Master of the Game

The sanitary arrangements in Cape Town were both primitive and inadequate, and when the sun set, an odoriferous vapour covered the city like a noxious blanket. It was unbearable. But Jamie knew that he would bear it. He needed more money before he could leave. ‘You can’t survive in the diamond fields without money,’ he had been warned. ‘They’ll charge you just for breathin’.’

On his second day in Cape Town, Jamie found a job driving a team of horses for a delivery firm. On the third day he started working in a restaurant after dinner, washing dishes. He lived on the leftover food that he squirrelled away and took back to the boardinghouse, but it tasted strange to him and he longed for his mother’s cock-a-leekie and oatcakes and hot, fresh-made baps. He did not complain, even to himself, as he sacrificed both food and comfort to increase his grubstake. He had made his choice and nothing was going to stop him, not the exhausting labour, nor the foul air he breathed, nor the flies that kept him awake most of the night. He felt desperately lonely. He knew no one in this strange place, and he missed his friends and family. Jamie enjoyed solitude, but loneliness was a constant ache.

At last, the magic day arrived. His pouch held the magnificent sum of two hundred pounds. He was ready. He would leave Cape Town the following morning for the diamond fields.

Reservations for passenger wagons to the diamond fields at Klipdrift were booked by the Inland Transport Company at a small wooden depot near the docks. When Jamie arrived at seven a.m., the depot was already so crowded that he could not get near it. There were hundreds of fortune seekers fighting for seats on the wagons. They had come from as far away as Russia and America, Australia, Germany and England. They shouted in a dozen different tongues, pleading with the besieged ticket sellers to find spaces for them. Jamie watched as a burly Irishman angrily pushed his way out of the office onto the sidewalk, fighting to get through the mob.

‘Excuse me,’ Jamie said. ‘What’s going on in there?’

‘Nothin’,’ the Irishman grunted in disgust. ‘The bloody wagons are all booked up for the next six weeks.’ He saw the look of dismay on Jamie’s face. ‘That’s not the worst of it, lad. The heathen bastards are chargin’ fifty pounds a head.’

It was incredible! ‘There must be another way to get to the diamond fields.’

‘Two ways. You can go Dutch Express, or you can go by foot.’

‘What’s Dutch Express?’

‘Bullock wagon. They travel two miles an hour. By the time you get there, the damned diamonds will all be gone.’

Jamie McGregor had no intention of being delayed until the diamonds were gone. He spent the rest of the morning looking for another means of transportation. Just before noon, he found it. He was passing a livery stable with a sign in front that said MAIL DEPOT. On an impulse, he went inside, where the thinnest man he had ever seen was loading large mail sacks into a dogcart. Jamie watched him a moment.

‘Excuse me,’ Jamie said. ‘Do you carry mail to Klipdrift?’

‘That’s right. Loadin’ up now.’

Jamie felt a sudden surge of hope. ‘Do you take passengers?’

‘Sometimes.’ He looked up and studied Jamie. ‘How old are you?’

An odd question. ‘Eighteen. Why?’

‘We don’t take anyone over twenty-one or twenty-two. You in good health?’

An even odder question. ‘Yes, sir.’

The thin man straightened up. ‘I guess you’re fit. I’m leavin’ in an hour. The fare’s twenty pounds.’

Jamie could not believe his good fortune. ‘That’s wonderful! I’ll get my suitcase and –’

‘No suitcase. All you got room for is one shirt and a toothbrush.’

Jamie took a closer look at the dogcart. It was small and roughly built. The body formed a well in which the mail was stored, and over the well was a narrow, cramped space where a person could sit back to back behind the driver. It was going to be an uncomfortable journey.

‘It’s a deal,’ Jamie said. ‘I’ll fetch my shirt and toothbrush.’

When Jamie returned, the driver was hitching up a horse to the open cart. There were two large young men standing near the cart: one was short and dark, the other was a tall, blond Swede. The men were handing the driver some money.

‘Wait a minute,’ Jamie called to the driver. ‘You said I was going.’

‘You’re all goin’,’ the driver said. ‘Hop in.’

‘The three of us?’

‘That’s right.’

Jamie had no idea how the driver expected them all to fit in the small cart, but he knew he was going to be on it when it pulled out.

Jamie introduced himself to his two fellow passengers. ‘I’m Jamie McGregor.’

‘Wallach,’ the short, dark man said.

‘Pederson,’ the tall blond replied.

Jamie said, ‘We’re lucky we discovered this, aren’t we? It’s a good thing everybody doesn’t know about it.’

Pederson said, ‘Oh, they know about the post carts, McGregor. There just aren’t that many fit enough or desperate enough to travel in them.’

Before Jamie could ask what he meant, the driver said, ‘Let’s go.’

The three men – Jamie in the middle – squeezed into the seat, crowded against each other, their knees cramped, their backs pressing hard against the wooden back of the driver’s seat. There was no room to move or breathe. It’s not bad, Jamie reassured himself.

‘Hold on!’ the driver sang out, and a moment later they were racing through the streets of Cape Town on their way to the diamond fields at Klipdrift.

By bullock wagon, the journey was relatively comfortable. The wagons transporting passengers from Cape Town to the diamond fields were large and roomy, with tent covers to ward off the blazing winter sun. Each wagon accommodated a dozen passengers and was drawn by teams of horses or mules. Refreshments were provided at regular stations, and the journey took ten days.

The mail cart was different. It never stopped, except to change horses and drivers. The pace was a full gallop, over rough roads and fields and rutted trails. There were no springs on the cart, and each bounce was like the blow of a horse’s hoof. Jamie gritted his teeth and thought, I can stand it until we stop for the night, I’ll eat and get some sleep, and in the morning I’ll be fine. But when nighttime came, there was a ten-minute halt for a change of horse and driver, and they were off again at a full gallop.

‘When do we stop to eat?’ Jamie asked.

‘We don’t,’ the new driver grunted. ‘We go straight through. We’re carryin’ the mails, mister.’

They raced through the long night, travelling over dusty, bumpy roads by moonlight, the little cart bouncing up the rises, plunging down the valleys, springing over the flats. Every inch of Jamie’s body was battered and bruised from the constant jolting. He was exhausted, but it was impossible to sleep. Every time he started to doze off, he was jarred awake. His body was cramped and miserable and there was no room to stretch. He was starving and motion-sick. He had no idea how many days it would be before his next meal. It was a six-hundred-mile journey, and Jamie McGregor was not sure he was going to live through it. Neither was he sure that he wanted to.

By the end of the second day and night, the misery 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 aquiline nose and a proud chin. There was a dignity about him, a quiet aloofness. He lifted a heavy wooden box of rifles to his shoulder and, as he turned, he slipped on a leaf fallen from a crate of cabbage. Jamie instinctively reached out an arm to steady him. The black man did not acknowledge Jamie’s presence. He turned and walked into the store. A Boer prospector hitching up a mule spat and said distastefully, ‘That’s Banda, from the Barolong tribe. Works for Mr van der Merwe. I don’t know why he keeps that uppity black. Those fuckin’ Bantus think they own the earth.’

The store was cool and dark inside, a welcome relief from the hot, bright street, and it was filled with exotic odours. It seemed to Jamie that every inch of space was crammed with merchandise. He walked through the store, marvelling. There were agricultural implements, beer, cans of milk and crocks of butter, cement, fuses and dynamite and gunpowder, crockery, furniture, guns and haberdashery, oil and paint and varnish, bacon and dried fruit, saddlery and harness, sheep-dip and soap, spirits and stationery and paper, sugar and tea and tobacco and snuff and cigars … A dozen shelves were filled from top to bottom with flannel shirts and blankets, shoes, poke bonnets and saddles. Whoever owns all this, Jamie thought, is a rich man.

A soft voice behind him said, ‘Can I help you?’

Jamie turned and found himself facing a young girl. He judged she was about fifteen. She had an interesting face, fineboned and heart-shaped, like a valentine, a pert nose and intense green eyes. Her hair was dark and curling. Jamie, looking at her figure, decided she might be closer to sixteen.

‘I’m a prospector,’ Jamie announced. ‘I’m here to buy some equipment.’

‘What is it you need?’

For some reason, Jamie felt he had to impress this girl. ‘I – er – you know – the usual.’

She smiled, and there was mischief in her eyes. ‘What is the usual, sir?’

‘Well …’ He hesitated. ‘A shovel.’

‘Will that be all?’

Jamie saw that she was teasing him. He grinned and confessed. ‘To tell you the truth, I’m new at this. I don’t know what I need.’

She smiled at him, and it was the smile of a woman. ‘It depends on where you’re planning to prospect, Mr –?’

‘McGregor. Jamie McGregor.’

‘I’m Margaret van der Merwe.’ She glanced nervously towards the rear of the store.

‘I’m pleased to meet you, Miss van der Merwe.’

‘Did you just arrive?’

‘Aye. Yesterday. On the post cart.’

‘Someone should have warned you about that. Passengers have died on that trip.’ There was anger in her eyes.

Jamie grinned. ‘I can’t blame them. But I’m very much alive, thank you.’

‘And going out to hunt for mooi klippe.’

‘Mooi klippe?’

‘That’s our Dutch word for diamonds. Pretty pebbles.’

‘You’re Dutch?’

‘My family’s from Holland.’

‘I’m from Scotland.’

‘I could tell that.’ Her eyes flicked warily towards the back of the store again. ‘There are diamonds around, Mr McGregor, but you must be choosy where you look for them. Most of the diggers are running around chasing their own tails. When someone makes a strike, the rest scavenge off the leavings. If you want to get rich, you have to find a strike of your own.’

‘How do I do that?’

‘My father might be the one to help you with that. He knows everything. He’ll be free in an hour.’

‘I’ll be back,’ Jamie assured her. ‘Thank you, Miss van der Merwe.

He went out into the sunshine, filled with a sense of euphoria, his aches and pains forgotten. If Salomon van der Merwe would advise him where to find diamonds, there was no way Jamie could fail. He would have the jump on all of them. He laughed aloud, with the sheer joy of being young and alive and on his way to riches.

Jamie walked down the main street, passing a blacksmith’s, a billiard hall and half a dozen saloons. He came to a sign in front of a decrepit-looking hotel and stopped. The sign read:

R-D MILLER, WARM AND COLD BATHS.

OPEN DAILY FROM 6 A.M. TO 8 P.M.,

WITH THE COMFORTS OF A NEAT DRESSING ROOM

Jamie thought, When did I have my last bath? Well, I took a bucket bath on the boat. That was – He was suddenly aware of how he must smell. He thought of the weekly tub baths in the kitchen at home, and he could hear his mother’s voice calling, ‘Be sure to wash down below, Jamie.’

He turned and entered the baths. There were two doors inside, one for women and one for men. Jamie entered the men’s section and walked up to the aged attendant. ‘How much is a bath?’

‘Ten shillings for a cold bath, fifteen for a hot.’

Jamie hesitated. The idea of a hot bath after his long journey was almost irresistible. ‘Cold,’ he said. He could not afford to throw away his money on luxuries. He had mining equipment to buy.

The attendant handed him a small bar of yellow lye soap and a threadbare hand towel and pointed. ‘In there, mate.’

Jamie stepped into a small room that contained nothing except a large galvanized-iron bathtub in the centre and a few pegs on the wall. The attendant began filling the tub from a large wooden bucket.

‘All ready for you, mister. Just hang your clothes on those pegs.’

Jamie waited until the attendant left and then undressed. He looked down at his grime-covered body and put one foot in the tub. The water was cold, as advertised. He gritted his teeth and plunged in, soaping himself furiously from head to foot. When he finally stepped out of the tub, the water was black. He dried himself as best he could with the worn linen towel and started to get dressed. His pants and shirt were stiff with dirt, and he hated to put them back on. He would have to buy a change of clothes, and this reminded him once more of how little money he had. And he was hungry again.

Jamie left the bathhouse and pushed his way down the crowded street to a saloon called the Sundowner. He ordered a beer and lunch. Lamb cutlets with tomatoes, and sausage and potato salad and pickles. While he ate, he listened to the hopeful conversations around him.

‘… I hear they found a stone near Colesberg weighin’ twenty-one carats. Mark you, if there’s one diamond up there, there’s plenty more …’

‘… There’s a new diamond find up in Hebron. I’m thinkin’ of goin’ there …’

‘You’re a fool. The big diamonds are in the Orange River …’

At the bar, a bearded customer in a collarless, striped-flannel shirt and corduroy trousers was nursing a shandygaff in a large glass. ‘I got cleaned out in Hebron,’ he confided to the bartender. ‘I need me a grubstake.’

The bartender was a large, fleshy, bald-headed man with a broken, twisted nose and ferret eyes. He laughed. ‘Hell, man, who doesn’t? Why do you think I’m tendin’ bar? As soon as I have enough money, I’m gonna hightail it up the Orange myself.’ He wiped the bar with a dirty rag. ‘But I’ll tell you what you might do, mister. See Salomon van der Merwe. He owns the general store and half the town.

‘What good’ll that do me?’

‘If he likes you, he might stake you.’

The customer looked at him. ‘Yeah? You really think he might?’

‘He’s done it for a few fellows I know of. You put up your labour, he puts up the money. You split fifty-fifty.’

Jamie McGregor’s thoughts leaped ahead. He had been confident that the hundred and twenty pounds he had left would be enough to buy the equipment and food he would need to survive, but the prices in Klipdrift were astonishing. He had noticed in Van der Merwe’s store that a hundred-pound sack of Australian flour cost five pounds. One pound of sugar cost a shilling. A bottle of beer cost five shillings. Biscuits were three shillings a pound, and fresh eggs sold for seven shillings a dozen. At that rate, his money would not last long. My God, Jamie thought, at home we could live for a year on what three meals cost here. But if he could get the backing of someone really wealthy, like Mr van der Merwe … Jamie hastily paid for his food and hurried back to the general store.

Salomon van der Merwe was behind the counter, removing the rifles from a wooden crate. He was a small thin man, with a thin, pinched face framed by Dundreary whiskers. He had sandy hair, tiny black eyes, a bulbous nose and pursed lips. His daughter must take after her mother, Jamie thought. ‘Excuse me, sir …’

Van der Merwe looked up. ‘Ja?’

‘Mr van der Merwe? My name is Jamie McGregor, sir, I’m from Scotland. I came here to find diamonds.’

‘Ja? So?’

‘I hear you sometimes back prospectors.’

Van der Merwe grumbled, ‘Myn magtig! Who spreads these stories? I help out a few diggers, and everyone thinks I’m Santa Claus.’

‘I’ve saved a hundred and twenty pounds,’ Jamie said earnestly. ‘But I see that it’s not going to buy me much here. I’ll go out to the bush with just a shovel if I have to, but I figure my chances would be a lot better if I had a mule and some proper equipment.’

Van der Merwe was studying him with those small, black eyes. ‘Wat denk ye? What makes you think you can find diamonds?’

‘I’ve come halfway around the world, Mr van der Merwe, and I’m not going to leave here until I’m rich. If the diamonds are out there, I’ll find them. If you help me, I’ll make us both rich.’