long-bleached skeletons of my horses,
but that one day chance or fate led me back to the path of reason. I
had been sleeping off the effects of the berries, and lay, beneath the
shade of a rock close to the pool, idly tossing about the tiny pebbles
of the little patch of shingle close to its brink playing with them as
a child might. And suddenly a glint on the corner of one of these
little stones arrested my wandering attention; there was something
familiar about it, something that stirred memories in my sluggish
brain. What was it? I groped in vain for some clue. The pebble worried
me, and I made a peevish gesture to throw it away. No! Whatever it was,
I must not do that, rather wash it, wash it. Yes! that was what we used
to do. But where was the batea, for now by some strange freak I was
back in Brazil, and must have my batea. We washed our gravel for
diamonds in that wooden prospecting pan--diamonds?

My mind was stirring troubling me now, and with a trembling hand I
thrust the pebble into a handful of others and worked them between my
palms in the water. Yes, there it was, a good stone of ten carats--
slightly encrusted with oxide--a good find. And I? Where was I?

I stood gazing alternately at the stone, and at my surroundings: the
pool, the circle of towering cliffs that hemmed me in, and gradually
the flood-gates of my clouded memory broke loose and I remembered all.

The girl in England, old Anderson, Inyati, and the blue diamond; my
ride and fall; all these came back to me almost in a flash, stunning
and amazing me; but for long the incidents of my life here in the
hollow were vague and misty. The berries! Surely they had been the
cause of my lethargy, and even as I thought of them the desire for them
came upon me. But for the first time I fought it, for in my reawakened
brain other desires were now surging.

Diamonds! Inyati had told me there were plenty in his land; had Fate
with a cruel irony led me into this land of wealth only to maim me and
keep me a lonely prisoner here in this pit till I died!

All this flashed through my mind as I stood and gazed at the stone;
then, righting my inclination for the berries, I plunged into the pool,
and found new strength and resolution in its refreshing coolness. Then
I searched eagerly amongst the other pebbles and found three more
diamonds, all fine big stones; yet not to be compared with the blue
stone Inyati had given me. Where was it? My pack had been scattere