Men of Men

With his legs braced wide, he stood over the anvil, and hefted the sweat-polished handle of the pick, feeling the balance and weight of the steel head that had become so familiar.

Bazo narrowed his eyes, measuring his stroke, and then he reared back with the pick almost touching, the thatched roof. He drove his body weight into the stroke, and the steel pick head came hissing down from on high.

The point caught the diamond exactly on the high centre of its curved upper surface, and the great stone exploded as though a bucketful of mountain water had been dashed to the earth. The sparkling drops, the shattered fragments, the glowing chips of priceless crystal, seemed to fill the whole hut with a burst of sunlight.

They pattered against the thatched walls, stung the naked skins of the watching Matabele, kicked little puffs of grey ash as they fell into the fire, and scattered on the lustrous fur of the silver jackal kaross, shining there like live fish in the net.

"Son of the Great Snake," hooted Kamuza joyously. "We are rich men." And the laughing Matabele flung themselves into the task of gathering up the fragments.

They picked them from the ashes, swept them up from the earthen floor, shook them out of the jackal skin kaross, and piled them into Bazo's cupped hand until it was filled to overflowing. Even then they missed some of the tiny chips that had fallen into the dust or the fire and were lost for ever.

"You are a wise man," Kamuza told Bazo with unaffected admiration.

"Bakela has his stones, a hundred calves , and we will have more coins than the yellow Bastaard would give us."

There was no work in the collapsed number 6 Section, no need to rise before dawn, so the sun was clear of the horizon when Zouga strode out of the tent, clinching his belt as he joined Jan Cheroot and the two boys under the camel-thorn tree.

The table was a packing-case, the lid stained with candle grease and spilled coffee, and breakfast was maize-meal porridge in chipped enamel bowls, unsweetened, for the price of sugar had recently risen to a pound a pound on the diamond fields.

Zouga's eyes were red-rimmed, for he had slept little the previous night, but had lain awake worrying and scheming, going over and over in his mind every detail of the plans for the new staging, and coming back each time to the most important detail, the one for which there seemed to be no solution: the cost, the enormous cost of it all.

The two boys saw his face, recognized his mood, and were immediately silent, applying themselves with complete absorption to the unappetizing grey gruel in their bowls.

A shadow fell across the group, and Zouga looked up irritably, squinting into the early sunlight with the spoon half raised to his lips. "What is it, Bazo?"

"Pick-ups, Bakela." The tall young Matabele used the English words. "Pick-ups." Zouga grunted.

"Let me see it." Zouga was immediately uninterested.

Almost certainly it would be a worthless chip of quartz or rock crystal. But Bazo placed a small bundle wrapped in a dirty scrap of cloth beside Zouga's bowl.

"Well, open it," Zouga ordered; and Bazo picked the knot, and spread the cloth.

"Glass!" thought Zouga disgustedly. There was almost a handful of it, chips and pieces, the biggest not much bigger than the head of a wax Vesta.

"Glass!" and he made the gesture of sweeping it away, and then stayed his hand as the sunlight fell on the pile and a shaft of it pricked his eyes in a rainbow burst of colours.

Slowly, disbelievingly, he changed the gesture of dismissal and reached hesitantly, almost reverently for the glittering heap, but Jordan forestalled him.

With a shriek of joy the child's small graceful fingers danced over the pile.

"Diamonds, Papa," he screamed. "They are diamonds, real diamonds."

"Are you sure, Jordie?" Zouga asked the question u

Still hesitantly Zouga took one of the largest stones from Jordan's fingers.

"Are you sure, Jordie?" he repeated.

"They are diamonds, Papa. All of them."

Zouga's last doubts faded, to be replaced immediately by a deeper uncertainty.

"Bazo," he said. "There are so many-" And then something else puzzled him. Quickly he picked out twenty of the largest stones and stood them in a row across the top of the packing case.

"The same colour, they are all the same colour, exactly!"

Zouga shook his head, frowning, confused; and then suddenly the shadows in his eyes cleared.

"Oh my God," he whispered, and slowly all blood drained from his face, leaving the skin dirty yellow like a man ten days gone in malaria fever.

"The same; they are all the same. The breaks are clean and fresh."

Slowly he lifted his eyes to Bazo's face. "Bazo, how big -" his voice roughened and dried, so that he had to clear his throat, "how big was the stone before, before you cracked it?"

"This big." Bazo clenched and showed his fist. "With my pick I made it into many stones, for you, Bakela, knowing how you value many stones."

Zouga's voice was still a husky whisper. "I will kill you," he said in English. "For this, I will kill you."

The scar across his cheek turned slowly into an ugly inflamed weal, the stigmata of his rage, and now he was shaking, his lips trembling as he rose slowly to his feet.

"I will kill you." His voice rose to a bellow, and Jordan shrieked again, this time with terror. He had never seen his father like this before; there was a terrifying maniacal quality about him.

"That was the stone I was waiting for, you bastard, you black bastard, that was it. That was the key to the north."

Zouga snatched the Martini-Henry rifle from where it leaned against the bole of the camel-thorn tree beside the falcon carving. The steel clashed and snickered as he pumped a cartridge into the chamber and in the same moment swung up the barrel.

"I'm going to kill you," he roared, and then checked.

Ralph had jumped to his feet, and now he faced his father, stepping forward until the muzzle of the loaded and fully cocked rifle almost touched the entwined brass snakes of his belt buckle.

"You will have to kill me first, Papa," he said. He was as pale as Zouga, his eyes the same deep haunted green.

"Get out of the way." Zouga's voice sank into that croaking, husky whisper and Ralph could not answer him, but he shook his head, his heavy jaw clenched so determinedly that his teeth grated audibly.

"I warn you, stand aside," Zouga choked, and they stood confronting each other, both trembling with tension and outrage.

Then the muzzle of the heavy rifle wavered in Zouga's hands, lowered slowly until it pointed to the dusty red earth between the toes of Ralph's boots.

The silence went on for many seconds; then Zouga took a full breath and the barrel of his chest swelled under the faded blue fla

With a gesture of utter frustration he hurled the rifle against the treetrunk and the butt snapped through.

Then he sank back into his seat at the packing-case table and his golden head sank slowly into his hands.

"Get out." All the fire and fury had gone from his voice; it was quiet and hopeless. "Get out, all of you."

Zouga sat on alone under the thorn tree. He felt burned out with emotion and anger, empty and blackened and devastated within, like the veld after fire has swept through it.