章节正文
we had recourse to dynamite, and soon laid bare the stone
steps, and ascended to the gallery. The chasm was bridged
with planks, and Arcoll and I crossed alone. The cave was as I
had left it. The bloodstains on the floor had grown dark with
time, but the ashes of the sacramental fire were still there to
remind me of the drama I had borne a part in. When I looked
at the way I had escaped my brain grew dizzy at the thought
of it. I do not think that all the gold on earth would have
driven me a second time to that awful escalade. As for Arcoll,
he could not see its possibility at all.
'Only a madman could have done it,' he said, blinking his
eyes at the green linn. 'Indeed, Davie, I think for about four
days you were as mad as they make. It was a fortunate thing,
for your madness saved the country.'
With some labour we got the treasure down to the path, and
took it under a strong guard to Pietersdorp. The Government
were busy with the settling up after the war, and it took many
weeks to have our business disposed of. At first things looked
badly for me. The Attorney-General set up a claim to the
whole as spoils of war, since, he argued, it was the war-chest
of the enemy we had conquered. I do not know how the matter
would have gone on legal grounds, though I was advised by
my lawyers that the claim was a bad one. But the part I had
played in the whole business, more especially in the visit to
Inanda's Kraal, had made me a kind of popular hero, and the
Government thought better of their first attitude. Besides,
Arcoll had great influence, and the whole story of my doings,
which was told privately by him to some of the members of the
Government, disposed them to be generous. Accordingly they
agreed to treat the contents of the cave as ordinary treasure
trove, of which, by the law, one half went to the discoverer
and one half to the Crown.
This was well enough so far as the gold was concerned, but
another difficulty arose about the diamonds; for a large part of
these had obviously been stolen by labourers from the mines,
and the mining people laid claim to them as stolen goods. I
was advised not to dispute this claim, and consequently we
had a great sorting-out of the stones in the presence of the
experts of the different mines. In the end it turned out that
identification was not an easy matter, for the experts quarrelled
furiously among themselves. A compromise was at last come
to, and a division made; and then the diamond companies
behaved very handsomely, voting me a substantial sum in
recognition of my services in recovering their property. What
with this and with my half share of the gold and my share of
the unclaimed stones, I found that I had a very considerable
fortune. The whole of my stones I sold to De Beers, for if I
had placed them on the open market I should have upset the
delicate equipoise of diamond values. When I came finally to
cast up my accounts, I found that I had secured a fortune of a
trifle over a quarter of a million pounds.
The wealth did not dazzle so much as it solemnized me. I
had no impulse to spend any part of it in a riot of folly. It had
come to me like fairy gold out of the void; it had been bought
with men's blood, almost with my own. I wanted to get away
to a quiet place and think, for of late my life had been too
crowded with drama, and there comes a satiety of action as
well as of idleness. Above all things I wanted to get home.
They gave me a great send-off, and sang songs, and good
fellows shook my hand till it ached. The papers were full of
me, and there was a banquet and speeches. But I could not
relish this glory as I ought, for I was like a boy thrown
violently out of his bearings.
Not till I was in the train nearing Cape Town did I recover
my equanimity. The burden of the past seemed to slip from
me suddenly as on the morning when I had climbed the linn.
I saw my life all lying before me; and already I had won
success. I thought of my return to my own country, my first
sight of the grey shores of Fife, my visit to Kirkcaple, my
meeting with my mother. I was a rich man now who could
choose his career, and my mother need never again want for
comfort. My money seemed pleasant to me, for if men won
theirs by brains or industry, I had won mine by sterner
methods, for I had staked against it my life. I sat alone in the
railway carriage and cried with pure thankfulness. These were
comforting tears, for they brought me back to my old common-
place self.
My last memory of Africa is my meeting with Tam Dyke. I
caught sight of him in the streets of Cape Town, and running
after him, clapped him on the shoulder. He stared at me as if
he had seen a ghost.
'Is it yourself, Davie?' he cried. 'I never looked to see you
again in this world. I do nothing but read about you in the
papers. What for did ye not send for me? Here have I been
knocking about inside a ship and you have been getting
famous. They tell me you're a millionaire, too.'
I had Tam to dinner at my hotel, and later, sitting smoking
on the terrace and watching the flying-ants among the aloes, I
told him the better part of the story I have here written down.
'Man, Davie,' he said at the end, 'you've had a tremendous
time. Here are you not eighteen months away from home, and
you're going back with a fortune. What will you do with it?'
I told him that I proposed, to begin with, to finish my
education at Edinburgh College. At this he roared with
laughter.
'That's a dull ending, anyway. It's me that should have the
money, for I'm full of imagination. You were aye a prosaic
body, Davie.'
'Maybe I am,' I said; 'but I am very sure of one thing. If I
hadn't been a prosaic body, I wouldn't be sitting here to-night.'
Two years later Aitken found the diamond pipe, which he had
always believed lay in the mountains. Some of the stones in
the cave, being unlike any ordinary African diamonds, confirmed
his suspicions and set him on the track. A Kaffir tribe
to the north-east of the Rooirand had known of it, but they
had never worked it, but only collected the overspill. The
closing down of one of the chief existing mines had created a
shortage of diamonds in the world's markets, and once again
the position was the same as when Kimberley began. Accordingly
he made a great fortune, and to-day the Aitken Proprietary Mine is
one of the most famous in the country. But Aitken did more than
mine diamonds, for he had not forgotten the lesson we had learned
together in the work of resettlement. He laid down a big fund for
the education and amelioration of the native races, and the first
fruit of it was the establishment at Blaauwildebeestefontein
itself of a great native training college. It was no factory for
making missionaries and black teachers, but an institution for
giving the Kaffirs the kind of training which fits them to be
good citizens of the state. There you will find every kind of
technical workshop, and the finest experimental farms, where the
blacks are taught modern agriculture. They have proved themselves
apt pupils, and to-day you will see in the glens of the Berg and
in the plains Kaffir tillage which is as scientific as any in
Africa. They have created a huge export trade in tobacco and
fruit; the cotton promises well; and there is talk of a new fibre
which will do wonders. Also along the river bottoms the
india-rubber business is prospering.
There are playing-fields and baths and reading-rooms and
libraries just as in a school at home. In front of the great hall
of the college a statue stands, the figure of a black man shading
his eyes with his hands and looking far over the plains to the
Rooirand. On the pedestal it is lettered 'Prester John,' but the
face is the face of Laputa. So the last of the kings of Africa
does not lack his monument.
Of this institution Mr Wardlaw is the head. He writes to me
weekly, for I am one of the governors, as well as an old friend,
and from a recent letter I take this passage: -
'I often cast my mind back to the afternoon when you and I
sat on the stoep of the schoolhouse, and talked of the Kaffirs
and our future. I had about a dozen pupils then, and now I
have nearly three thousand; and in place of a tin-roofed shanty
and a yard, I have a whole countryside. You laughed at me for
my keenness, Davie, but I've seen it justified. I was never a
man of war like you, and so I had to bide at home while you
and your like were straightening out the troubles. But when it
was all over my job began, for I could do what you couldn't
do - I was the physician to heal wounds. You mind how
nervous I was when I heard the drums beat. I hear them every
evening now, for we have made a rule that all the Kaffir farms
on the Berg sound a kind of curfew. It reminds me of old
times, and tells me that though it is peace nowadays we mean
to keep all the manhood in them that they used to exercise in
war. It would do your eyes good to see the garden we have
made out of the Klein Labongo glen. The place is one big
orchard with every kind of tropical fruit in it, and the irrigation
dam is as full of fish as it will hold. Out at Umvelos' there is a
tobacco-factory, and all round Sikitola's we have square miles
of mealie and cotton fields. The loch on the Rooirand is
stocked with Lochleven trout, and we have made a bridle-path
up to it in a gully east of the one you climbed. You ask about
Machudi's. The last time I was there the place was white with
sheep, for we have got the edge of the plateau grazed down,
and sheep can get the short bite there. We have cleaned up all
the kraals, and the chiefs are members of our county council,
and are as fond of hearing their own voices as an Aberdeen
bailie. It's a queer transformation we have wrought, and when
I sit and smoke my pipe in the evening, and look over the
plains and then at the big black statue you and Aitken set up,
I thank the Providence that has guided me so far. I hope and
trust that, in the Bible words, "the wilderness and the solitary
place are glad for us." At any rate it will not be my fault if they
don't "blossom as the rose". Come out and visit us soon, man,
and see the work you had a hand in starting. ...'
I am thinking seriously of taking Wardlaw's advice.
End
steps, and ascended to the gallery. The chasm was bridged
with planks, and Arcoll and I crossed alone. The cave was as I
had left it. The bloodstains on the floor had grown dark with
time, but the ashes of the sacramental fire were still there to
remind me of the drama I had borne a part in. When I looked
at the way I had escaped my brain grew dizzy at the thought
of it. I do not think that all the gold on earth would have
driven me a second time to that awful escalade. As for Arcoll,
he could not see its possibility at all.
'Only a madman could have done it,' he said, blinking his
eyes at the green linn. 'Indeed, Davie, I think for about four
days you were as mad as they make. It was a fortunate thing,
for your madness saved the country.'
With some labour we got the treasure down to the path, and
took it under a strong guard to Pietersdorp. The Government
were busy with the settling up after the war, and it took many
weeks to have our business disposed of. At first things looked
badly for me. The Attorney-General set up a claim to the
whole as spoils of war, since, he argued, it was the war-chest
of the enemy we had conquered. I do not know how the matter
would have gone on legal grounds, though I was advised by
my lawyers that the claim was a bad one. But the part I had
played in the whole business, more especially in the visit to
Inanda's Kraal, had made me a kind of popular hero, and the
Government thought better of their first attitude. Besides,
Arcoll had great influence, and the whole story of my doings,
which was told privately by him to some of the members of the
Government, disposed them to be generous. Accordingly they
agreed to treat the contents of the cave as ordinary treasure
trove, of which, by the law, one half went to the discoverer
and one half to the Crown.
This was well enough so far as the gold was concerned, but
another difficulty arose about the diamonds; for a large part of
these had obviously been stolen by labourers from the mines,
and the mining people laid claim to them as stolen goods. I
was advised not to dispute this claim, and consequently we
had a great sorting-out of the stones in the presence of the
experts of the different mines. In the end it turned out that
identification was not an easy matter, for the experts quarrelled
furiously among themselves. A compromise was at last come
to, and a division made; and then the diamond companies
behaved very handsomely, voting me a substantial sum in
recognition of my services in recovering their property. What
with this and with my half share of the gold and my share of
the unclaimed stones, I found that I had a very considerable
fortune. The whole of my stones I sold to De Beers, for if I
had placed them on the open market I should have upset the
delicate equipoise of diamond values. When I came finally to
cast up my accounts, I found that I had secured a fortune of a
trifle over a quarter of a million pounds.
The wealth did not dazzle so much as it solemnized me. I
had no impulse to spend any part of it in a riot of folly. It had
come to me like fairy gold out of the void; it had been bought
with men's blood, almost with my own. I wanted to get away
to a quiet place and think, for of late my life had been too
crowded with drama, and there comes a satiety of action as
well as of idleness. Above all things I wanted to get home.
They gave me a great send-off, and sang songs, and good
fellows shook my hand till it ached. The papers were full of
me, and there was a banquet and speeches. But I could not
relish this glory as I ought, for I was like a boy thrown
violently out of his bearings.
Not till I was in the train nearing Cape Town did I recover
my equanimity. The burden of the past seemed to slip from
me suddenly as on the morning when I had climbed the linn.
I saw my life all lying before me; and already I had won
success. I thought of my return to my own country, my first
sight of the grey shores of Fife, my visit to Kirkcaple, my
meeting with my mother. I was a rich man now who could
choose his career, and my mother need never again want for
comfort. My money seemed pleasant to me, for if men won
theirs by brains or industry, I had won mine by sterner
methods, for I had staked against it my life. I sat alone in the
railway carriage and cried with pure thankfulness. These were
comforting tears, for they brought me back to my old common-
place self.
My last memory of Africa is my meeting with Tam Dyke. I
caught sight of him in the streets of Cape Town, and running
after him, clapped him on the shoulder. He stared at me as if
he had seen a ghost.
'Is it yourself, Davie?' he cried. 'I never looked to see you
again in this world. I do nothing but read about you in the
papers. What for did ye not send for me? Here have I been
knocking about inside a ship and you have been getting
famous. They tell me you're a millionaire, too.'
I had Tam to dinner at my hotel, and later, sitting smoking
on the terrace and watching the flying-ants among the aloes, I
told him the better part of the story I have here written down.
'Man, Davie,' he said at the end, 'you've had a tremendous
time. Here are you not eighteen months away from home, and
you're going back with a fortune. What will you do with it?'
I told him that I proposed, to begin with, to finish my
education at Edinburgh College. At this he roared with
laughter.
'That's a dull ending, anyway. It's me that should have the
money, for I'm full of imagination. You were aye a prosaic
body, Davie.'
'Maybe I am,' I said; 'but I am very sure of one thing. If I
hadn't been a prosaic body, I wouldn't be sitting here to-night.'
Two years later Aitken found the diamond pipe, which he had
always believed lay in the mountains. Some of the stones in
the cave, being unlike any ordinary African diamonds, confirmed
his suspicions and set him on the track. A Kaffir tribe
to the north-east of the Rooirand had known of it, but they
had never worked it, but only collected the overspill. The
closing down of one of the chief existing mines had created a
shortage of diamonds in the world's markets, and once again
the position was the same as when Kimberley began. Accordingly
he made a great fortune, and to-day the Aitken Proprietary Mine is
one of the most famous in the country. But Aitken did more than
mine diamonds, for he had not forgotten the lesson we had learned
together in the work of resettlement. He laid down a big fund for
the education and amelioration of the native races, and the first
fruit of it was the establishment at Blaauwildebeestefontein
itself of a great native training college. It was no factory for
making missionaries and black teachers, but an institution for
giving the Kaffirs the kind of training which fits them to be
good citizens of the state. There you will find every kind of
technical workshop, and the finest experimental farms, where the
blacks are taught modern agriculture. They have proved themselves
apt pupils, and to-day you will see in the glens of the Berg and
in the plains Kaffir tillage which is as scientific as any in
Africa. They have created a huge export trade in tobacco and
fruit; the cotton promises well; and there is talk of a new fibre
which will do wonders. Also along the river bottoms the
india-rubber business is prospering.
There are playing-fields and baths and reading-rooms and
libraries just as in a school at home. In front of the great hall
of the college a statue stands, the figure of a black man shading
his eyes with his hands and looking far over the plains to the
Rooirand. On the pedestal it is lettered 'Prester John,' but the
face is the face of Laputa. So the last of the kings of Africa
does not lack his monument.
Of this institution Mr Wardlaw is the head. He writes to me
weekly, for I am one of the governors, as well as an old friend,
and from a recent letter I take this passage: -
'I often cast my mind back to the afternoon when you and I
sat on the stoep of the schoolhouse, and talked of the Kaffirs
and our future. I had about a dozen pupils then, and now I
have nearly three thousand; and in place of a tin-roofed shanty
and a yard, I have a whole countryside. You laughed at me for
my keenness, Davie, but I've seen it justified. I was never a
man of war like you, and so I had to bide at home while you
and your like were straightening out the troubles. But when it
was all over my job began, for I could do what you couldn't
do - I was the physician to heal wounds. You mind how
nervous I was when I heard the drums beat. I hear them every
evening now, for we have made a rule that all the Kaffir farms
on the Berg sound a kind of curfew. It reminds me of old
times, and tells me that though it is peace nowadays we mean
to keep all the manhood in them that they used to exercise in
war. It would do your eyes good to see the garden we have
made out of the Klein Labongo glen. The place is one big
orchard with every kind of tropical fruit in it, and the irrigation
dam is as full of fish as it will hold. Out at Umvelos' there is a
tobacco-factory, and all round Sikitola's we have square miles
of mealie and cotton fields. The loch on the Rooirand is
stocked with Lochleven trout, and we have made a bridle-path
up to it in a gully east of the one you climbed. You ask about
Machudi's. The last time I was there the place was white with
sheep, for we have got the edge of the plateau grazed down,
and sheep can get the short bite there. We have cleaned up all
the kraals, and the chiefs are members of our county council,
and are as fond of hearing their own voices as an Aberdeen
bailie. It's a queer transformation we have wrought, and when
I sit and smoke my pipe in the evening, and look over the
plains and then at the big black statue you and Aitken set up,
I thank the Providence that has guided me so far. I hope and
trust that, in the Bible words, "the wilderness and the solitary
place are glad for us." At any rate it will not be my fault if they
don't "blossom as the rose". Come out and visit us soon, man,
and see the work you had a hand in starting. ...'
I am thinking seriously of taking Wardlaw's advice.
End
- gallery [´gæləri]
n.画廊；美术馆；长廊 (初中英语单词) - possibility [,pɔsə´biliti] n.可能(性)；希望；前途 (初中英语单词)
- fortunate [´fɔ:tʃənət] a.幸运的，侥幸的 (初中英语单词)
- generous [´dʒenərəs] a.慷慨的；丰盛的 (初中英语单词)
- accordingly [ə´kɔ:diŋli] ad.因此；从而；依照 (初中英语单词)
- contents [´kɔ:ntents] n.容纳物；要旨 (初中英语单词)
- obviously [´ɔbviəsli] ad.明显地；显而易见地 (初中英语单词)
- stolen [´stəulən] steal 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- dispute [di´spju:t] v.&n.争论，辩论；争吵 (初中英语单词)
- wealth [welθ] n.财富，财产 (初中英语单词)
- impulse [´impʌls] n.推动(力)；冲动；刺激 (初中英语单词)
- career [kə´riə] n.经历；生涯；职业 (初中英语单词)
- carriage [´kæridʒ] n.马车；客车；货运 (初中英语单词)
- imagination [i,mædʒi´neiʃən] n.想象(力) (初中英语单词)
- unlike [,ʌn´laik] a.不同的 prep.不象... (初中英语单词)
- establishment [i´stæbliʃmənt] n.建(成)立；研究所 (初中英语单词)
- institution [,insti´tju:ʃən] n.建立；制定；制度 (初中英语单词)
- agriculture [´ægrikʌltʃə] n.农业；农事 (初中英语单词)
- scientific [,saiən´tifik] a.科学(上)的 (初中英语单词)
- export [ik´spɔ:t] vt.&n.输出，出口 (初中英语单词)
- tobacco [tə´bækəu] n.烟草(叶)；卷烟 (初中英语单词)
- statue [´stætʃu:] n.塑像，雕像 (初中英语单词)
- schoolhouse [´sku:lhaus] n.校舍 (初中英语单词)
- physician [fi´ziʃən] n.(内科)医生 (初中英语单词)
- wrought [rɔ:t] work 的过去式(分词) (初中英语单词)
- wilderness [´wildənis] n.荒地，荒野 (初中英语单词)
- seriously [´siəriəsli] ad.严肃；严重，重大 (初中英语单词)
- madness [´mædnis] n.疯狂；狂热 (高中英语单词)
- concerned [kən´sə:nd] a.有关的；担心的 (高中英语单词)
- mining [´mainiŋ] n.采矿；矿业 (高中英语单词)
- consequently [´kɔnsikwəntli] ad.因此，所以 (高中英语单词)
- compromise [´kɔmprəmaiz] n.妥协，和解 (高中英语单词)
- substantial [səb´stænʃəl] a.实质的，真的 (高中英语单词)
- dazzle [´dæz(ə)l] vt.使茫然 n.炫耀 (高中英语单词)
- banquet [´bæŋkwit] n.宴会，盛宴 (高中英语单词)
- millionaire [,miljə´neə] n.百万富翁 (高中英语单词)
- terrace [´terəs] n.梯田 vt.使成梯田 (高中英语单词)
- ending [´endiŋ] n.结尾，结局 (高中英语单词)
- manhood [´mænhud] n.人格；男子气概 (高中英语单词)
- tropical [´trɔpikəl] a.热带地区的 (高中英语单词)
- plateau [´plætəu] n.高原；平稳；托盘 (高中英语单词)
- hearing [´hiəriŋ] n.听力；听证会；审讯 (高中英语单词)
- idleness [´aidlnis] n.懒；闲着不干事 (英语四级单词)
- edinburgh [´edinbərə] n.爱丁堡 (英语四级单词)
- workshop [´wə:kʃɔp] n.车间；工场；创作室 (英语四级单词)
- experimental [ik,speri´mentl] a.实验的 (英语四级单词)
- pedestal [´pedistl] n.垫座 vt.给...装上座 (英语四级单词)
- countryside [´kʌntrisaid] n.乡下，农村 (英语四级单词)
- transformation [,trænsfə´meiʃən] n.转化；转变；改造 (英语四级单词)
- providence [´prɔvidəns] n.天意，天命，上帝 (英语四级单词)
- recourse [ri´kɔ:s] n.求助；依靠 (英语六级单词)
- dynamite [´dainəmait] n.&vt.(用)炸药(爆破) (英语六级单词)
- madman [´mædmən] n.疯子；狂人 (英语六级单词)
- privately [´praivitli] ad.秘密，一个人 (英语六级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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