For time he cared little, for character less, for money more, consequently as a matter of course the Capetown jail received within its walls a visitor who for several months had leisure to ruminate on the adage, “much will have more,” ofttimes more than it bargains for.
This same man on being liberated returned to the Fields, sunk lower and lower, until one day he was caught in “flagrante delicto” by the detective department. The breakwater at Capetown now is visited daily by the quondam tourist and the gradual progress of this valuable public work is materially assisted by the thews and sinews of our ingenious but not ingenuous hero.
As an illustration of the strange infatuation which this crime exercises over its votaries, how like the fascinated moth they flutter round the candle, singeing their wings, and what perfidy they can on occasions exhibit to one another, I will give a brief anecdote respecting a young man whom we shall call Silberfeldt.
Under the old diamond ordinance this bright specimen of humanity was trapped in the usual manner, caught red-handed by the detectives and sentenced to three years’ hard labor, of which time nearly two years were remitted in consequence of good conduct while in jail. Unwarned by this experience, ungrateful for the lenity shown him by the authorities, no sooner had he gained his liberty than he emulated the example of the scriptural sow and returned at once to his wallowing in the mire.
The further knowledge of the inner working of the I. D. B. craft, which he had gained during his temporary retirement from public life, had so increased his self-confidence that, considering himself now a veritable passed-master in its mysteries, he openly boasted there was not a man clever enough in all Griqualand West to catch him a second time; but unhappily for him, Ord 48, 1882, which throws upon the holders of diamonds the onus probandi of honest possession, had passed the Cape parliament, and had received Her Majesty’s sanction.
Too wary to be trapped by even the most astute detective, he nevertheless, with all his cunning, fell into the meshes of the law, and along with another was arrested under the section dealing with the offense of “illegal possession,” having been pounced upon one fine morning, when diamonds were found in the house where he and his companion were stopping.
The two were friends who had long been on terms of the greatest intimacy, and naturally they might have been expected to stick to each other through thick and through thin. When, however, they were placed in the dock and asked to plead, Silberfeldt at once, arrant coward as he was, exclaimed:
“Oh! your vorship, I don’t vant to plead, I’m going to turn Queensh evidensh.”
This vision of a traitor’s liberty, this desire to shelter himself and protect his own worthless skin by “rounding on his pal” was soon rudely ended by the magistrate, who intimated that the Crown was not in want of any “Queensh evidensh” in the case at all, or to slightly parody Oliver Goldsmith—
“When the culprit cried, oh, yes!