"Why, he went off on the hunt with a couple o' niggers, and afore I knowed about it he'd been out three days in the bush. It makes me laugh now. Wha' yer think? I came across him without his gun, or his hat, or his kit, making tracks for home. He found the bull sure enough, but the bull chased him up a yellow-wood tree and kep' him there one day and a night." "Did he see the diamond?" "Oh, yes; he seed too much of it; but he didn't want any more of that sort o' minin'--and 'tweren't long afore I chucked the job, too." "How was that?" "Well, you wouldn't believe me if I tole you. At any rate it's bedtime; and if you young ones don't roost now you'll never hold your guns straight in the mornin'. So long!" CHAPTER TWENTY THREE. ABE'S DIAMOND MINE. We were still at the camp near the bush by the sea, and the week's hunt was ended. The "boys" had gone off to a neighbouring kraal to dance and eat and drink throughout the night, and we were left in the great quiet of a South African evening. As usual, Long Jim had squeezed from his concertina all the melancholy airs he knew, and Amos Topper had trotted out all his well-worn arguments against the _Ukolobola_--the Kaffir system of selling girls into wedlock in exchange for cattle; a system which he warmly contended was the root of all the stock-thieving. "A darned good system," said Abe; "one that's based on reason and justice; that's so." "Hear the old boomer!" said Amos scornfully; "anyone would think he'd got a parcel o' daughters to marry off fer cattle."