Still hesitantly Zouga took one of the largest stones from Jordan's fingers.
"Are you sure, Jordie?" he repeated.
"They are diamonds, Papa. All of them."
Zouga's last doubts faded, to be replaced immediately by a deeper uncertainty.
"Bazo," he said. "There are so many-" And then something else puzzled him. Quickly he picked out twenty of the largest stones and stood them in a row across the top of the packing case.
"The same colour, they are all the same colour, exactly!"
Zouga shook his head, frowning, confused; and then suddenly the shadows in his eyes cleared.
"Oh my God," he whispered, and slowly all blood drained from his face, leaving the skin dirty yellow like a man ten days gone in malaria fever.
"The same; they are all the same. The breaks are clean and fresh."
Slowly he lifted his eyes to Bazo's face. "Bazo, how big -" his voice roughened and dried, so that he had to clear his throat, "how big was the stone before, before you cracked it?"
"This big." Bazo clenched and showed his fist. "With my pick I made it into many stones, for you, Bakela, knowing how you value many stones."
Zouga's voice was still a husky whisper. "I will kill you," he said in English. "For this, I will kill you."
The scar across his cheek turned slowly into an ugly inflamed weal, the stigmata of his rage, and now he was shaking, his lips trembling as he rose slowly to his feet.
"I will kill you." His voice rose to a bellow, and Jordan shrieked again, this time with terror. He had never seen his father like this before; there was a terrifying maniacal quality about him.
"That was the stone I was waiting for, you bastard, you black bastard, that was it. That was the key to the north."
Zouga snatched the Martini-Henry rifle from where it leaned against the bole of the camel-thorn tree beside the falcon carving. The steel clashed and snickered as he pumped a cartridge into the chamber and in the same moment swung up the barrel.
"I'm going to kill you," he roared, and then checked.
Ralph had jumped to his feet, and now he faced his father, stepping forward until the muzzle of the loaded and fully cocked rifle almost touched the entwined brass snakes of his belt buckle.
"You will have to kill me first, Papa," he said. He was as pale as Zouga, his eyes the same deep haunted green.
"Get out of the way." Zouga's voice sank into that croaking, husky whisper and Ralph could not answer him, but he shook his head, his heavy jaw clenched so determinedly that his teeth grated audibly.
"I warn you, stand aside," Zouga choked, and they stood confronting each other, both trembling with tension and outrage.
Then the muzzle of the heavy rifle wavered in Zouga's hands, lowered slowly until it pointed to the dusty red earth between the toes of Ralph's boots.
The silence went on for many seconds; then Zouga took a full breath and the barrel of his chest swelled under the faded blue flannel shirt.
With a gesture of utter frustration he hurled the rifle against the treetrunk and the butt snapped through.
Then he sank back into his seat at the packing-case table and his golden head sank slowly into his hands.
"Get out." All the fire and fury had gone from his voice; it was quiet and hopeless. "Get out, all of you."
Zouga sat on alone under the thorn tree. He felt burned out with emotion and anger, empty and blackened and devastated within, like the veld after fire has swept through it.
When at last he lifted his head the first thing he saw was the falcon squatting opposite him on its greenstone plinth. It seemed to be smiling, a cruel and sardonic twist to the predator's beak, but when he stared at it Zouga saw that it was merely a trick of shadow and sunlight through the thorn branches.
The kopje-walloper was a small man, with legs so short that his polished high-heeled boots did not touch the floor when he sat on the swivel piano stool behind his desk.
The desk filled most of the tiny galvanized-iron hut, and it was furnace-hot in the room; the heat quivered and danced down from the roof. On the raw deal planks of the desk stood the accoutrements of the kopie-walloperys trade. The whisky bottle and shot-glasses to mellow the man with stones to sell; the sheet of white paper on which to examine the goods for colour; the wooden tweezers, the jeweller's eye-glass, the balance and scales, and the cheque book.
The cheque book was the size of a family Bible, each cheque form embossed in gold leaf and printed in multicolours, the border depicting choirs of heavenly angels, sea nymphs riding in half clam shells drawn by teams of leaping dolphins, the Queen as Britannia with helmet, shield and trident, twisting cornucopia from which poured the treasures of Empire and a dozen other patriotic symbols of Victorian might.
The cheque book was by far the most impressive item in the hut, not excepting the buyer's flowing silk Ascot tie and the yellow spats that covered his boots. It was unlikely that a digger would be able to refuse payment offered in such flamboyant style.
"How much, mister Werner?" Zouga asked.
Werner had swiftly sorted the glittering heap of diamond chips into separate piles, grading them by size alone for each stone was of the same fine white colour.
The smallest stones were three points, three hundredth parts of a carat, barely bigger than a grain of beach sand, the largest was almost a carat.
Now Werner laid aside his tweezers. and ran his hand through his dark locks.
"Have another whisky," he murmured, and when Zouga refused, "Well, me, I'm having one now."
He poured both glasses full to the brim, and despite Zouga's frown pushed one across to him.
"How much?" Zouga persisted.
"The weight?"Werner sipped the whisky and smacked his thick liver-coloured lips. "Ninety-six carats, all told.
What a diamond it must have been. We will never see the likes again-' "How much in cash?"
"Major, I would have offered you fifty thousand pounds, if that had been a single stone."
Zouga winced and blinked his eyes closed for an instant, as though he had been slapped across the face with an open hand.
With fifty thousand pounds he could have taken Zambezia, money for men, horses and guns, money for wagons and bullock teams, machinery to mine the reef and mill the gold, money for the farms, the seed and implements. He opened his eyes again.
"Damn you, I'm not interested in what might have been," he whispered. "Just tell me how much you will pay for that."
"Two thousand pounds; that's my top price, and it's not an "open" offer."
The stone had splintered into almost two hundred chips. That meant a "pick-up" payment to Bazo of that many sovereigns. Zouga would intensely resent having to make that payment, but he owed it and he would make it. Of what remained after paying Bazo, at least a thousand would go for his share of the new stagings on the number 6 Section.
Eight hundred left, and it cost him a hundred a week to work his claims, so he had won himself two months.
Sixty days, instead of a land. Sixty days instead of a hundred thousand square miles of rich land.
"I'll take it," he said quietly, picked up the whisky glass and drained it. It burned away the bitter taste at the back of his throat.
Ralph's bird was a lanner, one of the true members of the family Falco, long-winged and perfect for hunting the open plains of Griqualand. At last, after many attempts, he had found her and taken her for his own, a falcon and therefore bigger than the male bird, which was not a falcon but a tercel or, in the case of a lanner, a "lanneret".
She was "eyas", the falconers" term for a wild bird taken at the nest when almost full-fledged. Ralph had climbed to the nest high on the top branches of a giant acacia and brought the bird down in his shirt, bleeding where she had raked him with her talons across his belly.