For a moment I could scarcely believe that such human crying could come from animals.
“They always cry all night,” Lewis told me. “Very annoying at first. You’ll get used to it. Just remember that they are ugly black monkeys, that they like to make that noise, that they are not really crying any more than a dog is crying when he barks, and now go to sleep.”
No one else seemed to mind it. But I must admit that it kept me awake a long while. I couldn’t force myself to think that it was a natural noise made by an animal. I couldn’t believe anything could make such a noise unless it was actual crying caused by grief or suffering. Finally I fell asleep.
CHAPTER XVIII
ARRIVAL AT THE DIAMOND FIELDS
NEXT morning the sun was shining brightly. The Indians were coming in from a hunting trip with game.
Our blacks had finished their tea and crackers, the shelters were coming down and soon we would be on the way up the river.
“We ought to make the big bend by to-morrow,” said Captain Peters.
Those were thrilling words to me, for up just around the big bend in the Mazaruni River, which I have already described, lay our diamond fields, and while every inch of the seventeen days’ boat trip up this mad, wild river, among the primitive Indians, had been one of interest and adventure for me, after all, I was out for diamonds and naturally eager to get to the fields and try my luck at digging up the sparklers. Of course I did not expect to pick them up off the ground. “Dud” Lewis had told me of the process and I had read up on diamond mining before starting, yet I had high hopes of finding wealth there in the gravel of the old river bed. Mountains could be seen in the distance rising like temples above the low land.