he knew them all, and had something
interesting to say about all of them; and the few days of our
companionship were pleasant in the extreme.

I never knew his name, and had it not been that chance came to my aid,
I should probably never have heard his strange history. But it so
happened that a few days after our first meeting, a buffalo, with the
finest horns I had ever seen, got up within twenty yards of us; and in
my eagerness to secure his wonderful head, I shot badly, and only
succeeded in wounding him slightly. His terrific charge was a thing to
be remembered.

Straight at us he came, wild with rage, and my new friend's horse,
gored and screaming, went down before him in a flash. The rider was
thrown, and to my horror, before I could control my own frightened
animal sufficiently to enable me to shoot, the bull was upon the fallen
man, goring and trampling upon him in an awful manner. Leaping from my
horse, I put bullet after bullet through the big bull's head, and at
length he lurched forward, dead, upon the mangled body of his victim.

We had some difficulty in extricating the man, and never expected to
find him alive, but though badly crushed and torn he still breathed,
and naturally I did all I could to save his life.

That night he was delirious, and it was then that I had evidence of the
almost superhuman strength with which he was endowed. Time after time
he tore himself from the combined strength of my two sturdy boys, and
always he raved of diamonds, and of a never-ending search for
something, or some one, in the desert.

His hurts were sufficient to have killed half a dozen men, and I never
expected him to live; but two days later he was able to tell the
natives, in their own tongue, of certain herbs which they prepared
under his direction, and in a week he was about again.

His cure was nothing short of miraculous in my eyes at least but he
made light of his own share in the matter, and was all gratitude for
the little I had been able to do to atone for the result of my bad
shooting. And one night, by the camp fire, and with very little
preamble, he told me the following strange story, which I have set down
as nearly as possible in his own words.

A RIP VAN WINKLE OF THE KALAHARI

CHAPTER I THE BLUE DIAMOND

Diamonds first brought me to this country--a small glass phial full of
them in the hands of an old sailor who had been shipwrecked on the
South-west African coast, somewhere i