Part 86 (1/2)
”Still, five pints of diamonds is better than a poke in the eye with a rhino horn,”Tungata countered.
They had salvaged a dozen poles from the top section of the ladder work in the shaft and built a small fire on the cavern floor. As they squatted in a circle around the pile of stones, their damp clothing steamed in the warmth from the flames.
”If they are diamonds,” Sally-Anne was still sceptical.
”They are diamonds,” Craig declared flatly, ”every single one of them. Watch this!” Craig selected one of the stones, a crystal with a knife edge to one of its facets. He drew the edge across the lens of the lamp. It made a shrill squeal that set their teeth on edge, but it gouged a deep white scratch in the gla.s.s.
”That's proof! That's a diamond!”
”So big!” Sarah picked, out the smallest she could find.
”Even the smallest is bigAr than the top joint of my finger.” She compared them.
”The old Matabele labourers picked only those large enough to show up in the first wash of gravel,” Craig explained. ”And remember that they will lose sixty per cent or more of their ma.s.s in the cutting and polis.h.i.+ng.
That one will probably end up no bigger than a green pea.”
”The colours,” Tungata murmured, ”so many different colours.” Some were translucent lemon-coloured, others dark r amber or cognac, with all shades in between, while again there were those that were un tinted clear as snow-melt in a mountain stream, with frosted facets that reflected the flames of the smoky little fire.
”Just look at this one.” The stone Sally-Anne held up was the deep purplish blue of the Mozambique current when the tropic midday sun probes its depths.
”And this.” Another as bright as the blood from a spurting artery.
”And this.” Limpid green, impossibly beautiful, changing with each flicker of the light.
Sally-Anne laid out a row of the coloured stones on the cavern floor in front of her.
”So pretty,” she said. She was grading them, the yellows and golds and ambers in one row, the pinks and reds in another.
”The diamond can take any of the primary colours. It seems to take pleasure in imitating the colours proper to other gems. John Mandeville, the fourteenth-century tray eller, wrote that.” Craig spread his hands to the blaze. ”And jj it can crystallize to any shape from a perfect square to octahedron or dodecahedron.”
”Blimey, mate,” Sally-Anne mocked him, ”what's an octahedron, pray?”
”Two pyramids with triangular sides and a common base.”
”Wow! And a dodecahedron?” she challenged.
”Two rhombs of lozenge shape with common facets.”
”How come you know so much?” 41 wrote a book remember?” Craig smiled back. ”Half the book was about Rhodes and Kimberley and diamonds.”
”Enough already, ”she capitulated.
”Not nearly enough,” Craig shook his head. ”I can go on.
The diamond is the most perfect reflector of light, only IL chromate of lead refracts more light, only chrysolite disperses it more. But the diamond's combined powers of reflection, refraction and dispersion are unmatched.”
”Stop!” ordered Sally-Anne, but her expression was still interested, and he went on.
”It's brilliance is un decaying though the ancients did not have the trick of cutting it to reveal its true splendour.