On one side of Staines were two swells, who lay on their backs and
talked opera half the day, but seldom condescended to work without
finding a diamond of some sort.
After a week's deplorable luck, his Kafir boy struck work on account of
a sore in his leg; the sore was due to a very common cause, the burning
sand had got into a scratch, and festered. Staines, out of humanity,
examined the sore; and proceeding to clean it, before bandaging, out
popped a diamond worth forty pounds, even in the depreciated market.
Staines quietly pocketed it, and bandaged the leg. This made him suspect
his blacks had been cheating him on a large scale, and he borrowed Hans
Bulteel to watch them, giving him a third, with which Master Hans was
mightily pleased. But they could only find small diamonds, and by this
time prodigious slices of luck were reported on every side. Kafirs and
Boers that would not dig, but traversed large tracts of ground when the
sun was shining, stumbled over diamonds. One Boer pointed to a wagon
and eight oxen, and said that one lucky glance on the sand had given him
that lot: but day after day Staines returned home, covered with dust,
and almost blinded, yet with little or nothing to show for it.
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