MY UNCLE’S GIFT IS MANY TIMES MULTIPLIED
We got at the treasure by blowing open the turnstile. It was easy
enough to trace the spot in the rock where it stood, but the most
patient search did not reveal its secret. Accordingly we had recourse
to dynamite, and soon laid bare the stone steps, and ascended to the
gallery. The chasm was bridged with planks, and Arcoll and I crossed
alone. The cave was as I had left it. The bloodstains on the floor had
grown dark with time, but the ashes of the sacramental fire were still
there to remind me of the drama I had borne a part in. When I looked at
the way I had escaped my brain grew dizzy at the thought of it. I do
not think that all the gold on earth would have driven me a second time
to that awful escalade. As for Arcoll, he could not see its possibility
at all.
“Only a madman could have done it,” he said, blinking his eyes at the
green linn. “Indeed, Davie, I think for about four days you were as mad
as they make. It was a fortunate thing, for your madness saved the
country.”
With some labour we got the treasure down to the path, and took it
under a strong guard to Pietersdorp. The Government were busy with the
settling up after the war, and it took many weeks to have our business
disposed of. At first things looked badly for me. The Attorney-General
set up a claim to the whole as spoils of war, since, he argued, it was
the war-chest of the enemy we had conquered. I do not know how the
matter would have gone on legal grounds, though I was advised by my
lawyers that the claim was a bad one. But the part I had played in the
whole business, more especially in the visit to Inanda’s Kraal, had
made me a kind of popular hero, and the Government thought better of
their first attitude. Besides, Arcoll had great influence, and the
whole story of my doings, which was told privately by him to some of
the members of the Government, disposed them to be generous.
Accordingly they agreed to treat the contents of the cave as ordinary
treasure trove, of which, by the law, one half went to the discoverer
and one half to the Crown.
This was well enough so far as the gold was concerned, but another
difficulty arose about the diamonds; for a large part of these had
obviously been stolen by labourers from the mines, and the mining
people laid claim to them as stolen goods. I was advised not to dispute
this claim, and consequently we had a great sorting-out of the stones
in the presence of the experts of the different mines. In the end it
turned out that identification was not an easy matter, for the experts
quarrelled furiously among themselves. A compromise was at last come
to, and a division made; and then the diamond companies behaved very
handsomely, voting me a substantial sum in recognition of my services
in recovering their property. What with this and with my half share of
the gold and my share of the unclaimed stones, I found that I had a
very considerable fortune. The whole of my stones I sold to De Beers,
for if I had placed them on the open market I should have upset the
delicate equipoise of diamond values. When I came finally to cast up my
accounts, I found that I had secured a fortune of a trifle over a
quarter of a million pounds.
The wealth did not dazzle so much as it solemnized me. I had no impulse
to spend any part of it in a riot of folly. It had come to me like
fairy gold out of the void; it had been bought with men’s blood, almost
with my own. I wanted to get away to a quiet place and think, for of
late my life had been too crowded with drama, and there comes a satiety
of action as well as of idleness. Above all things I wanted to get
home. They gave me a great send-off, and sang songs, and good fellows
shook my hand till it ached. The papers were full of me, and there was
a banquet and speeches. But I could not relish this glory as I ought,
for I was like a boy thrown violently out of his bearings. Not till I
was in the train nearing Cape Town did I recover my equanimity. The
burden of the past seemed to slip from me suddenly as on the morning
when I had climbed the linn. I saw my life all lying before me; and
already I had won success. I thought of my return to my own country, my
first sight of the grey shores of Fife, my visit to Kirkcaple, my
meeting with my mother. I was a rich man now who could choose his
career, and my mother need never again want for comfort. My money
seemed pleasant to me, for if men won theirs by brains or industry, I
had won mine by sterner methods, for I had staked against it my life. I
sat alone in the railway carriage and cried with pure thankfulness.
These were comforting tears, for they brought me back to my old
common-place self.
My last memory of Africa is my meeting with Tam Dyke. I caught sight of
him in the streets of Cape Town, and running after him, clapped him on
the shoulder. He stared at me as if he had seen a ghost.
“Is it yourself, Davie?” he cried. “I never looked to see you again in
this world. I do nothing but read about you in the papers. What for did
ye not send for me? Here have I been knocking about inside a ship and
you have been getting famous. They tell me you’re a millionaire, too.”
I had Tam to dinner at my hotel, and later, sitting smoking on the
terrace and watching the flying-ants among the aloes, I told him the
better part of the story I have here written down.
“Man, Davie,” he said at the end, “you’ve had a tremendous time. Here
are you not eighteen months away from home, and you’re going back with
a fortune. What will you do with it?” I told him that I proposed, to
begin with, to finish my education at Edinburgh College. At this he
roared with laughter.
“That’s a dull ending, anyway. It’s me that should have the money, for
I’m full of imagination. You were aye a prosaic body, Davie.”
“Maybe I am,” I said; “but I am very sure of one thing. If I hadn’t
been a prosaic body, I wouldn’t be sitting here to-night.”
Two years later Aitken found the diamond pipe, which he had always
believed lay in the mountains. Some of the stones in the cave, being
unlike any ordinary African diamonds, confirmed his suspicions and set
him on the track. A Kaffir tribe to the north-east of the Rooirand had
known of it, but they had never worked it, but only collected the
overspill. The closing down of one of the chief existing mines had
created a shortage of diamonds in the world’s markets, and once again
the position was the same as when Kimberley began. Accordingly he made
a great fortune, and to-day the Aitken Proprietary Mine is one of the
most famous in the country. But Aitken did more than mine diamonds, for
he had not forgotten the lesson we had learned together in the work of
resettlement. He laid down a big fund for the education and
amelioration of the native races, and the first fruit of it was the
establishment at Blaauwildebeestefontein itself of a great native
training college. It was no factory for making missionaries and black
teachers, but an institution for giving the Kaffirs the kind of
training which fits them to be good citizens of the state. There you
will find every kind of technical workshop, and the finest experimental
farms, where the blacks are taught modern agriculture. They have proved
themselves apt pupils, and to-day you will see in the glens of the Berg
and in the plains Kaffir tillage which is as scientific as any in
Africa. They have created a huge export trade in tobacco and fruit; the
cotton promises well; and there is talk of a new fibre which will do
wonders. Also along the river bottoms the india-rubber business is
prospering.
There are playing-fields and baths and reading-rooms and libraries just
as in a school at home. In front of the great hall of the college a
statue stands, the figure of a black man shading his eyes with his
hands and looking far over the plains to the Rooirand. On the pedestal
it is lettered “Prester John,” but the face is the face of Laputa. So
the last of the kings of Africa does not lack his monument.
Of this institution Mr Wardlaw is the head. He writes to me weekly, for
I am one of the governors, as well as an old friend, and from a recent
letter I take this passage:—
“I often cast my mind back to the afternoon when you and I sat on the
stoep of the schoolhouse, and talked of the Kaffirs and our future. I
had about a dozen pupils then, and now I have nearly three thousand;
and in place of a tin-roofed shanty and a yard, I have a whole
countryside. You laughed at me for my keenness, Davie, but I’ve seen it
justified. I was never a man of war like you, and so I had to bide at
home while you and your like were straightening out the troubles. But
when it was all over my job began, for I could do what you couldn’t
do—I was the physician to heal wounds. You mind how nervous I was when
I heard the drums beat. I hear them every evening now, for we have made
a rule that all the Kaffir farms on the Berg sound a kind of curfew. It
reminds me of old times, and tells me that though it is peace nowadays
we mean to keep all the manhood in them that they used to exercise in
war. It would do your eyes good to see the garden we have made out of
the Klein Labongo glen. The place is one big orchard with every kind of
tropical fruit in it, and the irrigation dam is as full of fish as it
will hold. Out at Umvelos’ there is a tobacco-factory, and all round
Sikitola’s we have square miles of mealie and cotton fields. The loch
on the Rooirand is stocked with Lochleven trout, and we have made a
bridle-path up to it in a gully east of the one you climbed. You ask
about Machudi’s. The last time I was there the place was white with
sheep, for we have got the edge of the plateau grazed down, and sheep
can get the short bite there. We have cleaned up all the kraals, and
the chiefs are members of our county council, and are as fond of
hearing their own voices as an Aberdeen bailie. It’s a queer
transformation we have wrought, and when I sit and smoke my pipe in the
evening, and look over the plains and then at the big black statue you
and Aitken set up, I thank the Providence that has guided me so far. I
hope and trust that, in the Bible words, ‘the wilderness and the
solitary place are glad for us.’ At any rate it will not be my fault if
they don’t ‘blossom as the rose’. Come out and visit us soon, man, and
see the work you had a hand in starting....”
I am thinking seriously of taking Wardlaw’s advice.