They came out of the pit and took the kafir back to the camp with them, leaving their tools where they lay. The old man went in obedience to their gestures without demur, and squatted himself on his hams to be talked to. The average Boer knows no native tongues; he will not condescend so far to the kafir; but Piet and his sons had yielded to their vicissitudes, and between them could command quite a number of dialects. Tembu, Fingo and the "kitchen "Now," she continued, "let us say goodby." kafir" of the Cape failed to gain any response; Klein Piet's few words of Bechuana only made the old man laugh; the Griqua "clicks" made him laugh more. Then, by an inspiration, Piet put a question in Basuto, the harsh speech of the mountaineers. Up went the black hand in a salute, and the old kafir replied in the same tongue.
"I am a doctor," he told them. "I am of The Men (the Zulus). I am walking north to my own people."
He spoke with a seriousness that was like courtesy, so attentive and gracious. To each of Piet's questions he gave a considered answer, ample and careful. There was no war in these parts, he told them; the nearest kraal was four days away. In any case, his people would not concern themselves with a single family of white people; they had nothing to fear.
"But," said Piet, "since I have been here, I have seen another white man. He watched me at work from a distance. Do you know who he was?"
The old kafir listened to him with a sedulous attention.
"It is said," he answered, "that white men have been seen hereabouts. My grandfather saw them, and his father. But I have never seen them."
Piet stared at him. "Your grandfather?" he cried. "But I saw him yesterday."
The old kafir nodded. "It is a tale that is told," he said. "A very old tale. White men came from yonder—" his lean finger waved to the darkling sea southwards,—"traveling on the water in a——" he paused for a word.
"A ship," said Piet. "I know."
The old man nodded. "This was in the old times, before we Men had come to this country," he went on; "when white men were dreams. Here their ship halted; and that same night, the great wind of the year drove down on them. It was a wind that struck men as with a club and killed them; it lifted the sea as mowers lift hay and stacked it high on the veld, so that here where we sit was all water, and the shore was a mile inland. And with the water, the wind carried their ship, plunging and turning like a cow in a torrent; when the sea went back to its place, it stood here on the land, great and wonderful, with its white men swarming about it. That iron at which you were sweating was the hook with which they held their ship in one place."