Luck at the Diamond Fields

by Dalrymple J. Belgrave

“Played out, eh? well, take a good nip of this, it will pull you together if anything will, it’s Eckshaw’s Number One, the best brandy that comes to this cursed country. Where have you come from, eh?” The voice I somehow seemed to remember, and as the brandy revived me I took a look at the Good Samaritan who had come to my assistance. I knew him; the pleasant voice belonged to Jim Dormer, and it was his handsome reckless face I saw looking down at me.

“I have come from the gold-fields and have had a hardish time of it,” I said in answer to his question.

“Well, I don’t know that I’d have done myself up like that to come to this wretched hole Kimberley; but you’d better get into my cart—I’ll give you a lift in anyhow,” he said. Of course I was glad enough to accept his offer and to get into his cart, which was drawn up close to where we were, his Kaffir boy holding the reins.

“Let’s see, ain’t you Mr Gordon, who used to have claims at old De Beer’s? Thought I knew you. Do you remember that day on the racecourse when Cockney Bill and his pals tried the system of going for the banker at faro and jumping his satchel? That system would have come off if it hadn’t been for your taking a hand in the game.” I remembered the incident he alluded to, which took place one evening after the races. Some roughs had made an attack upon him and his partner, who were keeping a faro table, and I, who had been losing my money to him, came to his assistance. “I haven’t forgotten it and shan’t in a hurry. ‘That’s the sort of chap I’d like to have with me in anything that wanted good grit,’ I said to myself when I saw you in that row,” he said.

“Look here, Mr Gordon, where are you going to put up when you get to Kimberley?” he added, after thinking for some time. “If you like to come to my place I can look after you and give you as good a room as you will get at any of the hotels, and you’ll be made quiet and comfortable.” It was a good-natured offer, and all the more good-natured from the way he put it; but I hesitated before I accepted it.

“Ah, you think that stopping with Jim Dormer won’t sound over well, and I don’t say you’re not right; but times are bad in the camp and there isn’t much chance of your getting a billet all at once, so you might stop at my place till you get over your tramp down; but you won’t hurt my feelings by refusing, I ain’t one of the respectable crowd and don’t want to be.”

He had guessed my thoughts. He was a pleasant, well-mannered fellow enough, but he had acquired rather a doubtful character, and I am afraid to a certain extent deserved it. It would be difficult for any one who wished to do so in a friendly spirit to say how he lived and had lived for the last ten years. He himself would probably admit that he was a professional gambler. His enemies would declare that in the matter of buying stolen diamonds he was not altogether without reproach. This charge, however, was not true, for he preferred winning money from the buyers of stolen diamonds to indulging in such a risky trade on his own account. He never for one moment was able to see that he was one whit worse than the people who belonged to what he called the respectable crowd.

He won money from some of the biggest thieves in the camp, so he was called a sharper and an associate of bad characters, while your respectable men got hold of honest men’s money with their bubble companies. “He wished he got as much the best of it at a deal of faro as honest Mr Bowker, the member of the Legislative Assembly, did when he started the Boschfontein Mining Company. He was too straight to be respectable, that’s where he went wrong,” he would say to me when I got to know him better; and I believe he thought it.

“Thanks, you’re a good fellow, but I don’t like to sponge on you; I am dead broke,” I said in answer to his invitation.

“Dead broke be blowed! No man’s dead broke till his neck’s broke; and as for sponging on me, one never loses anything by doing a good turn to one of your sort who has good grit. You’re looking pretty bad though—dysentery do you say? Well, you’d better watch it; come up to my place and I’ll put you straight,” he said.