frightened elephants and the shouting of a Zulu impi.

"You think that sight fine, wife," he said, pointing to the spouting
foam; "but I call it the ugliest in the world. Almighty! it turns my
blood cold to look at it and to think that Christian men, ay, and women
and children too, may be pounding to pulp in those breakers."

"Without doubt the death is as good as another," I answered; "not that I
would choose it, for I wish to die in my bed with the _predicant_ saying
prayers over me, and my husband weeping--or pretending to--at the foot
of it."

"Choose it!" he said. "I had sooner be speared by savages or hanged by
the English Government as my father was."

"What makes you think of death in the sea, Jan?" I asked.

"Nothing, wife, nothing; but there is that fool of a Pondo
witch-doctoress down by the cattle kraal, and I heard her telling a
story as I went by to look at the ox that the snake bit yesterday."

"What was the story?"

"Oh! a short one; she said she had it from the coast Kaffirs--that far
away, up towards the mouth of the Umzimbubu, when the moon was young,
great guns had been heard fired one after the other, minute by minute,
and that then a ship was seen, a tall ship with three masts and many
'eyes' in it--I suppose she meant portholes with the light shining
through them--drifting on to the coast before the wind, for a storm was
raging, while streaks of fire like red and blue lightnings rushed up