By this time the sun was down, and as they did not dare to move in the dark, the children sat together on the rock, clasped in each other’s arms for warmth, and as they sat they saw yellow eyes staring at them through the gloom, and heard strange snoring sounds, and were afraid. At length the moon rose, and in its first rays they perceived standing and walking within a few paces of them three tigers, as we call leopards, two of them big and one half-grown. But the tigers did them no harm, for God forbade them; they only looked at them a little and then slipped away, purring as they went.
Now Suzanne rose, and taking the boy by the hand she began to lead him homeward, very slowly, since he was footsore and exhausted, and for the last half of the way could only walk resting upon her shoulder. Still through the long night they crawled forward, for the kopje at the back of our stead was a guide to Suzanne, stopping from time to time to rest a while, till at the breaking of the dawn with their last strength they came to the house, as has been told.
Well it was that they did so, for it seems that the searchers had already sought them in the very kloof where they were hidden, without seeing anything of them behind the thick screen of the mimosas, and having once sought doubtless they would have returned there no more, for the hills are wide and the kloofs in them many.
CHAPTER III.
THE STORY OF THE SHIPWRECK
“What shall we do with this boy whom Suzanne has brought to us, wife?” asked Jan of me that day while both the children lay asleep.
“Do with him, husband!” I answered; “we shall keep him; he is the Lord’s gift.”
“He is English, and I hate the English,” said Jan, looking down.
“English or Dutch, husband, he is of noble blood, and the Lord’s gift, and to turn him away would be to turn away our luck.”
“But how if his people come to seek him?”
“When they come we will talk of it, but I do not think that they will come; I think that the sea has swallowed them all.”