t half-way to the
steep summit the trees fell away and a hard saddle of rock spread
itself over the diamond beneath. Just before he reached this point he
slowed down his pace warned by an animal sense that there was life
just ahead of him. Coming to a high boulder, he lifted his head
gradually above its edge. His curiosity was rewarded; this is what he
saw:

Braddock Washington was standing there motionless, silhouetted against
the gray sky without sound or sign of life. As the dawn came up out of
the east, lending a gold green colour to the earth, it brought the
solitary figure into insignificant contrast with the new day.

While John watched, his host remained for a few moments absorbed in
some inscrutable contemplation; then he signalled to the two negroes
who crouched at his feet to lift the burden which lay between them. As
they struggled upright, the first yellow beam of the sun struck
through the innumerable prisms of an immense and exquisitely chiselled
diamond--and a white radiance was kindled that glowed upon the air
like a fragment of the morning star. The bearers staggered beneath its
weight for a moment--then their rippling muscles caught and hardened
under the wet shine of the skins and the three figures were again
motionless in their defiant impotency before the heavens.

After a while the white man lifted his head and slowly raised his arms
in a gesture of attention, as one who would call a great crowd to
hear--but there was no crowd, only the vast silence of the mountain
and the sky, broken by faint bird voices down among the trees. The
figure on the saddle of rock began to speak ponderously and with an
inextinguishable pride.

"You--out there--!" he cried in a trembling voice.

"You--there----!" He paused, his arms still uplifted, his head held
attentively as though he were expecting an answer. John strained his
eyes to see whether there might be men coming down the mountain, but
the mountain was bare of human life. There was only sky and a mocking
flute of wind along the treetops. Could Washington be praying? For a
moment John wondered. Then the illusion passed--there was something in
the man's whole attitude antithetical to prayer.

"Oh, you above there!"

The voice was become strong and confident. This was no forlorn
supplication. If anything, there was in it a quality of monstrous
condescension.

"You there--" Words, too quickly uttered to be understood, flowing
one into the other .... J