“Master,” said poor Squat, in deprecating tones, “my little master at the farm wanted plaster.  He send to Bulteel’s pan; dere was large lumps.  Squat say to miners, ’May we take de large lumps?  Dey say, ’Yes; take de cursed lumps we no can break.’  We took de cursed lumps.  We ride ’em in de cart to farm twenty milses.  I beat ’em with my hammer.  Dey is very hard.  More dey break my heart dan I break their cursed heads.  One day I use strong words, like white man, and I hit one large lump too hard; he break, and out come de white clear stone.  Iss, him diamond.  Long time we know him in our kraal, because he hard.  Long time before ever white man know him, tousand years ago, we find him, and he make us lilly hole in big stone for make wheat dust.  Him a diamond, blank my eyes!”

This was intended as a solemn form of asseveration adapted to the white man’s habits.

Yes, reader, he told the truth; and strange to say, the miners knew the largest stones were in these great lumps of carbonate, but then the lumps were so cruelly hard, they lost all patience with them, and so, finding it was no use to break some of them, and not all, they rejected them all, with curses; and thus this great stone was carted away as rubbish from the mine, and found, like a toad in a hole, by Squat.

“Well,” said Christopher, “after all, you are an honest fellow, and I think I will buy it; but first you must show me out of this wood; I am not going to be eaten alive in it for want of the king of rifles.”

Squat assented eagerly, and they started at once.  They passed the skeleton of the eland; its very bones were polished, and its head carried into the wood; and looking back they saw vultures busy on the lion.  They soon cleared the wood.

Squat handed Staines the diamond—­when it touched his hand, as his own, a bolt of ice seemed to run down his back, and hot water to follow it—­and the money, horse, rifle, and skin were made over to Squat.

“Shake hands over it, Squat,” said Staines; “you are hard, but you are honest.”

“Iss, master, I a good much hard and honest,” said Squat.

“Good-by, old fellow.”

“Good-by, master.”

And Squat strutted away, with the halter in his hand, horse following him, rifle under his arm, and the lion’s skin over his shoulders, and the tail trailing, a figure sublime in his own eyes, ridiculous in creation’s.  So vanity triumphed, even in the wilds of Africa.

Staines hurried forward on foot, loading his revolver as he went, for the very vicinity of the wood alarmed him now that he had parted with his trusty rifle.

That night he lay down on the open veldt, in his jackal’s skin, with no weapon but his revolver, and woke with a start a dozen times.  Just before daybreak he scanned the stars carefully, and noting exactly where the sun rose, made a rough guess at his course, and followed it till the sun was too hot; then he crept under a ragged bush, hung up his jackal’s skin, and sweated there, parched with thirst, and gnawed with hunger.  When it was cooler, he crept on, and found water, but no food.  He was in torture, and began to be frightened, for he was in a desert.  He found an ostrich egg and ate it ravenously.