From Veldt Camp Fires Part 11

"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 b.u.t.terfly 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 pa.s.sed, as pa.s.ses the light cloud wrack from before the moon, a man's loud, rather guttural voice was heard from within the house, and a figure pa.s.sed into the darkness of the garden. At the sound, the girl's hand was s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 d.i.c.kens 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 sc.r.a.ped 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 d.i.c.kens 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 compa.s.s 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 G.o.d'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?"

"Well, Miss Nina," returned Frank, looking pleasantly at the girl's handsome, excited face, "I hardly know how to answer you at present.

That crocodile came from up-country, and I suppose the diamond came from the same locality. It's all tumbled so suddenly upon me, that I hardly know what to say or what to think. The best plan, I take it, is to have a good night's sleep on it; then I'll make up my mind in the morning, and have a long talk with your brother and you. Meanwhile, I know I can trust to you and Otto to keep the strictest silence about the matter.

If it got known in Kimberley, I should be pestered to death, and perhaps have the detectives down upon me into the bargain."

"That's all right, Frank, my boy," broke in Staarbrucker, in his big Teutonic voice; "we'll take care of that. Nina's the safest girl in Kimberley, and this is much too important a business to be ruined in that way. Why, there may be a fortune for us all, where that stone came from, who knows?"

Already Otto Staarbrucker spoke as if he claimed an interest in the find; and although there was not much in the speech, yet Frank only resented the patronising tone in which it was delivered.

"Well, I've pretty carefully prospected the interior of this animal,"

said Frank, showing the now perfectly clean mummy. "He's been a good friend to me, and I'll put him away, and we'll have a smoke."

For another two hours, the three sat together on the stoep at the back of the house, discussing the situation. Staarbrucker fished his hardest to discover the exact whereabouts of the place from whence the crocodile had come. Frank fenced with his palpably leading questions, and put him off laughingly with, "You shall know all about it in good time. For the present you may take it the beast came from his natural home somewhere up the Crocodile River." [The Limpopo River is in South Africa universally known as the Crocodile.] Presently the sitting broke up, and they retired to their respective rooms. Nina's handshake, as she said good-night to Frank, was particularly friendly, and Frank himself thought he had never seen the girl look more bewitching.

"Pleasant dreams," she said, as she turned away; "I'm so glad of your luck. I suppose to-night you'll be filling your pockets with glorious gems in some fresh Tom Tiddler's ground. Mind you put your diamond under your pillow and lock your door. Good-night."

Otto Staarbrucker went to his bedroom too, but not for some hours to sleep. He had too much upon his mind. Business had been very bad of late. The Du Toit's Pan mine had been shut down, and had still further depressed trade at his end of the town, and, to crown all, he had been gambling in Randt mines, and had lost heavily.

Otto's once flourishing business was vanishing into thin air, and it was a question whether he should not immediately cut his losses and get out of Kimberley with what few hundreds he could sc.r.a.pe together, before all had gone to ruin.

This diamond discovery of Frank Farnborough's somehow strongly appealed to his imagination. Where that magnificent stone came from, there must be others--probably quant.i.ties of them. It would surely be worth risking two or three hundred in exploration. Frank was a free, open-hearted fellow enough, and although not easily to be driven, would no doubt welcome his offer to find the money for prospecting thoroughly upon half profits, or some such bargain. It must be done; there seemed no other reasonable way out of the tangle of difficulties that beset him. He would speak to Frank about it early in the morning. Comforted with this reflection, he fell asleep.

They breakfasted betimes at the Staarbruckers, and after the meal, Nina having gone into the garden, Otto proceeded to open his proposal to the young Englishman, who had stayed this morning to breakfast. He hinted first that there might be serious difficulty in disposing of so valuable a diamond, and, indeed, as Frank already recognised, that was true enough. The proper course would be to "declare" the stone to the authorities; but would they accept his story--wildly improbable as it appeared on the face of it?

No one in England can realise the thick and poisonous atmosphere of suspicion and distrust in which the immense diamond industry of Kimberley is enwrapped. Its miasma penetrates everywhere, and protected as is the industry by the most severe and brutal--nay, even degrading-- laws and restrictions, which an all-powerful "ring" has been able to force through the Cape Parliament, no man is absolutely safe from it.

And, even Frank, an employe of the great De Beers Company itself, a servant of proved integrity and some service, might well hesitate before exposing himself to the tremendous difficulty of proving a strong and valid t.i.tle to the stone in his possession.

"Well, Frank," said Staarbrucker, "have you made up your mind about your diamond? What are you going to do with it?"

"I don't quite know yet," answered Frank, taking his pipe out of his mouth. "It's an infernally difficult puzzle, and I haven't hit on a solution. What do you advise?" Here was Otto's opening.

"Well, my boy," he answered, "I've thought a good deal over the matter, and in my opinion, you'd better keep your discovery to ourselves at present. Now I'm prepared to make you an offer. I'll find the expenses of a prospecting trip to the place where your crocodile came from, and take a competent miner up with us--I know several good men to choose from--on the condition that, in the event of our finding more stones, or a mine, I am to stand in halves with you. I suppose such a trip would cost three hundred pounds or thereabouts. It's a sporting offer; what do you say to it?"

"No, I don't think I'll close at present," returned Frank; "I'll take another few hours to think it over. Perhaps I'll mention the matter to an old friend of mine, and take his advice."