Renshaw Fanning's Quest Part 26

"We can do nothing here!" said Renshaw, surveying every point with a fairly powerful field-gla.s.s. "There are our chalk-marks all right-- flags and all. We had better make a cast round to the right. According to Greenway's story, the krantzes must be in a sort of terrace formation somewhere. That will be at the point where he was dodging the Bushmen."

Skirting the edge of the gulf, they soon rounded the spur. It was even as Renshaw had conjectured. The ground became more broken. By dint of a not very difficult climb, they soon descended about a hundred feet.

But here they were pulled up by a cliff--not sheer indeed, but apparently unnegotiable. It dropped a matter of thirty feet on to a gra.s.sy ledge some six yards wide, thence without a break about twice that depth to the bottom of the crater.

"We can negotiate that, I guess!" cried Renshaw, joyously, as he unwound a long coil of raw-hide rope. "I came prepared for a far greater drop, but we can do it well here. I don't see any other place that seems more promising. And now I look at it, this must be the very point Greenway himself tried from. Look! That must be the identical rock he squatted under while the Bushmen were peppering him. Yes, by Jove, it must!"

pointing to a great overhanging ma.s.s of stone which rose behind them.

"Why, he had already found a diamond or two even here. What shan't we find down yonder?"

There was a boyish light-heartedness about Renshaw now, even surpa.s.sing the spirits of his companion. The latter stared. But the consciousness of being within touch of fabulous wealth is a wonderful incentive to light-heartedness.

He measured off a length of the rope for the shorter drop. Then they drove in a crowbar, and, securing the rope, a very few minutes sufficed to let themselves down to the gra.s.sy ledge.

"Pheugh! that's something of a job!" cried Sellon, panting with the exertion of the descent. "Something of a job, with all this gear to carry as well. I could have sworn once the whole thing was giving way with me. I say, couldn't we leave our shooting irons here, and pick them up on the way back?"

"H'm! Better not. Never get a yard away from your arms in an enemy's country!"

The reply was unpleasantly suggestive. To Sellon it recalled all his former apprehensions. What a trap they would be in, by the way, in the event of a hostile appearance on the scene.

"You're right," he said. "Let's get on."

The second crowbar was driven in. This time they had some difficulty in fixing it. The turf covering the ledge was only a few inches thick.

Then came the hard rock. At length a crevice was struck, and the staunch iron firmly wedged to within a few inches of its head.

"Our string is more than long enough," said Renshaw, flinging the raw-hide rope down the face of the rock. The end trailed on the ground more than a dozen feet. "This krantz is on a greater slant than the smaller one. Don't throw more of your weight on the _reim_ than you can help. More climbing than hanging, you understand. I'll go down first."

Slant or no slant, however, this descent was a ticklish business. To find yourself hanging by a single rope against the smooth face of a precipice with a fifty-foot drop or so beneath is not a delightful sensation, whatever way you look at it. The crowbar might give. There might be a flaw in the iron--all sorts of things might happen. Besides, to go down a sixty-foot rope almost hand under hand is something of a feat even for a man in good training. However, taking advantage of every excrescence in the rock likely to afford pa.s.sing foothold, Renshaw accomplished the descent in safety.

Then came Sellon's turn. Of powerful and athletic build, he was a heavy man, and in no particular training withal. It was a serious ordeal for him, and once launched in mid-air the chances were about even in favour of a quicker and more disastrous descent than either cared to think of.

The rope jammed his unwary knuckles against the hard rock, excoriating them and causing him most excruciating agony, nearly forcing him to let go in his pain and bewilderment. The instinct of self-preservation prevailed, however, and eventually he landed safely beside his companion--where the first thing he did on recovering his breath was to break forth into a tremendous imprecation. Then, forgetting his pain and exertion, he, following the latter's example, glanced round curiously and a little awed, upon the remarkable place wherein they found themselves--a place whose soil had probably never before been trodden by human foot.

And the situation had its awesome side. The great rock walls sheering up around had shut in this place for ages and ages, even from the degraded and superst.i.tious barbarians whose fears invested it and its guardian Eye with all the terrors of the dread unknown. While the history of civilisation--possibly of the world itself--was in its infancy, this gulf had yawned there unexplored, and now they two were the first to tread its virgin soil. The man who could accept such a situation without some feeling of awe must be strangely devoid of imagination--strangely deficient in ideas.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

THE "VALLEY OF THE EYE."

The floor of the crater was nearly level, though somewhat depressed in the centre. Great ma.s.ses of rock spar protruded here and there from the soil, which latter was gravelly. On turning up the surface, however, a formation of whitey-blue clay lay revealed.

"This is the place for the 'stones,'" said Renshaw, exultantly, making a tentative dig or two with his pick. "The Eye apart, we ought to find something here worth having. Ah, I thought so."

He picked up a small, dingy-looking crystal about the size of a pea. It was of perfect symmetry even in the rough, the facets being wonderfully even.

"You'd better put that aside, Sellon, and stick to it as the first stone--apart from our division of the swag. Knock it into a pin or something."

It was a small act. But it was thoroughly characteristic of the man's open-souled unselfishness. The first instalment of the treasure, attained at the cost of so much anxious thought--of so much hards.h.i.+p and lonely peril--he offered to his companion. And the latter accepted it without hesitation--equally characteristically.

"We'd better get on to the big thing now, though," he continued, "and leave the fossicking until afterwards."

In a few minutes they crossed the crater. Then carefully scanning the opposite cliff they made their way along the base of the same.

"There's one of our 'flags,'" cried Renshaw, suddenly. "And by Jove-- there are our chalk splashes! Not bad archery in the dark, eh? Look.

They are all within half a dozen yards of each other."

A great boulder some dozen feet in height and in shape like a tooth, rose out of the soil about twenty yards from the base of the cliff. It was riven obliquely from top to bottom as if split by a wedge; a curious boulder, banded with strata of quartz like the stripes of an agate.

On the face of it were four white marks--all, as the speaker had said, within a few yards of each other, and bearing the relative formation of the stars composing the Southern Cross. Two of the arrows with the strips of rag attached, lay a little further off, while the shafts which had so faithfully left their mark lay at the foot of the boulder, the chalk shattered to pieces.

The intense excitement of the moment was apparent in both men, and it took widely different phases. Sellon advanced hurriedly to the face of the boulder, and began scrutinising it, eagerly, fiercely, from top to base. Renshaw, on the other hand, deliberately sat down, and, producing his pipe, proceeded leisurely to fill and light it.

"It isn't on the face of the rock we've got to look, Sellon," he said, when this operation was completed. "It's here."

He rose, advanced to the cleft, and gazed eagerly inside. It was just wide enough to admit a man's body. Just then the first arrowy gleams of the risen sun shot over the frowning rock walls, glowing athwart the grey chill atmosphere of the crater. They swept round the searcher's head, darting into the shaded cleft.

And then one swift reflected beam from the shadow of that rocky recess, one dart of fire into his eyes, and Renshaw started back. There, not two yards in front of his face, protruded from the rough surface of the quartz, a dull hard pyramid; but from the point of that pyramid darted the ray which had for the moment blinded him.

"HERE IT IS! THE EYE!"

The other was at his side in a moment. And thus they stood side by side, speechless, gazing upon a truly magnificent diamond.

Well might they be struck speechless. To one the retrospect of a hard, lonely life, sacrificed in detail to the good of others, a struggling against wind and tide, a constant battle against the very stars in their courses--rose up and pa.s.sed before his eyes in a lightning flash at that moment. To the other what experience of soured hopes, of reckless s.h.i.+fts, of a so far marred life, of failure, and confidence misplaced and unrequited--of gradual cutting loose from all principle--a confusion between the sense of right and wrong, and, following immediately upon all, a golden glow of hope no longer deferred, a sunny ideal of abundant consolation; of love and happiness! But to both comfort, ease, wealth.

Wealth. The riches lying waste for ages in this remote solitude must at length yield to the grasping hand of their predestined owner--Man. With the first human footfall in this solemn untrodden recess rushed in the jarring cares and considerations of the busy world in all its whirling haste--its feverish strivings. Wealth!

With the point of his geological hammer Renshaw next proceeded to chip a circle around the great diamond. Clink, clink! The hammer bit its way slowly but surely into the face of the hard rock. Clink, clink! The circle deepened. The chips flew into their eager faces. No thought of pausing to rest.

It was a long job and a tedious one. At length the quartz cracked, then split. The superb stone rolled into Renshaw's hand.

"Seven or eight hundred carats, if it's one," he said, holding it up to the light, and then pa.s.sing it to his companion. "Look what a s.h.i.+ne it has, even in the rough. It must have been partially 'cut' by the splitting of the quartz, even as old Greenway conjectured. Directly I saw this boulder, split in half like that, I knew that it was in the cleft that we had to search. Yet the thing is a perfect marvel, well-nigh outside all experience."

"I wonder what the _schelm_ Bushmen will think when they find that their 'devil's eye' has knocked off s.h.i.+ning," said Sellon. "By Jove, we should look precious fools if they were to drop down and quietly sneak our rope!"

"We should," a.s.sented Renshaw, gravely. "We should be pinned in a trap for all time."

"Pho! The very thought of it makes one's blood run cold. But, I say, let's hunt for some more stones, and then clear out as soon as possible."

A careful search having convinced Renshaw that such a freak of Nature was not likely to repeat itself, and that neither the cleft nor the sides of the great boulder offered any more of its marvellous treasures to be had for the taking, they turned away to search the gravelly soil of the crater, with what intensity of eagerness only those who have experienced the truly gambling pa.s.sion involved in treasure-seeking can form an idea. No food had pa.s.sed their lips since the previous evening, yet not a moment could be spared from the fierce, feverish quest for wealth. They ate their dry and scanty rations with one hand while wielding pick and shovel with the other. Even the torments of thirst, for the contents of their pocket flasks were as a mere drop to the ocean in the torrid, focussed heat now pouring down into this iron-bound hollow, they hardly felt. Each and every energy was merged in that intense and craving treasure hunt.

"Well, this can't go on for ever," said Renshaw at last, pausing to wipe his streaming brow. "What do you say to knocking off now, and leaving this for another day? Remember, we are not out of the wood yet. There is such a thing as leaving well alone. And we have done more than well."

They had. It wanted about two hours to sunset. In the course of this long day's work they had found upwards of sixty diamonds--besides the superb Eye. All were good stones, some of them indeed really magnificent. This long-sealed-up treasure-house of the earth, now that its doors were opened, yielded its riches in no n.i.g.g.ardly fas.h.i.+on.

"Perhaps we had better clear out while we can," a.s.sented Sellon, looking around regretfully, and making a final dig with his pick. There hung the good rope, safe and sound. A stiff climb--then away to spend their lives in the enjoyment of the fruits of their enterprise.

"If you don't mind, I'll go first. I am so cursedly heavy," said Sellon. "And just steady it, like a good chap, while I swarm up."

A good deal of plunging, and gasping, and kicking--and we are sorry to add--a little "cussing," and Sellon landed safely upon the gra.s.sy ledge.

Renshaw was not long in following.