then, suddenly, as he was answered by the word `Ariseep' a light flashed
across his countenance. Seizing his aged countryman by the shoulders,
he turned him round and carefully examined his back. Lifting the skin
kaross and rubbing away the coating of grease and dirt that covered the
right shoulder, Klaas pointed to two round white scars just below the
blade-bone, several inches apart; then he gave a leap into the air,
seized the old fossil by the neck and shrieked into his ears the most
wonderful torrent of Bushman language I have ever heard. In his turn
the old man started back, scanned Klaas intently from head to foot, and
in a thin pipe, jabbered at him almost as volubly.
"Finally, Klaas enlightened me as to this comical interlude. It seemed
incredible; this old man, Ariseep by name, was his grandfather, whom he
had not set eyes on since, long years before, the Boer commando had
broken into his tribal fastness, slain his father, mother and other
relatives and carried himself off captive. The old man before us had
somehow escaped in the fight, had crept away, and, after years of
solitary hiding in the mountains around, had finally penetrated to this
grim and desolate valley, where he had subsisted on Bushman fare.
Snakes, lizards, roots, gum, bulbs, fruit and an occasional snared buck
or rock-rabbit; these, and a little rill of water that gushed from the
mountain-side hard by, supplied him with existence. Here he had
lingered for many years, alone and isolated. His only fear had been, as
he grew older and feebler, the leopards infesting the neighbouring
mountain. Against their attacks had he built the strong thorned fence,
carefully closed at night, and the door of thorns which he wedged
tightly into the entrance way.
"A strange meeting indeed it was, but after all not stranger than many
things that happen in the busy world. So far as I could learn from
Klaas, who himself was between forty and fifty, the ancient figure
before us was laden with the burden of more than ninety years. Think of
it! ninety summers of parched Bushmanland, of burning Orange River
mountains; ninety seasons of hunger and thirst and dire privations;
great part of the earlier period varied by raids on the flocks of the
Boers and battles for existence with the wild beasts of the land!
"After nearly an hour's incessant chatter, during which I believe Klaas
had laid before his monkeylike ancestor an epitomised history of his
life, he told the old man we wished to get through the mountain and that
he had lost the tunnel of which he had known as a boy.
"Ariseep, who it seems, in the years he had been there, had explored
every nook and cranny of the valley, knew at once what he meant, and
quickly pointed out to us, not a hundred paces away, a dense and prickly
mass of cactus and euphorbia bush; here, after half an hour's hewing and
slashing with our hunting knives, we managed to open a pathway, and at
last a cave-like opening in the mountain, about seven feet in diameter,
lay before us. Grandfather Ariseep, questioned as to the tunnel, said
that, upon first discovering it, which he had done quite by accident
while hunting rock-rabbits, he had once been through, years before, but,
as he had found the passage long and dangerous, and the valley beyond
appeared to him less interesting than his present abiding place, he had
never repeated the journey. However, he gave us warning that snakes
abounded and might not impossibly be encountered in the twenty minutes'
crawl, which, as Klaas had told me, it would take to get through.
"This opinion, translated by Klaas, was not of a nature to fortify me in
the undertaking, yet, rather than leave the diamonds unexplored, I felt
prepared to brave the terrors of this uncanny passage.
"It was now three o'clock; the sun was marching steadily across the
brassy firmament on his westward trek and we had no time to lose.
"`In you go, Klaas,' said I, and, nothing loth, Klaas dived into the
bowels of the mountain, I at his heels. For five minutes, by dint of
stooping and an occasional hands-and-knees creep upon the flooring of
the tunnel, sometimes on smooth sand, sometimes over protruding rock and
rough gravel, we got along very comfortably. Then the roof of the dark
avenue--for it was pitch dark now--suddenly lowered, and we had to crawl
along, especially I, as being taller and bulkier than Klaas, like
serpents, upon our bellies. It was unpleasant, deuced unpleasant, I can
tell you, boxed up like this beneath the heart of the mountain. The
very thought seemed to make the oppression a million times more
oppressive. It seemed that the frightful pile of rock, towering far
above us, was bodily descending to crush us into a horrible and hidden
tomb. The thought of lying here, squeezed down till Judgment Day, was
appalling; or, perhaps, more mercifully one's bones might, ages
hereafter, be discovered as these regions became settled up, in much the
same state in which mummified cats are occasionally found in old
chimneys and hidden closets when ancient dwellings are pulled down in
England. Even Klaas, plucky Bushman though he was, didn't seem to
relish the adventure and spoke in a subdued and awe-stricken whisper.
Sometimes since, as I have thought of that most gruesome passage, I have
burst into a sweat nearly as profuse, though not so painful, as I
endured that day. At last, after what seemed to me hours upon hours of
this painful crawling and Egyptian gloom, we met a breath of fresher
air; the tunnel widened and heightened, and in another five minutes we
emerged into the blessed sunlight. Little Klaas looked pretty well
`baked,' even in his old leather `crackers' and flannel shirt; as for
myself, I was literally streaming, every thread on me was as wet as if I
had plunged into a river. We lay panting for awhile upon the scorching
rocks, and then sat up and looked about us.
"If the Paarl Kloof, as Klaas called it, from whence we had just come,
had been sufficiently striking, the mighty amphitheatre in which we lay
was infinitely more amazing. Imagine a vast arena, almost completely
circular in shape, flat and smooth, and composed as to its flooring of
intermingled sand and gravel, reddish-yellow in colour. This arena was
surrounded by stupendous walls of the same ruddy brown rock we had
noticed in Paarl Kloof, which here towered to a height of close on a
thousand feet. An inspection of these cliffs, which sheered inwards
from top to bottom, revealed the fact previously imparted to me by
Klaas, that no living being could ever penetrate hither save by the
tunnel passage through which we had come. The amphitheatre, which here
and there bore upon its surface a thin and scattered covering of bush
and undergrowth, seemed everywhere about half-a-mile across from wall to
wall. In the centre of the red cliffs, blazing forth in splendour, ran
a broad band of the most glorious opalescent rock-crystal, which flashed
out its glorious rays of coloured light as if to meet the fiery kisses
of the sun. This flaming girdle of crystal, more beautiful a thousand
times than the most gorgeous opal, the sheen of a fresh-caught mackerel,
or the most radiant mother-of-pearl, I can only compare in splendour to
the flashing rainbows formed over the foaming falls of the Zambesi,
which I have seen more than once. It ran horizontally and very evenly
round at least two-thirds of the cliff-belt that encircled us. It was a
wonderful and amazing spectacle, and I think quite the most singular of
the many strange things (and they are not few) I have seen in the
African interior.
"Well, we sat gazing at this crystal rainbow for many minutes, till I
had somewhat feasted my enraptured gaze; then we got up and at once
began the search for diamonds. Directly I saw the gravel, especially
where it had been cleansed in the shallow spruits and dongas by the
action of rain and flood, I knew at once we should find `stones'; it
resembled almost exactly the gravel found in the Vaal River diggings,
and was here and there strongly ferruginous, mingled with red sand and
occasionally lime.
"I noticed quickly that agates, jaspers and chalcedony were distributed
pretty thickly, and that occasionally the curious banddoom stone, so
often found in the Vaal River with diamonds, and, indeed, often
considered by diggers as a sure indicator of `stones' was to be met
with. In many places the pebbles were washed perfectly clean and lay
thickly piled in hollow water-ways; here we speedily found a rich
harvest of the precious gems. In a feverish search of an hour and a
half, Klaas and I picked up twenty-three fine stones, ranging in size
from a small pigeon's egg to a third of the size of my little finger
nail. They were all fine diamonds, some few, it is true, yellow or
straw-coloured, others of purest water, as I afterwards learned, and we
had no difficulty in finding them, although we wandered over not a
twentieth part of the valley. I could see at once from this off-hand
search that enormous wealth lay spread here upon the surface of the
earth; beneath probably was contained fabulous wealth. I was puzzled at
the time, and I have never had inclination or opportunity to solve the
mystery since, to account for the presence of diamonds in such
profusion. Whether they were swept into the valley by early floodings
of the Orange River through some aperture that existed formerly, but had
been closed by volcanic action, or whether, as I am inclined to think,
the whole amphitheatre is a vast upheaval from subterraneous fires of a
bygone period, is to this hour an unfathomed secret. I rather incline
to the latter theory, and believe that, like the Kimberley `pipe,' as
diggers call it, the diamondiferous earth had been shot upwards
funnel-wise from below, and that ages of floods and rain-washing had
cleansed and left bare the gravel and stones upon the surface.
"From the search we had had, I made no doubt that a fortnight's careful
hunting in this valley would make me a millionaire, or something very
like it. At length I was satisfied, and as the westering sun was fast
stooping to his couch, with a light heart and elastic step I turned with
Klaas to depart. The excitement of the `find' had quite banished the
remembrance of that awful tunnel passage so recently encountered.
"`We'll go back now, Klaas,' said I, `sleep in your grandfather's kraal,
and get to the waggon first thing in the morning; then I shall arrange
to return and camp a fortnight in Paarl Kloof, leaving the waggon at the
pool. In that time we shall be able to pick up diamonds enough to
enrich ourselves and all belonging to us for generations. I don't mind
then who discovers the valley; they can make another Kimberley of it if
they choose, for aught I care.'
"At half-past five we again entered the tunnel. It was a nasty business
when one thought of it again, but it would soon be over. As it flashed
across my brain, I thought at the moment that two such journeys a day
for six or seven days would be quite as much as even the greediest
diamond lover could stomach. As before, Klaas went first, and for half
the distance all went well. Suddenly, as we came to a sandy part of the
tunnel, there was a scuffle in front, a fierce exclamation in Bushman
language, and then Klaas called out in a hoarse voice, `Allemaghte,
sieur, een slang het mij gebissen!'" (Almighty, sir, a snake has bitten
me!)
"Heavens, what a situation! Cooped up in this frightful burrow, face to
face with probably a deadly snake, which had already bitten my
companion! Almost immediately Klaas's voice came back to me in a hoarse
guttural whisper, `I have him by the neck, sieur; it is a puff-adder and
his teeth are sticking into my shoulder. If you will creep up and lay
hold of his tail, which is your side of me, we can settle him, but I
can't get his teeth out without your help.' As you will remember, the
puff-adder's striking fangs are very curved and are often difficult to
disengage once it has made its strike. Poor Klaas! I felt certain his
days must be numbered, but there was nothing for it; I must help him.
"Crawling forwards and feeling my way with fright-benumbed fingers, I
touched Klaas's leg. Then softly moving my left hand I was suddenly
smitten by a horrible writhing tail. I seized it with both hands, and
finally gripped the horrid reptile (which I felt to be swollen with
rage, as is the brute's habit) in an iron grasp with both hands. Then I
felt, in the black darkness, Klaas take a fresh grip of the loathsome
creature's neck, and with an effort, disengage the deadly fangs from his
shoulder. Immediately I felt him draw his knife, and after a struggle,
sever the serpent's head from its body. The head he pushed away to the
right, as far out of our course as possible, and then I dragged the
writhing body from him, and, shuddering, cast it behind me as far as
possible.
"At that moment I thought that, for the first time in my life, I must
have swooned. But, luckily, I bethought me of poor faithful Klaas, sore
stricken, and I called to him in as cheerful a voice as I could muster,
`Get forward, Klaas, for your life, as hard as you can, and, please God,
we'll pull you through.'
"Never had I admired the Bushman's fierce courage more than now. Most
men would have sunk upon the sand and given up life and hope. Not so
this aboriginal. `Ja, sieur, I will loup,' was all he said.
"Then we scrambled onward, occasionally halting as the deadly sickness
overtook Klaas; but all the while I pushed him forwards and urged him
with my voice. At last the light came, and as my poor Bushman grew
feebler and more slow, I found room to pass him and so dragged him
behind me to the opening into Paarl Kloof. Here I propped him for a
moment on the sand outside, with his back to the mountain, and loudly
called `Ariseep,' while I got breath for a moment.
"The sun was sinking in blood-red splendour behind the mountains, and
the kloof and rock-walls were literally aglow with the parting blush of
day. Nature looked calm and serenely beautiful and hushed in a
splendour that ill-accorded with the agitating scene there at the mouth
of the tunnel. All this flashed across me as I called for the old man.
I looked anxiously at Klaas and examined his wound; there were two deep
punctures in the left shoulder, and from his having had to use some
degree of force to drag off the reptile, the orifices were more torn
than is usual in cases of snake-bite. Klaas was now breathing heavily
and getting dull and stupefied I took him in my arms and carried him to
Ariseep's kraal, whence the old man was just emerging. At sight of his
grandfather, Klaas rallied and rapidly told him what had happened, and
the old man at once plunged into his hut for something.
"Then Klaas's eyelids drooped and he became drowsy, almost senseless.
In vain I roused him and tried to make him walk and so stay the baleful
effects of the poison now running riot in his blood; he was too far
gone. Ariseep now re-appeared with a small skin bag, out of which he
took some dirty-looking powder. With an old knife he scored the skin
and flesh around Klaas's wound and then rubbed in the powder. I had no
brandy or ammonia to administer, and therefore let the old Bushman
pursue his remedy, though I felt, somehow, it would be useless. So it
proved; either the antidote, with which I believe Bushmen often do
effect wonderful cures, was stale and inefficacious, or the poison had
obtained too strong a hold. My poor Klaas never became conscious again,
though I fancied eagerly that he recognised me before he died, for his
lips moved as he turned to me once. His pulse sank and sank, his face
became dull and ashen, his eyelids quivered a little, his breath came
hard and laboured, and at last, within an hour and a half from the time
he was bitten, he lay dead.
"So perished my faithful and devoted henchman; the stoutest, truest,
bravest soul that ever African sun shone upon. I cannot express to you
the true and unutterable grief I felt, as, with old Ariseep, I buried
poor Klaas when the moon rose that night. We placed him gently in a
deep sandy spruit, and over the sand piled heavy stones to keep the
vermin from him.
"Then, laying myself within Ariseep's kraal, I waited for the slothful
dawn. As it came, I rose, called Ariseep from his hut, and bade
farewell to him as best I could, for we neither of us understood one
another. I noticed, by-the-bye, that no sign of grief seemed to trouble
the old man. Probably he was too aged, and had seen too much death to
think much about the matter.
"The rest of my story is soon finished. I made my way back to camp,
told my men what had happened, and indeed took some of them back with me
to Klaas's grave and made them exhume the body to satisfy themselves of
the cause of death--for these men are sometimes very suspicious--then we
covered him again securely against wandering beasts and birds.
"I trekked back to the Old Colony, sold off my things and came home.
The diamonds I had brought away realised in England 22,000 pounds. I
have never dreamt of going to the fatal valley again; nothing on earth
would tempt me after that ill-starred journey, heavy with the fate of
Klaas and the Bechuana boy, Amazi. As for the tunnel, I would not
venture once more into its recesses for all the diamonds in Africa, even
if they lay piled in heaps at the other end of it. Except old Ariseep,
Klaas had no relation that I knew of, and it was useless to think of
spending the diamond-money in that quarter. The old fellow had, so far
as I could make him understand me, utterly refused to accompany me from
the kloof, where he evidently meant to end his days; even if he had
come, what could I have done for him? At his time of life, and with his
peculiar habits, he could hardly have begun the world again, even if I
had brought him home, bought him a country house, taken rooms in
Piccadilly, dressed him in the height of fashion and launched him upon
society.
"Therefore I left him as I found him. Klaas I have never ceased to
mourn from that day to this. Part of the 22,000 pounds I invested for
some relatives, the balance that I kept suffices, with what I already
possessed, for all possible wants of my own. Then I came back to my
dearly-loved South Africa for the last time, and a few weeks later made
the journey to the Chobi River, from which you rescued me in the
thirstland."
Such was the story related to us by the transport rider, in a clear and
singularly graphic manner, to which these pages do scant justice. Our
narrator wound up by telling us that Mowbray had further imparted to him
the exact locality of the diamond valley, but, he added, "I have never
yet been there, nor do I think that, for the present, it is likely I
shall go. Some day before I leave the Cape I may have a try and trek
down the Orange River; but I don't feel very keen about that secret
passage, after poor Mowbray's experiences."
We had sat wrapt listeners for some hours of that soft, calm, African
night. The glorious stars looked out from above us in their deep blue
dome; the Southern Cross shone in serene effulgence, as if, too, its
sparkling gems claimed an interest in the legend of the lost diamonds.
It was now two o'clock, and the camp fire of the transport riders burned
low; just one more soupje we had with our friendly entertainers, and
then, with hearty expressions of thanks and good-will, rose to seek our
beds. That night, before falling asleep, I pondered long upon the
strange narrative we had heard. Often since have I done so. Often,
too, have I thought of the lone grave of the English hunter, Mowbray,
far out upon the verge of that dim and mysterious desert, the Kalahari.
CHAPTER TWO.
THE STORY OF A TUSK.
It was a fine spring morning in the City: even in the great dingy
warehouse, where Cecil Kensley was engaged in cataloguing a vast store
of ivory in preparation for the periodical sales, the sun beamed
pleasantly. It lit up the dark corners of the building, and played
everywhere upon hundreds of smooth, rounded elephants' teeth, varying in
colour from a rich creamy yellow to darkest brown--from the gleaming
tusk, fresh chopped within the last year from the head of a young bull,
to the huge, dark, discoloured, almost black-skinned tooth, that for a
hundred years had lain unnoticed in some mud swamp, or for generations
had decorated the grave or kraal-fence of some native chief. There they
lay, those precious pillars of ivory--solid scrivelloes, Egyptian soft
teeth, Ambriz hard irregulars, billiard and bagatelle scrivelloes,
bangle teeth, Siam, Niger, Abyssinian, Bombay, West Coast, Cape, and all
the rest of them--upon which the world sets so great a store, and for
which mankind is so rapidly exterminating a species.
Those wonderful teeth, dumb memorials, so many of them, of dark tales of
blood and suffering, of slave raids, plundered villages, murders,
floggings, terrible journeys to the coast, unutterable scenes of horror
and woe--what histories could they not unfold? But the tusks lay there,
hugging their grim secrets, silent and mute enough.
Cecil Kensley, the person cataloguing these treasures of ivory in a
purely matter-of-fact way, was a good-looking, fair-bearded man of
thirty, partner in a wealthy firm, a bachelor, somewhat of a man of
pleasure out of office hours, but in business smart, shrewd and
hard-working. The cataloguing of such an accumulation of ivory as that
great warehouse held was a lengthy business; and all day, until four
o'clock, Kensley was engaged, with the help of the warehousemen,
sorting, turning over and writing down. Before taking a short rest for
luncheon, his eye fell upon one magnificent tusk--long, perfectly shaped
and balanced, massive, highly polished, and, in colour, of the richest
chrome yellow. It lay somewhat apart, and appeared to have no fellow; a
careful inspection of the rest of the warehouse, and a single glance at
that peerless tooth, showed that, even out of all that vast collection,
no possible match for it could be found.
Kensley had been working all the morning at the far end of the
warehouse; he now stood by the tusk which had so taken his eye.
"Hallo, Thomas!" he said, interrogating the man who stood by him, "what
have you got here? What a grand tooth! Where's the fellow to it? Is
it an odd one?"
"Yes, sir," replied the man, "it's an odd tooth, and a rare beauty.
It's years since I saw the like of it. It's a grand tusk, as you say: I
ran the measure over it, and it went 9 feet 2 inches, and it weighs just
on 170 lb. It's as nigh perfect as can be, but there's just one little
bit of a flaw down there by the base--an old wound, or something of the
kind. There's a sight of good ivory in that tooth, and it must be as
old as the hills a'most."
Kensley had seen, in the fourteen years of his experience, thousands of
fine teeth; yet, connoisseur though he was, he thought, as his eye ran
lovingly over that magnificent nine feet of ivory, splendid in colour,
curve and solidity, that he had never seen such another. He stooped to
look at the flaw the man spoke of. Within a foot of the darker portion
at the base, just beyond where the ivory had manifestly emerged from the
flesh of the gum, there appeared a curious fault in the graining of the
tooth, elsewhere perfect. The growth had been disturbed by some foreign
substance, and the graining, instead of being as regular and even as a
pattern woven by machinery, swept in irregular curves round the centre
of the flaw.
Kensley rose to his feet again. "It's not much of a fault," he said,
"and the tooth's a real beauty. I've been meaning this long time past
to have such a tusk at my rooms, to decorate a corner or hang upon the
wall. I think I'll take that fellow, Thomas, and pay for it; it will be
a long time before I come across a better. See that it goes up to my
flat to-morrow, will you, and take care how it's carried. I don't want
it spoiled."
"All right, sir," replied the man, "I'll see to it myself. I'll give it
a bit of a clean up and take it up for you to-morrow morning."