Swallow

"Wow!" he said, "this is wonderful. This is magic indeed. She who was white as snow has become black as coal, and yes, she looks best black. Oh! this is magic indeed."

At his words Suzanne sprang up looking as though she were about to weep, and Sihamba stopped his lips with fierce words and blows, though he took small heed of either, but stood staring.

"Zinti," Sihamba said, "you have done me many services, but to-day you must do me the greatest of all. This morning at the daylight the lady Swallow will pass with the multitude down the cleft yonder and none will know her in that disguise. You must go with her, but not too near her, and cross the plain, meeting her by the saw-edged rock which stands yonder at the mouth of the gorge in the Quathlamba mountains. Then you must lead her as fast as you can travel to that camp of the Boers which is near the Tugela River, where she will be safe. Do you understand?"

"I understand, lady. But what of yourself?"

"It is my plan to hide on the mountain," Sihamba answered quickly, "in a secret place I know of, seeing that it is impossible that I should escape because my stature would betray me. I will join you at the Boer camp later; or, failing that, you can return in a while--say on the first night of the new moon--to search for me. But talk no more, for we have still much to do. Yes, we who have made a white woman black, must make a black woman white. Follow me, both of you," and giving Zinti a jar of pigment and the long goat-skin cloak, which Suzanne wore for an outer garment, she left the hut, carrying in her hand strips of ox-hide tanned white.

Avoiding the groups of thirst-tormented people who sat or wandered about in the coolness of the night, they passed through the gates of the kraal unheeded, and walking quickly across the wide stretch of tableland reached the eastern edge of the cliff. Now upon the very verge of this cliff rose a sharp pinnacle of rock fifty feet or more into the air, and upon the top of this pinnacle was that stone shaped like a great chair, in which Suzanne sat day by day, poised like an eagle over the dizzy gulf of space, for the slopes of the mountain swelled five hundred feet beneath, watching for the help that never came. Not far from the base of this point Sihamba began to search in the starlight till she found what she wanted, the body of a young woman who had crept here to die of thirst, and whose death and the place of it had been reported to her.