Wealth. The riches lying waste for ages in this remote solitude must at length yield to the grasping hand of their predestined owner—Man. With the first human footfall in this solemn untrodden recess rushed in the jarring cares and considerations of the busy world in all its whirling haste—its feverish strivings. Wealth!
With the point of his geological hammer Renshaw next proceeded to chip a circle around the great diamond. Clink, clink! The hammer bit its way slowly but surely into the face of the hard rock. Clink, clink! The circle deepened. The chips flew into their eager faces. No thought of pausing to rest.
It was a long job and a tedious one. At length the quartz cracked, then split. The superb stone rolled into Renshaw’s hand.
“Seven or eight hundred carats, if it’s one,” he said, holding it up to the light, and then passing it to his companion. “Look what a shine it has, even in the rough. It must have been partially ‘cut’ by the splitting of the quartz, even as old Greenway conjectured. Directly I saw this boulder, split in half like that, I knew that it was in the cleft that we had to search. Yet the thing is a perfect marvel, well-nigh outside all experience.”
“I wonder what the schelm Bushmen will think when they find that their ‘devil’s eye’ has knocked off shining,” said Sellon. “By Jove, we should look precious fools if they were to drop down and quietly sneak our rope!”
“We should,” assented Renshaw, gravely. “We should be pinned in a trap for all time.”
“Pho! The very thought of it makes one’s blood run cold. But, I say, let’s hunt for some more stones, and then clear out as soon as possible.”
A careful search having convinced Renshaw that such a freak of Nature was not likely to repeat itself, and that neither the cleft nor the sides of the great boulder offered any more of its marvellous treasures to be had for the taking, they turned away to search the gravelly soil of the crater, with what intensity of eagerness only those who have experienced the truly gambling passion involved in treasure-seeking can form an idea. No food had passed their lips since the previous evening, yet not a moment could be spared from the fierce, feverish quest for wealth. They ate their dry and scanty rations with one hand while wielding pick and shovel with the other. Even the torments of thirst, for the contents of their pocket flasks were as a mere drop to the ocean in the torrid, focussed heat now pouring down into this iron-bound hollow, they hardly felt. Each and every energy was merged in that intense and craving treasure hunt.
“Well, this can’t go on for ever,” said Renshaw at last, pausing to wipe his streaming brow. “What do you say to knocking off now, and leaving this for another day? Remember, we are not out of the wood yet. There is such a thing as leaving well alone. And we have done more than well.”
They had. It wanted about two hours to sunset. In the course of this long day’s work they had found upwards of sixty diamonds—besides the superb Eye. All were good stones, some of them indeed really magnificent. This long-sealed-up treasure-house of the earth, now that its doors were opened, yielded its riches in no niggardly fashion.