This woman Sihamba, who might have been a little over thirty years of age, had been living in our neighbourhood for some three or four years and practising as a doctoress.  Not that she was a “black” doctoress, for she never took part in the “smelling-out” of human beings for witchcraft or in the more evil sort of rites.  Her trade was to sell charms and medicines to the sick, also to cure animals of their ailments, at which, indeed, she was very clever, though there was some who said that when she chose she could “throw the bones” and tell the future better than most, and this without dressing herself up in bladders and snake skins, or falling into fits, or trances, and such mummery.  Lastly, amongst the natives about, and some of the Boers too, I am sorry to say, she had the reputation of being the best of rainmakers, and many were the head of cattle that she earned by prophesying the break-up of a drought, or the end of continual rains.  Indeed, it is certain that no one whom I ever knew had so great a gift of insight into the omens of the weather at all seasons of the year, as this strange Sihamba Ngenyanga, a name that she got, by the way, because of her habit of wandering about in the moonlight to gather the herbs and the medicine roots which she used in her trade.

On several occasions Jan had sent animals to be doctored by this Sihamba, for she would not come out to attend to them whatever fee was offered to her.  At first I did not approve of it, but as she always cured the animals, whatever their ailments might be, I gave in on the matter.

Now it happened that a few months before some travellers who had guested at our house gave Suzanne a little rough-haired dog bred of parents which had been brought from England.  Of this dog Suzanne grew very fond, and when it fell sick of the distemper she was in much distress.  So it came about that one afternoon Suzanne put the dog in a basket, and taking with her an old Hottentot to carry it, set out upon her grey mare for the valley where Sihamba lived.  Now Sihamba had her hut and the huts of the few people in her service in a recess at the end of the valley, so placed that until you were quite on to them you would never have guessed that they were there.  Down this valley Suzanne rode, the Hottentot with the basket on his head trotting by her side, till turning the corner she came upon a scene which she had very little expected.  In one part of the open space beyond her, herded by some Kaffirs, were a number of cattle, sheep and goats.  Opposite to them in the shadow under the hillside stood the huts of Sihamba, and in front of these grew a large tree.  Beneath this tree was Sihamba herself with scarcely any clothing on her, for she had been stripped, her tiny wrists bound together behind her back and a rope about her neck, of which one end was thrown over a bough of the tree.  In front of her, laughing brutally, stood none other than Swart Piet and with him a small crowd of men, mostly half-breed wanderers of the sort that trek from place to place claiming hospitality on the grounds of cousinship or poverty, until they are turned off as a nuisance.  Also there were present a few Kaffirs, either headmen in Swart Piet’s pay or some of his dark associates in witchcraft.