“Alas! sister, all things pass, and with them our lives,” and she told her of the surrender of the Umpondwana and its terms.

Suzanne listened in silence, for grief and despair had done their worst with her, and her heart could hold no more pain.

“So it is finished at last,” she said, when Sihamba had spoken, “and this is the end of all our toil and strivings and of our long fight against fate.  Yes, this is the end:  that we must die, or at the least I must die, for I will choose death rather than that Van Vooren should lay a finger upon me.  Well, I should care little were it not that now I believe my husband to be still alive, and it is hard to go before him into yonder darkness, though I believe also that the darkness which we fear will prove such a happy light as does not shine upon this earth,” and she laid her head upon Sihamba’s breast and they wept together.

Presently Sihamba said, “My mind, that was wont to be so clear, is darkened.  Pray to your God, you who are of His people that He may send light upon it, so that I can think once more while there is yet time.  Now we wander in the forest of despair, but never yet was there a forest so thick that it cannot be passed.  Pray then that I may be given light, for your life hangs upon it.”

So Suzanne prayed, and presently, as she prayed, her weariness overcame her and she slept, and Sihamba slept also.  When Sihamba awoke it was within an hour of midnight.  A little lamp of oil burnt in the hut, and by the light of it she could see the white face of Suzanne lying at her side, and groaned in her bitterness to think that before the sun set again that face must be whiter still, for she knew that the Swallow was not of the mind of the Umpondwana, who preferred dishonour to death.  “Oh! that my wisdom might come back to me,” she murmured.  “Oh!  Great-Great, God of my sister, give me back my wisdom and I will pay my life for it.  Oh!  Lighter of the stars, for myself I ask nothing, who am not of Thy children.  Let eternal death be my portion, but give me back my wisdom that I may save my sister who serves Thee.”

Thus prayed Sihamba out of the depth of her untutored heart, not for herself but for another, and it would seem that her prayer was heard; though many among our people think that God does not listen to the black creatures.  At the least, as her eyes wandered around the hut, they fell upon certain jars of earthenware.  Now during the years that she dwelt among the Umpondwana Suzanne had but two pastimes.  One of them was to carve wood with a knife, and the other to paint pictures upon jars, for which art she always had a taste, these jars being afterwards burnt in the fire.  For pigments she used certain clays or ochres, red and black and white and yellow, which were found in abundance on the slopes of the mountain, and also a kind of ink that she made by boiling down the kernels of the fruit of the green-leaved tree which grew by the banks of the river.