We got down to the shoals as it was getting dusk and a heavy sea was breaking on many of the shoal patches. There were no marks or lights, so I put her at one of the dark patches of water and she came through all right, in fact it was about as safe a plan as could have been adopted. But I will admit it was rough-and-ready navigation, adapted to the needs of the time and also the circumstances of the case. We got to Cape Town in due course on the way home. There, to my satisfaction, I met my friend, Herbert Rhodes, and got up a little luncheon party on board to celebrate the occasion. I thought I had picked my party well, for I had Castilho and Rhodes, who sat opposite one another and next to me. There was F. St. Leger, “the Saint,” as the dear old editor of the _Cape Times_ was commonly called, Peter van Breda, and others whose names do not now occur to me. I was greatly surprised to find that Castilho did not talk willingly to Rhodes, and that the latter had some reason for mirth which he did not impart to me at the time. When we left the table Castilho observed to me, “If I could have have laid hold of your friend in Delagoa Bay, he would have gone to jail for a long time.” I was a bit astonished, but the party then broke up. Here was the reason of it all. For some years past there had been a lot of young Englishmen coming to South Africa in search of adventure, and there was very little that was too hot or too heavy for some of them to tackle in one way or the other. Some were soldiers, I remember Major Goodall and Captain Elton in the early ’seventies; then there were young men such as Dawnay, Reggie Fairlie, Campbell, and others like Rhodes. They might be hunting, or transport riding, or exploring, but one was fairly confident that no piece of mischief was passed that could by any means be negotiated. Now, some little way up the river that runs into Delagoa Bay there lived a dusky potentate whose soul thirsted for the possession of some piece of artillery, be it ever so small, and as proof of his earnestness offered in return a tumbler full of diamonds. I never heard that they were to be of any fixed value, but they ought to have been, for the Portuguese strictly forbade the importation of artillery of any sort or kind, and it would go hard with any one engaged in smuggling. I am not certain who Rhodes’s companions were, but some of those I have mentioned were surely in the job. They chartered a little schooner at Natal, named the _Pelham_, then got a six-pounder old brass gun, which they smuggled on shore at Delagoa Bay one night and buried in the mangrove bushes above the town. They got their diamonds and, then, instead of getting on board their craft as sensible, or older, men would have done, they proceeded to paint Lourenço Marques red, in the brightest coloured paint procurable. There was a certain lady there with very sharp ears who, forming a conclusion, gave the game away to the authorities, and the young