Part 2 (1/2)

Then the big Coo the first payable pipe of ”blue ground” in Southern Africa was discovered on a hard scrabble farm owned by a Boer named De Beer Old De Beer sold his far that a treasure worth 300,000,000 pounds lay beneath the bleak dry earth The strike was named De Beers New Rush, and a horde of ues and scoundrels moved in to purchase and work e room

Froh above the others, until between them they owned most of the claims in De Beers New Rush When these two, Cecil John Rhodes and Barney Barnato, at last combined their resources, a formidable financial enterprise was born

Frorown to awesonity Its wealth is fabled, its influence immeasurable, its income is astronomical It controls the diamond supply to the world It controls also mineral concessions over areas of Central and Southern Africa which total hundreds of thousands of square miles, and its reserves of un-mined precious and base minerals cannot be calculated Siant until they reach a certain size then suddenly they becoht s any of its pilot fish who beco Company can afford to buy the best prospects, equipment - and men It reached out one of its myriad tentacles to draw in Johnny Lance The price they set on him ice his present salary, and three times his future prospects

Johnny turned it down flat Perhaps the Old Man did not notice, perhaps it was mere coincidence that a week later Johnny was proer of Beach Operation The nickna Canute'

Van Der Byl Diamonds had thirty-seven miles of beach concession

The tiny ribbon of shoreline, one hundred and twenty feet above high-water mark, and one hundred and twenty feet beloaterCompany It had purchased the land, a dozen vast ranches, sihts

The sea concessions, territorial up to waters twelve ed to them also Granted to them by Government charter twenty years before But Van Der Byl Dia Canuta's job to work it

The sea-round pearl dust off the cold waters of the Benguela current Froh unhurried swells ht yellow sands and the tall wave-cut Cliffs of Namaqualand

The swells peaked up sharply as they felt the land Their crests trean to dissolve in plumes of wind-blown spray, arched over and slid down upon themselves in the roar and rumble of white water

Johnny stood on the driver's seat of the open Landrover He wore a sheepskin jacket against the chill of the dawn mist, but his head was bare and his dark hair fluttered nervously against his forehead in the wind

His heavy jaas thrust forward, and his hands in the pockets of the sheepskin jacket were balled into fists He scowled aggressively as he ht and push of the surf With his crooked nose he looked like a boxer waiting for the gong

Suddenly with an aard angry movement he jerked his left hand from his pocket and looked down at the dial of his wrist watch Two hours and three minutes to low tide He pushed his fist back into his pocket, and swivelled quickly to look at his bulldozers

There were eleven of theh-water h ste hi well back, were the earthloaders

They were ungainly, pregnant-looking ed tyres that stood taller than a man When the time came they would rush in at thirty miles an hour, drop a steel blade beneath their bellies and scrape up a fifteen-ton load of sand or gravel, race back inland and drop their load, turn and rush back for another gargantuan bite out of the earth

Johnny was steeling hi the exact moment in which to hurt a quarter of a million pounds” worth ofa handful of bright pebbles

The moment came, and Johnny spent half ahis preparations before co himself to action

Then ”GO!” he shouted into his loudhailer and windht arm in the unain, but his voice was lost Even the sound of the wild surf was lost in the bull bellow of the diesels Lowering their massive steel blades, a chorus line of steel olden sand curled before the scooped blades, like butter from the knife It built up before the h wall Thrusting, pulling back, butting, worrying, the bulldozers swept the wall of sand forward The ar the handles of the controls likea thousand pints of beer, the diesels roaring and ain

The wall of sand met the first low push of sea water up the beach and s astonish and crea dyke of sand

The bulldozers were perfor and crossing, blades lifting and falling, backing and advancing, all under the supervision of the rapher, Johnny Lance

The Land-Rover darted back and forward along the edge of the huge pit that was forh the electric loud-hailer

Gradually a sickle-shaped dyke of sand was thrown out into the sea, while behind it the bulldozer blades cut down, six, ten, fifteen feet through the loose yellow sand

Then suddenly they hit the oyster line, that thin layer of fossilized oyster shell that so often covers the diae in the character of his pit, saw the shell curling from the blades of the bulldozers

With half a dozen orders and hand signals he had his ”dozers flatten a raive the earthloaders access

Then he ordered thelanced at his watch ”One hour thirteen ht!” Quickly he checked his pit Two hundred yards long, fifteen feet deep, the overburden of sand stripped away, the oyster line showing clean and white in the sun, the bulldozers clear of the pit bottorunted ”Let's see e've got” He turned to face the two earth h-water ave the windnal

Nose to tail the earthloaders roared forward, swinging wide at the head of the pit, then swooping down the ra the bottoravel without checking their speed and went bellowing up the far raain to race up and deposit their load below the Cliff, but above the high-watertheir tails, while the bulldozers held back the sea which was now beco the dyke, seeking a weak place to attack

Johnny glanced at his watch again

”Three oing toa little now

He dropped into the driving seat and swung the Land-Rover up the beach, parking it beyond the

He cliravel

”Lovely!” he whispered ”Oh sweet! Sweed” It was right All the signs were good In the single handful he identified a sate

He scooped another handful

”Jasper,” he gloated ”And banded ironstone!” All these stones were the teaether

The shape was right also, the stories polished round and shi+ny as marbles, not flattened like coins which Would mean they had washed in only one direction Round stones meant a wave action zone - a diamond trap!

”We've hit a jewel box - I'll take Lysol on that”

From thirty-seven miles of beach Johnny had picked a two-hundred-yard stretch, and hit it right on the nose A choice not by luck, but by careful study of the configuration of the coastline, aerial photographs of the wave patterns and bottom contours of the sea, an analysis of the beach sands, and finally by that indefinable ”feel”

for ground that a good diahted with himself as he climbed back into the Land-Rover The earthloaders had scraped the gravel down to bedrock Their job was finished, and they pulled out of the pit and stood with panting exhausts beside the enorravel they had recovered

”Bottom boys!” roared Johnny, and the patient ar above the beach ca down into the pit Their job was to sweep and clean the pit bottoh proportion of the diaravel into the crevices and irregularities of the bedrock

The sea changed its mood, furious at the brutal rape of its beaches it ca at the sand dyke

The tide wasnow, and the bulldozers had to redouble their efforts to keep it out