Men of Men Read Free

prejudiced against granting ‘briefies’ to Englishmen.
    For these reasons, and also for the more pleasant living conditions along the river, the diggers had not taken too much interest in the ‘dry diggings’ to the south.
    Then one day a Hottentot servant of one of the river diggers rendered himself blind falling-down drunk with Cape Smoke, the fierce Cape brandy, and while in that state accidentally set fire to
his master’s tent and burned it to the ground.
    When he was once again sober, his master beat him with a sjambok whip of cured rhinoceros hide until he was once more unable to stand. When he recovered from his treatment, his master ordered
him, still in disgrace, to go into the dry country ‘and dig until you find a diamond’.
    Chastened and still wobbly on his feet, the Hottentot had shouldered his shovel and pack and limped away. His master promptly forgot him, until he returned unannounced two weeks later and placed
in his master’s hand half a dozen fine white stones – the largest the size of the first joint of a lady’s little finger.
    ‘Where?’ demanded Fleetwood Rawstorne, the single word all that he could choke through a throat suddenly parched and closed with excitement.
    Minutes later, Fleetwood galloped furiously out of camp, a cartload of scrapings from the river bed left untreated and his diamond ‘cradle’ abandoned halfway through the process of
concentrating the heavier diamondiferous gravel. Daniel, the Hottentot servant, hung from his stirrup leather, his bare feet kicking up little puffs of dust as they skimmed the dry earth, and the
red woollen cap that was the insignia of Fleetwood’s party blowing back from his bald head to flap like a flag beckoning others to follow.
    Such behaviour instantly precipitated a wild panic amongst the fiercely competitive little community of diggers along the river. Within an hour a tall column of red dust rose above the flat dry
land; a headlong column of horsemen flogged their mounts while behind them the Scotch carts rumbled and the less fortunate stumbled and slipped in the sandy footing as they ran the miles back
southwards to old man De Beer’s barren hard-scrabble little farm on which rose another bald stony little kopje, just like ten thousand others that studded the plains.
    The kopje was that same day in the bleak, dry winter of 1871 named ‘Colesberg’ kopje, for Colesberg was Fleetwood Rawstorne’s birthplace, and De Beer’s New Rush came
swarming out of the dusty sun-bleached distances towards it.
    It was almost dark when Fleetwood reached the kopje, only just ahead of his followers. His horse was blown, lathered with sweat and white froth, but the Hottentot servant clung to the stirrup
leather still.
    Master and servant flung themselves from the heaving staggering animal and ran at the slope. Their scarlet caps bobbing above the scrub thorn could be seen from a half mile distance, and a
hoarse excited cheer went up from the ragged column that pursued them.
    On the crest of the hill, the Hottentot servant had burrowed a shaft ten feet into the hard earth, a tiny scratch when compared to what was to follow. Frantic with haste, casting fearful glances
down the hillside at the horde that raced up towards him, Fleetwood drove the centre line of his claim pegs across the narrow mouth of the shallow prospect shaft.
    Night fell over a battlefield on which brawny diggers cursed each other and swung punches and pick-handles to clear the ground and drive their own claim pegs. By noon the next day, when farmer
De Beer rode across from his primitive two-roomed dwelling to begin writing out the ‘briefies’, which was taal for ‘letters’, the entire kopje was covered with claim pegs;
even the flat plain for a quarter of a mile below the slopes was bristling with pegs.
    Each claim was thirty feet square, its centre and corners marked with a sharpened wood stake cut from a camel-thorn branch. On payment of an annual fee of ten