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 other end of the world as many rough diamonds as there was in the whole of that dustbin of a place—­diamonds that didn’t have to be dug for, either, only I didn’t know them when I saw them.”

His narrowed eye gleamed craftily, a mere pin’s point of expression in the direction of Charles, as though expecting a question.  But Charles kept silence, so he went on with his story.  He let it be understood that his luck on the fields was of the worst possible description—­never a solitary stone came his way.  But he had no heart for digging.  He was always thinking of the diamonds in that remote spot which he had ignorantly let slip from his grasp, like the dog in the fable dropping the substance for the shadow.  He would have gone back to look for them, but he’d spent most of his little capital in that wild-goose chase, and the miserable remnant oozed away like water in a place where the barest necessaries of life cost fabulous prices.  Soon he became stranded, practically penniless.