Swallow | Page 8

pretending to--at the
foot of it."
"Choose it!" he said. "I had sooner be speared by savages or hanged by
the English Government as my father was."
"What makes you think of death in the sea, Jan?" I asked.
"Nothing, wife, nothing; but there is that fool of a Pondo witch-
doctoress down by the cattle kraal, and I heard her telling a story as I
went by to look at the ox that the snake bit yesterday."
"What was the story?"
"Oh! a short one; she said she had it from the coast Kaffirs--that far
away, up towards the mouth of the Umzimbubu, when the moon was
young, great guns had been heard fired one after the other, minute by
minute, and that then a ship was seen, a tall ship with three masts and
many 'eyes' in it--I suppose she meant portholes with the light shining
through them--drifting on to the coast before the wind, for a storm was
raging, while streaks of fire like red and blue lightnings rushed up from
her decks."
"Well, and then?"
"And then, nothing. Almighty! that is all the tale. Those waves which
you love to watch can tell the rest."

"Most like it is some Kaffir lie, husband."
"May be, but amongst these people news travels faster than a good
horse, and before now there have been wrecks upon this coast. Child,
put down that gun. Do you want to shoot your mother? Have I not told
you that you must never touch a gun?" and he pointed to Suzanne, who
had picked up her father's /roer/--for in those days, when we lived
among so many Kaffirs, every man went armed--and was playing at
soldiers with it.
"I was shooting buck and Kaffirs, papa," she said, obeying him with a
pout.
"Shooting Kaffirs, were you? Well, there will be a good deal of that to
do before all is finished in this land, little one. But it is not work for
girls; you should have been a boy, Suzanne."
"I can't; I am a girl," she answered; "and I haven't any brothers like
other girls. Why haven't I any brothers?"
Jan shrugged his shoulders, and looked at me.
"Won't the sea bring me a brother?" went on the child, for she had been
told that little children came out of the sea.
"Perhaps, if you look for one very hard," I answered with a sigh, little
knowing what fruit would spring from this seed of a child's talk.
On the morrow there was a great to do about the place, for the black
girl whose business it was to look after Suzanne came in at breakfast
time and said that she had lost the child. It seemed that they had gone
down to the shore in the early morning to gather big shells such as are
washed up there after a heavy storm, and that Suzanne had taken with
her a bag made of spring-buck hide in which to carry them. Well, the
black girl sat down under the shadow of a rock, leaving Suzanne to
wander to and fro looking for the shells, and not for an hour or more
did she get up to find her. Then she searched in vain, for the spoor of
the child's feet led from the sand between the rocks to the pebbly shore

above, which was covered with tough sea grasses, and there was lost.
Now at the girl's story I was frightened, and Jan was both frightened
and so angry that he would have tied her up and flogged her if he had
found time. But of this there was none to lose, so taking with him such
Kaffirs as he could find he set off for the seashore to hunt for Suzanne.
It was near sunset when he returned, and I, who was watching from the
/stoep/, saw with a shiver of fear that he was alone.
"Wife," he said in a hollow voice, "the child is lost. We have searched
far and wide and can find no trace of her. Make food ready to put in my
saddle-bags, for should we discover her to-night or to-morrow, she will
be starving."
"Be comforted," I said, "at least she will not starve, for the cook girl
tells me that before Suzanne set out this morning she begged of her a
bottle of milk and with it some biltong and meal cakes and put them in
her bag."
"It is strange," he answered. "What could the little maid want with
these unless she was minded to make a journey?"
"At times it comes into the thoughts of children to play truant,
husband."
"Yes, yes, that is so, but pray God that we may find her before the
moon sets."
Then while I filled the saddle-bags