Then, losing command of herself, Suzanne screamed and struggled, and the sound of her cries reached the ears of Swart Piet, who was standing close at hand. “What is this?” he asked of the man. “Nothing, Bull-Head, except that I have taken a woman whom I wish for a wife because she is so fair.” Van Vooren let his eyes rest upon her, but dreamily, for all his thoughts were given to her who sat aloft five hundred feet above his head, and, feeling their glance, Suzanne’s blood froze in her veins. “Yes, she is fair,” he answered, “but she is a married woman, and I will have no Umpondwana brats among my people. Let her go, and take a girl if you will.” For Van Vooren did not wish that the few men who remained with him should cumber themselves just then with women and children, since they were needed to look after the cattle. “Maid or wife, I choose this one and no other,” said the man sulkily. Then Black Piet, whose sullen temper could not brook to be crossed, broke into a blaze of rage. “Do you dare to disobey me?” he shouted with an awful Kaffir oath. “Let her go, dog, or I will kill you.” At this the man, who knew his master, loosed hold of Suzanne, who ran away, though it was not until she reached the water that she noticed a white ring round her arm, where his grip had rubbed the paint off the skin beneath. Strangely enough Van Vooren saw the ring, and at that distance mistook it for an ivory ornament such as Kaffir women often wear above the elbow. Still more strangely its white colour made him think again of the white woman who sat aloft yonder, and he turned his face upwards, forgetting all about the black girl with the child. Thrusting herself through the crowd, Suzanne ran on for a while till she was clear of the worst of it, then terrified though she was, she could resist the temptation of the water no longer, for her mouth and throat felt dry and rough. Climbing down to the edge of the river she drank greedily under the shelter of a rock, and when she had satisfied some of her thirst, she poured water into the mouth of the child, dipping its shrunken little body into the stream, whereon it seemed to increase before her eyes like a dry sponge that is left out in the rain. While she tended the child thus, and just as it began to find its senses and to wail feebly, she chanced to look up, and to her terror saw that man from whom she had escaped walking along the bank looking for her. Happy was it for Suzanne that the rock under which she was crouched hid her, for the man stood for thirty seconds or more within two paces, so that she was obliged to plunge the body of the boy under water to stifle its crying.