It might be thought after receiving a pistol bullet fired into him at a distance of four paces, and being cast down through fifty feet of space into a pool of the sea, that there was an end of Ralph Kenzie for ever on this earth. But thanks to the mercy of God this was not so, for the ball had but shattered his left shoulder, touching no vital part, and the water into which he fell was deep, so that, striking against no rock, he rose presently to the surface, and the pool being but narrow, was able to swim to one side of it where the beach shelved. Up that beach Ralph could not climb, however, for he was faint with loss of blood and shock. Indeed, his senses left him while he was in the water, but it chanced that he fell forward and not backward, so that his head rested upon the shelving edge of the pool, all the rest of his body being beneath its surface. Lying thus, had the tide been rising, he would speedily have drowned, but it had turned, and so, the water being warm, he took no further harm. Now Sihamba did not leave the stead till some hours after Ralph and his bride had trekked away. She knew where they would outspan, and as she did not wish that they should see her yet, or until they were too far upon their journey to send her back, it was her plan to reach the spot, or rather a hiding-place in the kloof within a stone’s throw of it, after they had gone to rest. So it came about that at the time when Ralph and Suzanne were surprised by Swart Piet, Sihamba was riding along quietly upon the horse which Jan had given her, accompanied by the lad Zinti, perched on the strong brown mule in the midst of cooking pots, bags of meal, biltong, and rolls of blankets. Already, half a mile off or more, she could see the cap of the waggon gleaming white in the moonlight, when suddenly away to the left they heard the sound of a pistol shot. “Now who shoots in this lonely place at night?” said Sihamba to Zinti. “Had the sound come from the waggon yonder I should think that someone had fired to scare a hungry jackal, but all is quiet at the waggon, and the servants of Swallow are there, for, look, the fire burns.” “I know not, lady,” answered Zinti, for Sihamba was given the title of Chieftainess among the natives who knew something of her birth, “but I am sure that the sound was made by powder.” “Let us go and see,” said Sihamba turning her horse. For a while they rode on towards the place whence they had heard the shot, till, suddenly, when they were near the cliff and in a little fold of ground beyond the ridge of which ran the stream, Sihamba stopped and whispered, “Be silent, I hear voices.” Then she slipped from her horse and crept like a snake up the slope of the rise until she reached its crest, where at this spot stood two tufts of last season’s grass, for no fires had swept the veldt. From between these tufts, so well hidden herself that unless they had stepped upon her body, none could have discovered her, she saw a strange sight.