From Veldt Camp Fires

Six months later Tobias De la Rey had reached the far Transvaal border on his return home, had crossed a drift of the Limpopo, and was now approaching Vogelstruisfontein. Despite the toils and dangers of his last eighteen months in the wilderness, his heart was light and there was a look upon his broad and stolid face that told of much happiness. The house was reached at last, and Tobias’s travel-worn waggon, loaded to the tilt with ivory, halted fifty yards away from the door. Vrouw Terblans, aroused by the cracking of whips, the cries of the drivers, and the heavy creaking of the waggon, stood outside upon the stoep.

“Well, Tant’ Joanna,” cried Tobias, as he rode up, “there is the finest load of ivory that has come into the Transvaal for many a long year. More than a thousand pounds’ worth. I have kept my word Ja! I have made my last hunt and brought home three thousand pounds weight of ivory. Allemaghte! It was the greatest hunt ever known in South Africa. Seventy-six elephants we killed in a single day. But where are Truey and Terblans?” De la Rey, in the joy of this unspeakably triumphant moment – looked forward to so eagerly during every waking hour of the last six months – had not noticed the stout huis-vrouw’s black stuff gown and her lugubrious expression.

“Alas!” she replied. “Have not you heard, Tobias? Truey caught a fever four months since and died, poor child, in my arms. My man died too – he had been long ailing – six months after you had trekked. I have had sore trouble, but the Heer God who chastens can bring the healing. It is a blessed thing to see the face of an old friend again. Will ye not off-saddle and come in, Tobias? I want your help and advice.”

Tobias had stared at Tant’ Joanna as she spoke these words, his slow mind not fully comprehending their terrible import. He leaned down towards her from his horse and said in a low, fierce, guttural voice:

“What was that you said, woman? – Truey dead?”

Vrouw Terblans was whimpering now and had a kerchief to her eyes.

“Yes, Tobias,” she answered feebly, “dead indeed.”

With a deep groan, but without another word, De la Rey jerked fiercely at his horse’s bit and turned to his waggon. “Trek on for home,” he said huskily, and himself rode forward.

For six months, De la Rey, his dream shattered, his brightest hopes dispelled, shut himself up, away upon his lonely farm, and nursed the bitter sorrow that had overtaken him. But, after all, the Dutch Afrikanders are an eminently practical race, and Tobias began presently to look abroad again. Tant’ Joanna and he in due time met each other once more. She was now very ready to play the consoler; a wealthy widow is always a source of deep attraction, even to a Boer twenty or thirty years her junior; their farms adjoined; and so within a year De la Rey and she made up their minds, trekked to Pietersburg and were married at the Dutch Reformed Church.

Tobias De la Rey is now a comfortable man, respected for his wealth and well known throughout the Northern Transvaal as one of the two hunters who slew in a single day six-and-seventy elephants. But there come to him at times, undoubtedly, bitter moments, and, looking with the mind’s eye past the immense figure of his grim and elderly vrouw, he sees again the kind brown eyes and the pleasant face of his lost Truey. These thoughts, for very good and sufficient reasons, he keeps severely to himself. For Tant’ Joanna is, it must be owned, a jealous and an exacting spouse.

Chapter Nine.

The Mahalapsi Diamond

It was a fine warm evening at Kimberley, and Frank Farnborough, just before the dinner hour at the “Central,” was fortifying his digestion with a glass of sherry and bitters, and feeling on very good terms with himself. He had put in an excellent day’s work at De Beers, that colossal diamond company’s office, where he had the good fortune to be employed, and had that morning received from his chief an intimation that his salary had been raised to four hundred pounds per annum. Four hundred per annum is not an immense sum in Kimberley, where living is dear all round; but for a young man of five-and-twenty, of fairly careful habits, it seemed not so bad a stipend. And so Frank sat down to the excellent menu, always to be found at the “Central,” at peace with the world and with a sound appetite for his dinner. Next to him was a fellow-member of the principal Kimberley cricket team, and, as they were both old friends and enthusiasts, they chatted freely. Everywhere around them sat that curious commingling of mankind usually to be seen at a Kimberley table d’hôte– diamond dealers, Government officials, stock-brokers, detectives, Jews, Germans, Englishmen and Scots, and a few Irish, hunters and traders from the far interior, miners, prospectors, concessionaires, and others. A few women leavened by their presence the mass of mankind, their numbers just now being increased by some members of a theatrical company playing in the town.

As for Frank and his companion, they drank their cool lager from tall tankards, ate their dinners, listened with some amusement to the impossible yarns of an American miner from the Transvaal, and, presently rising, sought the veranda chairs and took their coffee. In a little while Frank’s comrade left him for some engagement in the town.

Frank finished his coffee and sat smoking in some meditation. He was on the whole, as we have seen, on good terms with himself, but there was one little cloud upon his horizon, which gave pause to his thoughts. Like many other young fellows, he lodged in the bungalow house of another man; that is, he had a good bedroom and the run of the sitting-rooms in the house of Otto Staarbrucker, an Afrikander of mixed German and Semitic origin, a decent fellow enough, in his way, who ran a store in Kimberley. This arrangement suited Frank Farnborough well enough; he paid a moderate rental, took his meals at the “Central,” and preserved his personal liberty intact. But Otto Staarbrucker had a sister, Nina, who played housekeeper, and played her part very charmingly. Nina was a colonial girl of really excellent manners and education. Like many Afrikanders, nowadays, she had been sent to Europe for her schooling, and having made the most of her opportunities, had returned to the Cape a very charming and well-educated young woman. Moreover, she was undeniably attractive, very beautiful most Kimberley folks thought her. On the mother’s side there was blood of the Spanish Jews in her veins – and Nina, a sparkling yet refined brunette, showed in her blue-black hair, magnificent eyes, warm complexion, and shapely figure, some of the best points of that Spanish type.

These two young people had been a good deal together of late – mostly in the warm evenings, when Kimberley people sit in their verandas – stoeps, they call them in South Africa – cooling down after the fiery heat of the corrugated-iron town. It was pleasant to watch the stars, to smoke the placid pipe, and to talk about Europe and European things to a handsome girl – a girl who took small pains to conceal her friendliness for the well set-up, manly Englishman, who treated her with the deference of a gentleman (a thing not always understood in South Africa), and withal could converse pleasantly and well on other topics than diamonds, gambling, and sport Frank Farnborough, as he ruminated over his pipe this evening out there in the “Central” fore-court – garden, I suppose one should call it – asked himself a plain question.

“Things are becoming ‘steep,’” he thought to himself. “I am getting too fond of Nina, and I half believe she’s inclined to like me. She’s a nice and a really good girl, I believe. One could go far for a girl like her. And yet – that Jewish blood is a fatal objection. It won’t do, I’m afraid, and the people at home would be horrified. I shall have to chill off a bit, and get rooms elsewhere. I shall be sorry, very sorry, but I don’t like the girl well enough to swallow her relations, even supposing I were well enough off to marry, which I am not.”

As if bent upon forthwith proving his new-found resolve, the young man soon after rose and betook himself along the Du Toit’s Pan road, in the direction of his domicile. Presently he entered the house and passed through to the little garden behind. As his form appeared between the darkness of the garden and the light of the passage, a soft voice, coming from the direction of a low table on which stood a lamp, said, “That you, Mr Farnborough?”

“Yes,” he returned, as he sat down by the speaker. “I’m here. What are you doing, I wonder?”

“Oh, I’m just now deep in your ‘Malay Archipelago.’ What a good book it is, and what a wonderful time Wallace had among his birds and insects; and what an interesting country to explore! This burnt-up Kimberley makes one sigh for green islands, and palm-trees and blue seas. Otto and I will certainly have to go to Kalk Bay for Christmas. There are no palm-trees, certainly, but there’s a delicious blue sea. A year at Kimberley is enough to try even a bushman.”

“Well,” returned Frank, “one does want a change from tin shanties and red dust occasionally. I shall enjoy the trip to Cape Town too. We shall have a pretty busy time of it with cricket in the tournament week; but I shall manage to get a dip in the sea now and then, I hope. I positively long for it.”

As Nina leaned back in her big easy-chair, in her creamy Surah silk, and in the half-light of the lamp, she looked very bewitching, and not a little pleased, as they chatted together. Her white teeth flashed in a quick smile to the compliment which Frank paid her, as the conversation drifted from a butterfly caught in the garden, to the discovery he had made that she was one of the few girls in Kimberley who understood the art of arraying herself in an artistic manner. She rewarded Frank’s pretty speech by ringing for tea.

“What a blessing it is,” she went on, leaning back luxuriously, “to have a quiet evening. Somehow, Otto’s friends pall upon one. I wish he had more English friends. I’m afraid my four years in England have rather spoilt me for Otto’s set here. If it were not for you, indeed, and one or two others now and again, things would be rather dismal. Stocks, shares, companies, and diamonds, reiterated day after day, are apt to weary female ears. I sometimes long to shake myself free from it all. Yet, as you know, here am I, a sort of prisoner at will.”

Frank, who had been pouring out more tea, now placed his chair a little nearer to his companion’s as he handed her her cup.

“Come,” he said, “a princess should hardly talk of prisons. Why, you have all Kimberley at your beck and call, if you like. Why don’t you come down from your pedestal and make one of your subjects happy?”

“Ah!” she returned, with a little sigh, “my prince hasn’t come along yet I must wait.”

Frank, I am afraid, was getting a little out of his depth. He had intended, this evening, to be diplomatic and had manifestly failed. He looked up into the glorious star-lit sky, into the blue darkness; he felt the pleasant, cool night air about him; he looked upon the face of the girl by his side – its wonderful Spanish beauty, perfectly enframed by the clear light of the lamp. There was a shade of melancholy upon Nina’s face. A little pity, tinged with an immense deal of admiration, combined with almost overpowering force to beat down Frank’s resolutions of an hour or two back. He bent his head, took the girl’s hand into his own, and lightly kissed it. It was the first time he had ventured so much, and the contact with the warm, soft, shapely flesh thrilled him.

“Don’t be down on your luck, Nina,” he said. “Things are not so bad. You have at all events some one who would give a good deal to be able to help you – some one who – ”

At that moment, just when the depression upon Nina’s face had passed, as passes the light cloud wrack from before the moon, a man’s loud, rather guttural voice was heard from within the house, and a figure passed into the darkness of the garden. At the sound, the girl’s hand was snatched from its temporary occupancy.

“Hallo! Nina,” said the voice of Otto, her brother, “any tea out there? I’m as thirsty as a salamander.”

The tea was poured out, the conversation turned upon indifferent topics, and for two people the interest of the evening had vanished.

Next morning, early, Frank Farnborough found a note and package awaiting him. He opened the letter, which ran thus:

“Kimberley – In a dickens of a hurry.

“My dear Frank, —

“Have just got down by post-cart (it was before the railway had been pushed beyond Kimberley), and am off to catch the train for Cape Town, so can’t possibly see you. I had a good, if rather rough, time in ’Mangwato. Knowing your love of natural history specimens, I send you with this a small crocodile, which I picked up in a dried, mummified condition in some bush on the banks of the Mahalapsi River – a dry watercourse running into the Limpopo. How the crocodile got there, I don’t know. Probably it found its way up the river-course during the rains, and was left stranded when the drought came. Perhaps it may interest you; if not, chuck it away. Good-bye, old chap. I shall be at Kimberley again in two months’ time, and will look you up.

“Yours ever, —

“Horace Kentburn.”

Frank smiled as he read his friend’s characteristic letter, and turned at once to the parcel – a package of sacking, some three and a half feet long. This was quickly ripped open, and the contents, a miniature crocodile, as parched and hard as a sun-dried ox-hide, but otherwise in good condition, was exposed.

“I know what I’ll do with this,” said Frank to himself; “I’ll soak the beast in my bath till evening, and then see if I can cut him open and stuff him a bit; he seems to have been perfectly sun-baked.”

The crocodile was bestowed in a long plunge bath, and covered with water. Frank found it not sufficiently softened that evening, and had to skirmish elsewhere for a bath next morning in consequence. But the following evening, on taking the reptile out of soak, it was found to be much more amenable to the knife; and after dinner, Frank returned to his quarters prepared thoroughly to enjoy himself. First he got into some loose old flannels; then tucked up his sleeves, took his treasure finally out of the bath, carefully dried it, placed it stomach upwards upon his table, which he had previously covered with brown paper for the purpose, and then, taking up his sharpest knife, began his operations. The skin of the crocodile’s stomach was now pretty soft and flexible; it had apparently never been touched with the knife, and Frank made a long incision from the chest to near the tail. Then, taking back the skin on either side, he prepared to remove what remained of the long-mummified interior. As he cut and scraped hither and thither, his knife came twice or thrice in contact with pieces of gravel. Two pebbles were found and put aside, and again the knife-edge struck something hard.

“Hang these pebbles!” exclaimed the operator; “they’ll ruin my knife. What the dickens do these creatures want to turn their intestines into gravel-pits for, I wonder?”

His hand sought the offending stone, which was extracted and brought to the lamp-light. Now this pebble differed from its predecessors – differed so materially in shape and touch, that Frank held it closer yet to the light. He stared hard at the stone, which, as it lay between his thumb and forefinger, looked not unlike a symmetrical piece of clear gum-arabic, and then, giving vent to a prolonged whistle, he exclaimed, in a tone of suppressed excitement, “By all that’s holy! A fifty carat stone! Worth hundreds, or I’m a Dutchman.”

He sat down, pushed the crocodile farther from him, brought the lamp nearer, turned up the wick a little, and then, placing the diamond – for diamond it was – on the table between him and the lamp, proceeded to take a careful survey of it, turning it over now and again. The stone resembled in its shape almost exactly the bull’s-eye sweetmeat of the British schoolboy. It was of a clear, white colour, and when cut would, as Frank Farnborough very well knew, turn out a perfect brilliant of fine water. There was no trace of “off-colour” about it, and it was apparently flawless and perfect. South African diamond experts can tell almost with certainty from what mine a particular stone has been produced, and it seemed to Frank that the matchless octahedron in front of him resembled in character the finest stones of the Vaal River diggings – from which the choicest gems of Africa have come.

Many thoughts ran through the young man’s brain. Here in front of him, in the compass of a small walnut, lay wealth to the extent of some hundreds of pounds. Where did that stone come from? Did the crocodile swallow it with the other pebbles on the Mahalapsi river, or the banks of the adjacent Limpopo? Why, there might be – nay, probably was – another mine lying dormant up there – a mine of fabulous wealth. Why should he not be its discoverer, and become a millionaire? As these thoughts flashed through his brain, a hand was laid on his shoulder, and a merry feminine voice exclaimed, “Why, Mr Farnborough, what have you got there?”

Frank seized the diamond, sprang up with flushed face and excited eyes, and was confronted with Nina and her brother, both regarding him very curiously.

Otto Staarbrucker spoke first. “Hullo, Frank! You seem to be mightily engrossed. What’s your wonderful discovery?”

The Englishman looked keenly from one to another of his interrogators, hesitated momentarily, then made up his mind and answered frankly, but in a low, intense voice:

“My wonderful discovery is this. Inside that dried-up crocodile I’ve found a big diamond. It’s worth hundreds anyhow, and there must be more where it came from. Look at it, but for God’s sake keep quiet about it.”

Staarbrucker took the stone from Frank, held it upon his big fat white palm, and bent down to the lamp-light. Nina’s pretty, dark head bent down too, so that her straying hair touched her brother’s as they gazed earnestly at the mysterious gem. Presently Otto took the stone in his fingers, held it to the light, weighed it carefully, and then said solemnly and sententiously, “Worth eight hundred pounds, if it’s worth a red cent!”

Nina broke in, “My goodness, Frank – Mr Farnborough – where did you get the stone from, and what are you going to do with it?”