ere all my Bushmen
friends, the whole lot of them, jabbering in the most threatening
manner; and, worse still, they'd all got their bows and were about to
take pot shots at me. Sore enough, I had only just time to get under a
rock when a perfect shower of their little poison sticks came rattling
about my ears.

"Things now looked desperate. I daren't go up among them, and I
couldn't move out of my shelter. They seemed afraid to come down and
that was my only chance. I must wait until night.

"All at once, as I lay crouching there, under cover from their deadly
little arrows, a thought struck across my brain that made every drop of
blood in my body tingle. That green, staring Eye which I had seen
shining down there in the depths was nothing less than a diamond, and a
diamond of enormous size. If only I could get at it.

"But this is just what I couldn't do. To cut the tale short I waited
until night and then descended further. There gleamed the Eye,
brighter, more dazzling than ever. But between it and me was a big
krantz, and I pulled up on the very brink, just in time to escape going
over. And the place seemed edged in all round by krantzes.

"My mind was made up. I'd come again. No use staying on now to be
starved out and killed by those miserable little yellow devils. So I
crept up to the top again, and, as I expected, the coast was clear. It
doesn't matter how long I took to work my way down into civilised parts
again.

"No rest for me after that. The idea of that huge stone--worth, maybe,
tens of thousands of pounds, lying there to be had for the picking up--
left me no rest night or day. In six months I was back there again, me
and a mate. But when we reached the spot where I first sighted the Eye
it was not there. Nothing but pitch darkness. We felt pretty blank
then, I can tell you. We waited t ll nearly dawn. Suddenly Jim gave a
shout.

"There it is!

"There it was, too, glittering as before. Then it faded. And at that
moment we had to `fade' too, for a volley of arrows came whistling among
us, and poor Jim fell with a dozen in him.

"I don't know how I got away, but I did, and that's all about it. The
furious little devils came swarming from rock to rock, and I couldn't
get in a fair shot at them. I had to run for my life, and if I hadn't
known those awful mountains almost as well as they did I shouldn't have
escaped either. I'm getting mortal weak, friend--stay--another dri