The Adventures of Dick Maitland: A Tale of Unknown Africa

by Harry Collingwood

“Why not?” retorted Dick, laughingly. “Gems are sometimes found in the most unlikely looking places. I did not expect the landscape to be distinguished by any unusual characteristics; did you?”

“’Pon my word I don’t know,” replied Grosvenor; “but somehow I expected it to look very different from this. After all, however, what does the beauty or otherwise of the landscape matter, so long as the rubies are really here? And I suppose they are here, somewhere, eh? We haven’t made a mistake and come out at the wrong spot, do you think?”

“Well,” admitted Dick, “we may not have hit the precise spot perhaps, but I think we cannot be more than half a mile from it. Perhaps the quickest way of finding it will be to search for it. Now, just let me think for a moment. Those Flying-Fish people started by searching the beach. The Professor, possessing superior knowledge to the others, searched the face of the cliff; and finally, when the precise locality of the mine had been discovered, they went to work with pickaxe and shovel and dug their way down to the level of the ‘pocket’. I think our best plan would be to search for that hole, which must still be conspicuous enough to admit of identification. Let us return, by way of the donga, to the top of the cliff, and, starting from there, ride along close to the cliff edge, you taking one direction and I the other. We ought to come across it within half a mile, or a mile at most.”

“Right you are, old chappie, come along,” answered Grosvenor, preparing to mount. As, however, he placed his left foot in the stirrup, and was about to spring into the saddle, Dick checked him.

“Hold on a moment, Phil,” he exclaimed, his eyes intently searching a certain part of the cliff about a quarter of a mile distant. “Do you see that notch in the line of the cliff, over there? From here it looks something like a ‘breakdown’, but it may be the very spot we want to find. Anyhow it is quite worth examining; and if it should prove not to be the mine we can at all events reach the top of the cliff by means of it, and can start our search from there. Come along.” The next moment the pair were up and cantering toward the spot.

At the point toward which they were riding the cliff was quite low, its crest being not more than some fifteen feet above the level of the beach; therefore, although the notch or gap was of but insignificant width, it reached from top to bottom of the cliff face, and offered a way, of sorts, from the beach to the level of the plain above; but as the horsemen drew near they saw that although it was a ‘breakdown’ or collapse of the cliff face, it was undoubtedly caused by an artificial excavation which had had its origin a few yards inland from the line of the crest. They rode right into it, and found themselves in a sort of basin-shaped pit, one side of which having broken away had left the gap through which they had entered. A single glance around sufficed to assure them that they had reached the place of which they were in search, and dismounting they flung their bridles over their horses’ heads to the ground, leaving them to stand, as they had been trained to do, while they proceeded at once to search the place for its precious contents.

They had not to look far. It was evident that time and weather had wrought some slight changes in the place since it had last been worked, the changes consisting chiefly of falls of earth from the sides, here and there; but pebbles, singly and in little groups of half a dozen or so, were plentifully strewed about the surface of the soil, and the very first one examined proved to be exactly similar in character to those of which the king’s necklace was composed. Such, however, was not invariably the case, many of the stones which the searchers picked up turning out to be quite worthless; nevertheless ten minutes sufficed to satisfy the prospectors that the source of boundless wealth lay practically within reach of their hands, for during that short period each of them had secured a dozen rubies of varying size, from that of a pea up to pebbles as large as a pigeon’s egg, while Grosvenor had been lucky enough to find a specimen as large as a duck’s egg. By the end of an hour they had more than doubled the amount of their find, and had filled their jacket pockets as full as it was prudent to load them; but it was evident that, profitable as this desultory, haphazard method of search had proved to be, much better results might be hoped for from systematic pick-and-shovel work; accordingly they agreed to suspend further operations until the arrival of the wagon, and the party of labourers which had been placed at their disposal by Lobelalatutu; they, therefore, scrambled out of the pit and set about searching for a suitable site for their camp, eventually pitching upon a spot about a quarter of a mile distant from the mine.

By the time that the wagon arrived and the tent had been pitched the day was too far advanced to make it worth while for work to be started. It was, therefore, decided to give the workers a good long night’s rest after their wearisome tramp from the king’s village, and an hour after sunset saw the entire party wrapped in profound sleep.

But with the appearance of the sun above the sea’s rim, on the following morning, everybody was once more astir; and after an early breakfast a general adjournment was made to the mine, where, under Dick Maitland’s superintendence, a dozen parties of the Makolo were soon actively engaged with their native mattocks and shovels in excavating the soil in search of the precious stones, one-half of each party being employed upon the work of digging, while the other half turned over the excavated soil and extracted from it all the stones which it happened to contain, Dick and Grosvenor employing themselves meanwhile in passing from party to party and sorting out the rubies from the worthless stones upturned. In this way considerable progress was made, and by midday a very handsome pile of rubies had been accumulated, consisting, however, for the most part of relatively small stones.

It was not, however, until late in the afternoon that their real good luck came to them, and then it came all in a moment. A party of the natives who had for some time been left to themselves had excavated quite a little cavern in the side of the pit, and, as might have been expected, this mode of working ultimately resulted in a “cave-in”. Fortunately for them, the workers who were responsible for it detected the signs of the approaching fall in time to avoid being buried by it; and when the dust-cloud occasioned by it presently subsided, and the new face thus laid bare came to be examined, it was discovered that a veritable “pocket” of rubies had been exposed, the stones—every one of them of large size and especially fine fire and colour—being so numerous that almost every shovelful of earth turned over contained one or more! They were all, without exception, so very much finer than the finest that had hitherto been found that the latter were there and then incontinently discarded, and a fresh collection was at once begun, the whole body of natives being concentrated upon this one spot. So enormously rich did this “pocket” prove to be that when at length the declining sun gave warning that the moment to cease work had arrived, Dick and Grosvenor were fain to acknowledge to each other that, eager as the former was to make his fortune, they had now collected sufficient rubies to constitute not one but two exceedingly handsome fortunes, and that in any case the quantity acquired was as great as it would be at all prudent to cumber themselves with in view of the long and arduous journey that still lay before them.