Our journey back to the cart was a hungry but uneventful one. We found the driver on the point of clearing for Upington with the news of our being lost or captured by the Germans, for we were long overdue, and he had consoled himself by eating practically every bit of our remaining stores. Three days later we were back at Kakamas North Bank, where at the store Borcherds ransacked the whole stock for a pair of pants large enough for his ample proportions. For his only pair were in rags, our boots were in shreds, and altogether a bigger lot of ragamuffins rarely straggled over a frontier. Of course, we had had no news from the outside world since we left Kakamas on our way down, and our first anxious inquiry disclosed the fact that a messenger had been chasing me for days, with telegrams which he had brought all the way from Upington. We located him later, and one of the telegrams brought me news that immediately sent our despondent spirits up with a bound. Before leaving for the trip, I had vainly endeavoured to obtain the name of a certain individual who, years before, had sold a very large diamond at Steinkopf, which he said he had found somewhere near the Great Falls, and who, after obtaining a considerable sum for it, had gone back to Gordonia. And this wire, which had been following me for weeks, conveyed the welcome intelligence that he was a certain Hendrick, living at Kakamas--the very place in which the wire reached me! Here was luck with a vengeance, luck which might atone for all our misfortunes--for Steinkopf credited this man, above all others, with knowing where there were plenty more to be picked up! Cautious inquiry elicited the fact that the man was well known, and lived but a mile or two away. And without loss of time, Paul and Borcherds set out to find him. He was a sly-looking Bastard, who at first strenuously denied that he had ever been to Steinkopf, or knew what a diamond was; but when he found we were not police, and that he had nothing to fear, he owned up. Yes! he had found three--big ones. One he had sold at Steinkopf, the others he had buried beneath a tree close to where he found them, for he believed that the police were watching him, and had feared to go near the spot again. We showed him our licences, and as he assured us the spot was on Government ground, we felt that all was indeed well in this best of all possible worlds. The wily old fox drove a hard bargain with us, and in nowise would he tell us the whereabouts of his discovery. It would take us three or four days to reach it, that was all he said, and when, in trying to pump him, we mentioned that we had been to Bak River on a similar search, he smiled grimly and said, “You were on the wrong side of the river [Orange].”