For these reasons, and also for the more pleasant living conditions along the river, the diggers had not taken too much interest in the "dry diggings" to the south.
Then one day a Hottentot servant of one of the river diggers rendered himself blind falling-down drunk with Cape Smoke, the fierce Cape brandy, and while in that state accidentally set fire to his master's tent and burned it to the ground.
When he was once again sober, his master beat him with a sjambok whip of cured rhinoceros-hide until he was once more unable to stand. When he recovered from his treatment, his master ordered him, still in disgrace, to go into the dry country "and dig until you find a diamond".
Chastened and still wobbly on his feet, the Hottentot had shouldered his shovel and pack and limped away.
His master promptly forgot him, until he returned unannounced two weeks later and placed in his master's hand half a dozen fine white stones, the largest the size of the first joint of a lady's little finger.
"Where?" demanded Fleetwood Rawstome, the single word all that he could choke through a throat suddenly parched and closed with excitement.
Minutes later, Fleetwood galloped furiously out of camp, a cartload of scrapings from the river bed left untreated and his diamond "cradle" abandoned halfway through the process of concentrating the heavier diamondiferous gravel. Daniel, the Hottentot servant, hung from his stirrup leather, his bare feet kicking up little puffs of dust as they skimmed the dry earth, and the red woollen cap that was the insignia of Fleetwood's party blowing back from his bald head to flap like a flag beckoning others to follow.
Such behaviour instantly precipitated a wild panic amongst the fiercely competitive little community of diggers along the river. Within an hour a tall column of red dust rose above the flat dry land; a headlong column of horsemen flogged their mounts while behind them the Scotch carts rumbled and the less fortunate stumbled and slipped in the sandy footing as they ran the miles back southwards to old man De Beer's barren hard-scrabble little farm on which rose another bald stony little kopje, just like ten thousand others, that studded the plains.
The kopje was that same day in the bleak, dry winter of 1871 named "Colesberg" kopje, for Colesberg was Fleetwood Rawstorne's birthplace, and De Beer's New Rush came swarming out of the dusty sun-bleached distances towards it.
It was almost dark when Fleetwood reached the kopje, only just ahead of his followers. His horse was blown, lathered with sweat and white froth, but the Hottentot servant clung to the stirrup leather still.
Master and servant flung themselves from the heaving staggering animal and ran at the slope. Their scarlet caps bobbing above the scrub thorn could be seen from a half mile distance, and a hoarse excited cheer went up from the ragged column that pursued them.
On the crest of the hill, the Hottentot servant had burrowed a shaft ten feet into the hard earth, a tiny scratch when compared to what was to follow. Frantic with haste, casting fearful glances down the hillside at the horde that raced up towards him, Fleetwood drove the centre line of his claim pegs across the narrow mouth of the shallow prospect shaft.
Night fell over a battlefield on which brawny diggers cursed each other and swung punches and pick-handles to clear the ground and drive their own claim pegs. By noon the next day, when farmer De Beer rode across from his primitive two-roomed dwelling to begin writing out the "briefies", which was taal for "letters", the entire kopje was covered with claim pegs; even the flat plain for a quarter of a mile below the slopes was bristling with pegs.
Each claim was thirty feet square, its centre and corners marked with a sharpened wood stake cut from a camel-thorn branch. On payment of an annual fee of ten shillings to farmer De Beer, the digger received his written "briefie" which entitled him to hold and work the claim in perpetuity.
Before nightfall that first day the lucky diggers who had pegged the centre of the new rush had merely scratched the stony earth, but had turned up over forty stones of the first water; and already horsemen were away southwards carrying the word to the world that Colesberg kopje was a mountain of diamonds.
When Zouga Ballantyne's single wagon creaked the last few miles down the rutted red earth track towards Colesberg kopje, it was already half demolished, eaten away as though by the maggots in a rotten cheese, and men still swarmed over what remained. On the dusty plain below it were encamped almost ten thousand souls, black and brown and white. The smoke from their cooking fires blurred the high china-blue sky with dirty grey, and for miles in each direction the diggers had almost denuded the plain of the beautiful camel-thorn trees to feed those fires.
The settlement was strewn about under dirty weatherworn canvas, although already some sheets of the ubiquitous corrugated iron had been laboriously transported from the coast and knocked up into boxlike shanties.
Some of these, with a fine sense of order, had been arranged in an approximation of a straight line, forming the first rudimentary streets.
These belonged to the "kopie-wallopers", the previously nomadic diamond buyers who had until recently roamed the diggings, but who had now found it worth their while to set up permanent shop below the crumbling remains of Colesberg kopje. According to the infant diamond laws of the Boer Free State, each licensed buyer was obliged to display his name prominently. This they did in crudely lettered signs upon the little iron sweatbox offices, but most of them went further and flew a disproportionately large gaudy and fancifully designed flag from a mast on the roof to announce to the diggers that the incumbent was in office and ready to do business. The flags lent a carnival air to the settlement.
Zouga Ballantyne walked beside the offside lead ox of his team, following one of the narrow meandering rutted tracks that ran through the settlement. Occasionally the team had to be swung to avoid the tailings that had spilled into the track from one of the recovery stations, or to avoid a deep morass formed by spilled sewerage and washings from the sorting-tables.
The settlement was densely crowded upon itself, that was the first impression that struck Zouga. He was a man of the plains and savannah forests, accustomed to long uninterrupted horizons, and the crowding jarred upon his senses. The diggers lived within touching distance of each other, every man attempting to get as close to his claim as he could so that the gravel that he won from it would not have to be carried too far to the place where he would process it.
Zouga had hoped to find an open space upon which to outspan his wagon and erect the big bell tent, but there was no open space within a quarter of a mile of the kopje.
. He glanced back at Aletta on the box. She was sitting very still, moving only as the wagon jolted, looking straight ahead as though oblivious of the almost naked men, many wearing merely a scrap of trade cloth about the loins, who milled the crunchy lumps of yellow gravel and then shovelled it into the waiting cradles. Swearing or singing as they worked, all of them oiled with their own sweat in the cruel white sunlight.
The filth appalled even Zouga, who had known the kraals of the Mashona in the north and had lived in a bushman settlement with the little creatures who never bathed in their entire lifetimes.
Civilized man generates particularly loathsome wastes, and it seemed that every square inch of the dusty red earth between the tents and the shanties of the settlement was covered with a litter of rusty bully beef tins, broken fragments of bottles and porcelain that glittered in the sunlight, a snowstorm of paper scraps, the decomposing corpses of stray kittens and unwanted dogs, the scrapings from the cooking pots, the excrement of those too lazy to dig a latrine in the hard earth and screen it with a thatch of the silvery Karroo grass, and all the other unidentifiable offal and castings with which ten thousand human beings without control or sanitary regulations had surrounded themselves.
Zouga caught Aletta's eyes and smiled at her reassuringly, but she did not return the smile. Her lips were set bravely, but her eyes were huge and brimming with tears that lapped at her lower lids. Zouga did not look back again at Aletta.
They squeezed past a transport rider who had brought up a wagonload of goods from the coast, six hundred miles, and had set up shop from the tailboard of his wagon, displaying a sign on which he had chalked up a price list: Candles, 1 pound a packet Whisky, 12 pounds a case Soap, 5 shillings a piece.the prices were twenty times higher than those prevailing at the coast.
De Beer's New Rush was probably at that moment the most expensive spot on the surface of the globe. The remaining sovereigns in the wide leather money-belt around Zouga's waist seemed suddenly feather light.
By noon that day they had found space to outspan the wagon on the periphery of the huge circular encampment. While Jan Cheroot, Zouga's Hottentot retainer, drove the cattle away to find grazing and water, Zouga hurriedly erected the heavy canvas tent, Aletta and the boys holding the guy ropes while he drove the pegs.
"You must eat," Aletta mumbled, still not looking at him as she squatted over the smouldering cooking fire and stirred the cast iron stew pot that contained the remains of a springbuck that Ralph had shot three, days before.
Zouga went to her, stooped and with his hands on her shoulders lifted her to her feet. She moved stiffly as an old woman, the long hard journey had taken a heavy toll of her frail body.
"It will be all right," he told her, and still she would not look at him, perhaps she had heard that assurance too often. He cupped her chin and lifted her face, and the tears broke at last and slid down her cheeks, leaving little Funnels through the red dust that powdered her skin. The tears angered Zouga unreasonably, as though they were an accusation. He dropped his hands and stepped back from her.
"I will be back before dark," he told her harshly and, turning from her, he strode away towards the ruined sillhouette of the Colesberg kopje which stood out starkly, even through the stinking miasma of smoke and dust that hovered over the camp.
Zouga might have been a wraith, a thing of air, invisible to human eyes. They hurried by him on the narrow track, or remained stooped over mill and cradle while he passed, without an inclination of head or even a casual glance, an entire community living for one thing only, completely absorbed and obsessed.
From experience Zouga knew there was one place where he might be able to establish human contact, and through it glean the information he so desperately needed. He was looking for a canteen that sold hard liquor.
Below the kopje there was an open space, the only one in the camp.
It was roughly square in shape, bordered by shacks of canvas and iron, cluttered with the wagons of the transport riders.
Zouga selected one of the shacs that grandly announced itself as "The London Hotel" and on the same board advertised:
Whisky 7,"6. Best English Beer 5,"- a schooner.
He was picking his way across the littered, rutted market square towards it when ragged cheers and a bellowed chorus of "For he's a jolly good fellow" from the direction of the kopje checked him. A motley band of diggers came stamping through the dust carrying one of their number upon their shoulders, singing and yelling, their faces brick red with dust and excitement. They shouldered their way into the rickety bar ahead of Zouga, while from the other canteens and from the parked wagons men came running to find the cause of the excitement.
"What happened?" the question was yelled.
"Black Thomas pulled a monkey," the reply was hurled back.
It was only later that Zouga learned the diggers" parlance. A "monkey" was a diamond of fifty carats or more, while a "pony" was that impossible diggers" dream, a stone of one hundred carats.
"Black Thomas pulled a monkey." The reply was picked up and called across the square and through the encampment, and soon the crowd overflowed the rickety canteen so that the frothing schooners of beer had to be passed overhead to the men on the fringes.
The fortunate Black Thomas was hidden from Zouga's view in the crowd that pressed about him, everybody trying to draw close as though some of the man's luck might rub off onto them.
The kopje-wallopers heard the excitement, hastily lowered their flags and hurried across the square, gathering like carrion birds to the lion's kill. The first of them arrived breathless on the fringe of the revellers, hopping up and down for a glimpse of the man.
"Tell Black Thomas that Lion-heart Werner will make an open offer, pass it on to him."
"Hey, Blackie, Lion-arse will go open." The offer changed shape as it was yelled through the packed doorway. An "open offer" was firm and the digger was free to tout the other buyers. If he received no higher bid for his diamond, he was entitled to return and close with the open offer.
Once again Black Thomas was raised by his fellows until he could see over their heads. He was a little gypsydark Welshman and his moustache was rimmed with beer froth. His voice had the sweet Welsh lilt as he sang his defiance: "Hear me, then, Lion-arse the robber, I would soonerwhat he proposed to do with his diamond made even the rough men about him blink and then guffaw with surprise "-rather than let you get your thieving paws on it., His voice rang with the memory of a hundred humiliations and unfair bargains that had been forced upon him.
Today Black Thomas with his "monkey" was king of the diggings, and though his reign might be short, he was determined to reap all the sweets that it promised.
Zouga never laid eyes on that stone; he never saw Black Thomas again; for by noon the following day the little Welshman had sold his diamond, and sold too his "briefies", and taken the long road south on the beginning of his journey home to a fairer, greener land.
Zouga waited in the press of hot sweat-stinking bodies that filled the canteen, choosing a man with care while he listened to the voices grow louder and the chaff coarser as the schooners went down.
He selected one who by his comportment and speech was a gentleman, and home-bred rather than colonial born. The man was drinking whisky, and when his glass was empty Zouga moved closer and ordered it refilled.
"Very decent of you, old man," the man thanked him.
He was in his twenties still and remarkably good-looking, with fair English skin and silky sideburns. "The name is Pickering, Neville Pickering," he said.
"Ballantyne, Zouga Ballantyne." Zouga took the proffered hand and the man's expression altered.
"Good Lord, you are the elephant hunter." Pickering raised his voice. "I say, fellows, this is Zouga Ballantyne.
You know, the one who wrote Hunter's Odyssey."
Zouga doubted half of them could read, but the fact that he had written a book made him an object of wonder. He found the centre of interest had shifted from Black Thomas to himself.
It was after dark when he started back to the wagon.
He had always had a strong head for liquor and there was a good moon, so he could pick his way through the ordure that littered the track.
He had spent a few sovereigns on liquor, but in return he had learned a great deal about the diggings. He had learned of the diggers" expectations and fears. He knew now the going price for "briefies", the politics and economics of diamond pricing, the geological composition of the strike and a hundred other related facts.