Now when she heard this, Sihamba could keep silence no longer, but cried in a mocking voice: 

“Get you gone, Bull-Head, and take lessons in lying from your friends of my trade, the Kaffir witch-doctors, for never before did I hear a man bear false witness so clumsily.  On the third night of his illness the husband of Swallow was alive and doing well; the Heer Jan Botmar was not wounded at all, and as for the Vrouw Botmar, never in her life did she drink anything stronger than coffee, for the white man’s firewater is poison to her.  Get you gone, you silly half-breed, who seek to deceive the ears of Sihamba, and I counsel you, hold fast to your business of theft and murder and give up that of lying, in which you will never succeed.  Now be off, you stink-cat of the rocks, lest I send some to hunt you from your hole who this time will use the points and not the shafts of their assegais.  Come, Swallow, let us be going.”

So they went, keeping under cover all the way to the camp, which, indeed, was quite close to them, and if Swart Piet made any answer they did not hear it.  So soon as they reached it Sihamba told Sigwe what had passed and he sent men to scour the cliff and the bush behind it, but of Van Vooren they could find no trace, no, not even the spot where he had been hidden, so that Sigwe came to believe that they had been fooled by echoes and had never heard him at all.

But both Suzanne and Sihamba knew that this was not so; indeed, this hearing of the voice of Swart Piet filled Suzanne with fear, since where the voice was, there was the man, her hateful enemy, who had given his life to her ruin and to that of those she loved.  Whatever lies he might have spoken—­and her heart told her that all his ill tidings were but a cruel falsehood—­this at least was true, that he had dogged her step by step through the vast wilderness, and so craftily that none guessed his presence.  What might not be feared from such a foe as this, half mad and all wicked, armed with terrible cunning and untiring patience?  If the Umpondwana would not receive her she must fall into his hands at once, and if they did receive her she would never dare to leave their kraal, for always, always he would be watching and waiting for her.  Little wonder then that she felt afraid, though, just as the sun shines ever behind the blackest cloud, still in her heart shone the sure comfort of her hope, and more than hope that in the end God would give her back her husband and her to him unharmed.  Yet, which ever way she looked the cloud was very black, and through it she could see no ray of light.