hips of hunger, thirst, disease, lived like
beasts and died like vermin for the sake of precious stones in the earth.
Thalassa brought up before the young man's eyes a vivid picture of an
African diamond rush of that period--a corrugated iron settlement of one
straggling street, knee-deep in sand, swarming with vermin and scorpions,
almost waterless, crowded with a mongrel, ever-increasing lot of needy
adventurers brought from all parts of the world by reports of diamonds
which could be picked out with a penknife from the dunes and sandy shingle
which formed the background of the villainous "town." In the great waves
and ridges of sand which stretched everywhere as far as the eye could
reach, runaway scoundrels of every shade of colour wormed on their bellies
with the terrible pertinacity of ants, sweating and groping in that
choking dust for the glittering crystals so rarely found.

Thalassa had been infected by the diamond fever like so many more. Like
other young men he wanted plenty of money for women and grog--what else,
he asked, could a man get for money that was worth having? In those days
he was a sailor before the mast, lacking the capital for such delights. So
he deserted his timber tramp when she touched at Port Elizabeth, and set
out for the diamond fields with another runaway--the ship's cook, who had
an ambition to have his meals cooked for him for the rest of his life,
instead of cooking meals for other people.

The fields were far to the north. Thalassa reached them after a terrible
journey through the stony veldt and sandy desert, broken by barren hills.
His companion died of the hardships, and was buried in the desert which
stretched to the wandering course of the Orange River. Thalassa secured
his license and went "prospecting."

"Dost a' know anything about diamonds--digging for them?" he broke off to
ask.

Charles Turold shook his head.

Thalassa lapsed into silence for some moments, his eyes fixed on the sea
hissing among the black wet rocks at his feet, then said--

"A man's a fool most of his days, but sometimes he can be such a fool that
the memory 'll come up to mock him when he lays dying. Here was I,
deserting my ship and throwing away a year's wages and a'most my life to
get to these damned fields, thinking to pick up diamonds cut and
glittering like I'd seen them in London shops, when as soon as I'd clapped
eyes on the first diamond I saw dug up I knew that I'd left behind me at
the