I laughed at the poor chap's foolish bombast, as I thought it; but I have often wondered since whether the gift of that cheap pipe did not, after all, alter the whole of my life.
For that evening, sure enough, the Bushmen again returned empty-handed, and acting on my former resolve, I called my own followers together, and told them to make ready to return to Walfisch Bay. Later, as I sat in my tent writing up my diary by the light of a feeble candle, and with the gloomiest of thoughts for company, I heard Inyati's voice outside. "Master," he said, in a low tone but little above a whisper, "the dogs are full of meat, and sleeping; and there is that which I would show thee."
Without feeling much interest in what he might have got I bade him enter, and he stood before me in the dim light of my tallow candle.
Fumbling in his leopard skin, he drew forth a little tortoiseshell, such as the Hottentot women use for holding the hare's foot, ochre, buchu leaves, and other mysteries of their toilet. I had often seen him with it, and had chaffed him about carrying it before, and he evidently anticipated something of the kind again.
"Nay, master," he said, before I could speak, "true, as thou sayest, it is a woman's box, and a woman gave it me. But the box is naught; this is what I would show my master."
He shook something from the little box into the palm of his hand, clenched it, and with a dramatic gesture thrust it close to the dim light, and threw his fingers wide.
There, glittering in the yellow palm, flashing and scintillating with every movement, and looking as though the light it gathered and reflected really burnt in its liquid depths, lay the most marvelous diamond I had ever beheld!
The size of a small walnut, flawless, blue-tinted, and of wondrous luster and beauty, its many facets were as brilliantly polished as though fresh from the hands of the cutter, though it was a "rough" stone, untouched except by nature.
I was too stunned to speak, or do anything but clutch it, and gloat over it, and mutter "Where? where?"