“That knife would kill a man, Jantje,” she said.
“Yes, yes,” he answered: “no doubt it has killed many men.”
“It would kill Frank Muller, now, would it not?” she went on, suddenly bending forward and fixing her dark eyes upon the little man’s jaundiced orbs.
“Yah, yah,” he said starting back, “it would kill him dead. Ah! what a thing it would be to kill him!” he added, making a fierce sound, half grunt, half laugh.
“He killed your father, Jantje.”
“Yah, yah, he killed my father,” said Jantje, his eyes beginning to roll with rage.
“He killed your mother.”
“Yah, he killed my mother,” he repeated after her with eager ferocity.
“And your uncle. He killed your uncle.”
“And my uncle too,” he went on, shaking his fist and twitching his long toes as his hoarse voice rose to a subdued scream. “But he will die in blood—the old Englishwoman, his mother, said it when the devil was in her, and the devils never lie. Look! I draw Baas Frank’s circle in the dust with my foot; and listen, I say the words—I say the words,” and he muttered something rapidly; “an old, old witch-doctor taught me how to do it, and what to say. Once before I did it, and there was a stone in the circle, now there is no stone: look, the ends meet. He will die in blood; he will die soon. I know how to read the omen;” and he gnashed his teeth and sawed the air with his clenched fists.