"Some
luck, maybe," he said, "but in my opinion their day is over. Those
fellows at Nooitgedacht go out and sweat in the sun, and haul up
boulders, and sort their wash, and what do they come up with? Three or
four hundred carats a month, at most, for the batch of them. You know
what the Premier Mine produces? A hundred thousand carats a month. I'm
against digging on principle. It's wasteful, it's disorganized, and
it's useless. And I say—though this isn't the official attitude, it's
only my own—that it's time they gave it up."
"Oh, come now!" I protested. "After all, people have made fortunes out of digging. What about the Jonker?"
"The
Jonker?" said the buyer. "Well, since you mention it, I've never gone
along with the theory that the Jonker just happened to turn up where
it did. It's my belief that it originally came out of a deep mine. The
Premier, no doubt." And, as if he had not just pronounced a heresy, he
took a deep draught of tea.
