"The tables are guarded," Donsela. replied. "They are covered with a steel screen."
They had all of them heard Donsela. speak of the marvel of the new grease house.
Once again the ingenuity of the white men had put the diamond's unique qualities to his own advantage.
The diamond was unwetable, shedding moisture like the body feathers of a goose. So while wet gravel would roll across a steel table smeared with thick yellow grease, the dry diamond would stick fast.
The pipeline from the Vaal river had at last reached Kimberley, and this water supply was augmented by the subterranean water pumped up from the depths of the vast excavation. There was water enough now to wash the gravel, instead of laboriously dry-sorting it, water enough to wash the sieved gravel over the slanting grease tables. The diamonds stuck like fat little blisters, half embedded in the grease, ready to be scraped off with a steel spatula at the end of each shift.
"There is a steel screen over the tables," Donsela repeated, and Kamuza smiled and passed him a thin reed, cut from the riverbank. On the tip of the reed was a little lump of beeswax.
"The reed will pass through the mesh of the screen," Kamuza told him. "The diamond will stick more firmly to the wax than to the grease."
Donsela examined the reed cautiously. "Last week a Basuto was found with a stone. That same day he fell from the skip as they were bringing him out of the pit.
Men who steal stones have accidents. Those accidents always kill them."
"A warrior's duty is to die for his king," Kamusa told him drily.
"Do not let the overseer catch you, and pick out only the biggest and brightest stones."
In the three years between Kamusa's departure from Kimberley and his abrupt return, Ralph had reached his full growth. Only months short of his twenty-first birthday, he stood as tall as Zouga; but unlike his father, he was cleanshaven except for the thick dark moustache which he allowed to curl down at the corners of his mouth.
At rare intervals he was still able to gather together the ten gold sovereigns necessary to keep his surreptitious friendship with Diamond Lil alive. Then suddenly that was no longer relevant, for Ralph fell in love.
It happened in the street outside that exclusive institution, already the most famous in Africa south of the equator, membership of which conferred enormous prestige and a semi-mystical entre to the elite band of men who wielded the growing wealth and burgeoning power of the diamond fields.
Yet the Kimberley Club was merely a single-storeyed wood-and-iron building as drab as any on the diggings.
True it boasted a billiard room with a full-sized table, a picket fence of ornate cast iron and a stained-glass front door, but it was situated in the noisiest street just off Market Square, and it enjoyed its fair share of the flies and the all-pervading red dust.
It was midmorning and Ralph was bringing one of the gravel carts back from the blacksmith who had replaced the iron tyres on the wooden-spoked wheels.
There was a stir in the street ahead of him. He saw men run from the canteens and kopje-wallopers" offices, most of them bareheaded and in shirtsleeves.
A vehicle came bowling out of the Square, an extraordinary vehicle, light and fast, with high narrow wheels, so cunningly sprung that it seemed to float behind the pair that drew it. They were matched, a strange pale.
brazen colour, softer than the colour of honey, and their manes were white blond.
Both horses were martingaled to force them to arch their necks, and the long-combed platinum maines flew like the battle colours of a famous regiment.
The driver, either by chance, but more probably by skill, had them leading with their off fores in perfect unison, and their gait was an exaggerated trot in which they threw their forehooves so high that they seemed almost to touch the shining heads as they nodded to the rhythm of their run.
Ralph was stabbed by such a pang of envy that it was a physical pain. He had never seen anything so beautiful as those pale glistening animals and the vehicle that they drew, until he raised his eyes to the driver.
She wore a tricom hat of midnight blue, set at a jaunty angle over one eyebrow. Her eyebrows were jet black, narrow and exquisitely arched over huge drop-shaped eyes.
As she came up to the plodding gravel cart she barely lifted the gloved hand that held the reins, and the plunging pair of pale horses swerved neatly and the elegant vehicle flashed past so close that, had he dared, Ralph might have reached up and touched one of those slim ankles in its high-buttoned patent leather boot which just showed under the tailored skirt of moire taffeta.
Then she dropped her hand again, and the matched pair swung the carriage in neatly before the wrought-iron gate of the Kimberley Club and stopped, shaking out their manes fretfully and stamping their forefeet.
"Bazo, take them," Ralph called urgently. "Go on to the stagings.
I'll follow you."
Then he darted across the street and reached up to seize the head of the nearest thoroughbred.
He was only just in time, for half a dozen other loiterers had raced him to it. Ralph removed his cap and looked up at the woman on the buttoned leather seat of the carriage. She glanced down at him and fleetingly smiled her thanks, and Ralph saw that her eyes were the same midnight blue as the hat on her head. Those eyes touched him for only an instant and then went back to the stained-glass front door of the club, but Ralph felt a physical shock from her gaze like a blow in the chest, so that he could not catch his breath.
Ralph was aware of voices, men's voices, from the direction of the club, but he could not tear his eyes from that lovely face. He was absorbing each fine detail, the braid of her hair, the colour of freshly-washed coal, thick as the tail of a lioness, which dropped from under the hat over her shoulder and hung to her waist. The fine peppering of dark freckles high on her cheekbones seemed to emphasize the purity of the rest of her skin.
Her small pointed ears were set at an alert listening angle which gave a peculiar vivacity to her face. The dark !"of the widow's peak below the brim of her hat Pointed up the depth of forehead. Her nose was narrow and straight with elegantly flared nostrils that gave her expression an hauteur that was instantly belied when she smiled, as she was smiling now, but not at Ralph.
She was smiling at the group of men who came out onto the porch of the club, chatting animatedly as they adjusted their hats.
"A splendid lunch, sir." The only stranger to Ralph in the group thanked his host and then led them down the short walk to the street.
He was a tall, well-proportioned man. His dress was sober. The cut was not English but he wore it with a dash that made the dark colours appear flamboyant.
He wore a dark patch over one eye, and it gave him a piratical air. His beard was trimmed to a point, and touched with silver.
"He is at least forty years old," Ralph thought, bitterly, as he realized that the woman was smiling directly at this man.
At his right hand was a small neat figure, a man with an unremarkable face and thin receding hair, a small moustache of indeterminate colour, but eyes so intelligent and humorous that they altered the man's appearance, made it striking and interesting.
"Ah, Ralph," this man murmured, as he noticed the young man standing at the horse's head; but Ralph could not meet his eyes.
Doctor Leander Starr Jameson was an intimate friend of his father's, and privy to Ralph's shame and disgrace.
It was he who had administered the mercury tablets, and washed them down with a stern admonition to avoid in future the snares of harlotry. For a moment Ralph wondered if the doctor would impart his vile secret to the lovely lady on the seat of the carriage, and the thought burned his soul like hoar frost.
On the bearded man's other hand was mister Rhodes, big and serious, his dress untidy, the knot of his tie slipping and his breeches baggy, but with that sense of determination and certainty about him that always awed Ralph.