There beneath her, within a few paces indeed, for the ground sloped steeply to the stream, men were passing.  The first of these was white, and he carried a white woman in his arms; the rest were Kaffirs, some of whom wore karosses or cotton blankets, and some tattered soldiers’ coats and trousers, while all were well armed with “roers” or other guns, and had powder flasks hung about their necks.  Sihamba knew at once that the white man was Swart Piet, and the woman in his arms her mistress, Suzanne.  She could have told it from her shape alone, but as it happened, her head hung down, and the moonlight shone upon her face so brightly that she could see its every feature.  Her blood boiled in her as she looked, for now she understood that her fears were just, and that the Swallow whom she loved above everything in the world, had fallen into the power of the man she hated.  At first she was minded to follow, and if might be, to rescue her.  Then she remembered the pistol-shot, and remembered also that this new-made wife would have been with her husband and no other.  Where, then, was he now?  Without doubt, murdered by Bull-Head.  If so, it was little use to look for him, and yet something in her heart told her to look.

At that moment she might not help Suzanne, for what could one woman and a Kaffir youth do against so many men?  Moreover, she knew whither Van Vooren would take her, and could follow there, but first she must learn for certain what had been the fate of the Baas Ralph her husband.  So Sihamba lay still beneath the two tufts of grass until the last of the men had passed in silence, glancing about them sullenly as though they feared vengeance for a crime.  Then, having noted that they were heading for the kloof, she went back to where Zinti stood in the hollow holding the horse with one hand and the mule with the other, and beckoned him to follow her.

Very soon, tracing the spoor backwards, they reached the edge of the cliff just where the waterfall fell over it into the sea pool.  Here she searched about, noting this thing and that, till at last all grew clear to her.  Yonder Suzanne had lain, for the impress of her shape could still be seen upon the grass.  And there a man had been stretched out, for his blood stained the ground.  More, he had been dragged to the edge of the cliff, for this was the track of his body and the spoor of his murderer’s feet.  Look how his heels had sunk into the turf as he took the weight of the corpse in his arms to hurl it over the edge.

“Tie the horse and the mule together, Zinti,” she said, “and let us find a path down this precipice.”

The lad obeyed, wondering, though he too guessed much of what had happened, and after a little search they found a place by which they could descend.  Now Sihamba ran to the pool and stood upon its brink scanning the surface with her eyes, till at length she glanced downwards, and there, almost at her feet, three parts of his body yet hidden in the water, lay the man she sought.