Story 4.The Farm Boschfontein.Chapter One.“If we could get hold of one of these mines between us, we would show them how to work it, I guess. We wouldn’t fool around the camp trying to float a company and let a lot of local men into the thing. We’d go straight home and give the British public a turn. Couldn’t you fancy yourself as the South African millionnaire chairman of the Great Diamond Mining Company, with a house in Belgrave Square, a country house with a blessed big park round it, the favourite for the Derby in training at Newmarket, and the best of everything that money could buy, eh, Timson?”“Don’t, Hardman, don’t! I can’t bear to think of it. The chances some of ’em here have had and the way they have thrown ’em away! If I had only been in their place I’d have done something for myself, but I came here too late.”“Too late be blowed! there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out, and there are as rich mines lying unworked and undisturbed as any that have been found, that’s my opinion. How do we know that there is not another mine as rich as Kimberley on which the grass and bush are growing, and the spring bucks are playing? We may be sitting on just such a mine now, for all you know.”“By Jove! it’s enough to make a fellow wild when he thinks of the fortune that may be waiting for him to be picked up; but what’s the good of thinking of it? No one has found a diamond mine that would pay to work since Kimberley was opened.”“What of that? They have found a dozen places such as we have seen to-day, where there are diamonds in small quantities. Mark my words: sooner or later they will drop on to a place which will make the Kimberley mine pretty sick, and if we could only get hold of such a mine, you with your knowledge of business and the City of London, and me—well, I know my way about—what couldn’t we do with it?”As he spoke, Mr Bill Hardman glanced at his companion, and an ominous smile played across his swarthy face. His words had evidently told with a good deal of effect.The two men were on their way home from an expedition from Kimberley, to a mining camp in the Orange Free State. So it was not surprising that as they smoked their pipes under the shade of their Cape cart, after an excellent luncheon, their conversation should turn to the topic which in Griqualand West exercised men’s minds most, diamonds and diamond mining. Bill Hardman was about forty-five, and there was something about him which suggested that he had knocked about the world a good deal. He was not a bad-looking man, but every now and then an expression came into his face which gave one an unpleasant impression, and suggested that he might be rather dangerous, either as a friend or an enemy. For years he had been a well-known character on the Diamond Fields, and there were many stories told about him which bore witness rather to his astuteness, than to his integrity. He called himself a digger, but no one could remember his owning a claim or doing any work. The calling to which he devoted himself in the early days of the Fields was that of an exponent of faro, roulette, poker, and other games, more or less of chance. Afterwards, when what was called the company mania broke out, rotten scrip and a rigged share market gave him more scope for speculation, and he became a comparatively respectable member of society. But notwithstanding his respectability, many of those who knew most about him would have considered that Mr Timson was not very prudent in choosing him for a companion.The latter was a young man of about twenty-five; his get-up, sleek, fresh-complexioned face and plump figure had a very English look, and he seemed as if he would be far more at home eating at a luncheon bar in the City, than picnicking on the South African veldt. Though he had not been very long in South Africa and knew little of the country, he believed very much in himself and in his business knowledge, and had a very great contempt for the people he found himself amongst. He had brought out a few thousand pounds with him and had done very well in his speculations, doubling his capital again and again, which was not difficult in those days of wild speculation, when every investment was going up. About that time people on the Diamond Fields had gone mad on the subject of new mines, even old hands who had seen place after place reported to be very rich turn out a failure, were again taking the fever for prospecting, while men who had just come out from home were simply delirious with it. To a new hand there is a singular charm in the idea of a new mine, and Mr Timson found the fascination of this form of speculation simply irresistible. Mr Hardman also had turned his attention to prospecting, and on this common interest the two men had struck up a very intimate acquaintanceship.“Yes,” said Hardman, after they had smoked in silence for some time, “the place we saw to-day may be payable, but there ain’t much to be done with it. What one wants is to get on to a mine on private property, with no reservation of minerals to the Crown, so that one could get the whole mine into one’s hands.”“Fancy that, now, buying a farm for a few hundreds on which there might be a mine worth millions and millions. But we have got to find it, and without the owner or any one else knowing anything about it!” said Mr Timson, as much to himself as to his companion.“Right you are, Smarty! we have got to do that. It’s well enough to talk as one smokes one’s pipe; but it’s a hundred to one, one never gets such a chance. For all that, mind you, the chance may come; that’s what living in a mining country means. There is always the hope of a big fortune for the man who knows how to make the most of his luck.”Mr Timson listened to the other, and began to indulge in a delicious day-dream of what he would do, and how he would live if he were the owner of a diamond mine, with hundreds of pounds a day to spend. If it were only possible, he thought—possible! it was possible, he declared to himself, as he thought how fortunate he had been already. He was half asleep and half awake when he was woke up by hearing a strange voice inquiring the way to Pneil, a digging on the Vaal River some twenty-five miles off. The new-comer, who was on foot, was a tall man with a long beard; he was dressed in tattered clothes, and had on an old hat which had seen many years’ service. He looked travel-worn and tired; as Timson looked at him, he noticed a peculiar scar on his face and a curious droop in one eyelid.Hardman told him the distance. “It’s a long stretch and a sandy road; you had better sit down and take a drink,” he added, pouring some beer out into a glass as he spoke.“It’s a long time since I had a glass of beer,” the stranger said as he emptied the glass.“How’s that? been sworn off?” asked Hardman.“No, nor much need to. I’ve been living where you don’t get many chances of taking too much to drink; a hundred miles beyond the Tati Gold-Fields. I’ve tramped it down and had a pretty hard time of it.”“Well, you’d better take a rest and have something to eat,” said Hardman, as he pushed a plate and some cold meat towards the stranger, who, without any more pressing, accepted the other’s hospitality, and after he had made a good meal, filled his pipe and smoked for some time without joining in the conversation, the other two going on talking about diamonds and new mines.At last he broke in: “Have they worked out the New Rush, the Colesberg Kopje, as they called it?”“Colesberg Kopje, did you say? Why, that’s the Kimberley mine. No, it’s not worked out and won’t be in our time,” answered Hardman.“You mean they have abandoned it ’cause they have found a richer place?”“Abandoned it! Not they; there is no place one third as rich as Kimberley mine!”“Ain’t there though, mate; you mean they haven’t found one yet,” said the stranger. “Well, I’d have thought some one would have tumbled on to it by this time!” he added, more to himself than to the others, though Mr Timson heard him and pricked up his ears.“I suppose they don’t go prospecting much now-a-days?” the stranger asked after a second or two.“There is a bit of it being done just now,” replied Hardman; “but they haven’t come across a second Kimberley yet.”“So they go out prospecting still. Well, I suppose men will always keep on at that game. I have done a good lot of it in my time. I’d have been a happy man with a home of my own instead of the miserable devil I am now if I had only let it alone.”“So you broke yourself and lost your money prospecting! Well, others have done pretty much the same,” said Hardman.“Lost my money! No, I found as rich a place as you want to come across and got plenty of diamonds, but they cost me dear.”“You found as rich a place as one wants to come across, did you?” said Mr Timson, who was all attention. “Whereabouts was that, now?”The stranger did not answer his question, and for some time sat wrapped in his thoughts, which seemed to be gloomy enough. Then, with the air of one who could only get relief by telling his story, he spoke: “I say that prospecting trip cost me dear, and so you will say when you have heard my story. I must tell it, though it’s not the sort of tale most men would pan out to two strangers; but I must speak out, for I have done nothing but think over this for eight years, and feel that I should be easier in my mind for making a clean breast of it to some one or the other before I die. Prospecting! well, I’ve done about as much of prospecting as any man. They called me the Demon Prospector in Australia and New Zealand, and well they might, for I have found three payable gold-fields in my time. I did more good to others than to myself, though, for I could never stop in one place long, and would often turn my back upon a certainty to wander away after that wonderfully rich gold field I was always dreaming of. Still I did not do so badly, and before I came over to this country I had made a little money. And I had what was better than money—a home of my own and a wife, not the sort of wife many a digger with his belt full of gold-dust picked up in those days, but an English girl who had not been long out from home. She had come out with her father, who had collected the little money he had, and gone to try for a fortune in the land of gold. He lost his money, as a new chum will lose his money, and died leaving her alone. I don’t believe she only married me for a home; once she really cared for me—but you find this yarn a bit long, don’t you?” he said, looking at Mr Timson, who was not in the slightest degree interested in his domestic history.“About the place where you found all those diamonds, where was that?” said the latter.“Let himripand he will come round to it; don’t pump him too much or you’ll spoil a good thing,” whispered Hardman. “Go on, mate,” he added, “I like to hear you.”“Well, we were married in Sydney a few months after her father died, and we lived there for a bit, when I heard of the Diamond Fields breaking out in this country, and nothing would do for me but I must come over here. We got up here some months before the dry diggings were found, and I tried my luck at the river where all the diggers were then. I chose Pneil, where there were a good many men doing fairly well. I put up a stone shanty amongst the trees near the river, and we were fairly comfortable and happy enough. I found pretty well, and began to believe that my old restless spirit had left me, for I didn’t seem to want to go prospecting, but was willing enough to stop on there. After a bit the dry diggings were found and many of the diggers left the river for them, but still I stayed on at Pneil. Then I heard of the New Rush being opened, and how men were finding sackfuls of diamonds. I went over and saw the new diggings, and after that I could not be contented at the river. I had noticed the lay of the ground of the dry diggings, and I felt sure that there must be lots of spots where diamonds were to be found in quantities. Then the old instinct came over me and I longed to go off prospecting. At last I felt I could stay where I was no longer. My wife didn’t like my leaving her by herself, for the other women at Pneil were not much company for her, and she had very few friends. About the only person she seemed to care to speak to was a man who had come over with us from Australia, who was staying at the other side of the river helping to keep a canteen. He was an educated man, one of the broken-down gentleman kind, and could make himself agreeable enough, but I never liked him very much. He was no good and would never do any honest work. He had come to grief in the old country by gambling, and was just turning from a pigeon into a rook, but there was something about him that women found very fascinating. Well, to cut my story short, I went off prospecting. I would stay away a week or so at a time. Looking back now it seems to me that after the first time my wife didn’t seem to mind my going so much. At last, after trying in one place and then another, I did find the sort of place I was looking for. It was out yonder,” said the prospector, as he stretched out his brown hand and pointed in the direction of a ridge of hills in the far distance. Mr Timson’s eyes glistened with excitement. He had never heard of any diamond mine being found in that direction.“Yes, sir,” continued the stranger, “if the New Rush is as rich as the place I found, it is a deal better than I ever heard it was. I was working out yonder myself, but I found diamonds every day. I kept putting off going back to get Kaffirs to work for me, for I didn’t like the idea of the secret of the place being let out, and half thought I might keep it all to myself. After about a month I had over two hundred carats of smaller diamonds, besides a thirty, a fifty, and a sixty carat stone. Then I thought it was about time to go back and see the missis again and tell her my luck, sell my diamonds and get some Kaffirs to work for me. I cannot tell how I felt as I tramped back to the river. At last I had struck something really rich and made my fortune. How the boys would wake up when they heard, as they sooner or later would, I suppose, that I had found a place twice as rich as the famous New Rush. But diamonds would be down to nothing at all when my secret was known and people knew how plentiful they were if you only looked for them in the right place, so I determined to keep it quiet until I had made my fortune, which would not take me long, I thought. Then I would be able to take my missis home to England, and she would live the life she was fit for and be as fine a lady as any of ’em at home.“As soon as I got to Klip Drift I sold my diamonds. I got about five thousand pounds for them. Then I went into a canteen to get a drink. There were one or two men there who knew me, and I thought that they stared at me rather oddly. ‘Where’s the Count?’ I asked the man behind the bar, for that was the name they called the broken-down gentleman chap I told you of, and it was the bar he kept.“‘Don’t you know about it then?’ asked one man, and the others stared at me very queerly.“‘Know about it? about what?’ I asked.“‘Oh nothing; only he has cleared,’ the men answered.“The men looked at me, I thought, as if they expected me to break my heart about the Count’s having cleared, and I couldn’t make out their manner at all. I said I was off across the river to see the missis, and left the place. A man I knew pretty well followed me and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s no good going across, for you won’t find the missis there,’ he said. ‘Where is she?’ I asked. ‘She has cleared, too; gone off with the Count,’ was his answer. I turned round on him, half inclined to knock him down to show him I didn’t like that kind of joke, but there was something in his face which told me that he wasn’t joking; then he told me that it had been going on for a long time, and that every one had been talking about it, and about a week ago two or three saw them start off together, ‘and a good job for me, he told me, was what most of them said.’ At first I wouldn’t believe it, but it was true, though: she was gone, and I began to see how I had fooled away my happiness by leaving my wife to go prospecting and letting that damned scoundrel steal her from me. It wasn’t many hours after I heard the news that I was off on their track. They had gone up north to some gold-fields which broke out about then. It was some time before I came up with them, for they kept dodging about, first living in one place and then in another, and once or twice I was at fault and could hear nothing of them. At last I got to a new camp on the gold-fields where I heard the Count was; he had started in at his old trade, gambling, and was keeping a faro bank. I had not been many minutes at the hotel before I heard all the boys talking about him and the run of luck he had struck. Then they began to talk of the pretty woman he had with him; you can guess that made me feel wild. I don’t know how I behaved that night, but I stopped in the bar of the hotel drinking and longing for the time to come when I had planned to have my revenge.“I was the last to go to bed, and then I did not sleep, but waited till about three o’clock, when I knew the camp would be asleep. Then I stole out and walked along the creek to a canvas house which had been pointed out to me as the one they lived in. The place was quiet enough; I can remember now how a dog tied up to a waggon barked at me and how savage I felt with it, and how I laughed to myself as I knocked it over with a stone I hurled at it. When I got to the house I looked through the window. I saw them, they were asleep. I had a bowie knife on me, and I cut the rope with which the door was tied. No—I can’t tell you the rest.”“Well, you killed him; he’s injured you, but it’s rough killing a man when he’s asleep,” said Bill Hardman.“Him! I killed them,” said the prospector. “When she woke up and saw what I had done to him, she screamed and cursed at me; the devil came into me, and I stabbed her again and again. It would have been better for me if I had been caught red-handed, and strung up, as I should have been then and there; but I got away. Since then I have never got the sight I saw before I rushed out of their place into the open out of my head. I have hardly seen a white man to speak to since that day, for I wandered away up country and have lived amongst Kaffirs; but now I feel I must tell it to some one.”“Well, and now what are you going to do? Go back and work at the place you prospected?” asked Hardman.“Work at the place! What good are diamonds and money to me? No, I have not come back for that. I have come back to see the place where we were happy together once before I got the prospecting fever and left her, and then—well, what should a man do who has no hope and is sick of life and not afraid of finishing it? There, I have told you my story, and now I will say good-day, and good luck to you. If it goes against your conscience not to tell the police that a man has confessed murder to you, for I suppose there are police on the fields now, tell on, and make a clean breast of it.”Having finished speaking he got up to walk away. “Stop, don’t go yet, sit down and have a talk; tell us more about the place where you found those diamonds. Can you tell us exactly where it was?” said Timson, his voice quavering with excitement, for all the time the prospector had been telling the conclusion of his story he had been thinking of the wonderful diamond mine the other had spoken of.“Where is the place you said you found so well at?” he added as the stranger sat down and lit his pipe again.“What! you want to strike my luck, do you? I wouldn’t put a pick in there again for all the diamonds there are in the coast of the earth.”“Well, if you don’t like to work the place yourself, it seems a pity that no one else should,” said Timson, who, though he had some other weaknesses, was not superstitious. “You see, I don’t believe much in luck, except the luck of getting hold of a good thing when you know how to work it.”“Look here, mate, I am an old digger, and it goes agin’ my ideas of right to try and worm out another digger’s secret; but if you let us into this thing, we will work it with you fair and square,” said Hardman.“I don’t want you to work it with me or for me, but I don’t mind telling you where it is. See here,” said the prospector, pointing in the direction of a distant range of mountains towards which he had been gazing for some time, “do you see that little hump-backed hill standing out by itself? Well, it’s about four hundred yards to the north of it. You will see my old working still, I should say. Now, mates, I am off to Pneil, for I want to see the old place again, and then—”“Stop, let us talk it over. You had better work the place with us,” said Hardman; “we will forget all about what you have told us, or try to.”The stranger’s only answer was to wish them good luck at their prospecting, and refusing to listen to Hardman’s persuasions, he started off on his lonely walk.“I don’t like letting him go off in that state of mind; he means finishing himself, I saw it in his face, I have seen men look like that before,” said Hardman as he watched the tall figure striding over the long flat into the distance.“Certainly one pities him; but if what he has told us is true, life can’t be much comfort to him, and it’s just as well, if he is going to do it, that he should kill himself before he lets out to any one about that place. What do you think of that part of the story; do you believe it?” answered Mr Timson.“Believe it! well, I don’t know. It’s a queer story, but I ain’t one of those sharps who always disbelieve any story that’s a bit out of the common. I believe it well enough to mean finding out whether or no it’s true. What do you say?”“Ah! that’s just what I think. It may be true, and if it is true—”“If it is true, or near true, we are in a pretty big thing, for the farms out there ain’t on Crown land, and there is no reservation of minerals. Of course we must keep what we have heard quiet and try and learn a bit more. There’s millions who wouldn’t believe the yarn we have heard, but I ain’t one of ’em. If you ask me what I think, well, I think it’s true,” said Hardman, and then he shouted to his Kaffir to outspan the horses so that they could continue their journey to Kimberley. All the way they talked of the strange story they had heard, and the more they talked of it the more hopeful Mr Timson began to grow, and the more splendid were the castles in the air which he built on the foundation of the wonderful diamond mine he was to acquire a part possession of.Chapter Two.A few days after their conversation with the prospector, Messrs Hardman and Timson were again on a prospecting expedition. This time they had sought the prospector’s hump-backed hill, and they had come to it after a journey of about forty miles. Sure enough, about two hundred yards north of it, they found marks of old working and a hole which was almost filled up by sand. Mr Timson’s excitement before he reached the spot had begun to cool a good deal. Perhaps there was nothing in the tale he had heard. The man might have been mad, or have been hoaxing him, or exaggerating, he kept thinking to himself. Bill Hardman had not taken much trouble to reassure him. All he said was that it was good enough to look into, though it was long odds against its being as good as they hoped, and he professed to be quite prepared to find their trip turn out to be waste of time, though at the same time something seemed to tell him to try the place. They had come out in an ox waggon, professedly on a shooting trip, and had brought with them a small washing machine, picks, shovels and other tools for digging and prospecting; they had also taken out two or three Kaffirs who were accustomed to work in the mine.The sight of the old workings had a considerable effect in raising the hopes of Mr Timson.“That bears him out, anyhow!” said Hardman; “it seems to be the sort of hole a man working by himself could make in a month.”“How soon shall we know whether it is any good?” asked Timson.“Working on the small scale as we shall, it may take us days before we find a diamond, however rich it may be. We will first get some twenty loads of ground out and then we will wash. There is no house near here, and we might work for six months without being disturbed, so we needn’t fear that, though if the man who owns the farm found we were prospecting, he’d pretty quick get an interdict, as those cursed lawyers call it, from the High Court and clear us off,” answered the other.In a very short time work began, Bill Hardman opening a bottle of champagne to drink ‘luck’ to the venture, as the first pick was put into the ground. There is a strange excitement in working in new ground which is very fascinating to any one of a speculative turn. Mr Timson thought of the Scripture story of the man who knew of treasure hid in a field, and sold all he had to purchase that field. Let him but once satisfy himself that there was a diamond mine under his feet and he would show no want of enterprise in making the best use of his knowledge. Hardman said very little. When a few days’ work would tell them what they wanted to know, it was no good prophesying. He professed to like the look of the ground, it reminded him of the top stuff in the Kimberley mine, and Mr Timson was a good deal impressed with his favourable opinion. But the hours passed very slowly, and Mr Timson kept fidgeting about, looking into the shaft the boys were digging, and sorting handfuls of the earth they had thrown out, as if he expected that diamonds ought to be found every minute, much to the amusement of his companion, who pointed out that, however rich the place might be, they were likely enough to find nothing before they washed the ground. Hour after hour the Kaffirs worked on stolidly, though lazily, and as the shaft that they were sinking deepened, Timson’s spirits began to sink. He was breaking up a lump of ground when he heard a shout from Hardman—“We’ve found here a diamond! look at it! It’s true—that yarn we heard was true. It’s a ten-carat stone! I saw it glisten as Tom picked down some ground. Tom would have jumped it if I had not been too quick. Wouldn’t you, you black thief?”“Nay, boss,” said the Kaffir, grinning and showing his white teeth, “the boss is a good boss and I’d no jump his diamond.”Timson looked at the diamond, a white stone of about ten carats in weight, and he felt that his fortune was made. The Kaffirs talked to each other in their own language about the diamond. “They think it is a rich place and there will be lots of diamonds for them to steal,” said Hardman.The next day another diamond was found in the picking, and Mr Timson began to feel most hopeful as to what the result of washing the stuff would be.“If what we know is found out, we shall never be able to buy at a reasonable price,” he said, as they smoked their pipes after supper on the night before the day on which they intended to wash.“Nobody does as yet, and even we don’t know much,” said Hardman; “wait till we have washed.”Their washing machine was a small one, only able to get through about thirty loads of ground a day. In the afternoon they began to take out of the machine the heavy deposit which had been left after the earth and lighter gravel had been washed away. Hardman filled a sieve with this stuff, and worked it up and down in a tub of water so that the action of the water should work the diamonds to the bottom of the sieve.“Now, what luck?” he said, as he turned the sieve upside down on the sorting-table, at which Timson had taken his position. It was an exciting moment, for the stuff on the table was the result of a good many loads of ground, and if the place was any good, they might hope to find several diamonds in it. Mr Timson trembled with excitement. There was a second or two of suspense. Then he saw one diamond, then another, and another, and Hardman, who was looking over his shoulder, found two or three more. The next sieveful was equally good, and the result of the wash up was that the ground was proved to be marvellously rich. After that Timson suggested that they had better sink in some other place and find out how large the mine was, but Hardman did not agree to this. They had found out enough to know that whoever owned the farm owned a fortune, and they had better make the best use of their information and try to purchase the farm from its present owner before any one else found out what they knew. So the machinery and tools were packed up in their waggon, and the party started back again to Kimberley.Hardman undertook to find out about the land where the mine was situated, and until he could obtain that information, Mr Timson was to take care not to breathe one word of their secret. It was an exciting time for the latter gentleman. He thought to himself that perhaps they had been watched by some one who would claim a share in their prize, or give information to others who might bid against them for the land, or perhaps the man who owned it might come across the traces of the fresh working and that might arouse his suspicions. Come what might, thought Mr Timson, he would become the part owner of that wonderful mine. So far as they could judge, it was of greater extent than the Kimberley mine, and the work they had done made it appear to be three times as rich. If he could purchase the farm for a small sum, all the better, but he would not be afraid of risking all he had to get possession of it. Of the prospector, he could hear no more. He had probably wandered away into the veldt and destroyed himself. Mr Timson did not care much what might have happened to him so long as he did not tell his story, or rather, so much of it as related to the diamond mine, to any one else.It took Hardman about two days to obtain the information he required. It was fairly satisfactory, and he came to his friend in very good spirits. “It’s the Farm Boschfontein, there is no doubt about that, and it belongs to a Dutchman, by name Ziederman; and it’s the worst farm in the province, I am told,” he said, coming up to Timson, who was standing on the stoep of the hotel, and taking him on one side.“Ziederman! where does he live, and what kind of a man is he?”“Well, he is a pretty crude sort of a Dutchman, and his house is on the farm, about an hour’s drive from the mine. If we go over and see him, and tell him that we think of keeping a store where the road runs past it, and want to stock the farm, he will think he has got hold of two fools, and be glad to sell,” was the other’s answer.The next day Messrs Hardman and Timson started off to interview Mr Ziederman, the unconscious owner (they hoped) of the mine. The Boschfontein homestead where he lived was one of those low, whitewashed mud houses with which travellers in South Africa are so familiar. Mr Timson could see it miles away across the long flat over which they were driving. It was a poverty-stricken looking place, and as they neared the house there was no sign of any stock about.“Looks as if Boschfontein had about broke him,” said Hardman; “he’ll be glad to sell, you bet!”Mr Timson felt that in an hour or so he would know his fate, and as he gazed at the mean-looking Dutch farm-house, visions came before him of the house in London and the country place he would soon be the owner of. “Wonder how Hardman will do as a man of property? He’s a smart chip, but not quite one of us,” he thought to himself. As they came near to the house they saw Mr Ziederman sitting on a chair on the stoep of the house, staring after the manner of a Dutch boer into the far distance at nothing at all. When their cart drove up he turned round and stared at it, but no gleam of intelligence came into his face; he evidently was, so Mr Timson thought, a very crude specimen of the Dutchman. It would be very tedious to narrate all the conversation which took place after the two had got out of their cart, and had shaken the grimy, flabby hand which Mr Ziederman held out to them. Gradually, and with very much caution, Mr Hardman approached the subject of the purchase of the farm. Would Mr Ziederman care to sell it? they wished to set up a store and canteen, and would like to have the farm for keeping stock on, was the question which, after much fencing, he asked.“Yes, I will sell the farm. Ten thousand pounds, and you may have Boschfontein, but for not one dollar less,” answered Mr Ziederman, looking as stolid as ever.“Ten thousand pounds, mein herr! you are joking. The farm is not worth one twentieth part of that,” said Hardman.Mr Timson tried to look as if he were more surprised than disappointed.“Never mind, the farm is worth more than that. I know something that you perhaps know and perhaps don’t know. There are diamonds on my farm.”Mr Timson began to feel that all his hopes were going to be dashed to the ground.“Diamonds, mein herr! there are no diamonds out in this direction, and me and my partner don’t want to have anything to do with diamonds, they ain’t in our line; we want to keep a store and raise stock.”“Then you don’t want to buy the Farm Boschfontein, because the Farm Boschfontein has diamonds,” answered Ziederman. “See here, I will show you something,” he added, as he went into his house and came out with something in his hand; “see what my herd boy found near thekopjeyonder,” he said as he pointed in the direction of the mine. It was a ten-carat white diamond he had in his hand, and one of the partners felt something out of heart when he saw it. It was useless to try and persuade Ziederman that the stone was not a diamond.“Yes, I always knew there were some diamonds on my farm, but I would not say anything about them, for I knew diamonds bring English diggers on one’s farm; but I said to myself, ‘If I ever sell Boschfontein I will get plenty of money for it.’ I want ten thousand pounds!” he said as he lit his pipe again, looking as if he did not care whether he sold the farm or no. “If you like to buy it for the money, well; if not, I will have it prospected, and then I will sell it for what it will bring.”Hardman touched Timson on the shoulder and they walked away from the house together. “See here,” he said, when they were out of hearing of Ziederman, who sat smoking with a placid expression on his face, “what can we do? I can only raise two thousand pounds. I don’t like to let the thing slip from me, though, and once let him have the farm prospected and find out how rich it is, what we know is worth nothing to us.”“Maybe he will take less,” said Mr Timson.Very little could be got out of the boer. Somehow or the other he seemed to have hit upon ten thousand pounds as the price the farm was worth, and he would take no less.Then the two had another conversation. Curiously enough Timson could just raise eight thousand pounds, Mr Hardman had two. After all, thought Mr Timson to himself, he would have four-fifths of the mine instead of only one-half, so perhaps it would be all the better for him that Ziederman had stuck out for his price. At last, after much conversation, the bargain was struck and they drove home, it having been agreed that Ziederman should come into Kimberley a few days afterwards, and having given transfer of the farm, receive the ten thousand pounds.“Well, we are going our piles on it, eh, partner?” said Hardman as they drove back to Kimberley; “but I don’t mind owning that I feel pretty confident. Lord! I am sorry for the Kimberley people; it will just about bust up their mine when we open ours.”Chapter Three.Mr Ziederman arrived at Kimberley on the appointed day. Transfer was duly given, and the ten thousand pounds were paid over to him. Timson could not help feeling rather a twinge as he parted with his money. It did not leave him more than a few hundred pounds, still he was very pleased with his bargain; he had bought the farm, he hoped, for very much less than one hundredth of its value, and had got the best of Mr Hardman, who would only have a fifth share. The next day the news was all over the camp. It created a good deal of excitement, and at eleven in the forenoon, an hour when splits and other drinks, long and short, are in much request, quite a crowd of the leading citizens of Kimberley dropped into the bar of the Queen’s Hotel, where Mr Timson was to be found at that hour, reading the local morning paper and criticising the manners and customs of the place. On this occasion there was a look of unusual importance about him, and he was laying down the law more authoritatively than he generally did. He had just been discussing the value of claims in the Kimberley mine, and chuckling to himself as he thought how startled the claimholders would be when they heard of his discovery.“Well, Mr Timson, so I hear you have been speculating in farms,” said a man who was standing at the bar.“I don’t know why people should interest themselves in my affairs so much,” answered Timson; “but I don’t mind owning that I have bought a farm called Boschfontein.”“You’re going to make your fortune farming?” said the first speaker, a digger who had dropped in on his way from the mine to get a drink and to interview Timson.“I don’t know about farming, but I don’t think I shall do so badly with Boschfontein,” answered Timson, who, now that he owned the property, thought there was no reason why he should not have the pleasure of bragging about his wonderfully good bargain. He noticed that his listeners were not impressed, there was something like a smile on their faces.“How much did you give Bill Hardman for Boschfontein?” asked the first speaker.“Bill Hardman! I never bought from Bill Hardman, I bought with him, he has a small share in the speculation. So he has been telling you about it, has he? Well, I suppose he won’t make less than four or five hundred thousand pounds, though he only has one-fifth of it. Yes, you may laugh, but you won’t laugh when the place up there is shut up, as it will be when I work the diamond mine on Boschfontein.”“Here, barman, drinks; open some champagne for Mr Timson; he has gone in for a spec with Bill Hardman, and they have got a diamond mine on Boschfontein which will shut the Kimberley mine,” cried the first speaker.Mr Timson was no admirer of the prevailing custom, a survival from the early days of the diamond-digging, which demanded that good fortune of any sort should be celebrated by a reckless expenditure in champagne. Still he felt that the occasion was a special one, and after having in vain tried to catch the barman’s eye, and prevent him opening more than one bottle, he made no remonstrance. “Well, gentlemen, we will drink to the health of the Boschfontein mine,” he said, “though I am afraid it will prove rather a bad business for some of my friends here. Three carats of diamonds to a load is a pretty good average, and the mine is as big as Kimberley; it will revolutionise diamond mining, our mine will.”“Bill Hardman found that mine, I’d bet,” said another man who had just come in and stood listening to Timson. “Why, Boschfontein’s looking up. It wasn’t as rich as that last time.”“Look here,” said the digger, taking up a dice-box which lay on the bar, “we will throw for this wine, and Mr Timson shall stand out. No, it’s a shame letting him in, he has been let in enough. How much did you pay for Boschfontein?”“What do you mean?” asked Timson, who began to feel nervous and uncomfortable. “Let in! some of you will only wish that you had been let in in the same way when we begin to work the new mine. Bill Hardman ain’t the sort of man to be taken in so easy.” Then he told them how he had learnt the secret about the mine and became possessed of the Farm Boschfontein.The others listened to every word of his narrative, no one ordered drinks nor even lifted their glasses to their mouths while he spoke. When he had told them all, and described the finding of the diamonds and the subsequent purchase of the farm Boschfontein, there was a burst of noise, every one beginning to shout or laugh, expressing with much vigour of language their admiration for the smartness of Bill.“Look here, what was the prospector like? wasn’t he a tall man with a long beard, and a scar across the left side of his face, and a droop in one eye?” asked the digger.“Yes, that’s the man,” answered Timson.“I’d have sworn it; it’s Tom Raven; he was in camp the other day. Now, look here, young man, you’d better try and find your friend, Bill Hardman, not that there’s much chance of your coming across him; now that they have got your money they’d be off. I dare say you never heard of Raven’s Rush, that was on Boschfontein. There isn’t a show of a mine there; but Tom Raven and Bill Hardman, who have always been more or less partners, won it at cards off a Dutchman. It’s about as bad a farm as there is in the country; but they meant working it off somehow, so they started a mine there, any one to have a claim for two pounds down. It took for a bit; but as no one could find diamonds there except Bill and Tom Raven, people cooled off it, and there was some talk of starting a prosecution for fraud, as some one split as to where they got the diamonds from they found there, and that’s why Raven, against whom there was most of a case, cleared off. Ziederman is a long, stolid-looking Dutchman; he is not such a fool as he looks, is that Dutchman—‘Slim Pete’ they call him—he has always been more or less in with the firm of Hardman and Raven.”“Look here, you’re trying to fool me, ain’t you? You don’t mean to tell me that the man who told me how his wife ran away and how he killed her wasn’t genuine!” said Timson.“Genuine! it was a pretty bit of play-acting, made up by the two of ’em. Tom was always clever at a yarn.”Mr Timson did not say another word. Something seemed to tell him that the suspicions of the others were well founded; anyhow he would interview his partner and do his best to get back some of his money.However, Hardman was not so easily to be found. He was not at the hotel where he boarded, nor at the billiard-room he usually patronised, nor at any of his other haunts, and none of his associates had seen him. All day long Mr Timson was making fruitless inquiries; but though he could hear nothing about Hardman, every one could tell him a good deal about the Farm Boschfontein. Every one laughed when they heard his story, and with the exception of one or two men who had formed little plans for the disposal of his fortune, no one sympathised very much with him. There was no doubt about it that he had a case against Mr Hardman and the men who helped to swindle him; but he might just as well have had a case against the man in the moon. For some time Mr Timson cherished a faint hope that the mine might be a genuine one, so he spent a little more money in having it well tested. But the charm was gone when Mr Hardman had vanished. There was no appearance of diamond bearing ground on the Farm Boschfontein, so experts declared; and what was more to the point, there was no appearance of diamonds.Mr Timson is still the owner of the property, and has not found it very remunerative. The only consolation he has is, that many of the men who laughed at him when he made his unfortunate purchase, invested their money in speculations which seemed at the time very hopeful, but resulted in their becoming the owners of nicely-engraved diamond-mining scrip which, though useful for papering a spare room with, is now even less marketable than that desirable property, the Farm Boschfontein.
“If we could get hold of one of these mines between us, we would show them how to work it, I guess. We wouldn’t fool around the camp trying to float a company and let a lot of local men into the thing. We’d go straight home and give the British public a turn. Couldn’t you fancy yourself as the South African millionnaire chairman of the Great Diamond Mining Company, with a house in Belgrave Square, a country house with a blessed big park round it, the favourite for the Derby in training at Newmarket, and the best of everything that money could buy, eh, Timson?”
“Don’t, Hardman, don’t! I can’t bear to think of it. The chances some of ’em here have had and the way they have thrown ’em away! If I had only been in their place I’d have done something for myself, but I came here too late.”
“Too late be blowed! there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out, and there are as rich mines lying unworked and undisturbed as any that have been found, that’s my opinion. How do we know that there is not another mine as rich as Kimberley on which the grass and bush are growing, and the spring bucks are playing? We may be sitting on just such a mine now, for all you know.”
“By Jove! it’s enough to make a fellow wild when he thinks of the fortune that may be waiting for him to be picked up; but what’s the good of thinking of it? No one has found a diamond mine that would pay to work since Kimberley was opened.”
“What of that? They have found a dozen places such as we have seen to-day, where there are diamonds in small quantities. Mark my words: sooner or later they will drop on to a place which will make the Kimberley mine pretty sick, and if we could only get hold of such a mine, you with your knowledge of business and the City of London, and me—well, I know my way about—what couldn’t we do with it?”
As he spoke, Mr Bill Hardman glanced at his companion, and an ominous smile played across his swarthy face. His words had evidently told with a good deal of effect.
The two men were on their way home from an expedition from Kimberley, to a mining camp in the Orange Free State. So it was not surprising that as they smoked their pipes under the shade of their Cape cart, after an excellent luncheon, their conversation should turn to the topic which in Griqualand West exercised men’s minds most, diamonds and diamond mining. Bill Hardman was about forty-five, and there was something about him which suggested that he had knocked about the world a good deal. He was not a bad-looking man, but every now and then an expression came into his face which gave one an unpleasant impression, and suggested that he might be rather dangerous, either as a friend or an enemy. For years he had been a well-known character on the Diamond Fields, and there were many stories told about him which bore witness rather to his astuteness, than to his integrity. He called himself a digger, but no one could remember his owning a claim or doing any work. The calling to which he devoted himself in the early days of the Fields was that of an exponent of faro, roulette, poker, and other games, more or less of chance. Afterwards, when what was called the company mania broke out, rotten scrip and a rigged share market gave him more scope for speculation, and he became a comparatively respectable member of society. But notwithstanding his respectability, many of those who knew most about him would have considered that Mr Timson was not very prudent in choosing him for a companion.
The latter was a young man of about twenty-five; his get-up, sleek, fresh-complexioned face and plump figure had a very English look, and he seemed as if he would be far more at home eating at a luncheon bar in the City, than picnicking on the South African veldt. Though he had not been very long in South Africa and knew little of the country, he believed very much in himself and in his business knowledge, and had a very great contempt for the people he found himself amongst. He had brought out a few thousand pounds with him and had done very well in his speculations, doubling his capital again and again, which was not difficult in those days of wild speculation, when every investment was going up. About that time people on the Diamond Fields had gone mad on the subject of new mines, even old hands who had seen place after place reported to be very rich turn out a failure, were again taking the fever for prospecting, while men who had just come out from home were simply delirious with it. To a new hand there is a singular charm in the idea of a new mine, and Mr Timson found the fascination of this form of speculation simply irresistible. Mr Hardman also had turned his attention to prospecting, and on this common interest the two men had struck up a very intimate acquaintanceship.
“Yes,” said Hardman, after they had smoked in silence for some time, “the place we saw to-day may be payable, but there ain’t much to be done with it. What one wants is to get on to a mine on private property, with no reservation of minerals to the Crown, so that one could get the whole mine into one’s hands.”
“Fancy that, now, buying a farm for a few hundreds on which there might be a mine worth millions and millions. But we have got to find it, and without the owner or any one else knowing anything about it!” said Mr Timson, as much to himself as to his companion.
“Right you are, Smarty! we have got to do that. It’s well enough to talk as one smokes one’s pipe; but it’s a hundred to one, one never gets such a chance. For all that, mind you, the chance may come; that’s what living in a mining country means. There is always the hope of a big fortune for the man who knows how to make the most of his luck.”
Mr Timson listened to the other, and began to indulge in a delicious day-dream of what he would do, and how he would live if he were the owner of a diamond mine, with hundreds of pounds a day to spend. If it were only possible, he thought—possible! it was possible, he declared to himself, as he thought how fortunate he had been already. He was half asleep and half awake when he was woke up by hearing a strange voice inquiring the way to Pneil, a digging on the Vaal River some twenty-five miles off. The new-comer, who was on foot, was a tall man with a long beard; he was dressed in tattered clothes, and had on an old hat which had seen many years’ service. He looked travel-worn and tired; as Timson looked at him, he noticed a peculiar scar on his face and a curious droop in one eyelid.
Hardman told him the distance. “It’s a long stretch and a sandy road; you had better sit down and take a drink,” he added, pouring some beer out into a glass as he spoke.
“It’s a long time since I had a glass of beer,” the stranger said as he emptied the glass.
“How’s that? been sworn off?” asked Hardman.
“No, nor much need to. I’ve been living where you don’t get many chances of taking too much to drink; a hundred miles beyond the Tati Gold-Fields. I’ve tramped it down and had a pretty hard time of it.”
“Well, you’d better take a rest and have something to eat,” said Hardman, as he pushed a plate and some cold meat towards the stranger, who, without any more pressing, accepted the other’s hospitality, and after he had made a good meal, filled his pipe and smoked for some time without joining in the conversation, the other two going on talking about diamonds and new mines.
At last he broke in: “Have they worked out the New Rush, the Colesberg Kopje, as they called it?”
“Colesberg Kopje, did you say? Why, that’s the Kimberley mine. No, it’s not worked out and won’t be in our time,” answered Hardman.
“You mean they have abandoned it ’cause they have found a richer place?”
“Abandoned it! Not they; there is no place one third as rich as Kimberley mine!”
“Ain’t there though, mate; you mean they haven’t found one yet,” said the stranger. “Well, I’d have thought some one would have tumbled on to it by this time!” he added, more to himself than to the others, though Mr Timson heard him and pricked up his ears.
“I suppose they don’t go prospecting much now-a-days?” the stranger asked after a second or two.
“There is a bit of it being done just now,” replied Hardman; “but they haven’t come across a second Kimberley yet.”
“So they go out prospecting still. Well, I suppose men will always keep on at that game. I have done a good lot of it in my time. I’d have been a happy man with a home of my own instead of the miserable devil I am now if I had only let it alone.”
“So you broke yourself and lost your money prospecting! Well, others have done pretty much the same,” said Hardman.
“Lost my money! No, I found as rich a place as you want to come across and got plenty of diamonds, but they cost me dear.”
“You found as rich a place as one wants to come across, did you?” said Mr Timson, who was all attention. “Whereabouts was that, now?”
The stranger did not answer his question, and for some time sat wrapped in his thoughts, which seemed to be gloomy enough. Then, with the air of one who could only get relief by telling his story, he spoke: “I say that prospecting trip cost me dear, and so you will say when you have heard my story. I must tell it, though it’s not the sort of tale most men would pan out to two strangers; but I must speak out, for I have done nothing but think over this for eight years, and feel that I should be easier in my mind for making a clean breast of it to some one or the other before I die. Prospecting! well, I’ve done about as much of prospecting as any man. They called me the Demon Prospector in Australia and New Zealand, and well they might, for I have found three payable gold-fields in my time. I did more good to others than to myself, though, for I could never stop in one place long, and would often turn my back upon a certainty to wander away after that wonderfully rich gold field I was always dreaming of. Still I did not do so badly, and before I came over to this country I had made a little money. And I had what was better than money—a home of my own and a wife, not the sort of wife many a digger with his belt full of gold-dust picked up in those days, but an English girl who had not been long out from home. She had come out with her father, who had collected the little money he had, and gone to try for a fortune in the land of gold. He lost his money, as a new chum will lose his money, and died leaving her alone. I don’t believe she only married me for a home; once she really cared for me—but you find this yarn a bit long, don’t you?” he said, looking at Mr Timson, who was not in the slightest degree interested in his domestic history.
“About the place where you found all those diamonds, where was that?” said the latter.
“Let himripand he will come round to it; don’t pump him too much or you’ll spoil a good thing,” whispered Hardman. “Go on, mate,” he added, “I like to hear you.”
“Well, we were married in Sydney a few months after her father died, and we lived there for a bit, when I heard of the Diamond Fields breaking out in this country, and nothing would do for me but I must come over here. We got up here some months before the dry diggings were found, and I tried my luck at the river where all the diggers were then. I chose Pneil, where there were a good many men doing fairly well. I put up a stone shanty amongst the trees near the river, and we were fairly comfortable and happy enough. I found pretty well, and began to believe that my old restless spirit had left me, for I didn’t seem to want to go prospecting, but was willing enough to stop on there. After a bit the dry diggings were found and many of the diggers left the river for them, but still I stayed on at Pneil. Then I heard of the New Rush being opened, and how men were finding sackfuls of diamonds. I went over and saw the new diggings, and after that I could not be contented at the river. I had noticed the lay of the ground of the dry diggings, and I felt sure that there must be lots of spots where diamonds were to be found in quantities. Then the old instinct came over me and I longed to go off prospecting. At last I felt I could stay where I was no longer. My wife didn’t like my leaving her by herself, for the other women at Pneil were not much company for her, and she had very few friends. About the only person she seemed to care to speak to was a man who had come over with us from Australia, who was staying at the other side of the river helping to keep a canteen. He was an educated man, one of the broken-down gentleman kind, and could make himself agreeable enough, but I never liked him very much. He was no good and would never do any honest work. He had come to grief in the old country by gambling, and was just turning from a pigeon into a rook, but there was something about him that women found very fascinating. Well, to cut my story short, I went off prospecting. I would stay away a week or so at a time. Looking back now it seems to me that after the first time my wife didn’t seem to mind my going so much. At last, after trying in one place and then another, I did find the sort of place I was looking for. It was out yonder,” said the prospector, as he stretched out his brown hand and pointed in the direction of a ridge of hills in the far distance. Mr Timson’s eyes glistened with excitement. He had never heard of any diamond mine being found in that direction.
“Yes, sir,” continued the stranger, “if the New Rush is as rich as the place I found, it is a deal better than I ever heard it was. I was working out yonder myself, but I found diamonds every day. I kept putting off going back to get Kaffirs to work for me, for I didn’t like the idea of the secret of the place being let out, and half thought I might keep it all to myself. After about a month I had over two hundred carats of smaller diamonds, besides a thirty, a fifty, and a sixty carat stone. Then I thought it was about time to go back and see the missis again and tell her my luck, sell my diamonds and get some Kaffirs to work for me. I cannot tell how I felt as I tramped back to the river. At last I had struck something really rich and made my fortune. How the boys would wake up when they heard, as they sooner or later would, I suppose, that I had found a place twice as rich as the famous New Rush. But diamonds would be down to nothing at all when my secret was known and people knew how plentiful they were if you only looked for them in the right place, so I determined to keep it quiet until I had made my fortune, which would not take me long, I thought. Then I would be able to take my missis home to England, and she would live the life she was fit for and be as fine a lady as any of ’em at home.
“As soon as I got to Klip Drift I sold my diamonds. I got about five thousand pounds for them. Then I went into a canteen to get a drink. There were one or two men there who knew me, and I thought that they stared at me rather oddly. ‘Where’s the Count?’ I asked the man behind the bar, for that was the name they called the broken-down gentleman chap I told you of, and it was the bar he kept.
“‘Don’t you know about it then?’ asked one man, and the others stared at me very queerly.
“‘Know about it? about what?’ I asked.
“‘Oh nothing; only he has cleared,’ the men answered.
“The men looked at me, I thought, as if they expected me to break my heart about the Count’s having cleared, and I couldn’t make out their manner at all. I said I was off across the river to see the missis, and left the place. A man I knew pretty well followed me and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘It’s no good going across, for you won’t find the missis there,’ he said. ‘Where is she?’ I asked. ‘She has cleared, too; gone off with the Count,’ was his answer. I turned round on him, half inclined to knock him down to show him I didn’t like that kind of joke, but there was something in his face which told me that he wasn’t joking; then he told me that it had been going on for a long time, and that every one had been talking about it, and about a week ago two or three saw them start off together, ‘and a good job for me, he told me, was what most of them said.’ At first I wouldn’t believe it, but it was true, though: she was gone, and I began to see how I had fooled away my happiness by leaving my wife to go prospecting and letting that damned scoundrel steal her from me. It wasn’t many hours after I heard the news that I was off on their track. They had gone up north to some gold-fields which broke out about then. It was some time before I came up with them, for they kept dodging about, first living in one place and then in another, and once or twice I was at fault and could hear nothing of them. At last I got to a new camp on the gold-fields where I heard the Count was; he had started in at his old trade, gambling, and was keeping a faro bank. I had not been many minutes at the hotel before I heard all the boys talking about him and the run of luck he had struck. Then they began to talk of the pretty woman he had with him; you can guess that made me feel wild. I don’t know how I behaved that night, but I stopped in the bar of the hotel drinking and longing for the time to come when I had planned to have my revenge.
“I was the last to go to bed, and then I did not sleep, but waited till about three o’clock, when I knew the camp would be asleep. Then I stole out and walked along the creek to a canvas house which had been pointed out to me as the one they lived in. The place was quiet enough; I can remember now how a dog tied up to a waggon barked at me and how savage I felt with it, and how I laughed to myself as I knocked it over with a stone I hurled at it. When I got to the house I looked through the window. I saw them, they were asleep. I had a bowie knife on me, and I cut the rope with which the door was tied. No—I can’t tell you the rest.”
“Well, you killed him; he’s injured you, but it’s rough killing a man when he’s asleep,” said Bill Hardman.
“Him! I killed them,” said the prospector. “When she woke up and saw what I had done to him, she screamed and cursed at me; the devil came into me, and I stabbed her again and again. It would have been better for me if I had been caught red-handed, and strung up, as I should have been then and there; but I got away. Since then I have never got the sight I saw before I rushed out of their place into the open out of my head. I have hardly seen a white man to speak to since that day, for I wandered away up country and have lived amongst Kaffirs; but now I feel I must tell it to some one.”
“Well, and now what are you going to do? Go back and work at the place you prospected?” asked Hardman.
“Work at the place! What good are diamonds and money to me? No, I have not come back for that. I have come back to see the place where we were happy together once before I got the prospecting fever and left her, and then—well, what should a man do who has no hope and is sick of life and not afraid of finishing it? There, I have told you my story, and now I will say good-day, and good luck to you. If it goes against your conscience not to tell the police that a man has confessed murder to you, for I suppose there are police on the fields now, tell on, and make a clean breast of it.”
Having finished speaking he got up to walk away. “Stop, don’t go yet, sit down and have a talk; tell us more about the place where you found those diamonds. Can you tell us exactly where it was?” said Timson, his voice quavering with excitement, for all the time the prospector had been telling the conclusion of his story he had been thinking of the wonderful diamond mine the other had spoken of.
“Where is the place you said you found so well at?” he added as the stranger sat down and lit his pipe again.
“What! you want to strike my luck, do you? I wouldn’t put a pick in there again for all the diamonds there are in the coast of the earth.”
“Well, if you don’t like to work the place yourself, it seems a pity that no one else should,” said Timson, who, though he had some other weaknesses, was not superstitious. “You see, I don’t believe much in luck, except the luck of getting hold of a good thing when you know how to work it.”
“Look here, mate, I am an old digger, and it goes agin’ my ideas of right to try and worm out another digger’s secret; but if you let us into this thing, we will work it with you fair and square,” said Hardman.
“I don’t want you to work it with me or for me, but I don’t mind telling you where it is. See here,” said the prospector, pointing in the direction of a distant range of mountains towards which he had been gazing for some time, “do you see that little hump-backed hill standing out by itself? Well, it’s about four hundred yards to the north of it. You will see my old working still, I should say. Now, mates, I am off to Pneil, for I want to see the old place again, and then—”
“Stop, let us talk it over. You had better work the place with us,” said Hardman; “we will forget all about what you have told us, or try to.”
The stranger’s only answer was to wish them good luck at their prospecting, and refusing to listen to Hardman’s persuasions, he started off on his lonely walk.
“I don’t like letting him go off in that state of mind; he means finishing himself, I saw it in his face, I have seen men look like that before,” said Hardman as he watched the tall figure striding over the long flat into the distance.
“Certainly one pities him; but if what he has told us is true, life can’t be much comfort to him, and it’s just as well, if he is going to do it, that he should kill himself before he lets out to any one about that place. What do you think of that part of the story; do you believe it?” answered Mr Timson.
“Believe it! well, I don’t know. It’s a queer story, but I ain’t one of those sharps who always disbelieve any story that’s a bit out of the common. I believe it well enough to mean finding out whether or no it’s true. What do you say?”
“Ah! that’s just what I think. It may be true, and if it is true—”
“If it is true, or near true, we are in a pretty big thing, for the farms out there ain’t on Crown land, and there is no reservation of minerals. Of course we must keep what we have heard quiet and try and learn a bit more. There’s millions who wouldn’t believe the yarn we have heard, but I ain’t one of ’em. If you ask me what I think, well, I think it’s true,” said Hardman, and then he shouted to his Kaffir to outspan the horses so that they could continue their journey to Kimberley. All the way they talked of the strange story they had heard, and the more they talked of it the more hopeful Mr Timson began to grow, and the more splendid were the castles in the air which he built on the foundation of the wonderful diamond mine he was to acquire a part possession of.
A few days after their conversation with the prospector, Messrs Hardman and Timson were again on a prospecting expedition. This time they had sought the prospector’s hump-backed hill, and they had come to it after a journey of about forty miles. Sure enough, about two hundred yards north of it, they found marks of old working and a hole which was almost filled up by sand. Mr Timson’s excitement before he reached the spot had begun to cool a good deal. Perhaps there was nothing in the tale he had heard. The man might have been mad, or have been hoaxing him, or exaggerating, he kept thinking to himself. Bill Hardman had not taken much trouble to reassure him. All he said was that it was good enough to look into, though it was long odds against its being as good as they hoped, and he professed to be quite prepared to find their trip turn out to be waste of time, though at the same time something seemed to tell him to try the place. They had come out in an ox waggon, professedly on a shooting trip, and had brought with them a small washing machine, picks, shovels and other tools for digging and prospecting; they had also taken out two or three Kaffirs who were accustomed to work in the mine.
The sight of the old workings had a considerable effect in raising the hopes of Mr Timson.
“That bears him out, anyhow!” said Hardman; “it seems to be the sort of hole a man working by himself could make in a month.”
“How soon shall we know whether it is any good?” asked Timson.
“Working on the small scale as we shall, it may take us days before we find a diamond, however rich it may be. We will first get some twenty loads of ground out and then we will wash. There is no house near here, and we might work for six months without being disturbed, so we needn’t fear that, though if the man who owns the farm found we were prospecting, he’d pretty quick get an interdict, as those cursed lawyers call it, from the High Court and clear us off,” answered the other.
In a very short time work began, Bill Hardman opening a bottle of champagne to drink ‘luck’ to the venture, as the first pick was put into the ground. There is a strange excitement in working in new ground which is very fascinating to any one of a speculative turn. Mr Timson thought of the Scripture story of the man who knew of treasure hid in a field, and sold all he had to purchase that field. Let him but once satisfy himself that there was a diamond mine under his feet and he would show no want of enterprise in making the best use of his knowledge. Hardman said very little. When a few days’ work would tell them what they wanted to know, it was no good prophesying. He professed to like the look of the ground, it reminded him of the top stuff in the Kimberley mine, and Mr Timson was a good deal impressed with his favourable opinion. But the hours passed very slowly, and Mr Timson kept fidgeting about, looking into the shaft the boys were digging, and sorting handfuls of the earth they had thrown out, as if he expected that diamonds ought to be found every minute, much to the amusement of his companion, who pointed out that, however rich the place might be, they were likely enough to find nothing before they washed the ground. Hour after hour the Kaffirs worked on stolidly, though lazily, and as the shaft that they were sinking deepened, Timson’s spirits began to sink. He was breaking up a lump of ground when he heard a shout from Hardman—
“We’ve found here a diamond! look at it! It’s true—that yarn we heard was true. It’s a ten-carat stone! I saw it glisten as Tom picked down some ground. Tom would have jumped it if I had not been too quick. Wouldn’t you, you black thief?”
“Nay, boss,” said the Kaffir, grinning and showing his white teeth, “the boss is a good boss and I’d no jump his diamond.”
Timson looked at the diamond, a white stone of about ten carats in weight, and he felt that his fortune was made. The Kaffirs talked to each other in their own language about the diamond. “They think it is a rich place and there will be lots of diamonds for them to steal,” said Hardman.
The next day another diamond was found in the picking, and Mr Timson began to feel most hopeful as to what the result of washing the stuff would be.
“If what we know is found out, we shall never be able to buy at a reasonable price,” he said, as they smoked their pipes after supper on the night before the day on which they intended to wash.
“Nobody does as yet, and even we don’t know much,” said Hardman; “wait till we have washed.”
Their washing machine was a small one, only able to get through about thirty loads of ground a day. In the afternoon they began to take out of the machine the heavy deposit which had been left after the earth and lighter gravel had been washed away. Hardman filled a sieve with this stuff, and worked it up and down in a tub of water so that the action of the water should work the diamonds to the bottom of the sieve.
“Now, what luck?” he said, as he turned the sieve upside down on the sorting-table, at which Timson had taken his position. It was an exciting moment, for the stuff on the table was the result of a good many loads of ground, and if the place was any good, they might hope to find several diamonds in it. Mr Timson trembled with excitement. There was a second or two of suspense. Then he saw one diamond, then another, and another, and Hardman, who was looking over his shoulder, found two or three more. The next sieveful was equally good, and the result of the wash up was that the ground was proved to be marvellously rich. After that Timson suggested that they had better sink in some other place and find out how large the mine was, but Hardman did not agree to this. They had found out enough to know that whoever owned the farm owned a fortune, and they had better make the best use of their information and try to purchase the farm from its present owner before any one else found out what they knew. So the machinery and tools were packed up in their waggon, and the party started back again to Kimberley.
Hardman undertook to find out about the land where the mine was situated, and until he could obtain that information, Mr Timson was to take care not to breathe one word of their secret. It was an exciting time for the latter gentleman. He thought to himself that perhaps they had been watched by some one who would claim a share in their prize, or give information to others who might bid against them for the land, or perhaps the man who owned it might come across the traces of the fresh working and that might arouse his suspicions. Come what might, thought Mr Timson, he would become the part owner of that wonderful mine. So far as they could judge, it was of greater extent than the Kimberley mine, and the work they had done made it appear to be three times as rich. If he could purchase the farm for a small sum, all the better, but he would not be afraid of risking all he had to get possession of it. Of the prospector, he could hear no more. He had probably wandered away into the veldt and destroyed himself. Mr Timson did not care much what might have happened to him so long as he did not tell his story, or rather, so much of it as related to the diamond mine, to any one else.
It took Hardman about two days to obtain the information he required. It was fairly satisfactory, and he came to his friend in very good spirits. “It’s the Farm Boschfontein, there is no doubt about that, and it belongs to a Dutchman, by name Ziederman; and it’s the worst farm in the province, I am told,” he said, coming up to Timson, who was standing on the stoep of the hotel, and taking him on one side.
“Ziederman! where does he live, and what kind of a man is he?”
“Well, he is a pretty crude sort of a Dutchman, and his house is on the farm, about an hour’s drive from the mine. If we go over and see him, and tell him that we think of keeping a store where the road runs past it, and want to stock the farm, he will think he has got hold of two fools, and be glad to sell,” was the other’s answer.
The next day Messrs Hardman and Timson started off to interview Mr Ziederman, the unconscious owner (they hoped) of the mine. The Boschfontein homestead where he lived was one of those low, whitewashed mud houses with which travellers in South Africa are so familiar. Mr Timson could see it miles away across the long flat over which they were driving. It was a poverty-stricken looking place, and as they neared the house there was no sign of any stock about.
“Looks as if Boschfontein had about broke him,” said Hardman; “he’ll be glad to sell, you bet!”
Mr Timson felt that in an hour or so he would know his fate, and as he gazed at the mean-looking Dutch farm-house, visions came before him of the house in London and the country place he would soon be the owner of. “Wonder how Hardman will do as a man of property? He’s a smart chip, but not quite one of us,” he thought to himself. As they came near to the house they saw Mr Ziederman sitting on a chair on the stoep of the house, staring after the manner of a Dutch boer into the far distance at nothing at all. When their cart drove up he turned round and stared at it, but no gleam of intelligence came into his face; he evidently was, so Mr Timson thought, a very crude specimen of the Dutchman. It would be very tedious to narrate all the conversation which took place after the two had got out of their cart, and had shaken the grimy, flabby hand which Mr Ziederman held out to them. Gradually, and with very much caution, Mr Hardman approached the subject of the purchase of the farm. Would Mr Ziederman care to sell it? they wished to set up a store and canteen, and would like to have the farm for keeping stock on, was the question which, after much fencing, he asked.
“Yes, I will sell the farm. Ten thousand pounds, and you may have Boschfontein, but for not one dollar less,” answered Mr Ziederman, looking as stolid as ever.
“Ten thousand pounds, mein herr! you are joking. The farm is not worth one twentieth part of that,” said Hardman.
Mr Timson tried to look as if he were more surprised than disappointed.
“Never mind, the farm is worth more than that. I know something that you perhaps know and perhaps don’t know. There are diamonds on my farm.”
Mr Timson began to feel that all his hopes were going to be dashed to the ground.
“Diamonds, mein herr! there are no diamonds out in this direction, and me and my partner don’t want to have anything to do with diamonds, they ain’t in our line; we want to keep a store and raise stock.”
“Then you don’t want to buy the Farm Boschfontein, because the Farm Boschfontein has diamonds,” answered Ziederman. “See here, I will show you something,” he added, as he went into his house and came out with something in his hand; “see what my herd boy found near thekopjeyonder,” he said as he pointed in the direction of the mine. It was a ten-carat white diamond he had in his hand, and one of the partners felt something out of heart when he saw it. It was useless to try and persuade Ziederman that the stone was not a diamond.
“Yes, I always knew there were some diamonds on my farm, but I would not say anything about them, for I knew diamonds bring English diggers on one’s farm; but I said to myself, ‘If I ever sell Boschfontein I will get plenty of money for it.’ I want ten thousand pounds!” he said as he lit his pipe again, looking as if he did not care whether he sold the farm or no. “If you like to buy it for the money, well; if not, I will have it prospected, and then I will sell it for what it will bring.”
Hardman touched Timson on the shoulder and they walked away from the house together. “See here,” he said, when they were out of hearing of Ziederman, who sat smoking with a placid expression on his face, “what can we do? I can only raise two thousand pounds. I don’t like to let the thing slip from me, though, and once let him have the farm prospected and find out how rich it is, what we know is worth nothing to us.”
“Maybe he will take less,” said Mr Timson.
Very little could be got out of the boer. Somehow or the other he seemed to have hit upon ten thousand pounds as the price the farm was worth, and he would take no less.
Then the two had another conversation. Curiously enough Timson could just raise eight thousand pounds, Mr Hardman had two. After all, thought Mr Timson to himself, he would have four-fifths of the mine instead of only one-half, so perhaps it would be all the better for him that Ziederman had stuck out for his price. At last, after much conversation, the bargain was struck and they drove home, it having been agreed that Ziederman should come into Kimberley a few days afterwards, and having given transfer of the farm, receive the ten thousand pounds.
“Well, we are going our piles on it, eh, partner?” said Hardman as they drove back to Kimberley; “but I don’t mind owning that I feel pretty confident. Lord! I am sorry for the Kimberley people; it will just about bust up their mine when we open ours.”
Mr Ziederman arrived at Kimberley on the appointed day. Transfer was duly given, and the ten thousand pounds were paid over to him. Timson could not help feeling rather a twinge as he parted with his money. It did not leave him more than a few hundred pounds, still he was very pleased with his bargain; he had bought the farm, he hoped, for very much less than one hundredth of its value, and had got the best of Mr Hardman, who would only have a fifth share. The next day the news was all over the camp. It created a good deal of excitement, and at eleven in the forenoon, an hour when splits and other drinks, long and short, are in much request, quite a crowd of the leading citizens of Kimberley dropped into the bar of the Queen’s Hotel, where Mr Timson was to be found at that hour, reading the local morning paper and criticising the manners and customs of the place. On this occasion there was a look of unusual importance about him, and he was laying down the law more authoritatively than he generally did. He had just been discussing the value of claims in the Kimberley mine, and chuckling to himself as he thought how startled the claimholders would be when they heard of his discovery.
“Well, Mr Timson, so I hear you have been speculating in farms,” said a man who was standing at the bar.
“I don’t know why people should interest themselves in my affairs so much,” answered Timson; “but I don’t mind owning that I have bought a farm called Boschfontein.”
“You’re going to make your fortune farming?” said the first speaker, a digger who had dropped in on his way from the mine to get a drink and to interview Timson.
“I don’t know about farming, but I don’t think I shall do so badly with Boschfontein,” answered Timson, who, now that he owned the property, thought there was no reason why he should not have the pleasure of bragging about his wonderfully good bargain. He noticed that his listeners were not impressed, there was something like a smile on their faces.
“How much did you give Bill Hardman for Boschfontein?” asked the first speaker.
“Bill Hardman! I never bought from Bill Hardman, I bought with him, he has a small share in the speculation. So he has been telling you about it, has he? Well, I suppose he won’t make less than four or five hundred thousand pounds, though he only has one-fifth of it. Yes, you may laugh, but you won’t laugh when the place up there is shut up, as it will be when I work the diamond mine on Boschfontein.”
“Here, barman, drinks; open some champagne for Mr Timson; he has gone in for a spec with Bill Hardman, and they have got a diamond mine on Boschfontein which will shut the Kimberley mine,” cried the first speaker.
Mr Timson was no admirer of the prevailing custom, a survival from the early days of the diamond-digging, which demanded that good fortune of any sort should be celebrated by a reckless expenditure in champagne. Still he felt that the occasion was a special one, and after having in vain tried to catch the barman’s eye, and prevent him opening more than one bottle, he made no remonstrance. “Well, gentlemen, we will drink to the health of the Boschfontein mine,” he said, “though I am afraid it will prove rather a bad business for some of my friends here. Three carats of diamonds to a load is a pretty good average, and the mine is as big as Kimberley; it will revolutionise diamond mining, our mine will.”
“Bill Hardman found that mine, I’d bet,” said another man who had just come in and stood listening to Timson. “Why, Boschfontein’s looking up. It wasn’t as rich as that last time.”
“Look here,” said the digger, taking up a dice-box which lay on the bar, “we will throw for this wine, and Mr Timson shall stand out. No, it’s a shame letting him in, he has been let in enough. How much did you pay for Boschfontein?”
“What do you mean?” asked Timson, who began to feel nervous and uncomfortable. “Let in! some of you will only wish that you had been let in in the same way when we begin to work the new mine. Bill Hardman ain’t the sort of man to be taken in so easy.” Then he told them how he had learnt the secret about the mine and became possessed of the Farm Boschfontein.
The others listened to every word of his narrative, no one ordered drinks nor even lifted their glasses to their mouths while he spoke. When he had told them all, and described the finding of the diamonds and the subsequent purchase of the farm Boschfontein, there was a burst of noise, every one beginning to shout or laugh, expressing with much vigour of language their admiration for the smartness of Bill.
“Look here, what was the prospector like? wasn’t he a tall man with a long beard, and a scar across the left side of his face, and a droop in one eye?” asked the digger.
“Yes, that’s the man,” answered Timson.
“I’d have sworn it; it’s Tom Raven; he was in camp the other day. Now, look here, young man, you’d better try and find your friend, Bill Hardman, not that there’s much chance of your coming across him; now that they have got your money they’d be off. I dare say you never heard of Raven’s Rush, that was on Boschfontein. There isn’t a show of a mine there; but Tom Raven and Bill Hardman, who have always been more or less partners, won it at cards off a Dutchman. It’s about as bad a farm as there is in the country; but they meant working it off somehow, so they started a mine there, any one to have a claim for two pounds down. It took for a bit; but as no one could find diamonds there except Bill and Tom Raven, people cooled off it, and there was some talk of starting a prosecution for fraud, as some one split as to where they got the diamonds from they found there, and that’s why Raven, against whom there was most of a case, cleared off. Ziederman is a long, stolid-looking Dutchman; he is not such a fool as he looks, is that Dutchman—‘Slim Pete’ they call him—he has always been more or less in with the firm of Hardman and Raven.”
“Look here, you’re trying to fool me, ain’t you? You don’t mean to tell me that the man who told me how his wife ran away and how he killed her wasn’t genuine!” said Timson.
“Genuine! it was a pretty bit of play-acting, made up by the two of ’em. Tom was always clever at a yarn.”
Mr Timson did not say another word. Something seemed to tell him that the suspicions of the others were well founded; anyhow he would interview his partner and do his best to get back some of his money.
However, Hardman was not so easily to be found. He was not at the hotel where he boarded, nor at the billiard-room he usually patronised, nor at any of his other haunts, and none of his associates had seen him. All day long Mr Timson was making fruitless inquiries; but though he could hear nothing about Hardman, every one could tell him a good deal about the Farm Boschfontein. Every one laughed when they heard his story, and with the exception of one or two men who had formed little plans for the disposal of his fortune, no one sympathised very much with him. There was no doubt about it that he had a case against Mr Hardman and the men who helped to swindle him; but he might just as well have had a case against the man in the moon. For some time Mr Timson cherished a faint hope that the mine might be a genuine one, so he spent a little more money in having it well tested. But the charm was gone when Mr Hardman had vanished. There was no appearance of diamond bearing ground on the Farm Boschfontein, so experts declared; and what was more to the point, there was no appearance of diamonds.
Mr Timson is still the owner of the property, and has not found it very remunerative. The only consolation he has is, that many of the men who laughed at him when he made his unfortunate purchase, invested their money in speculations which seemed at the time very hopeful, but resulted in their becoming the owners of nicely-engraved diamond-mining scrip which, though useful for papering a spare room with, is now even less marketable than that desirable property, the Farm Boschfontein.
Story 5.Luck—An Episode in a Digger’s Life.There are few more hideous parts of the world than the country known as Griqualand West, celebrated, as the school books have it, for its diamonds. In that weary land the traveller may go on day by day outspanning at evening in just the same dreary waste of veldt in which he inspanned at morning, until he almost forgets that the world is not one endless series of rolling, burnt-up flats with ridges of table-topped hills in the distance, the last just like the one before it. Still there are spots on the banks of the Vaal River which runs through this territory that have a soft beauty of their own, all the more fascinating because of their contrast with the desert ugliness of the country—places where the traveller longs to settle down and live the rest of his days doing some slight work well paid by kind nature, forgetting the troublesome, distant world. Moonlight Rush is perhaps the fairest of these silent river nooks. There a wooded gulley, gay with flowering bushes, and shadowed by wide-spreading trees, runs down to the waters of the Vaal River. One can rest under the shade of those trees and forget how cruelly the sun beats down on the veldt, and as one looks at the Vaal, which flows at one’s feet in a noble reach, one no longer thinks of the arid discomfort of the plains. The place is quiet enough now, but once it had its day. The night it was rushed will be always remembered by those who came to seek their fortunes on the banks of the Vaal in the early days of diamond-digging. To this day men talk of how the news about the quantities of diamonds that had been found at a new place spread like wild-fire around the river camps, and how diggers, as soon as they heard it, snatched up their picks and shovels and rough provision for a meal or two, and left their camp fires, eager to get a claim in the new diggings, where they were at last to strike a fortune. Its history was like that of other river camps, only the diamonds found there at first were more plentiful, and are said to have been of better average quality; but they became fewer and fewer, and the diggers, party by party, either left for the new dry digging, which afterwards became the wonderful diamond mines of South Africa, or wandered away to other river camps. And at last the place was quite deserted, and the rock hares sported over the grass-grown claims, and the snakes, who had found the place too lively for them, sneaked back to make their homes in the ruined hovels put up by sanguine diggers who had believed in the future of Moonlight, and had shown their faith by plunging into building to the extent of houses built with boulders and thatched with rushes. Still, from time to time diggers, who had found well at Moonlight in its palmy days, or had heard of the wonderful stones which had been found there, came back to try their luck either in sorting thedébrisfor the gems which the greedy diggers in those good flush times threw away in their haste, or in working the less promising ground which was left untouched. But since those old days no one had done much. Diggers had lingered on there, and persuaded themselves into believing in it because they liked the place; for the charm of nature has a strange influence over many a rough mind which knows little of culture or art jargon. But most of them, after working for months, had to tell the diggers’ oft-told tale of “we are not making tucker, let alone wages,” and had to drag their small stock-in-trade of tools off to some other digging, or had given up the river as a bad game, and had gone to work as overseers for wages in the mines.One night, a year or two ago, there were only two tents there—almost hidden in the bushes by the river-bank. Though it was long past the time when men who have to work hard all day and to be up betimes are usually asleep, it was lit up. Its tenant was stretched across the tent on a mattress. By his side there were several tattered, well-read volumes—‘Vanity Fair,’ ‘Elia,’ some of Bret Harte’s books; and Whyte Melville’s ‘Bones and I,’ and in his hand he had a crumpled home letter. His name was Charlie Lumsden, and he was about thirty years old. For the last ten years, more or less, he had belonged to the noble army of diggers who are recruited from all classes of society, and form a distinct class of their own. He was also an English gentleman of good birth and gentle breeding, as any one would guess from a first glance at him, and be sure of after a few minutes’ conversation. He was not reading, though it was so late, but thinking, and had been thinking for some time, far more seriously than he often did. It was perhaps an orthodox occasion for a little self-retrospection, for it happened to be the last night of the old year. Charlie, by chance, for he had been living a solitary life in which men are apt to forget dates, had remembered this, and he was seeing the New Year in, as many a man may well do, thinking over the years of his life he had lived, and what he had managed to do with them. He has not much reason to be satisfied with the past, or to be over sanguine about the future. Where will he be this time next year, and what sort of a year will it be for him? he wonders. Well, pretty much the same as the last year or two. Last year he was at ‘Bad Hope,’ digging with his old chum, Jack Heathcote, who has just left him, and given up the off-chance of the river for the certainty of some pay in the Mounted Police. They were finding fairly well, but their finds melted away before the claim was worked out, at least most of them did, though there would have been something left if they had not been fools and had that spree at Kimberley Races. Last New Year’s Day he was up-country hunting for gold near the Crocodile River. He found pretty well too, and would not have done so badly if his mates had not gone down with fever. Maybe he will have another turn at it. After all, it wouldn’t much matter, he thinks, if next time he is tempted to trespass on Tom Tiddler’s ground fever should catch him, and keep him as it caught his chums. Yes, now he sees what a mess he has made of his life. Ten years before he had just left school, and was going up to Cambridge, where it was hoped that he would do wonders in the way of taking honours and getting fellowships. Now he was a digger, just like old David Miller who worked near him, though he was not half as good with a pick and shovel as the old man who could hardly read and write.Then he remembered the year he had spent at Cambridge. Well, he had a jolly time enough there; but what a young fool he was to have run up all those ticks, and to have got into those scrapes, which when he looks back to them seem so childish. What a mistake he had made in living with the fast, noisy lot instead of the steady-going set, who were just as good fellows after all. How well he remembers that supper party which was so fatal to him. It had been in a rich fellow-commoner’s room, and a good many bottles had been emptied, and they were just ripe for mischief, when one of the party suggested the brilliant idea of having songs, and a camp fire on the college grass plot.They had proceeded at once to carry out the suggestion; their host, who was placidly intoxicated, blandly approving, at the sacrifice of his household gods in defiance of college discipline, when it was proposed that his chairs should be used for firewood. The fire was lit, and the fun round it was fast and furious until the college tutor made his appearance, as he naturally did.The dons were only too glad to make a clean sweep of the rowdy lot in the college, and about ten of them were sent down the next morning. Some of them got over their misfortune very easily. The man who suggested the bonfire is a popular preacher, and the giver of the supper party is a county member. Poor Charlie unfortunately was the earthern pot between the brazen ones, and that college row ended in his leaving England for South Africa, with his passage paid and fifty pounds in his pocket. Well, and he would have had a good chance on the fields if he had only been wise. What a lot of diamonds he used to get in that half-claim of his, in number five road. The other day it was sold for over ten thousand; but he had been sold up and had to let it go for a few hundreds after he struck a bad layer. He would have been able to have worked through the bad layer though if he had saved the money he made first, instead of throwing it away playing faro in those gambling saloons that were so fatal to many a digger’s fortunes.After he sold his claim in the mine he lived the roving hand-to-mouth life of a river-digger, with very little capital beyond his pick and shovel, and his reputation with the store-keepers of being a straight man, who would always pay when he found. Not a bad life either he would think at any other time, for the Bohemianism of a digger is ingrained in him. He liked the free and easy life, the absence from restraint or dependence on any one else. But he was out of spirits. He had not found for months; he missed his old partner, and he had no boys working for him. In fact he would find it very difficult to pay them any wages if he had, so he can get through but very little work. That night, memories of the old days and his old life came crowding into his mind, and he longed to be in England again, and to see well-remembered places and faces.The crumpled letter by his side was from home—from his sister in England. She told him that she had been staying at the little village in Somersetshire, where he once went with a reading party, and that she had met the parson’s daughter there, who had asked so much after him. How well he remembered that reading party. Does the message in his sister’s letter mean that she still cares for him? She has not married yet then. That boy and girl engagement was perfectly absurd of course, but he knows that they were quite in earnest while it lasted, and after all if he had taken his degree instead of being sent down in disgrace, they probably would have been married. For a minute or two he pictures himself as a staid curate or vicar dressed in decent black garment, instead of in moleskin and a flannel shirt—with a vicarage house to live in, instead of a tent.Probably she got over it as easily as he did. He was broken-hearted when he got her sad little letter, saying that it must all come to an end, and that her father would not hear of it. He got over it wonderfully soon though. With his sea-sickness his love-trouble left him in the bay. She probably had got over it too, and could laugh at it as he did. But as he smokes and thinks, he realises how much happier his life might have been. How wanting it is in real happiness; why how long is it since he has spoken to any woman more refined than the barmaid of the Vaal Hotel? Should he ever shake the dust of Africa off his boots and go home, or should he be buried there as many a chum of his had been. It is no good going home dead beat to loaf on his relations; no, it would be better to stay in the country for ever, or to land without a sixpence in some other colony. What bad luck he has always had. The men who make money may say what they like, but it is almost all luck after all, he thinks, as he contrasts his position with that of many another man, just as thoughtless and reckless as he, who has made a fortune and gone home with it. Maybe the very next shovel full of gravel he washes may turn his luck, and he thinks of all the big diamonds that have at one time or the other been found down the river. “Bosh, what’s the use of thinking,” he said to himself as the end of the candle, which has been growing shorter and shorter, fell down to the bottom of the bottle into which he had stuck it, and he was left in the dark to knock out the ashes of his pipe and to curl himself up in his blanket.It was still enough at Moonlight Rush, and in a few minutes he was asleep and dreaming a queer medley of English and Diamond-Field scenes. As he slept and dreamt he heard a cry for help, repeated again and again. At first it seemed to fit in with what he was dreaming about. But he heard it again after he woke up, and then he formed a pretty notion as to what it meant. “It’s poor old David come to grief,” he said to himself, as he sprang up and ran out of his tent.Old David Miller, who lived in the other tent at Moonlight Rush, was a taciturn old fellow, who always worked by himself and seemed to look upon the world in general with surly indifference. He had been digging all over the world since gold was first discovered in Australia, and had spent a good many years on the banks of the Vaal. He dug by himself without employing Kaffirs, but he got through a fair amount of work, as the high bank of boulders which he had broken up and dragged out of claim at Moonlight bore witness to.So far as Charlie knew he had found little enough to recompense him for his toil. He was not, however, much given to talk about his own affairs, though for him he was very friendly with Charlie—often coming round to his claim and growling about South Africa and its inhabitants, and contrasting the country with others in which it had been his lot to live. He was owner of a rickety little tub of a boat, in which, on the rare occasions on which he yearned for more of society and civilisation than he could get at Moonlight, he would cross over to the other side. The object of these voyages was a canteen that was some miles down the river. Old David, a sober man enough as a rule, used at intervals to go on the drink somewhat seriously. He believed, as a good many men of his class do believe, that an occasional bout of drinking was good for the system, and brightened a man up for his work like a change of air. Besides, he probably liked it. So now and then he used to indulge in one of these bouts. At other times he took nothing but tea—looking upon strong drink as a medicine that was wasted if not taken in large quantities. Sometimes these bouts would last for days, sometimes for a much shorter time. When he had taken what he considered was enough, or as more often was the case spent all his money, he would start off from the canteen, stagger off to the river, and get into his little tub of a boat and navigate himself across in it. The voyage always seemed beset with considerable danger, as the little boat, which the old man had made himself, was a very crank craft, certainly not fit to carry old David after he himself had taken in such a large cargo of whiskey. Charlie knew that the old man had started on one of his expeditions that afternoon, for he had come to his claim and asked him to come with him, showing an amount of hospitality and a wish for society which was unlike him. It was likely enough that he had gone to grief and got swamped. The river was swollen with recent floods, and flowing rather strongly; so Charlie looked forward to rather a longish job, particularly as he remembered that the old man had told him he could not swim a stroke.It was a dark night for South Africa. Again and again, as he ran along the bank peering into the river, he thought he saw something in the water, but the object turned out to be a snag, or a mass of weed. At last he made out a paddle floating down; then he came to an upturned boat, and then he saw, or thought he saw something rise and sink again. In a second he was in the water, and when he got about to the spot where he thought he saw the object sink he dived for it. As he dived he felt himself caught in a mass of Vaal river-weed, which clung round him like a net, and seemed to drag him down in its deadly grip. At first he struggled wildly to get free, and the more he struggled the more entangled he got. After a little time, however, and before it was too late, his presence of mind came back, and humouring the weed rather than struggling against it, he managed to get free. Then he reached the body he had dived for, and came up with it to the top of the water. He had hard work enough to get it to land, and he began to feel terribly done with his struggles to drag it along through the weeds, and to keep free from them himself. At last he got it up the bank, dragging a tangled mass of weeds out with it. Then he lay exhausted and out of breath for some seconds before he was sure what it was that he had fished out from the bottom of the river, and recognised old David Miller in the object covered with weed and slime by his side. He remembered that he had a bottle of Cape smoke in his tent, so he went and got it, and having taken a pull at it himself, he tried to force some down the old man’s throat. A dozen conflicting directions for recovering half-drowned persons occurred to him, and without being sure of whether he was doing the right thing or not he did his best to bring back life to the body he had rescued. He felt fearfully alone, for he and the old man were the only inhabitants of Red Jacket, and even the nearest Kaffir huts were some miles off. The old man must have been for some time in the water before he got him out, and Charlie soon began to see that his help had come too late. The heart did not beat, and the life was not to come back, and when the sun rose its grey light lit up poor old David’s dead body.“Poor old chap! he has growled his last growl at South Africa, and seen his last year out in the country,” Charlie said to himself, as he looked at him.Then he carried the body into the tent, and lit a fire. He had always thought that poor old David would come to grief some day in that little boat of his. Well, the old fellow hadn’t much to live for. Charlie thought that if any of the Kaffirs came down to the river in the morning he would get them to watch by the body, and that he would walk down to one of the larger river camps where there was a magistrate, and report the death. Before, however, he left the place he ought to see what property old David had when he died. There would be little enough most likely—a few tools, and some blankets and perhaps a diamond or two, as a result of all the work he had done. Maybe a few coins, but there were not likely to be many after his visit to the canteen.Charlie did not find much in the tent. The body was clothed in a pair of cord trousers and a woollen shirt. Round his waist there was a digger’s belt. Charlie took it off, and opened it. There was a purse in the belt, in which there were two small all-coloured diamonds, worth a pound or two, but no money. There was something else in the belt besides the purse—something tied up in a piece of a handkerchief. Charlie gave a start as he felt, and when he undid it and saw what it was, he stood holding it in his hand and staring at it in a dazed, stupid way. It was a diamond—such a diamond as diggers may dream of, but few have ever seen. It was about the finest stone he had ever seen, he thought.“What luck—what queer luck,” he said to himself, as he looked at the dead man and then at the diamond. “It was just like luck giving poor old David a turn like that. Poor old fellow! he has never wanted more than a few pounds, and has often enough been without them; and just before his death he had come across this splendid prize.” No wonder the old man had looked rather queer that afternoon before, when he had come round to Charlie’s claims and asked him to come over the river to the canteen, and have a drink with him; Charlie had wondered at this unwonted hospitality, though he had refused it. The diamond explained it, however; there was plenty of occasion for it.Then, as Charlie stood with the diamond in his hand, the thought came into his head, what would happen to the diamond now that the lucky digger who had found it had gone to where there is no more luck? He remembered that old David once told him that he had neither kith nor kin whom he knew of. Well, the stone would probably go to the Government, or to enrich lawyers who would reap the rich harvest of actions over it. Perhaps some peasant at home would be found, who would be proved to be old David’s next-of-kin, though he would have as little to do with the old man as if he had lived in another world. He remembered that some days before they had talked about digging together. If they had only come to terms then, he would have had his share of this find. Why it would be absurd to let the diamond do no one any good. Had he not done his best to save the old man and risked his life, and nearly lost it amongst the weeds? Would it not be throwing away his good luck if he did not keep the treasure-trove which was his by natural right if not by law? How much that stone meant to him. It must be worth many thousand pounds, as much money as any diamond. With the money he could get for it he could go home, not as an unsuccessful prodigal, but as a prosperous man come back to live the pleasant life of an English gentleman.The sight of the diamond, and the knowledge of the lot of money it was worth, seemed to make Charlie realise how sick he was of the hopeless, wandering life he was living, and how he longed for civilisation and refinement again. If he only had some money he could go home and have another chance. A few more years of the life he was leading and he would be fit for nothing else, and even if luck came to him it would be no use.As he was thinking he looked up and saw some Kaffir women from the huts standing by the river. He shouted to them, and bargained with them to stop and watch by the body, for he did not like to leave it by itself, unprotected, and then he set out to walk across the veldt to the nearest camp. Before he started he put the purse with the two small diamonds into one pocket, and tying the big diamond up in his handkerchief he put it into the breast-pocket of his coat. He was bound for a place about six miles off, where he could report what had happened. On his way he had to pass the roadside canteen where old David had spent his last evening. The proprietor of it had just opened the place, so he went in and ordered some breakfast. As he ate it he told the landlord of the fate of his guest of the night before.The landlord did not seem to waste much pity upon old David. “What, he got drowned, did he? I always told him he would some day, and I advised him not to cross last night, but he was a bit queer in his temper. He wanted me to stick up a drink, but I said it was against the rules. And then he talked a lot about being worth more than I was, and being able to buy up me and my canteen; but none paid much heed to him. I ’spect he ain’t left a very big estate behind him?”“No, he hasn’t, poor old chap! Here are his finds—they are not worth much,” Charlie said, as he showed the landlord the two small diamonds. Then he wondered whether he looked like a thief, as he thought of what he had stowed away in his breast-pocket.He finished his breakfast and had something to drink afterwards, for he felt as if his nerves wanted settling. Just as he was going to start a man, dressed in the uniform of the Mounted Police, came into the bar, and came up to Charlie holding out his hand.“A happy New Year to you, old boy! Where are you off to this morning?” he said.The new arrival was Charlie’s old friend and partner, Jack Heathcote. Jack was as good a fellow as ever lived, and as true a friend, but for the first time since he had known him Charlie did not feel best pleased to see him.“What’s the matter, Charlie?” Jack added, as he noticed a rather downcast look in his friend’s face, “you seem a bit down on your luck.”“I have had rather a trying night of it,” answered Charlie, and he told how poor old David Miller had upset and got drowned the night before, and what a near thing he had had of it amongst the weeds trying to save him. But there was one part of the story which he kept to himself. He did not say anything about the big diamond, though he produced the two little ones, and asked Jack as he was going into the camp to report the death, and give them up to the authorities.“All right; I will tell ’em about it, and give these up to the magistrate. They ain’t worth much; but poor old David hadn’t much better luck than you and I,” said Jack. “Come, cheer up, old fellow; after all the old man hadn’t much to live for, and you did your level best to save him. Let’s have a split, and drink good luck to the New Year. It is about time you and I had a turn of luck, but it never comes to honest men in this cursed country. Well, may we get out of it somehow or the other before the next New Year’s Day; may you find a ‘big un,’ on which you can go home,” he said, when their glasses were filled.“Who can tell? luck is a queerish thing,” Charlie said, as he emptied his glass.“So it is—not that I know very much about it, for it has not troubled me much. Well, good-bye,” said Jack Heathcote, as he left the canteen and jumped on his horse, which was tied up outside.Charlie stood for a second or two watching his friend ride away.“A happy New Year! Well, I shall have it if money can make one happy. That streak of luck you talk about has come in my way after all. I shall be able to clear out of the country as soon as I like. Honest men! Well, it don’t do to be too honest,” he said to himself.Then he wondered what his old partner Jack Heathcote would have said if he had heard about the big diamond. Of course he would have said that he was right to stick to it, and would have been a fool if he had thrown away such a chance. He didn’t feel quite certain about it though. Jack was rather a queer fellow in his way, and though he did not go in for preaching, had some very decided notions about right and wrong. He had half a mind to tell his old friend, with whom he had lived as a partner for years, and from whom he had hardly had a secret since he had known him, of this good luck and ask him to share in it, but on second thoughts he knew that he had better not do that.Jack Heathcote had reined in his horse, some hundred yards from the canteen, to light his pipe, and Charlie for a second or two watched him, unable to make up his mind.“No, by Jove, I won’t ask him to have a share, and I won’t ask him what he’d do if he were in my place. I know. Hi, Jack Heathcote, Jack. Stop I say,” he shouted at the top of his voice, as he ran up to his friend, waving his hat.Jack saw him and waited for him to come up.“Well, what’s the matter?” he asked wondering, as he noticed a strangely excited look in his friend’s face.“There is something else you ought to have, Jack; it is this,” Charlie said, and he took the big diamond from his pocket. “It’s over three hundred carats, I should say, and about the best stone in the world. Old David must have found it yesterday, for he had it on him when I pulled him out of the river. Take it to the camp and give it up, and let me be rid of it, for it’s safe with you; and, Jack, don’t think too badly of me because I have so nearly been a thief.”“Charlie, there’s about ninety-nine men in a hundred who would think you a fool,” Jack said as he took the diamond, and then gave his old friend’s hand a grip. “I wonder who this thing belongs to now?”“Don’t know, don’t care; not to me, anyhow; it’s a niceish stone, ain’t it?” he answered, and then the two friends parted, the one to startle the Diamond Fields by the tale of old David Miller’s luck, and, as a good many men thought, of Charlie Lumsden’s egregious folly, and the other to work with very ordinary luck as a digger at Moonlight Rush.
There are few more hideous parts of the world than the country known as Griqualand West, celebrated, as the school books have it, for its diamonds. In that weary land the traveller may go on day by day outspanning at evening in just the same dreary waste of veldt in which he inspanned at morning, until he almost forgets that the world is not one endless series of rolling, burnt-up flats with ridges of table-topped hills in the distance, the last just like the one before it. Still there are spots on the banks of the Vaal River which runs through this territory that have a soft beauty of their own, all the more fascinating because of their contrast with the desert ugliness of the country—places where the traveller longs to settle down and live the rest of his days doing some slight work well paid by kind nature, forgetting the troublesome, distant world. Moonlight Rush is perhaps the fairest of these silent river nooks. There a wooded gulley, gay with flowering bushes, and shadowed by wide-spreading trees, runs down to the waters of the Vaal River. One can rest under the shade of those trees and forget how cruelly the sun beats down on the veldt, and as one looks at the Vaal, which flows at one’s feet in a noble reach, one no longer thinks of the arid discomfort of the plains. The place is quiet enough now, but once it had its day. The night it was rushed will be always remembered by those who came to seek their fortunes on the banks of the Vaal in the early days of diamond-digging. To this day men talk of how the news about the quantities of diamonds that had been found at a new place spread like wild-fire around the river camps, and how diggers, as soon as they heard it, snatched up their picks and shovels and rough provision for a meal or two, and left their camp fires, eager to get a claim in the new diggings, where they were at last to strike a fortune. Its history was like that of other river camps, only the diamonds found there at first were more plentiful, and are said to have been of better average quality; but they became fewer and fewer, and the diggers, party by party, either left for the new dry digging, which afterwards became the wonderful diamond mines of South Africa, or wandered away to other river camps. And at last the place was quite deserted, and the rock hares sported over the grass-grown claims, and the snakes, who had found the place too lively for them, sneaked back to make their homes in the ruined hovels put up by sanguine diggers who had believed in the future of Moonlight, and had shown their faith by plunging into building to the extent of houses built with boulders and thatched with rushes. Still, from time to time diggers, who had found well at Moonlight in its palmy days, or had heard of the wonderful stones which had been found there, came back to try their luck either in sorting thedébrisfor the gems which the greedy diggers in those good flush times threw away in their haste, or in working the less promising ground which was left untouched. But since those old days no one had done much. Diggers had lingered on there, and persuaded themselves into believing in it because they liked the place; for the charm of nature has a strange influence over many a rough mind which knows little of culture or art jargon. But most of them, after working for months, had to tell the diggers’ oft-told tale of “we are not making tucker, let alone wages,” and had to drag their small stock-in-trade of tools off to some other digging, or had given up the river as a bad game, and had gone to work as overseers for wages in the mines.
One night, a year or two ago, there were only two tents there—almost hidden in the bushes by the river-bank. Though it was long past the time when men who have to work hard all day and to be up betimes are usually asleep, it was lit up. Its tenant was stretched across the tent on a mattress. By his side there were several tattered, well-read volumes—‘Vanity Fair,’ ‘Elia,’ some of Bret Harte’s books; and Whyte Melville’s ‘Bones and I,’ and in his hand he had a crumpled home letter. His name was Charlie Lumsden, and he was about thirty years old. For the last ten years, more or less, he had belonged to the noble army of diggers who are recruited from all classes of society, and form a distinct class of their own. He was also an English gentleman of good birth and gentle breeding, as any one would guess from a first glance at him, and be sure of after a few minutes’ conversation. He was not reading, though it was so late, but thinking, and had been thinking for some time, far more seriously than he often did. It was perhaps an orthodox occasion for a little self-retrospection, for it happened to be the last night of the old year. Charlie, by chance, for he had been living a solitary life in which men are apt to forget dates, had remembered this, and he was seeing the New Year in, as many a man may well do, thinking over the years of his life he had lived, and what he had managed to do with them. He has not much reason to be satisfied with the past, or to be over sanguine about the future. Where will he be this time next year, and what sort of a year will it be for him? he wonders. Well, pretty much the same as the last year or two. Last year he was at ‘Bad Hope,’ digging with his old chum, Jack Heathcote, who has just left him, and given up the off-chance of the river for the certainty of some pay in the Mounted Police. They were finding fairly well, but their finds melted away before the claim was worked out, at least most of them did, though there would have been something left if they had not been fools and had that spree at Kimberley Races. Last New Year’s Day he was up-country hunting for gold near the Crocodile River. He found pretty well too, and would not have done so badly if his mates had not gone down with fever. Maybe he will have another turn at it. After all, it wouldn’t much matter, he thinks, if next time he is tempted to trespass on Tom Tiddler’s ground fever should catch him, and keep him as it caught his chums. Yes, now he sees what a mess he has made of his life. Ten years before he had just left school, and was going up to Cambridge, where it was hoped that he would do wonders in the way of taking honours and getting fellowships. Now he was a digger, just like old David Miller who worked near him, though he was not half as good with a pick and shovel as the old man who could hardly read and write.
Then he remembered the year he had spent at Cambridge. Well, he had a jolly time enough there; but what a young fool he was to have run up all those ticks, and to have got into those scrapes, which when he looks back to them seem so childish. What a mistake he had made in living with the fast, noisy lot instead of the steady-going set, who were just as good fellows after all. How well he remembers that supper party which was so fatal to him. It had been in a rich fellow-commoner’s room, and a good many bottles had been emptied, and they were just ripe for mischief, when one of the party suggested the brilliant idea of having songs, and a camp fire on the college grass plot.
They had proceeded at once to carry out the suggestion; their host, who was placidly intoxicated, blandly approving, at the sacrifice of his household gods in defiance of college discipline, when it was proposed that his chairs should be used for firewood. The fire was lit, and the fun round it was fast and furious until the college tutor made his appearance, as he naturally did.
The dons were only too glad to make a clean sweep of the rowdy lot in the college, and about ten of them were sent down the next morning. Some of them got over their misfortune very easily. The man who suggested the bonfire is a popular preacher, and the giver of the supper party is a county member. Poor Charlie unfortunately was the earthern pot between the brazen ones, and that college row ended in his leaving England for South Africa, with his passage paid and fifty pounds in his pocket. Well, and he would have had a good chance on the fields if he had only been wise. What a lot of diamonds he used to get in that half-claim of his, in number five road. The other day it was sold for over ten thousand; but he had been sold up and had to let it go for a few hundreds after he struck a bad layer. He would have been able to have worked through the bad layer though if he had saved the money he made first, instead of throwing it away playing faro in those gambling saloons that were so fatal to many a digger’s fortunes.
After he sold his claim in the mine he lived the roving hand-to-mouth life of a river-digger, with very little capital beyond his pick and shovel, and his reputation with the store-keepers of being a straight man, who would always pay when he found. Not a bad life either he would think at any other time, for the Bohemianism of a digger is ingrained in him. He liked the free and easy life, the absence from restraint or dependence on any one else. But he was out of spirits. He had not found for months; he missed his old partner, and he had no boys working for him. In fact he would find it very difficult to pay them any wages if he had, so he can get through but very little work. That night, memories of the old days and his old life came crowding into his mind, and he longed to be in England again, and to see well-remembered places and faces.
The crumpled letter by his side was from home—from his sister in England. She told him that she had been staying at the little village in Somersetshire, where he once went with a reading party, and that she had met the parson’s daughter there, who had asked so much after him. How well he remembered that reading party. Does the message in his sister’s letter mean that she still cares for him? She has not married yet then. That boy and girl engagement was perfectly absurd of course, but he knows that they were quite in earnest while it lasted, and after all if he had taken his degree instead of being sent down in disgrace, they probably would have been married. For a minute or two he pictures himself as a staid curate or vicar dressed in decent black garment, instead of in moleskin and a flannel shirt—with a vicarage house to live in, instead of a tent.
Probably she got over it as easily as he did. He was broken-hearted when he got her sad little letter, saying that it must all come to an end, and that her father would not hear of it. He got over it wonderfully soon though. With his sea-sickness his love-trouble left him in the bay. She probably had got over it too, and could laugh at it as he did. But as he smokes and thinks, he realises how much happier his life might have been. How wanting it is in real happiness; why how long is it since he has spoken to any woman more refined than the barmaid of the Vaal Hotel? Should he ever shake the dust of Africa off his boots and go home, or should he be buried there as many a chum of his had been. It is no good going home dead beat to loaf on his relations; no, it would be better to stay in the country for ever, or to land without a sixpence in some other colony. What bad luck he has always had. The men who make money may say what they like, but it is almost all luck after all, he thinks, as he contrasts his position with that of many another man, just as thoughtless and reckless as he, who has made a fortune and gone home with it. Maybe the very next shovel full of gravel he washes may turn his luck, and he thinks of all the big diamonds that have at one time or the other been found down the river. “Bosh, what’s the use of thinking,” he said to himself as the end of the candle, which has been growing shorter and shorter, fell down to the bottom of the bottle into which he had stuck it, and he was left in the dark to knock out the ashes of his pipe and to curl himself up in his blanket.
It was still enough at Moonlight Rush, and in a few minutes he was asleep and dreaming a queer medley of English and Diamond-Field scenes. As he slept and dreamt he heard a cry for help, repeated again and again. At first it seemed to fit in with what he was dreaming about. But he heard it again after he woke up, and then he formed a pretty notion as to what it meant. “It’s poor old David come to grief,” he said to himself, as he sprang up and ran out of his tent.
Old David Miller, who lived in the other tent at Moonlight Rush, was a taciturn old fellow, who always worked by himself and seemed to look upon the world in general with surly indifference. He had been digging all over the world since gold was first discovered in Australia, and had spent a good many years on the banks of the Vaal. He dug by himself without employing Kaffirs, but he got through a fair amount of work, as the high bank of boulders which he had broken up and dragged out of claim at Moonlight bore witness to.
So far as Charlie knew he had found little enough to recompense him for his toil. He was not, however, much given to talk about his own affairs, though for him he was very friendly with Charlie—often coming round to his claim and growling about South Africa and its inhabitants, and contrasting the country with others in which it had been his lot to live. He was owner of a rickety little tub of a boat, in which, on the rare occasions on which he yearned for more of society and civilisation than he could get at Moonlight, he would cross over to the other side. The object of these voyages was a canteen that was some miles down the river. Old David, a sober man enough as a rule, used at intervals to go on the drink somewhat seriously. He believed, as a good many men of his class do believe, that an occasional bout of drinking was good for the system, and brightened a man up for his work like a change of air. Besides, he probably liked it. So now and then he used to indulge in one of these bouts. At other times he took nothing but tea—looking upon strong drink as a medicine that was wasted if not taken in large quantities. Sometimes these bouts would last for days, sometimes for a much shorter time. When he had taken what he considered was enough, or as more often was the case spent all his money, he would start off from the canteen, stagger off to the river, and get into his little tub of a boat and navigate himself across in it. The voyage always seemed beset with considerable danger, as the little boat, which the old man had made himself, was a very crank craft, certainly not fit to carry old David after he himself had taken in such a large cargo of whiskey. Charlie knew that the old man had started on one of his expeditions that afternoon, for he had come to his claim and asked him to come with him, showing an amount of hospitality and a wish for society which was unlike him. It was likely enough that he had gone to grief and got swamped. The river was swollen with recent floods, and flowing rather strongly; so Charlie looked forward to rather a longish job, particularly as he remembered that the old man had told him he could not swim a stroke.
It was a dark night for South Africa. Again and again, as he ran along the bank peering into the river, he thought he saw something in the water, but the object turned out to be a snag, or a mass of weed. At last he made out a paddle floating down; then he came to an upturned boat, and then he saw, or thought he saw something rise and sink again. In a second he was in the water, and when he got about to the spot where he thought he saw the object sink he dived for it. As he dived he felt himself caught in a mass of Vaal river-weed, which clung round him like a net, and seemed to drag him down in its deadly grip. At first he struggled wildly to get free, and the more he struggled the more entangled he got. After a little time, however, and before it was too late, his presence of mind came back, and humouring the weed rather than struggling against it, he managed to get free. Then he reached the body he had dived for, and came up with it to the top of the water. He had hard work enough to get it to land, and he began to feel terribly done with his struggles to drag it along through the weeds, and to keep free from them himself. At last he got it up the bank, dragging a tangled mass of weeds out with it. Then he lay exhausted and out of breath for some seconds before he was sure what it was that he had fished out from the bottom of the river, and recognised old David Miller in the object covered with weed and slime by his side. He remembered that he had a bottle of Cape smoke in his tent, so he went and got it, and having taken a pull at it himself, he tried to force some down the old man’s throat. A dozen conflicting directions for recovering half-drowned persons occurred to him, and without being sure of whether he was doing the right thing or not he did his best to bring back life to the body he had rescued. He felt fearfully alone, for he and the old man were the only inhabitants of Red Jacket, and even the nearest Kaffir huts were some miles off. The old man must have been for some time in the water before he got him out, and Charlie soon began to see that his help had come too late. The heart did not beat, and the life was not to come back, and when the sun rose its grey light lit up poor old David’s dead body.
“Poor old chap! he has growled his last growl at South Africa, and seen his last year out in the country,” Charlie said to himself, as he looked at him.
Then he carried the body into the tent, and lit a fire. He had always thought that poor old David would come to grief some day in that little boat of his. Well, the old fellow hadn’t much to live for. Charlie thought that if any of the Kaffirs came down to the river in the morning he would get them to watch by the body, and that he would walk down to one of the larger river camps where there was a magistrate, and report the death. Before, however, he left the place he ought to see what property old David had when he died. There would be little enough most likely—a few tools, and some blankets and perhaps a diamond or two, as a result of all the work he had done. Maybe a few coins, but there were not likely to be many after his visit to the canteen.
Charlie did not find much in the tent. The body was clothed in a pair of cord trousers and a woollen shirt. Round his waist there was a digger’s belt. Charlie took it off, and opened it. There was a purse in the belt, in which there were two small all-coloured diamonds, worth a pound or two, but no money. There was something else in the belt besides the purse—something tied up in a piece of a handkerchief. Charlie gave a start as he felt, and when he undid it and saw what it was, he stood holding it in his hand and staring at it in a dazed, stupid way. It was a diamond—such a diamond as diggers may dream of, but few have ever seen. It was about the finest stone he had ever seen, he thought.
“What luck—what queer luck,” he said to himself, as he looked at the dead man and then at the diamond. “It was just like luck giving poor old David a turn like that. Poor old fellow! he has never wanted more than a few pounds, and has often enough been without them; and just before his death he had come across this splendid prize.” No wonder the old man had looked rather queer that afternoon before, when he had come round to Charlie’s claims and asked him to come over the river to the canteen, and have a drink with him; Charlie had wondered at this unwonted hospitality, though he had refused it. The diamond explained it, however; there was plenty of occasion for it.
Then, as Charlie stood with the diamond in his hand, the thought came into his head, what would happen to the diamond now that the lucky digger who had found it had gone to where there is no more luck? He remembered that old David once told him that he had neither kith nor kin whom he knew of. Well, the stone would probably go to the Government, or to enrich lawyers who would reap the rich harvest of actions over it. Perhaps some peasant at home would be found, who would be proved to be old David’s next-of-kin, though he would have as little to do with the old man as if he had lived in another world. He remembered that some days before they had talked about digging together. If they had only come to terms then, he would have had his share of this find. Why it would be absurd to let the diamond do no one any good. Had he not done his best to save the old man and risked his life, and nearly lost it amongst the weeds? Would it not be throwing away his good luck if he did not keep the treasure-trove which was his by natural right if not by law? How much that stone meant to him. It must be worth many thousand pounds, as much money as any diamond. With the money he could get for it he could go home, not as an unsuccessful prodigal, but as a prosperous man come back to live the pleasant life of an English gentleman.
The sight of the diamond, and the knowledge of the lot of money it was worth, seemed to make Charlie realise how sick he was of the hopeless, wandering life he was living, and how he longed for civilisation and refinement again. If he only had some money he could go home and have another chance. A few more years of the life he was leading and he would be fit for nothing else, and even if luck came to him it would be no use.
As he was thinking he looked up and saw some Kaffir women from the huts standing by the river. He shouted to them, and bargained with them to stop and watch by the body, for he did not like to leave it by itself, unprotected, and then he set out to walk across the veldt to the nearest camp. Before he started he put the purse with the two small diamonds into one pocket, and tying the big diamond up in his handkerchief he put it into the breast-pocket of his coat. He was bound for a place about six miles off, where he could report what had happened. On his way he had to pass the roadside canteen where old David had spent his last evening. The proprietor of it had just opened the place, so he went in and ordered some breakfast. As he ate it he told the landlord of the fate of his guest of the night before.
The landlord did not seem to waste much pity upon old David. “What, he got drowned, did he? I always told him he would some day, and I advised him not to cross last night, but he was a bit queer in his temper. He wanted me to stick up a drink, but I said it was against the rules. And then he talked a lot about being worth more than I was, and being able to buy up me and my canteen; but none paid much heed to him. I ’spect he ain’t left a very big estate behind him?”
“No, he hasn’t, poor old chap! Here are his finds—they are not worth much,” Charlie said, as he showed the landlord the two small diamonds. Then he wondered whether he looked like a thief, as he thought of what he had stowed away in his breast-pocket.
He finished his breakfast and had something to drink afterwards, for he felt as if his nerves wanted settling. Just as he was going to start a man, dressed in the uniform of the Mounted Police, came into the bar, and came up to Charlie holding out his hand.
“A happy New Year to you, old boy! Where are you off to this morning?” he said.
The new arrival was Charlie’s old friend and partner, Jack Heathcote. Jack was as good a fellow as ever lived, and as true a friend, but for the first time since he had known him Charlie did not feel best pleased to see him.
“What’s the matter, Charlie?” Jack added, as he noticed a rather downcast look in his friend’s face, “you seem a bit down on your luck.”
“I have had rather a trying night of it,” answered Charlie, and he told how poor old David Miller had upset and got drowned the night before, and what a near thing he had had of it amongst the weeds trying to save him. But there was one part of the story which he kept to himself. He did not say anything about the big diamond, though he produced the two little ones, and asked Jack as he was going into the camp to report the death, and give them up to the authorities.
“All right; I will tell ’em about it, and give these up to the magistrate. They ain’t worth much; but poor old David hadn’t much better luck than you and I,” said Jack. “Come, cheer up, old fellow; after all the old man hadn’t much to live for, and you did your level best to save him. Let’s have a split, and drink good luck to the New Year. It is about time you and I had a turn of luck, but it never comes to honest men in this cursed country. Well, may we get out of it somehow or the other before the next New Year’s Day; may you find a ‘big un,’ on which you can go home,” he said, when their glasses were filled.
“Who can tell? luck is a queerish thing,” Charlie said, as he emptied his glass.
“So it is—not that I know very much about it, for it has not troubled me much. Well, good-bye,” said Jack Heathcote, as he left the canteen and jumped on his horse, which was tied up outside.
Charlie stood for a second or two watching his friend ride away.
“A happy New Year! Well, I shall have it if money can make one happy. That streak of luck you talk about has come in my way after all. I shall be able to clear out of the country as soon as I like. Honest men! Well, it don’t do to be too honest,” he said to himself.
Then he wondered what his old partner Jack Heathcote would have said if he had heard about the big diamond. Of course he would have said that he was right to stick to it, and would have been a fool if he had thrown away such a chance. He didn’t feel quite certain about it though. Jack was rather a queer fellow in his way, and though he did not go in for preaching, had some very decided notions about right and wrong. He had half a mind to tell his old friend, with whom he had lived as a partner for years, and from whom he had hardly had a secret since he had known him, of this good luck and ask him to share in it, but on second thoughts he knew that he had better not do that.
Jack Heathcote had reined in his horse, some hundred yards from the canteen, to light his pipe, and Charlie for a second or two watched him, unable to make up his mind.
“No, by Jove, I won’t ask him to have a share, and I won’t ask him what he’d do if he were in my place. I know. Hi, Jack Heathcote, Jack. Stop I say,” he shouted at the top of his voice, as he ran up to his friend, waving his hat.
Jack saw him and waited for him to come up.
“Well, what’s the matter?” he asked wondering, as he noticed a strangely excited look in his friend’s face.
“There is something else you ought to have, Jack; it is this,” Charlie said, and he took the big diamond from his pocket. “It’s over three hundred carats, I should say, and about the best stone in the world. Old David must have found it yesterday, for he had it on him when I pulled him out of the river. Take it to the camp and give it up, and let me be rid of it, for it’s safe with you; and, Jack, don’t think too badly of me because I have so nearly been a thief.”
“Charlie, there’s about ninety-nine men in a hundred who would think you a fool,” Jack said as he took the diamond, and then gave his old friend’s hand a grip. “I wonder who this thing belongs to now?”
“Don’t know, don’t care; not to me, anyhow; it’s a niceish stone, ain’t it?” he answered, and then the two friends parted, the one to startle the Diamond Fields by the tale of old David Miller’s luck, and, as a good many men thought, of Charlie Lumsden’s egregious folly, and the other to work with very ordinary luck as a digger at Moonlight Rush.