"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.