Seeing he admired the rifle, Staines offered it him for the odd hundred pounds; but though Squat’s eye glittered a moment, he declined.

Finding that they met too many diggers and carts, Staines asked his Hottentot was there no nearer way to reach that star, pointing to one he knew was just over Dale’s Kloof.

Oh, yes, he knew a nearer way, where there were trees, and shade, and grass, and many beasts to shoot.

“Let us take that way,” said Staines.

The Hottentot, ductile as wax, except about the price of the diamond, assented calmly; and next day they diverged, and got into forest scenery, and their eyes were soothed with green glades here and there, wherever the clumps of trees sheltered the grass from the panting sun.  Animals abounded, and were tame.  Staines, an excellent marksman, shot the Hottentot his supper without any trouble.

Sleeping in the wood, with not a creature near but Squat, a sombre thought struck Staines.  Suppose this Hottentot should assassinate him for his money, who would ever know?  The thought was horrible, and he awoke with a start ten times that night.  The Hottentot slept like a stone, and never feared for his own life and precious booty.  Staines was compelled to own to himself he had less faith in human goodness than the savage had.  He said to himself, “He is my superior.  He is the master of this dreadful diamond, and I am its slave.”

Next day they went on till noon, and then they halted at a really delightful spot; a silver kloof ran along a bottom, and there was a little clump of three acacia-trees that lowered their long tresses, pining for the stream, and sometimes getting a cool grateful kiss from it when the water was high.

They halted the horse, bathed in the stream, and lay luxurious under the acacias.  All was delicious languor and enjoyment of life.

The Hottentot made a fire, and burnt the remains of a little sort of kangaroo Staines had shot him the evening before; but it did not suffice his maw, and looking about him, he saw three elands leisurely feeding about three hundred yards off.  They were cropping the rich herbage close to the shelter of a wood.

The Hottentot suggested that this was an excellent opportunity.  He would borrow Staines’s rifle, steal into the wood, crawl on his belly close up to them, and send a bullet through one.

Staines did not relish the proposal.  He had seen the savage’s eye repeatedly gloat on the rifle, and was not without hopes he might even yet relent, and give the great diamond for the hundred pounds and this rifle; and he was so demoralized by the diamond, and filled with suspicion, that he feared the savage, if he once had the rifle in his possession, might levant, and be seen no more, in which case he, Staines, still the slave of the diamond, might hang himself on the nearest tree, and so secure his Rosa the insurance money, at all events.  In short, he had really diamond on the brain.