Luck at the Diamond Fields

by Dalrymple J. Belgrave

“Poor old dear, he is always troubling himself about me, and says I am growing up a perfect savage, without any accomplishments and very little education, and shall have terribly hard work to make up for lost time when I get home. Well, I’ll back myself to cook, set a line for fish, nurse any one who’s down with fever, and sort for diamonds, against any one on the river; these are accomplishments enough for Red Shirt, and that’s where I shall be all my life, so far as I can see. He was talking the other day about sending me home, and staying out here himself; but that’s absurd, isn’t it?”

Charlie did not answer. The idea of Red Shirt Rush without Connie was miserable enough, for all his good sense told him that the General was right. Connie ought not to be growing up in a digger’s camp, with little education that was not of a very practical character.

“Why don’t you say that I couldn’t be improved, Charlie? You’re not half polite. I suspect you’re comparing me with some of those fine ladies you have met at Kimberley. Come, I bet I know about as much out of books as they do, for I have read all the old man has, and they are a good mixed lot. Besides, if I want educating ever so much, how could I go home and leave him by himself? He is wretched enough as it is, and I couldn’t bear to leave him—besides, I don’t want to say good-bye to all my old friends.”

Charlie’s heart gave rather a jump—he wondered whether he were one of the friends she would most mind saying good-bye to. He didn’t believe much in the General’s sanguine expectations being realised, and thought that Connie was likely to stand in need some day of a stronger protector than her father; and her words gave him a feeling of hope, and he determined that he would speak out. Just then, however, the General’s voice was heard calling for Connie, and the interruption disconcerted Charlie, who turned off a sentence he was beginning and determined to put it off for another day. His heart failed him, and he thought that the old General would not like it, and that Connie might take it amiss; so knocking the ashes out of his pipe he said good-bye to Connie, and walked up the bank to where he was working, although he longed to stay and talk to her, and there was not the slightest reason why he should not have done so. On his way to his claim he passed the ground where the General was working. It was a claim which had been partly worked in the old days, before the New Rush, as the Kimberley mine was then called, was found, and had been deserted before it had been worked out.

After its former owners had abandoned it and had gone to try their luck at the new diggings, the General had worked it down to the bed rock, some thirty feet deep, and was driving into the side of the claim towards the ground where he had seen the diamond found. Charlie stood for a moment or two watching him at work.

The drive certainly did not look very safe; the old man was working near a mass of rock which jutted out over him. The ground into which he was driving was the only part of the adjoining claim that had not been worked out, its former owners having thrown their stones and rubbish there, and so had been unable to get at it easily when they had worked out the rest of the claim. The weight on the natural surface of the ground made the place where the General was driving into look all the more awkward.

“I say, that’s rather a nasty-looking boulder you are working under, isn’t it? It would flatten out any one in the drive pretty well if it were to slip,” Charlie shouted out to the General, who had crawled out of his drive for a minute.

“Slip! Bosh! Suppose the moon were to slip. Nothing but dynamite would move that boulder! Perhaps you would like to teach me how to work the claim,” the elder digger growled out in response; and then he crawled into the tunnel, and Charlie went on, knowing that it was useless to remonstrate any more, and hoping that it would be all right.

“Well, youngster, you’ve come back to work at last; you’re a pretty sort of partner! Been down at the General’s? You’re always loafing down there—it makes me laugh to see how that little bit of a girl fools you,” a big dissipated-looking man, who was lying on the ground smoking a pipe, said as Charlie came up to the claim.

This was his partner, Bill Jeffson, and as he heard his voice Charlie thought to himself that one of the first steps he would take towards turning over a new leaf would be to break with Mr Bill, so he answered him rather shortly, and told him that he had better mind his own business.