from nature that wonderful gem, ever associated with
tragedy and romance, mystery and crime, for the possession of which,
since history began, men have been ready to give up their lives.
Confident of their success, they had risked all on a turn of the wheel,
and Fortune, mocking their puny efforts, had first ruined and then
degraded them, afterward sending them back home to die.

It was now quite light. The fire, which had flickered up fitfully at
intervals, was entirely extinguished. A chilly wind had started to
blow from the plateau on the north. The strangers stirred uneasily in
their sleep and awoke almost simultaneously. Sitting up with a start,
they yawned and rubbed their eyes.

"What show o' gettin' some breakfast, Handsome?" asked the smaller of
the two.

"Damned little!" was the profane and laconic rejoinder.

They were men still in the early thirties. One was short and stocky,
his face slightly pock-marked. Pictures of a mermaid and anchor
clumsily tattooed in indigo on his wrist showed him to be a sailor. In
fact, Dick Hickey, boatswain on _H. H. S. Tartar_, having taken French
leave of his ship, as she lay in Cape Town Harbor, ran a very good
chance of being taken back to England in irons as a deserter. Just now
he was serenely indifferent as to what happened to him. Half dead from
exposure and lack of nourishment, he would have gladly welcomed ship's
officers or anybody else so long as there was some relief from his
present sufferings. Meantime he spent what little breath he had left
in cursing his hard luck, and blaming his companion as being solely
responsible for his misfortune.

The latter was some few years his senior, stalwart and clean-limbed.
He appeared to be over six feet in height and a man of splendid
physique. At first glance it was evident that he came of superior
stock. His shapely hands were grimy, his eyes of a peculiarly light
shade of blue were hollow and haggard looking. His face, emaciated and
ghastly, was almost livid. A clean-cut chin was covered with several
weeks' growth of beard. Yet, underneath all these repellant externals,
there was in his every attitude that indefinable refinement of manner
which the world always associates with a gentleman. His dark hair,
disheveled and matted, was unusually thick and bushy, with the
exception of one spot, in the center of his forehead, where there was a
single white lock, a capillary phenomenon, which imparted at once t