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. The old kafir shrugged, and a silence fell between them all. Jan and Andries had understood less than the half of what was said, but the ill-ease reached them like a contagion and they sat very close together, their eyes wide open and quick. Piet was about to ask further questions, when Jan suddenly gripped his brother and started. "Hark!" he cried. "What is that?" The quick alarm strung them all to tenseness; only the old kafir cocked his eyebrow humorously and spat into the fire. The others rested where they sat, straining their ears. "There!" cried Jan again. It was a dull noise of metal on metal that they heard, a muffled ring and clink; it sounded again and again. "Someone is cutting at the chains," said Piet hoarsely. "It is they," said Klein Piet. Susanna's hand stole into Piet's arm; he had almost forgotten that she was sitting a little behind him, so still had she been. But the touch of her hand made him the equal of his terrors; the man with a wife to shield cannot afford fears. He pressed her hand and rose to his feet. "We are shivering like old women round a death-bed," he said. "Klein Piet, get your rifle; we will see who is mending our work for us."