This was intended as a solemn form of asseveration adapted to the white man's habits.
Yes, reader, he told the truth; and strange to say, the miners knew the largest stones were in these great lumps of carbonate, but then the lumps were so cruelly hard, they lost all patience with them, and so, finding it was no use to break some of them, and not all, they rejected them all, with curses; and thus this great stone was carted away as rubbish from the mine, and found, like a toad in a hole, by Squat.
“Well,” said Christopher, “after all, you are an honest fellow, and I think I will buy it; but first you must show me out of this wood; I am not going to be eaten alive in it for want of the king of rifles.”
Squat assented eagerly, and they started at once. They passed the skeleton of the eland; its very bones were polished, and its head carried into the wood; and looking back they saw vultures busy on the lion. They soon cleared the wood.
Squat handed Staines the diamond—when it touched his hand, as his own, a bolt of ice seemed to run down his back, and hot water to follow it—and the money, horse, rifle, and skin were made over to Squat.
“Shake hands over it, Squat,” said Staines; “you are hard, but you are honest.”
“Iss, master, I a good much hard and honest,” said Squat.
“Good-by, old fellow.”
“Good-by, master.”
And Squat strutted away, with the halter in his hand, horse following him, rifle under his arm, and the lion's skin over his shoulders, and the tail trailing, a figure sublime in his own eyes, ridiculous in creation's. So vanity triumphed, even in the wilds of Africa.