SHORT STORIES,

Otago Witness, Issue 3614, 19 June 1923, Page 65

SHORT STORIES,

DEAD MAN’S DIAMONDS.

By

E. .

Author of “Plira the Phoenician,” “Lepidus, the Centurion,” "(Ja the Indian liilis,” etc. etc. (Copyright.) This is the stor\. cf the young man who sat in the opposite corner of our luxurious smoking compartment as we journeyed down me railway from a mid-African town t-o the seaport, where we picked up a steamer for England. With the exception of a certain pallor and some lines of suffering in his face there was nothing suggestive of death or hardship about my fellow traveller, yet it was a grim narrative he had to tell, and its details still cling to mv memory. ‘‘l was beaten,’ he said, between the pulls of his cigar smoke, "hopelessly beaten! I had been out alone in the wilderness six months, prospecting for diamonds and had found nothing. I will not vex you with details of an old story; suffice it to say that, ragged, threadbare, burnt dry by African suns, hungry - in heart and stomach, ill-equipped, friendless. and footsore. I at last turned from the quest, setting my face eastward for that- dreariest of all earthly adventures, the homeward march of the broken man. I shudder even now to think of the journey, for it was by the merest chance I escaped alive and am not at this moment a heap of bones and rags, propped up against same tree in the outer wilderness, my fate and resting place alike unknown to friends and enemies. For a moment the pleasant, boyish face opposite to me clouded over; its lines deepened, the mouth hardened, and palpable fear gleamed in the grey eyes of the speaker, as though his words conjured up a terrible vision: then he mastered himself and went on again : ‘‘You know what a big place Africa is, how easy to miss one s way in its immensities? I have done a good deal of tramping in mv time, but now I was sick, s:ny, and careless—careless above every thing, and, to make this part of the story short, the terrible days slipped by one after another, 1 came into an unknown, uninhabited region, and with boots falling to pieces, provisions gene, I presently found 1 was lost bevond hope, the cruel solitudes of Africa hemmed me in on every side. When the fact in its naked reality ba-ca-me obvious I sat down and wept ; it was physical weakness more than anything else, and when that passed I ate the last c-rumbs of biscuit in my wallet, pulled myself together, and set out to tramp anew, not with any hope or expeclaticn, but just a dull, savage tramp, where or whither mattered nothing. All through tile fiery davs that c-aiae afterwards and most of the star spangled nights, noting, seeing nothing, I went on and on, I have 110 knowledge for how long, without thinking, or. indeed, feeling much. My strength dropped from me every hour, and as it went weakness and a .blazing sun filled my head with the wildest fancies. I dreamed hard as i wah-ced, dreamed of lovely ladies dancing before me over the scorched ground, dreamed of songs and laughter, of streams and green meadows all around. I was going mad. I sang huskily to myself of feasts and wine, as 1 starved to death on my feet, staggering ever forward through a glittering pantomime of unrealities to the grim reality of the fate close ahead. So at last I came unexpectedly one evening into a- pleasanter country, with clumps of trees islanded amongst growing grass, and low. blue hills in the rear distance. Beside one of these thickets was a shallow pool of water, ard as I saw it I knew mv tongue was a thong of leather, rny veins empty save for the thick, fiery blood that ebbed and flowed so slowly in them. Round and round went the giddy world, the verv hills danced before my swollen eyes, the great shuttle cf the Aft ican sun leapt horribly to and fro in the crimson and golden tapestry of the twilight skyabove” but there was water ahead, water! I would have c-rawled to it through hell, and I did crawl to it on all fours that last quarter of a mile, and lapped, and drank, and wallowed in it like a beast. Then a. craving for rest, even if it was for ever, came on me. The nearest clump of trees was not a hundred yards away, it looked liome-like arid inciting. I (daggered painfully over the intervening distance, reeled into the shade, and dropped helpless at the foot of a tree, too weak almost to move the hands that fell listlesslv at my side. Here it flashed cn me was the end of everything: the appointed place; 1 feared and suffered no more; my chin dropped on my chest; my eyes glazed; I was dying! In an hour, for some unknown reason, my numbed faculties suddenly bounded to life again, and with a thrill I awoke. The sun had set, the whole place was full of silence and ghostly twilight, the crowded tree stems, red and ebony under the funeral canopy of their foliage overhead; where was I? Was I dead indeed? I tried to think, but could recall nothing. I stared about me in the gloom, and then —oh, think how my heart jumped, how my pulses beat, for there, opposite, propped against a tree exactly as 1 was, sat the lonely figure of a man ! He was limp and mute ; ragged beyond all description; the soles of his boots towards me; his broad felt hat pulled down oyer his face; one hand resting on a rusty rifle lying at his side, his knapsack at the other, and a weather-worn cartridge belt across his chest. All the solitude of the place seemed to concentrate in him. He was the quintessence of silence, yet 1 was not afraid. ‘Hullo, over there f” I called softly, but tlu-re was no answer. Again, 1 spoke, without success, so, on hands and knees, 1 crawled over to that melancholy huddle of

clothes and lifted the hat on its head. Underneath was the face of a man long dead; the high protruding cheek-bones covered with a skin like brown parclianent, the teetli bare and white by comparison, the eye-sockets hollow, and the thin lips drawn with an expression of suffering no lapse of time could alter. He was dead as ever any man had been; the sun had dried him as he sat, and his clothes alone held his bones together! A meloneholy object indeed, but 1 felt too near akin to be alarmed. A prospector like myself, my fate also promised to be his. I sat opposite him for a long while, hunched up with weakness, and dreamily wondering where he had come from, what his story was. Meanwhile the day ended, the lurid splendours of a tropical sunset passed from the sky, and with the twilight strange thing things, unseen through the hot hours, began to move about the veldt. A little owl overhead hooted to another and went oh’ a-hunting; bats flitted through the darkening branches; night insects moved in the shadows, and small deer came down to drink at the pool outside. The very last rays of daylight ran down the barrel of the rifle the man was holding, emphasising it strongly against the dark ground. My eyes Tested on it without much attention until a deer barked at the water not a hundred yards away. Then eyes' and ears together flashed a thought into my mind. Meat, food, was possibly within reach! The physical hunger I had thought dead for ever within me leapt into reality. Would the rifle act, had he an unspent cartridge? With hands that trembled like a leaf I reached over and undid his bonv fingers from the stock—tliev broke •.aider my touch like dry twigs—and lifted the weapon. It was rusty bey- id imagination: it would have shocked a Bond street gunsmith, but the action worked, it could be used. The chamber was empty. Had the dead man any ammunition still left? The answer was life or death to me. I opened his jacket, and there slung about him was the cartridge belt. I ran my fingers down another deer barking loudly at the water hole, and the belt was emptyempty front end to end! I felt in the outer pocket of liis jacket, and with a thrill that went through me. amid the crumbs of .a biscuit, hits of string, and the stump of a pencil, mv fingers found what I looked for. It was a good cartridge, unspent, but the last, the only one, the sole chance between myself and starvation that else must certainly come with the morrow. I loaded that gun and crept on hanils and knees into the open. Never had a man gone a hunting in more desperate case, but fortunately game was close at hand. A scanty 50 yards crawling through the grass brought me within easy shot of the water, and there, eagerly drinking round its margin, stood half a dozen small dc-er. In that past, which now seemed so long ago, it would have been the easiest possible thing to bring down one of them, but now I lay and trembled from head to foot, shook in every fibre of me, as though the world itself was rocking. For full five minutes the fit lasted, but at last, desperately pulling myself together, I rested the muzzle on a clod of earth and took a long aim at the nearest beast. It meant life or death, and when at last the trigger was pulled there came a harmless click, but no report—the cartridge had failed. Then the bitterness of despair came on me again, and, hiding my face in the hot earth, I felt all was over. But just a chance remained, one in a it'iousand, that the cartridge might fire at a second try—and the deer were still drinking. Very quietly aim was taken anew, the trigger pressed, a flesh of crimson light jumped from the muzzle, and, to my inconceivable delight, the deer sprang into the air and rolled over dead. M hat exactly followed is lost in a haze c% emotions. I have a remembrance of cutting out with my hunting knife the best portions of that pc-ast; of staggering back to the trees, making a cookiiig fire, for I had matches and was still civilised man, and then eating. Afterwards came real forgetfulness, a subsidence into oblivion, the gleam of the flames on the leaves overhead, and that gaunt figure sitting propped against the tree-trunk opposite. Twice was I discovered before dawn, noth awakenings being weird enough to scare one less numbed by privation than myself. The first came 'about midnight. I was very sound asleep when a gentle Pull came at mv jacket. In a minute the tug came again, and a hot breath fell on my face. It roused me to quick consciousness, and, starting up, I rubbed my eyes and stared about. The moon was rising outside, ruddy and low, the fire out. and inky blackness under the trees. In the darkness, half a dozen paces away, shone two living eyes with a green, senuiehural radiance. I could see the colour change in them. They were absolutely, completely disembodied, and while I stared they began without a sound to change their position, so that T had to alter mine to face them. As I did so tile remembrance of the dead man rushed upon me, and for a, moment my hair fairlv bristled on my head, then a wave of shame at such cowardice followed, for it was nothing but a fox or prowling little beast of some sort, and a stone thrown into the darkness, where those green stars had been shining, successfully eclipsed them for the night. The blaze was made up afresh from the remains of the embers, and setting myself to rest facing the lost pioneer, plainly visilile against his tree, 1 was soon asleep again. Hut this time troubled dreams disturbed my slumbers. Tossing : n i turning, I spent an uneasy hour or two until dawn was near at hand, and, with the moon at its zenith, began to fill the shadows with grey light. Then a second time consciousness came suddenly, and, opening my eyes, I stared sleepily over to where my grim companion had been sitting. Think how my hair rose and my

heart stood still when I saw he was ao longer there! The tree, one of a hundred, was exactly as it had been, but the traveller had vanished from its roots. Not daring to move, I lay absolutely motionless for some moments racking my brains to think what it meant. No wild animal would have thought him worth a moment's notice, and ha was dead, as certainly dead as a poor framework of bones wrapped in bleached rags could he. M ho could have taken him, where had lie gene, had he walked away? With the thoughts flying thus through my mind my eyes changed to seek the remains of the camp fire—and they, too, were gone! A moment’s fearful hesitation, then, glancing over my shoulder, there lay the embers and the skeleton beyond them. I had simply turned over in my sleep and lost my bearings. Fool and coward to be scared by a coyotte and frightened by an empty shadow ! Indignantly rising, I shook the night dew from my rags and hobbled out on to the veldt. Hay was coming, splendid and lovely as it does under the equator, the pearly sky, hung with great planets, beginning'to flush with gold and crimson, and the cool breath of heaven drifting in from the near hills. I was better, but horribly hungry again. The fox had taken the last of my supper scraps, so, knife in hand, I went down to the pool to get more deer for breakfast. Not a trace of the animal remained, the tilings of the night-time had made completely away with it. One cannot leave fresh meat in the African wilderness and expect to find it again untouched. As a hunter I knew that, but had been too ill to think of it overnight. So here was I starving and unarmed once more, only the better by one meal than my friend in the wood. There was nothing for it but to set out again on that weary tramp into tile immensity. I went hack and stood by him, very sick at heart. As he was, so I should probably be in a day or two. Yet somehow I drew a strange inspiration from bis companionship, and determined to do all I could to escape while strength remained. Tlis boots were better than mine. i sat down in the ripening pulled them from the fleshless limbs, and put them on. Desperately hunting for one more cartridge, I came upon a second be.it about his waist. It was a familiar article to a prospector like myself, and opening tlie pockets I found they were tilled with rough diamonds, a prince’s ransom at least. He had obviously been splendidly suceessfnl where I had failed, and had died with tlie wealth lie had dreamed of all his life bound valueless about him. Hew worthless those gems were to me, as they had been to him ! I would so gladly have exchanged the' whole glittering store for a mouldy biscuit or two. Throwing them away in disgust, I presently gathered the stones together again, putting them in my pocket, for cupidity dies hard. The rifle was useless without ammunition, but his jacket seemed better than mine, so an exchange was made. Finally, the poor remains of that nameless traveller were laid in a shallow hollow, roughly dilg in the ground with a pointed piece of wood, and, nothing more being possible, I glanced round -the strange little woodland chamber, and went into the open. My idea was to go northward: had that plan been followed this storv would never have been told. But, indeed, no way offered much hope ; foot-sore and ill, I soon began to realise progress in any direction was impossible. The fact at last became so manifest I sat down on •» bare rock, hiding my face in mv hands in sheer despair. Why had I not died over-night instead of dragging on a miserable existence for .a few more hours? Why not shared to the last that chamber in the wood, with tlie friendly old pioneer? Lifting my hands in impotent distress to heaven I smote them on mv breast—and under one, in an overlooked inner pocket of the exchanged coat, lay something; hard. Taking it out it proved to he a faded and time-worn pocket booK. Every leaf contained entries in pencil, the writing growing feebler and more straggling with each sentence. But it was the final page which fascinated me. Here, in a scrawl scarcely decipherable, the dead man had told of the last hours before sleep overcame him. Roughly, the lines ran like this: “I can go no further. It is the hot weather; no water, as I hoped, in the pool. . . . No game : only one cartridge left. I am dying of hunger and thirst . . . I know it. And only a few miles away, through the hills to the south, the road ... I saw it yesterday . . . and men on it. Without food or help I cannot reach it. . . . Tt is so close. . . . I have come so far: I have crawled on hands and knees towards it all to-day. No water; I die . . . the road ’ There the ragged scrawl ran suddenly out in a. pencilled hue straggling aimlessly down the page as the man’s fingers fell from his control. “'Tlie road, the road!” Had he saved me after all? There were the southward hills I had hut now turned mv hack upon, close at hand, and behind ffiem, unless he lied, civilisation, meat, drink, shelter kindlv faces everything that makes life worth living. With a cry in my burning throat that scared the vultures in the cotton trees, a fierce energy returning to my shrunken limbs, I plunged southward, seeing, noting nothing; bursting through tangles and thickets like a madman, scaring the game from mv path, reckless of sun, dust, or pain, until, after some miles, I did indeed breast the rise of the low hill and looked down on the further side.” “And was the road there?” T asked of my fellow traveller on that African railway? He laughed lightly as he lit another cigar. “Yes” he answered, "only a mile away and people on it. Still closer to me was an English picnic party camped by a pretty spring in the green turf; women in white muslin dresses, men; cold chickens and tongues from England

laid out on the spread cloth; gooseberry tarts, and cakes; claret cup and icei coffee. Lord ! how I frightened them as I leapt out of hell into that paradise! But, luckily, perhaps, for me, all my senses went as I touched the hem of their table-cloth, and the next thing 1 knew I was in bed in hospital, being tenderly nursed back to strength again. The old note book that saved my life is up there in the attache-case in the rack; you can see it if you like- ’ "And the diamonds?” ,‘T have tried honestly to find anyone who has a better right to them than myself, but none with the shadow of a claim has come forward. Thev are only the lesser half of what I owe to that poor chap back there in the thicket by the pool: And now here’s the place where we stop an hour for luncheon. I telegraphed for a good one to be ready for us. I believe it will take me six months to get over my fasting in the wilderness. Hurry up!”