Dalrymple J. Belgrave

“ Mr Smythe, however, felt anything but at his ease. The situation was a very strange one, for if he shouted out “Murder!” he would be heard by his neighbours on both sides, who were only separated from him by a few feet of open space and a few inches of tin wall. One of them was a young diamond-buyer, with a taste for comic singing, who had just returned from a trip home, and was entertaining his friends with the cream of the melody of the London music-halls, and as he stood shivering with fear, with the revolver held up to his head, Smythe could hear the chorus of one of the songs of the day. ”

“ One gets the feeling of rest and distance, and begins to fancy that one has little to do with oneself, as one was once in other lands that seem so far away. There is nothing to be met with that reminds one of the rest of the world. The strings of laden waggons slowly wending their way over the veldt to the distant Diamond Fields, give an idea of carelessness about time, and worry, and the world in general. The sleepy looking farm-houses, where there is none of the thriving bustle of other lands—and everything suggests progression only at ox-waggon pace—help to carry out the idea. ”

“ After a few weeks of the round of theatres, race meetings, and sight-seeing, which colonists generally go in for, he began to feel half tired and bored with it all. The feeling of being alone in a crowd chilled him, as it does those who have always lived in a small community, and he began to feel something that was very like home-sickness. He was delighted when he came across any one he had known on the Diamond Fields, even finding himself pleased to talk to men whom at the mine he had rather disliked and avoided. ”

“ Look here, Charlie—now don’t get riled with an old chum. Look here, now let me put it to you—ain’t you making a mistake? Why don’t you stick to the diamond? You say it belongs to the old General’s girl. Well, you’re sweet on her, and want to marry her, so it won’t hurt her if you do stick to it; she’ll get her share, and it will be all one to her; while if you give it up see where are you—why, you lose the diamond and her too. You don’t suppose that she would marry you if she had a fortune of her own, and that diamond means a fortune, mind you. ”

“ Nobody on the Diamond Fields quite knew the beginning of the ill-feeling between Dr Gorman and Mr Bowker.
It had existed, as far as any one could remember, from the early days of the Fields, and had been increased and intensified by a hundred matters of grievance. It is only in a small community, where there is not much change of thought, and where a fresh face is not very often seen, that bitter personal hatred can grow luxuriantly, and the rancorous ill-will between those two men had become part of themselves, adding a sort of enjoyment to their lives, and influencing many of their actions. ”

“ I had tried my luck in Canada, Australia, and South Africa, and had found each country worse than the one I had been in before.
My experiences were not very interesting, and they would only make a tale which has already been told many a time before. I had begun to laugh grimly at my old hopes of making a fortune and buying back some of the family property. And yet my ideas had not been so absurd either; I had seen men whose chances did not seem to be much better than mine succeed and make something like the fortune I had dreamt of. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You know, miss, how proud we should be to have you with us; the missis and me have talked that over already.”
“How kind you are to me! I don’t want to leave Red Shirt Rush; all my friends are there, and every one seems so kind to me; but I shall be a burden to you. I must try and get my own living somehow,” poor Connie answered.
“Burden to us? Don’t talk of that; why, you talk as if you haven’t got anything of your own; why, there’s those claims which are worth a good bit of money maybe, and there is a heap of stuff the General got out of it which hasn’t been sorted yet.” ”

“ Pat Brady cried out.
“There’s lots of time for him to come out with his old tricks, but if he don’t they won’t catch him,” said Langford.
Muzada snarled out a sentence hideous with blasphemy.
“Even if he wins his bet the triumph will have cost him something,” I thought, as I looked at his ugly face, and saw how sick he looked as Storm Drum came along, the gap between him and the other horse rather increasing than decreasing.
“It’s a race! Marmion wins!” shouted some one, as for a second the favourite looked dangerous. ”

“ After some time he once or twice stayed at home of an evening and a man came in to see him. The visitor was not a pleasant-looking person. He had a shifty, half-ashamed expression, and as he sat clumsily playing cards with Dormer he looked as if he knew he ought not to be where he was.
“Who’s that? Don’t like his looks, can’t look one in the face,” I asked Jim one night when he had left.
“That! oh, he’s a most respectable man, a sergeant in the police. We are thinking of going in for a little spec together, and you ought to be in it too. That’s the chap who goes down with the diamond mail. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was somewhat annoying that a diamond should have been found in his claim the day after he sold it. His expression, however, changed a good deal when the other handed him the diamond.
“Say, did you find this just now; it’s a mighty rum thing to find in a claim; why—” Hawkins was grumbling out, when Austin gave him a kick, and motioned to him to keep quiet.
“Magnificent diamond, sir; the finest stone that ever has been found. Did ever man see such luck? Here you come down just for a lark, and find a fortune; but there, luck is one of the queerest things out!” Jack Austin said. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Going on night guard, particularly after one has spent a somewhat convivial evening, is tiresome work enough. Mr Jack Enderby had found it so, and after he had walked about for some time, and grumbled at his luck in having to earn his living in that way, he had settled himself down to smoke a quiet pipe and think over things. He had yawned, stretched himself, looked into the mine, and wished devoutly that the infernal place had never been found at all, or that he at all events had never seen it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was on the fourth day of their journey that the coach had outspanned at a farm-house by the roadside, and Kate and Darrell were sitting under some trees in the garden of the farm-house, by the edge of a cool shaded pool of water. There is a certain charm about those South African farms which most travellers in the country must have experienced. One seems to have never before enjoyed seeing trees and the soft green of vegetation until one has travelled for miles in the desert. ”

“ He didn’t care what he went in for—farming, diamond-mining, gold-digging. He didn’t care much what it was, so long as it paid. Soldiering, he said, was a bad game for a married man, and he intended to double his capital before he went home; for England was no country for a man to live in who had not some thousands a year. Mr Smythe did not at first take very kindly to the Captain, who seemed a dullish, heavy sort of man, and cared to talk about very little besides betting and sport. But Mrs Hamilton quite made up for any defects in her husband. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There was one peculiarity in their manners, which somewhat amazed Mr Moss. They had a curious way of bursting into laughter about nothing at all, as far as he could see. They did not show any envy, but to a man were full of a generous wish to drink with the fortunate finder. Their estimate of the value of the diamond was somewhat vague. One said fifty thou, another laughed at the idea of fifty thousand buying it, and seemed to have quite a contempt for such a paltry sum of money; though he would have had to have searched a long time in the pockets of his trousers before he could find sixpence. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ When the Diamond Field Horse left the camp she went out to see them off, and felt proud of her lover, as she saw him ride away in his troop. “He won’t come back a trooper,” she said to herself, “if there is much fighting to be done.”
She was right about his not coming back a trooper. When there was any work to be done, he was in the thick of it, and he had some opportunities of showing that soldiering was a trade he was fit for. Promotion, such as it is, comes quickly in a colonial corps, and when he came back he had a commission. He came back a new man, proud of and confident in himself. ”

“ The few bright flowers and the patch of waving maize are more grateful than in a country of fields and trees the most carefully tended garden could be. One of the team of mules which had been inspanned at the last station had turned sick, and the guard of the coach, careless of the remonstrance of the other passengers, who were in a hurry to get to their journey’s end, had prolonged their outspan for some hours to give the sick beast time to get round. Neither Darrell nor Kate were indignant at the delay or were in a hurry to start. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Who need ever know that George Darrell, digger, of Red Shirt Rush, Vaal River, was the same man as Darrell of the Lancers, who like a fool made his good old name shameful by giving it to the woman he had married. He cursed his folly as he remembered himself little more than a boy marrying a woman years older than himself, who, wild as he was then, was as much his inferior morally as she was socially. ”

“ Muzada was standing at the bar of the ‘Queen’s Hotel,’ swaggering about the good bargain he had made with Jack, and the folly of the latter in selling out of pique, when Jack came in. Some one asked him if he was going to ride in the Kimberley Cup the next day.
“Yes, I am; I ride Storm Drum,” Jack answered.
Muzada burst out laughing. The horse’s eccentricities were so well-known, that he thought with pleasure how the man he hated was certain to look ridiculous.
“So, Captain, you are going to ride; how much will you bet that you ever get round the course?” ”