Some time elapsed before we could fully realize our good fortune or believe in the wealth we had so suddenly acquired.
It seemed like a mere lump of rock crystal, but larger than a goose-egg, and not unlike the Koh-i-Noor—the fabled Light of the World—that mysterious palladium of the destinies of India, before it was cut, polished, and in some degree mutilated, that it might figure in the Exhibition of 1851—as ours may do, perhaps, in that of 1871.
Time will show.
If a pure diamond, this stone was worth nearly seventy thousand pounds!
"Let us keep our own counsel, Dick, about this, till we find ourselves in London," said Hislop, as he consigned it to his breast-pocket, together with the piece of stone which adhered to it; "and now we must make a good offing while all is quiet here."
In a minute more, and just as a group of horsemen—farmers and sugar-millers—entered the valley, we had mounted, and were galloping toward Santa Cruz as fast as our horses' heels could carry us.*
* By a note from Hislop, he informs me that the idea of marking with a chalk bullet the locality of the diamond was given him by an old Scottish legend which he heard, of a precious stone, of great size, that shone, but by night only, amid the rocks on the beautiful hill of Kinnoul. There it had long tantalized the citizens of Perth, till an ingenious fellow fired a ball of camstone at it, and by thus marking the place picked the gem out at his leisure.
CHAPTER LIII.
THE LAST OF ANTONIO EL CUBANO.
As we entered Santa Cruz we found a great crowd of colonists, citizens, mulattoes, Creoles, and negroes, all in motley and gaudily-striped linen jackets and trousers, assembled in the Plaza, where a guard of Spanish infantry, with muskets shouldered and bayonets fixed, kept back the people in the form of a hollow square, about a raised wooden platform, which was covered with black cloth, and whereon was placed the garotte.