Content Warning: This section discusses racist stereotypes, with outdated and offensive language used to describe indigenous peoples replicated only in explanations or direct quotations. This section also discusses death and infant death and refers to suicide.

It is nighttime, and the moon looms large over a farm in Africa. Tant’ (Aunt) Sannie, a Boer woman, sleeps amid nightmares. Two young girls rest in the next room; one (later revealed to be Lyndall) is briefly awake and calls to her companion, Em. The other girl is asleep, so she rolls over to slumber again.

In an outbuilding, the farm’s overseer, an older German man, sleeps peacefully while his son lies awake. The son is tormented by thoughts of mortality. Each tick of the clock sounds to him like the words “dying, dying, dying!” (37). He worries about the souls of those who die, and he wishes to save them all.

The next morning, the farm is alive with activity. Tant’ Sannie drinks coffee while the two girls—Em is Tant’ Sannie’s stepdaughter, and Lyndall is Em’s cousin—sew. The German overseer is preaching to two African boys while his son, Waldo Farber, herds the sheep. At lunchtime, Waldo sacrifices his lambchop on a makeshift altar.