Men of Men Read Online Free Page A

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for ‘briefies’, the politics and economics of diamond pricing, the geological composition of the strike and a hundred other related facts. He had also made a friendship that would alter
his whole life.
    Although Aletta and the boys were already asleep in the wagon tent, Jan Cheroot, the little Hottentot, was waiting for him, squatting beside the watch-fire, a small gnome-like figure in the
silver moonlight.
    ‘There is no free water,’ he told Zouga morosely. ‘The river is a full day’s trek away, and the thieving Boer who owns the wells sells water at the same price as they
sell brandy in this hell-hole.’ Jan Cheroot could be relied upon to know the going price of liquor ten minutes after arriving in a new town.
    Zouga climbed into the wagon body, careful not to jolt the boys awake; but Aletta was lying rigidly in the narrow riempie bed. He lay down beside her and neither of them spoke for many
minutes.
    Then she whispered. ‘You are determined to stay in this,’ her voice checked, then went on with quiet vehemence, ‘in this awful place.’
    He did not reply, and in the cot behind the canvas screen across the body of the wagon Jordan whimpered and then was silent. Zouga waited until he had settled before he replied.
    ‘Today a Welshman named Black Thomas found a diamond. They say he has been offered twelve thousand pounds by one of the buyers.’
    ‘A woman came to sell me a little goat’s milk while you were away.’ Aletta might not have heard him. ‘She says there is camp fever here. A woman and two children have
died already and others are sick.’
    ‘A man can buy a good claim on the kopje for one thousand pounds.’
    ‘I fear for the boys, Zouga,’ Aletta whispered. ‘Let us go back. We could give up this wandering gypsy life for every. Daddy has always wanted you to come into the
business—’
    Aletta’s father was a rich Cape merchant, but Zouga shuddered in the darkness at the thought of a high desk in the dingy counting-room of Cartwright and Company.
    ‘It is time the boys went to a good school, else they will grow up as savages. Please let us go back now, Zouga.’
    ‘A week,’ he said. ‘Give me a week – we have come so far.’
    ‘I do not think I can bear the flies and filth for another week.’ She sighed and turned her back to him, careful not to touch him in the narrow cot.
    The family doctor in Cape Town, who had attended Aletta’s own birth, the birth of both boys and her numerous miscarriages, had warned them ominously.
    ‘Another pregnancy could be your last, Aletta. I cannot be responsible for what may happen.’ For the three years since then she had lain with her back to him, on those occasions when
they had been able to share a bed.
    Before dawn Zouga slipped out of the wagon while Aletta and the boys still slept. In the darkness before first light he stirred the ashes and drank a cup of coffee crouching over them. Then in
the first rosy glow of dawn he joined the stream of carts and hurrying men that moved up for the day’s assault on the hill.
    In the strengthening light and rising heat and whirls of dust he moved from claim to claim, looking and assessing. He had long ago trained himself as an amateur geologist. He had read every book
that he could find on the subject, often by candlelight on the lonely hunting veld; and on his infrequent returns home he had passed days and weeks in the Natural History Museum in London, much of
the time in the Geological Section. He had trained his eye and sharpened his instinct for the lie of the rock formations and for the grain and weight and colour of a sample of reef.
    At most of the claims his overtures were met with a shrug and a turned back, but one or two of the diggers remembered him as the ‘elephant hunter’ or the ‘writer fellow’
and used his visit as an excuse to lean on their shovels and talk for a few minutes.
    ‘I’ve got two briefies,’ a digger who introduced himself as Jock Danby told