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Show r JIieMillion Dollar Diamond I 11 "jger1" Strange Tale of the Search for a Huge Diamond, a fl Sx SjW of Which Weighed 20 Carats and It Drove I m--.:- &7J Skardon to the Madhouse I Kt , By LOns !i:knhi imi it. Km, J X the madhouse of Kimberley, Orange Free State, Union of South Africa, is a little old man named Bill Skardon, Ho is harmless, and In if you should drop into the asylum he will show J you his great hag of diamonds and offer you 1 one of the amazing stones, "Have, a diamond 7" he will say. "Go ahead, f takes one." and he will giggle and tell you that I he made his fortune on the Vaal River, j Bill Skardon's one-time buddy. Capt. Joseph Dixon, prospector and sea adventurer, has rc- I lated to me the strange tale of the immense dia- EL mond that drove Bill mad. We were sitting j again in the bookshop in Charleston, S. C, J where the Captain teaches astronomy and nav- 1 igation. Dixon's lined face, usually so merry, I was sombre with memories of his old partner. Bci "Back in 1900. ' be began, "I was on the Vaal Rj River, diamond digging. We Qiad claims on the Bg Vaal River Estate. My side kick war, Bill Skar-3H Skar-3H don, a little man about live feet six high, tough BgH as nails and a real good miner. Our claims were HaH on the edge of the river near a small town called Delport's Hope. "We had been finding quite a few stones and Bill and I had about $L',000 in cash and twenty- KH live diamonds worth another $-.000 EE "Well, sir, we got news that tho river had ,i risen and was coming down. It had readied 'i Hi i place quite a ways above us, 60 'We had a couplo h I of days to get all our gear out of the stream H&H bed and Itrasb up the last dirt. Wc did it, and II j' down came the river, so Bill and 1 had to get i H claims up on tbe dry land. 'Sj I "After prospecting around for a good bit wo t'BI ran across a big dyke of basalt which cut down v" through a lot of fine gravel-wa-sh. Bill says' " 'Here Is tbe place for as. Any diamonds that H were floating around millions of yeais ago must jH have been caught in Ibis dyke 1 "He had a powerful lot of arguments in his f I favor, specific gravity, glacial-perlnr deposits i : and so on, and Bill, being longer at the diamond y I digging than me, of course knew it all. I couldn't j?j say anything but 'You're right, let's peg out this I bit of ground ' So that was decided on. In wont the pegs and the claims were ours. Ml I j "Wc went up to the township, a place called Sydney, after Sydney Hodge, a miner and pros- 1 pector and manager for the Vaal River Estate. I had a few drinks and bought gear to build a windlass and for working in the deep ground. gJH j11 Of course wo explained to Sydney Hodge what JE I we were going to do, and he and Old Bill agreed I on everything. f "'There's diamonds there,' say6 Bill in that B J bulldog way of his. " You'ro right.' says Sydney; 'go to It, boys, and you'll find bis and plenty.' "Now, my boy, being superstitious, we didn't start work until Monday morning. Then Bill and myself and six big strapping Kaffirs began to sink our shaft. In two weeks we were down about thirty feet, carrying a beautiful wash alt the way. Of course Bill says that we must gt to the bottom, then drive along it "'There's diamonds there, my boy,' he .says. "We put our shaft down fifty-two feet and got the bottom basal L Then wc started to drivo alon? the wall. The ground was tight, so we , could put in a big work. There was a lovely wash tourmalines, rubles, garnets, all kinds of stoncB but never a diamond. "Three months wo worked in that claim and we found everything but what wo were itching for. Funds were getting low. Bill had a ban temper by now, so bad that I used to spend my evenings up in the township playing billiards It was a sort of crisis. Wo cither had to find or quit pretty soon. "Then one day Bill was at. the baby, babying the dirt. Ho comes running over to me, his eyes bulging, yelling: " 'Oh boy. I found' ' "And he had found. It was a splinter of diamond dia-mond about three and a half Inches long, flaw-lets flaw-lets and a beautiful blue-white, weighing twenty carats. We sold it for 450 or $2. ".00 Before tho stone was sold Sydney Hodge, Bill and all the old diggers measured the splinter and tbey came to the conclusion that the atone It came off must havo weighed about 10,000 carats and be worth over a million dollars "Ole Bill was torrlbly excited and he yelled: "We'll And the other piece; lfis here somewhere some-where along thbj dyke!' "Holy smoke! On went more Kaffirs, till wo bad thirty boys woiklng day and niht One day Bill would be down below; the next day I was down the shaft, working like crazy. We washed tons and tons of dirt and didn't find a thing. Wo kept on washing week aftor week, working like a lot of slaves day and night, week in and week out After three months of it I was all in. Bill was pretty well gone himself. He wa.s as tbin as a rail and had a beard birds could havo rcosted in, but he waB a tough little fellow and wouldn't admlr that he was done. In four months all our money, including the 2,000 wc had got for the splinter, was spent, and we couldn't pa? for any more Kaffirs. So Bill amd I worked alone with one boy.. The boy and I worked down the shaft while Bill hauled the dirt up and H worked It on top. but we couldn t get an- (- ' other color. "Now, the Vaal River had gone down and the diggers were prospecting in the tm river bed again, so I says to Bill: " 'Let's try the river, and we'll'come back to t this claim when the river rises again.' You see, J I wanted to get him away from the shaft and H have him rest a little. " 'Oh. no, my bey,' says Bill, 'that big fellow is I here and I'm going to find it.' t H "There wa3 no use 'rylng to argue with Bill. H "So, one day. after a very poor breakfast of . mealypap. I decided to shift to the river. I ex- H plained to Bill that I was going to work the bed H and that what I found there would help to pay H the boys to find the big one. That suited Bill, so , H I shifted down to the Vaal, about 3lx miles, and H started beachcombin? H "The, second day of working I found a nice little three-carat stone, and when Saturday came J I bad, all told, about sixteen carats of diamonds to sell. The diamond market, where all the H rough river stones were sold. wa3 held in Sydney H every Saturday. So I want to market, hoping to f meet Olo Bill. The few dollars we could get for my diamonds would help him along. H "I didn't know bow all In I was till I started out to reach Sydney The last four months had H pretty near killed me. but I got there at last. I met some of the diggers and they invited me over to the booze shanty to have a guzzle. After ! had a dnuk Old Tom Quinn, another digyer, " 'There's something wrong with your old J mate. Bill Skardon. The Kaffir has left him and pays he has gone dilly. We had better go down f J to the claim and find out what's the matter V- "My God.' I says to myself, 'poor Ole Bill. IBI "Away we go and when we get to the claim Ml there Is Bill, as naked as tbe day he was born. irwl standing outside the tent with a shotgun in his ll "'Keep back there or I'll shoot!' he yelled. "I sorter edges up to him and says: "Hello. Bill, what the hell's the matter?'" "When he sees me he puts the gun down and picks up a flour bag full of stones. The lot must - H have welched fifty pounds. He says to me: "'By God, Jo, I'm glad that's you! Keep your mouth shut! I've struck diamonds, my boy j; Here Is a bag full'' Then he gets excited and I yells: 'I can swamp tbe market in two days and . there's millions more down the claim!' "We gathered around Ole Bill. He put hi band In the bag and pulled out a handful of pebbles and passed them around. " There, boys.' he said, 'ain't they beauties'' And he began to laugh and cry. 'Let's go up to the booze shanty!' "Well, sir. we coaxed Bill to put hia clothes on and we got hlra up to the township. Of course ho tarried his bag of pebbles with him. Wo cnl-lectod cnl-lectod a few dollars and put poor, harmless Bill. with hjs bag of stones, on the coach. I climbed aboard. We went to Kimberley He's there to-day. to-day. sir. but God knows where the rest of that diamond bv Down under ground somewhere T guess, but neither Ole Bill nor I will ever sec it." ' One of the great Kimberley pockets after a cave-in. 1 "at |