It was cold for us in khaki that evening by the Wolwe, though we did not lack overcoats. The spruit tinkled icily along patches of gravel in the blue clay, and late June's high moon seemed pouring down a Canadian wintriness. "No fire," ordered Deschamps, lest far-sighted Boer parties, skilled in surprises, might locate us. But the old burgher showed how to make small glowing heaps of dry offal, which had been plentifully left of old by troops of deer and antelope coming to drink at the spruit. Over one of these tiny smokeless fires our lieutenant sat with the prisoner. I think I see again the reflection of the little flame flickering on the old giant's enormous beard and shapely outspread hands.
We had supped heavily on his meat and meal, but sleep in that nipping air came by dozes only, and drowsiness departed when digestion had relieved repletion. At midnight, when the vedettes were changed and the moon sagged low, we all were more wakeful than early in the evening. There had been little talk, and that in the low voices of endurance; but now Deschamps and Swartz fell into discourse about the Kimberley mines. This led to discussing the greater diamonds of South Africa, and so on till the burgher began a story stranger than fiction:
"One of the biggest stones ever taken from blue clay is still uncut. It has never been offered for sale. Near this very place it was found by Vassell Swartz, my cousin. The man is not rich even for a Free State burgher. He is fond of money. He believes his diamond to be worth twelve thousand pounds. No man could wish harder to sell anything. And yet he has not offered it. He has not even shown it. His wife has not seen it. He has had it constantly near him for eleven years. He has handled it frequently—in its setting. But he has not ventured to look at it since the morning after he found it. You wonder at that. Is it possible a rough diamond can shine so bright as dangerously to dazzle the eyes? No; Vassell would be glad to stare at it all day. But its setting prevents him. And yet he set it himself."
The old burgher paused and looked about on our puzzled faces with some air of satisfaction at their interest.
"It is quite a riddle," said Deschamps.
"So it is. And I will make it harder. You have been told that we Boers think nothing of killing Kaffirs? But all Swartzdorp could tell you that my cousin Vassell could scarcely bear to let a Kaffir out of his sight. That is mysterious? Well, I will not go on talking in parables. I will tell you the thing just as I heard it from Vassell or know about it myself.
"Eleven years ago, Vassell and his brother, my cousin Claas, went off as usual to Makori's country beyond the Limpopo, elephant-hunting. Ivory was so plenty that they trekked back a month earlier than they had expected. On the return Vassell's riding-horse fell lame not long after crossing this very Wolwe spruit by a higher ford. My cousin gave the beast no rest till evening, and no attention until after they had made a laager against lions and had eaten supper. Then he took a brand from the fire and looked into the hoof. In it he found a whitish stone of about the bigness of an elephant-bullet of six to the pound. It was of the colour of alum, and in the torchlight it glistened as the scale of a fish.
"Vassell had never seen a rough diamond. And he had heard of diamonds as brighter than glittering glass. He thought only that the pebble was a pretty stone. The man's heart was soft with nearing his wife and children, so he slipped the pebble into his empty elephant-bullet pouch, thinking to give it for a toy to his little Anna. There it lay forgotten until his fingers went groping for a bullet at the next daybreak. Kaffirs were then trying to rush my cousins' laager.
"Wild Kaffirs these were, driven from Kimberley for unruliness in drink. They were going back to their tribe; they had come far without food, and they smelled the meat and meal in the wagons—so Matakit afterward told. But no hunger could have driven them against a Boer laager. They mistook the wagons for the wagons of Englishmen."
The French Canadians smiled unoffended, but my jaws snapped. Swartz turned to me courteously: