“All right, lend me a coal hammer,” and into the bunker stepped our joker, followed by the interested gaze of a score of the emigrants. In less than a quarter of an hour he emerged with five or six rough diamonds in his hand. “Well, boys,” said he, “that isn’t bad work for the time, is it? Now, I don’t care to go working about in a ship’s coal bunkers. Besides, I don’t care for the stuff. That coal wants breaking up; go and get permission of the captain to let you do it, and I’ll wager half of you will be rich before you arrive at Cape Town.”
No sooner said than done. Permission was granted, and, in less time than it takes to tell it, fifteen or twenty of the diamond seekers were hard at work banging at the coal, and straining their eyes in vain for the diamonds which seemed so easy to find. But their quest was fruitless, and the joker kept them at it by telling them they did not break the coal properly, that it had to be broken across the grain, and so on. Every bit of coal the ship required for her voyage was soon beautifully trimmed for the fires, and no diamonds found.
Chapter Five.
The voyage from Madeira to the Cape was simply delightful. A fortnight, during which we had crossed the equator through the heat of the tropics, had elapsed, when we found ourselves one morning at dawn of day approaching the rocky and precipitous shores of the Island of Saint Helena. It had a most rugged appearance, which was heightened by its lonely position, the island rising almost perpendicularly on all sides, in some places of to the height of one thousand to twelve hundred feet. Our steamer was to remain several hours, and many of the passengers took advantage of the delay to go ashore and see the spot made so famous as the scene of exile of Napoleon. The entrance to the island is guarded by natural walls of stone towering above the steamer, and looking so stern and cruel. A feeling of desolation was on us as we walked up the one narrow, deserted street, with its filthy, repulsive-looking inhabitants of dusky-coloured men and women. This spot was once all life and glitter with the pride of the British Navy, when Saint Helena was the port for the finest of British vessels to harbour in, on their way to India by the Cape but all that glory belongs now to history. What a terrible sense of desolation must have filled that great man’s heart in his rock-bound prison, where escape was impossible; his jail possessed but one gateway, and that led into the boundless ocean.
We chartered some cadaverous frameworks which some dirty little boys assured us were horses. Getting into a clattering vehicle, we were taken to Longwood, for six years the home of the weary exile. ’Tis a long, low building, very prettily situated at the head of a lovely valley in the centre of the island.
His tomb lies lower down the glen. As we stood there, we could not but think of the other tomb in Paris, with its gilded dome, vying with the surrounding pinnacles to reach high heaven. I remember one sunny day in Paris entering this temple; the sun was streaming through the yellow stained-glass windows upon the marble pillars in the rear of the building, making them appear like columns of gold; everything seemed to be praising the life of their great hero.