for its gift of sleep to man, Hans was already up and engaged in cleaning the rifles and revolvers. I looked at the ugly little Hottentot, reflecting how wonderful it was that so much courage, cunning, and fidelity should be packed away within his yellow skin and projecting skull. Had it not been for Hans, without a doubt I should now be dead, and the women also. It was he who had conceived the idea of letting down the sluice gate by exploding gunpowder beneath the pin of the lever. I had racked my brain for expedients, but this, the only one possible, escaped me. How tremendous had been the results of that inspiration—all of them due to Hans.