Evening had come upon them while they talked; its shadows were cast over the sea and the shore, and the old kafir's strong face was lit by the leaping fire at which they sat. Piet looked over his shoulder at the darkling dome of the night, under which they sat in a hush of solitude.
"Yes," he said. "And what became of them?"
The old kafir spread his hands asunder before him.
"Who can tell?" he answered. "They were killed, of course; the kafirs who had escaped to the hills came back and made war on them. It lasted a while, for the white men fought cleverly; but in the end, there was a creeping by night, a narrowing ring of assegais, the hush of stealth; and last the roar of the warcry and a charge. The kafirs thronged on that ship like ants on a carrion; in the middle of it, the white men put fire to their powder, and all the ship and the fighters vanished in a spring of fire. Yes, all the white men were killed; but still they have been seen, slinking through the hills and returning by the stream. They were killed, but who is to say what became of them?"
The four Boers looked at one another; their breath came short and harsh. Piet recalled all that sense of strangeness with which the sight of the man by the stream had filled him; the growing night was suddenly dangerous and fearful.
Klein Piet turned to the old kafir. "All this was very long ago?" he said.
The kafir considered, with a forefinger that calculated on the fingers of his other hand.
"My grandfather was old," he said. "So old that he was blind. And his grandfather had heard it as a tale of olden times."
Piet was still in thrall to the awe of the thing.
"Then I saw a spirit?" he demanded.