Then with the chamois bag buttoned into his pocket once again, his riding boots freshly waxed and polished by Ralph, his frayed shirt collar neatly darned and the buttons replaced by Jordan, and the gelding curried to a gloss by Jan Cheroot, Zouga would ride into the settlement, putting on the best face he could muster, smoking a cigar to show how little he really needed the money, and he would hitch the gelding at the door of the first diamond-buyer's galvanized iron shack.
'The Devil's Own.' The first kopje-walloper was a Hollander, and his accent was difficult to understand, but Zouga's brave show did not deceive him, and he sucked his teeth and shook his head dismally over Zouga's offering. 'The Devil's Own,' he repeated. 'It killed five men, and broke three others. Jocky Danby was lucky to get out at the price you paid him.'
'What's your offer?' Zouga asked quietly, and the buyer prodded the scattering of tiny stones.
'You want to see a real diamond?' he asked, and without waiting for Zouga's reply, swivelled his chair' and opened the iron safe on the wall behind his desk.
Reverently he unfolded a square of white paper and displayed the beautiful flashing crystal, almost the size of a ripe acorn.
'Fifty-eight carats,' he whispered, and Zouga stared at it with the sour acid of envy in the back of his throat. 'I bought it yesterday.'
'How much?' he asked, hating himself for the weakness.
'Six thousand pounds!' said the buyer and carefully refolded the paper, placed the diamond back in the safe, locked the thick iron door, hung the key on his watch chain and glanced at Zouga's stones.
'Forty pounds,' he said offhandedly.
'The lot!' Zouga asked quietly. He had sixteen men to pay and feed and he needed new rope, and he would have to pay the piratical prices of the transport riders for it.
'The price of pool goods is right down.' The buyer shrugged. 'Every digger south of the Vaal is bringing in rubbish like this.'
Zouga refilled the bag and stood up.
'I made you that price as a favour,' warned the buyer.
'If you come back later, it will be thirty pounds.'
'I'll take that chance.' Zouga touched the brim of his hat and strode out into the sunlight.
The second buyer he visited poured the diamonds into the bowl of the diamond balance and then carefully added weights to the other arm until the scale was in balance.
'You should have stuck to elephant hunting,' he said, as he wrote down the weights and made his calculations in a leather notebook. 'The diamond market is flooded.
There is a limit to the number of rich ladies who want to hang baubles round their necks, and here on the Vaal diggings we have mined more stones in a few years than were found in the six thousand years before that.'
'They are using them in watch movements, and tools for cutting glass and steel,' Zouga said quietly.
'A fad,' the buyer waved his hands in dismissal. 'Diamonds are finished. I'll give you fifty-five pounds for this lot and that's generous.'
One morning Zouga found Ralph working side by side with Bazo in the bottom of the pit, swinging the pick in rhythm with the Matabele chant. He stood there watching for a few minutes, saw the shape of mature muscle emerging from the soft flesh of childhood, saw the breadth of shoulder. Ralph's belly was greyhound slim and the cloth of his breeches, that were suddenly many sizes too small, strained over neat round buttocks as he stooped to break the point of the pick from the compacted yellow earth.
'Ralph,' he called him at last.
'Yes, Papa.' His throat was greasy with sweat, and it had cut little runners down through the dust that coated his upper body, fat glistening drops clung in the little nest of fine dark curls that had abruptly appeared in the centre of his chest.
'Put your shirt on,' Zouga ordered.
'Why?' Ralph looked surprised.
'Because you are an Englishman. By God's grace and, if necessary, the strength of my right arm you are going to be a gentleman as well.'
So Ralph worked booted and buttoned to the throat beside the naked Matabele, and he earned firstly their respect and then their affection and friendship.
From the first day when they had met in the open veld, the Matabele had been impressed with his horsemanship, and with the marksmanship which had brought down the old eland bull. Now they began to accept him amongst them, first in the patronizing manner of elder brothers, then gradually on more and more equal terms, until Ralph was competing with them in all they did, their work and their sport. He was not yet as tall or strong as the Matabele, so he won very seldom; and when he failed or was beaten, he scowled until his face darkened and the heavy brows met above the big nose.
'A good sportsman knows how to lose graciously,' Zouga told him.
'I don't want to be a sportsman, I don't want to learn how to lose,' Ralph replied. 'I want to learn how to win., And he threw himself back at the task with fiercely renewed determination.
It seemed that his strength grew with each day in the diggings, the puppy fat was burned away, and he made that final spurt to his full height without outstripping his strength. And he learned how to win.
He began to win the contests with Bazo at lashing gravel, frenziedly filling bucket after huge leather bucket so that the yellow dust flew in choking clouds. He won one of the dangerous races down the ladderworks from the roadway to the bottom of the pit, scorching his palms on the ropes and swinging out over the drop to pass another man on the reverse side of the ladder, using the pole of a gantry to cross a deep void between two claims, running
