“What!” cried Dyke.
“Tant feed. Jack knock kopf.”
“What! Jack knock the young ostriches on the head?”
“Ooomps!” grunted the woman, and picking up a stone, she took hold of the neck of an imaginary young ostrich, and gave it a thump on the head with the stone, then looked up at Dyke and laughed.
“The beast!” he cried indignantly.
“Ooomps! Jack tief.”
Tanta looked sharply round, then ran to where some ostrich bones lay, picked clean by the ants, and stooping down, took something from the ground, and ran back to hand Dyke the skull of a young bird, pointing with one black finger at a dint in the bone.
“Jack,” she said laconically—“Jack no want stritch.”
“No wonder our young birds didn’t live,” thought Dyke. Then to the woman, as he pointed to the skull: “Find another one!”
Tanta nodded, showed her white teeth, ran off, and returned in a few minutes with two, Dyke having in the meantime found a skull with the same mark upon it, the bone dinted in as if by a round stone.