had turned to agony. Jamie’s travelling companions were in the same sorry state, no longer even able to complain. Jamie understood now why the company insisted that its passengers be young and strong.
When the next dawn came, they entered the Great Karroo, where the real wilderness began. Stretching to infinity, the monstrous veld lay flat and forbidding under a pitiless sun. The passengers were smothered in heat, dust and flies.
Occasionally, through a miasmic haze, Jamie saw groups of men slogging along on foot. There were solitary riders on horseback, and dozens of bullock wagons drawn by eighteen or twenty oxen, handled by drivers and voorlopers, with their sjamboks, the whips with long leather thongs, crying, ‘Trek! Trek!’ The huge wagons were laden with a thousand pounds of produce and goods, tents and digging equipment and wood-burning stoves, flour and coal and oil lamps. They carried coffee and rice, Russian hemp, sugar and wines, whiskey and boots and Belfast candles, and blankets. They were the lifeline to the fortune seekers at Klipdrift.
It was not until the mail cart crossed the Orange River that there was a change from the deadly monotony of the veld. The scrub gradually became taller and tinged with green. The earth was redder, patches of grass rippled in the breeze, and low thorn trees began to appear.
I’m going to make it, Jamie thought dully. I’m going to make it.
And he could feel hope begin to creep into his tired body.
They had been on the road for four continuous days and nights when they finally arrived at the outskirts of Klipdrift.
Young Jamie McGregor had not known what to expect, but the scene that met his weary, bloodshot eyes was like nothing he ever could have imagined. Klipdrift was a vast panorama of tents and wagons lined up on the main streets and on the shores of the Vaal River. The dirt roadway swarmed with kaffirs, naked except for brightly coloured jackets, and bearded prospectors, butchers, bakers, thieves, teachers. In the centre of Klipdrift, rows of wooden and iron shacks served as shops, canteens, billiard rooms, eating houses, diamond-buying offices and lawyers’ rooms. On a corner stood the ramshackle Royal Arch Hotel, a long chain of rooms without windows.
Jamie stepped out of the cart, and promptly fell to the ground, his cramped legs refusing to hold him up. He lay there, his head spinning, until he had strength enough to rise. He stumbled towards the hotel, pushing through the boisterous crowds that thronged the sidewalks and streets. The room they gave him was small, stifling hot and swarming with flies. But it had a cot. Jamie fell onto it, fully dressed, and was asleep instantly. He slept for eighteen hours.
Jamie awoke, his body unbelievably stiff and sore, but his soul filled with exultation. I am here! I have made it! Ravenously hungry, he went in search of food. The hotel served none, but there was a small, crowded restaurant across the street, where he devoured fried snook, a large fish resembling pike; carbonaatje, thinly sliced mutton grilled on a spit over a wood fire; a haunch of bok and, for dessert, koeksister, a dough deep-fried and soaked in syrup.
Jamie’s stomach, so long without food, began to give off alarming symptoms. He decided to let it rest before he continued eating, and turned his attention to his surroundings. At tables all around him, prospectors were feverishly discussing the subject uppermost in everyone’s mind: diamonds.
‘… There’s still a few diamonds left around Hopetown, but the mother lode’s at New Rush …’
‘… Kimberley’s got a bigger population than Joburg …’
‘… About the find up at Dutoitspan last week? They say there’s more diamonds there than a man can carry …’
‘… There’s a new strike at Christiana. I’m goin’ up there tomorrow.’
So it was true. There were diamonds everywhere! Young Jamie was so excited he could hardly finish his huge mug of coffee. He was staggered by the amount of the bill. Two pounds, three shillings for one meal! I’ll have to be very careful, he thought, as he walked out onto the crowded, noisy street.
A voice behind him said, ‘Still planning to get rich, McGregor?’
Jamie turned. It was Pederson, the Swedish boy who had travelled on the dogcart with him.
‘I certainly am,’ Jamie said.
‘Then let’s go where the diamonds are.’ He pointed. ‘The Vaal River’s that way.’
They began to walk.
Klipdrift was in a basin, surrounded by hills, and as far as Jamie could see, everything was barren, without a blade of grass or shrub in sight. Red dust rose thick in the air, making it difficult to breathe. The Vaal River was a quarter of a mile away, and as they got closer to it, the air became cooler. Hundreds of prospectors lined both sides of the riverbank, some of them digging for diamonds, others meshing stones in rocking cradles, still others sorting stones at rickety, makeshift tables. The equipment ranged from scientific earth-washing apparatus to old tub boxes and pails. The men were sunburned, unshaven and roughly dressed in a weird assortment of collarless, coloured and striped flannel shirts, corduroy trousers and rubber boots, riding breeches and laced leggings and wide-brimmed felt hats or pith helmets. They all wore broad leather belts with pockets for diamonds or money.
Jamie and Pederson walked to the edge of the riverbank and watched a young boy and an older man struggling to remove a huge ironstone boulder so they could get at the gravel around it. Their shirts were soaked with sweat. Nearby, another team loaded gravel onto a cart to be sieved in a cradle. One of the diggers rocked the cradle while another poured buckets of water into it to wash away the silt. The large pebbles were then emptied onto an improvised sorting table, where they were excitedly inspected.
‘It looks easy,’ Jamie grinned.
‘Don’t count on it, McGregor. I’ve been talking to some of the diggers who have been here a while. I think we’ve bought a sack of pups.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you know how many diggers there are in these parts, all hoping to get rich? Twenty bloody thousand! And there aren’t enough diamonds to go around, chum. Even if there were, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s worth it. You broil in winter, freeze in summer, get drenched in their damned donderstormen, and try to cope with the dust and the flies and the stink. You can’t get a bath or a decent bed, and there are no sanitary arrangements in this damned town. There are drownings in the Vaal River every week. Some are accidental, but I was told that for most of them it’s a way out, the only escape from this hellhole. I don’t know why these people keep hanging on.’
‘I do.’ Jamie looked at the hopeful young boy with the stained shirt. ‘The next shovelful of dirt.’
But as they headed back to town, Jamie had to admit that Pederson had a point. They passed carcasses of slaughtered oxen, sheep and goats left to rot outside the tents, next to wide-open trenches that served as lavatories. The place stank to the heavens. Pederson was watching him. ‘What are you going to do now?’
‘Get some prospecting equipment.’
In the centre of town was a store with a rusted hanging sign that read: SALOMON VAN DER MERWE, GENERAL STORE. A tall black man about Jamie’s age was unloading a wagon in front of the store. He was broad-shouldered and heavily muscled, one of the most handsome men Jamie had ever seen. He had soot-black eyes, an
