“At last the opportunity came. I was out on the berg with one of the fellows one day, trying to get a shot at something, and gradually worked round to the place. Directly I got near it, he began to show the same signs of scare, but I paid no heed to him and just began to clamber down. It was an awful place to get at, though. After a good deal of dangerous climbing I got to a kind of sloping terrace, all stones and dry dusty earth. While I was resting I stooped down to pick up a stone, and at the same time lifted a little bit of carbonised-looking stuff. Heavens, how I jumped! It was a diamond.
“Didn’t I look about for more! I only found one, though; and after a lot of fossicking round I began to think of going further down, when a most infernal row overhead altered my mind. There were all my Bushmen friends, the whole lot of them, jabbering in the most threatening manner; and, worse still, they’d all got their bows and were about to take pot shots at me. Sore enough, I had only just time to get under a rock when a perfect shower of their little poison sticks came rattling about my ears.
“Things now looked desperate. I daren’t go up among them, and I couldn’t move out of my shelter. They seemed afraid to come down and that was my only chance. I must wait until night.
“All at once, as I lay crouching there, under cover from their deadly little arrows, a thought struck across my brain that made every drop of blood in my body tingle. That green, staring Eye which I had seen shining down there in the depths was nothing less than a diamond, and a diamond of enormous size. If only I could get at it.
“But this is just what I couldn’t do. To cut the tale short I waited until night and then descended further. There gleamed the Eye, brighter, more dazzling than ever. But between it and me was a big krantz, and I pulled up on the very brink, just in time to escape going over. And the place seemed edged in all round by krantzes.
“My mind was made up. I’d come again. No use staying on now to be starved out and killed by those miserable little yellow devils. So I crept up to the top again, and, as I expected, the coast was clear. It doesn’t matter how long I took to work my way down into civilised parts again.
“No rest for me after that. The idea of that huge stone—worth, maybe, tens of thousands of pounds, lying there to be had for the picking up—left me no rest night or day. In six months I was back there again, me and a mate. But when we reached the spot where I first sighted the Eye it was not there. Nothing but pitch darkness. We felt pretty blank then, I can tell you. We waited t ll nearly dawn. Suddenly Jim gave a shout.
“There it is!
“There it was, too, glittering as before. Then it faded. And at that moment we had to ‘fade’ too, for a volley of arrows came whistling among us, and poor Jim fell with a dozen in him.
“I don’t know how I got away, but I did, and that’s all about it. The furious little devils came swarming from rock to rock, and I couldn’t get in a fair shot at them. I had to run for my life, and if I hadn’t known those awful mountains almost as well as they did I shouldn’t have escaped either. I’m getting mortal weak, friend—stay—another drink of brandy.