Well, this wreck made a great stir, for many were drowned in it, and
the English Government sent a ship of war to visit the place where it
happened, but none came to ask us what we knew of the matter; indeed, we
never learned that the frigate had been till she was gone again. So
it came about that the story died away, as such stories do in this sad
world, and for many years we heard no more of it.

For a while the boy Ralph was like a haunted child. At night, and now
and again even in the daytime, he would be seized with terror, and sob
and cry in a way that was piteous to behold, though not to be wondered
at by any who knew his history. When these fits took him, strange as
it may seem, there was but one who could calm his heart, and that one
Suzanne. I can see them now as I have seen them thrice that I remember,
the boy sitting up in his bed, a stare of agony in his eyes, and the
sweat running down his face, damping his yellow hair, and talking
rapidly, half in English, half in Dutch, with a voice that at times
would rise to a scream, and at times would sink to a whisper, of the
shipwreck, of his lost parents, of the black Indian woman who nursed
him, of the wilderness, the tigers, and the Kaffirs who fell on them,
and many other things. By him sits Suzanne, a soft kaross of jackal
skins wrapped over her nightgown, the dew of sleep still showing upon
her childish face and in her large dark eyes. By him she sits, talking
in some words which for us have little meaning, and in a voice now
shrill, and now sinking to a croon, while with one hand she clasps his
wrist, and with the other strokes his brow, till the shadow passes from
his soul and, clinging close to her, he sinks back to sleep.

But as the years went by these fits grew rarer till at last they ceased
altogether, since, thanks be to God, childhood can forget its grief.