It was at this moment that Sihamba walked up to the _stoep_ as though to speak to me.
“The Swallow and the Swallow’s mate,” she said, following my eyes to where the little creatures swung together on the beautiful bough.
“Yes,” I answered, for her fancy seemed to me of good omen, “they have built their nest, and now they are thanking God before they begin to live together and rear their young in love.”
As the words left my lips a quick shadow swept across the path of sunlit ground before the house, two strong wings beat, and a brown hawk, small but very fierce, being of a sort that preys upon small birds, swooped downwards upon the swallows. One of them saw it, and slid from the bough, but the other the hawk caught in its talons, and mounted with it high into the air. In vain did its mate circle round it swiftly, uttering shrill notes of distress; up it went steadily as pitiless as death.
“Oh! my swallow,” I cried aloud in grief, “the accursed hawk has carried away my swallow.”
“Nay, look,” said Sihamba, pointing upwards.
I looked, and behold! a black crow that appeared from behind the house, was wheeling about the hawk, striking at it with its beak until, that it might have its talons free to defend itself, it let go the swallow, which, followed by its mate, came fluttering to the earth, while the crow and the falcon passed away fighting, till they were lost in the blue depths of air.
Springing from the _stoep_ I ran to where the swallow lay, but Sihamba was there before me and had it in her hands.
“The hawk’s beak has wounded it,” she said pointing to a blood stain among the red feathers of the breast, “but none of its bones are broken, and I think that it will live. Let us put it in the nest and leave it to its mate and nature.”
This we did, and there in the nest it stayed for some days, its mate feeding it with flies as though it were still unfledged. After that they vanished, both of them together, seeking some new home, nor did they ever build again beneath our eaves.
“Would you speak with me, Sihamba?” I asked when this matter of the swallows was done with.
“I would speak with the Baas, or with you, it is the same thing,” she answered, “and for this reason. I go upon a journey; for myself I have the good black horse which the Baas gave me after I had ridden to warn you in Tiger Kloof yonder, the one that I cured of sickness. But I need another beast to carry pots and food and my servant Zinti, who accompanies me. There is the brown mule which you use little because he is vicious, but he is very strong and Zinti does not fear him. Will you sell him to me for the two cows I earned from the Kaffir whose wife I saved when the snake bit her? He is worth three, but I have no more to offer.”