Therefore she still lay upon the top of the hut, and watched through the smoke-hole.

For a while Suzanne sat quiet upon the bed, then of a sudden she rose from it, and shuffling across the hut as well as her bound feet would allow her, she closed the opening with the door-board, and secured it by its wooden bar.

Next she returned to the bed and, seating upon it, clasped her hands and began to pray, muttering aloud and mixing with her prayer the name of her husband Ralph.

Ceasing presently, she thrust her hand into her bosom and drew from it a knife, not large, but strong and very sharp.

Opening this knife she cut the thong that bound her ankles, and made it into a noose.
Then she looked earnestly first at the noose, next at the knife, and thirdly at the candles, and Sihamba understood that she meant to do herself to death, and was choosing between steel and rope and fire.
Now all this while, although she dared not so much as whisper, Sihamba had not been idle, for with the blade of the assegai she was working gently at the thatch of the smoke-hole, and cutting the rimpis that bound it, till at last, and not too soon, she thought that it was wide enough to allow of the passage of her small body.