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The melting of season into season, and year into year, the leaf-like withering and drifting away of the old from among the fresh springing growths, are ever before their eyes, and the contemplation steeps them in a sense of the transitoriness of things good and bad. Even the black soil they tread on may next year flutter up into a vanishing blue column through a smoke-hole in somebody's thatch.
As soon as it began to blaze, Yagorsha the Story-teller took the cover off the smoke-hole, so the company was not quite stifled. A further diversion was created by several women crawling in, bringing food for the men-folk, in old lard-cans or native wooden kantaks. These vessels they deposited by the fire, and with an exchange of grunts went out as they had come.
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.
The other woman was bleeding from the face, and her face and neck were covered with blood. She was moving as if in great pain. I sent for the ambulance at once, and by this time the whole street was aroused." The two women, Tai Yau and the old servant, had fallen through a smoke-hole in the roof. Tai Yau had a fractured jaw and left thigh, besides internal injuries. She lived but ten days.
When Piet went out he left the door-board of the hut open, so that Sihamba dared neither act nor speak, fearing lest the guard should hear or see her through it. Therefore she still lay upon the top of the hut, and watched through the smoke-hole.
Fortunately in life there are few mistakes, and even worse than mistakes that cannot be repaired, if the wish towards reparation is real and earnest. Were it otherwise not many of us would escape destruction in one form or another. Thus I reflected until at length light flowing faintly through the smoke-hole of the hut told me that dawn was at hand.
"Yes, my grandchild, the legend says the large bright stars are wise old warriors, and the small dim ones are handsome young braves," she reiterates, in a high, tremulous voice. "Then this one peeping in at the smoke-hole yonder is my dear old grandfather," muses the young woman, in long-drawn-out words.
A heavy shower caught them once, and they were rather glad to be driven into their cheerless lodge, but the rain came abundantly into the smoke-hole as well as through the walls, and they found it but little protection. "Seems to me, if anything, a leetle wetter in here than outside," said Sam, as he led in a dash for home.
Pookjinsquess went off, singing as she went the following song, which has been written out from the phonographic record by Mr. Cheney, and left Black Cat on the island. "Once on a time Glooscap was cooking something in his wigwam, and the Snake wished to see what it was. So the Snake crawled up the outside of the wigwam and looked down through the smoke-hole into the cooking vessel.
"But on the day when their last bit of food was gone, lo! something pecked at the top of the smoke-hole, and it sang 'Nuck-tee, and it was a blue jay. The chief heard and saw and wondered, and, looking 'neath the smoke-hole, he saw a scarlet something upon the floor. Picking it up, he found it was a bunch of Indian tomato berries, red and ripe, and quickly hope sprang in his breast.
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