The buckets ascended for the last time and stood still; the tiny ants at work below threw down their picks and shovels and began to toil up the sides of the hole. Gradually they grew larger and larger till the ants became moles, till the moles looked like rabbits, then larger till the rabbits became boys, and finally emerged full-grown men.
They were principally Kafirs, with very little clothing beyond a cloth round their loins; some sported old red military jackets, and the appearance of their bare black legs beneath was comical in the extreme. Every thirteen or fourteen Kafirs at work in the mine have a white overseer, to prevent as much as possible that wholesale robbery which goes on amongst them.
One would think they would find it rather hard to steal, and still more difficult to conceal a diamond on their naked persons under the eye of the overseer; but, despite all precautions, they do steal a vast number of stones, picking them up and carrying them away in their mouths or between their toes.
The largest diamonds are usually unearthed in the mines before the stuff is washed, and an overseer must keep his eyes well open, for he cannot be sure of the honesty of any one of his “boys.”
Chapter Ten.
Diamonds are mostly found in a hard, bluish-green rock which has to be blasted, the safest time for doing this being the noon or midnight hour. The noise of it sounds like an enemy bombarding the camp. We stood on the edge of the mine and saw a solitary man down below, who looked as big as a rabbit, light a fuse and then run from it for his life, when, with a report like a thousand cannons, the earth rose two hundred feet in the air and then fell to ground again, probably dropping a Koh-i-noor on a neighbouring claim.