"Two miners, monsieur. I found zem several miles away on ze veldt. They have tramped for days without food; they are starving."
"Do they know the trail?"
"Yes, monsieur. Ze big man knows ze trail. He will show ze way—for a consideration."
"Good! First give them some breakfast and then we'll go."
He waved his hand in the direction of the cook's mess, where the coffee was already steaming on the fire, and, turning away, began to gather his things together, preparatory to departure. There was no reason why he should have anything to say to the strangers. In fact, it would be better if they did not see him, or know who he was. It was possible that they had been at the mines when he arrived, in which case they would instantly recognize him as the American who had come to take the big diamonds to New York. Besides, they were not particularly attractive objects. What did their adventures and mishaps matter to him? He had troubles of his own. François could look after their wants. The main thing was to find the trail and get started back toward Cape Town as soon as possible. When the strangers had been fed they would set out, and, the trail once found, he would give them a lift on their way and a few sovereigns into the bargain. That would more than compensate them for all their trouble.
Meanwhile he thought he would take a quiet walk. His legs were stiff from sitting so long. A little exercise would do him the world of good. So, without a word to anybody, he slipped out of camp unobserved and started off at a brisk gait.
The region where they had halted seemed to be the center of Nowhere, a land where had reigned for all time the abomination of desolation spoken of by all the prophets. Knocking about the world, as he had done for a lifetime, Kenneth had seen some queer spots in the world, but never had he come across so savagely repellent a spot as this. It was Nature in her harshest mood—not a vestige in any direction of human or animal life. There was not a farm, not a Boer or Kaffir, not even a tree to be seen. Nothing in every direction but a monotonous waste of yellow sand, rough stones and stunted grass. An unnatural stillness filled the air, making the silence oppressive, and uncanny. The soil was so poor that cultivation was impossible. The ground, strewn with broken rocks and sharp stones which cut the shoes and hurt the feet, suggested that in prehistoric times the plateau had been swept by a volcanic tempest. The slopes of the few scattered kopjies were sparsely covered with verdure and as he strode along, he passed here and there clumps of trees, veritable oases in the desert, or deep water holes under overhanging rocks where under cover of night, strange beasts came to drink. Apart from these few oases, it was a dreary monotonous waste of rock and sand, where neither beast or man could find food or shelter.
He had walked about three miles and was just passing a kopjie where a group of stunted trees offered a little shelter from the glare of the sun on the yellow gravel when he began to feel tired. Sitting down on a decayed tree stump, he took out his pipe, removed his helmet, and laying lazily back, closed his eyes, a favorite trick of his when he wished to concentrate his thoughts.
The trip, tiresome as it was, had certainly been worth while. His ambitious dreams had been more than realized. He could scarcely wait for his arrival to tell Helen the good news. He had secured signatures to a plan of consolidation of practically all the mining companies operating in South Africa. Until now, these companies had been engaged in a fierce and disastrous competition, which cut into each other's profits and cheapened the market price of stones. He had suggested a scheme of amalgamation which would put all the mines under one management, and fix arbitrary prices for diamonds which henceforth could not be sold under a certain figure agreed upon by the Syndicate. This plan, which had the general approval of the mining companies, practically gave Kenneth Traynor control of the diamond industry of the world, an industry which in South Africa alone had already produced 100,000,000 carats estimated to be worth $750,000,000. Overnight, Kenneth found himself many times a millionaire.
It had come at last—what he waited for all these years. This new consolidation deal meant great wealth to its promoters. What would he do with it? Most men need only enough for their actual needs, but he had higher aims. An ardent socialist he would use his money for the cause. Not, however, in the way others did, but to buy influence, power. He would fight Capitalism, in his own way. He would go into politics, run for public office, try and remedy some of the economic abuses from which people of the United States were now suffering. He would wage warfare on the high cost of living, on Greed and Graft. He would attack the Plutocracy in its stronghold, lay bare the inner workings of the System, the concentration of the wealth of the entire country in the hands of a few, by which the rich each year were becoming richer and the poor each year poorer. It would not be the first time a multi-millionaire had espoused the cause of the proletariat, but he would carry on the fight more vigorously than anyone had done. He would force an issue, make Greed disgorge its ill-gotten gains and accord to Labor its rightful place in the sun, its proper share of the world's production of wealth. His sympathies in the bitter struggle between the capitalists and the wage earners were wholly with the people who under the present wage system, had little chance to raise themselves from the mire. But he was intelligent enough to realize that the faults were not all on the side of Capital. Labor, too, needed the curb at times. Too ready to listen to the reckless harangues of irresponsible professional demagogues, wage earners were often as tyrannical as capitalists, insisting on impossible demands, rejecting sober compromise which, in the end, must be the basis of all amicable relations between employer and employed.