Geoffrey Jenkins: The River of Diamonds

'Yet you went with him.'

'We hired an old fishing-boat at Walvis Bay. There is what passes for a landing-beach. A couple of the mule-team were drowned. We pushed inland. The going was cruel. At Strandloper's Water I became convinced that it was madness to go on. But Caldwell was determined. I returned to the boat.'

'If Caldwell had not chosen so opportunely to buy your stores, what would you have done with them?'

'Taken them back to the boat, I suppose.'

'And left your comrade to die?'

'Of course not.'

'Could you have re-embarked the mules and wagon?'

'No. They were both expendable. We intended to shoot the mules and eat them, and to abandon the wagon later on.'

'But rather than take the risk, you abandoned your partner and friend with them, and in gratitude he signed away his undersea prospecting rights to the entire diamond coast?'

'Yes.'

'And he carried the document on his person? That was most considerate of Mr Caldwell.'

'He had it with him.'

'A document with a potential of millions? Surely a bank safe was the place for it?'

'He carried it.'

'What else?'

'A rifle, water-bottle, blankets — that sort of thing.'

'Nothing to prospect with? Come, come, Mr Shelborne!'

'We had a small portable trommel, or jig, a hammer, and some chemicals.'

'Than at Strandloper's Water you turned back because you funked it?'

A deep flush spread across Shelborne's face and neck and the veins knotted in his forehead, but he kept himself under control.

'I didn't funk it. I considered it inadvisable and hazardous in the extreme to continue.'

'Yet other notorious deserts like the Takla Makan and the Atacama held no such terrors for you?'

'The Namib is the worst…'

'Yes, yes. We have your unsupported assertion for that. When you considered it — I quote you — inadvisable to continue, in what terms did you put it to your partner that you were backing out — after you had planned it together for years?'

'Strandloper's Water is a sort of dry flat pan; ahead were the barchan dunes — they're the type which shift all the time. The mules could never have made it…'

'But you were fully prepared to trade them away, knowing that?'

'Caldwell was as well able to assess the risks as I was.'

'What did you say to him?'

'We had a discussion… an argument. I reckoned the boat would still be there because the wind was wrong…'

'Most peculiar, Mr Shelborne. What if the boat had gone? Your bridges both in front and behind you were burned.'

'Yes.'

'For a man of your intrepidity, and a collector of deserts to boot, you seem to have taken more chances than a greenhorn.'

'There are always risks in the desert.'

'Now — you had an argument. Whose idea was the bargain?'

'I don't remember.'

'No, I don't suppose you do. Was Caldwell fit when you parted?'

'What do you mean?'

'Simply, was he in good health, unhurt?'

Shelborne ran his tongue round his dry lips. 'Yes.'

'How did you finally separate?'

The young woman leaned forward, rapt.

'I wished him good luck and started for the coast.'

'Was it morning or afternoon?'

'Early morning.'

'Caldwell said nothing? He was still angry with you about your defection?'

'I did not say he was angry. He said, "Good luck to you, Shelley, perhaps my luck will change now".'

'You did not wait to see how far the mule-team went before it stuck?'

'No.'

'You had driven your bargain and were satisfied?'

Shelborne did not reply. Shardelow threw down his pencil with a clatter.

'Thus, then, died the diamond legend of our time.'

'I always hoped he would come back. No one knows where he died, or how.'.

Shardelow was easy, smooth. 'Is it not strange how mankind refuses to believe when one of its heroes vanishes: Lawrence of Arabia, Kitchener?' His words whipped across the court like a straight left. 'Perhaps Caldwell did not die, Mr Shelborne?'

'He is dead. Caldwell is dead.'

'Why are you so sure? Perhaps you saw him die?'

Shelborne was silent for a moment. He said steadily, 'I have told you how I left him.'

'Yes. You left him to die.'

'No. He elected to go on — against my judgement. That is all.'

'It was a shabby end to a great life, was it not?'

The tall man did not reply.

Shardelow went on. 'His signature — was it always shaky like this?'

'What do you mean…?'

'Yours is precise — it might have been written at your desk — but his… was he ill that his hand should shake so?'

Shelborne put up his right fist to wipe the sweat from his upper lip. It shook like a leaf.

'lust as your hand is shaking now, Mr Shelborne.'

'I had blackwater fever,' Shelborne retorted. 'It did this to me…' He gestured at his bald head. 'Even as a young man I was completely bald.'

Shardelow went in for the kill: 'You contracted black-water fever at Strandloper's Water, then?'

'I suppose I must have — I was taken ill on the boat going back…'

'So your partner might himself have died of blackwater?'

'Yes.'

Shardelow waved the deed of cession. 'Are you sure you did not obtain the shaky signature on this document from the hand of a man you knew was ill, so ill that he must die?'

'No! No!'

'Is that why you are so sure he did die?'

'No!'

'And you left him to die, having first extorted this vast potential wealth from him, under circumstances we shall never rightly know?' 'No! It wasn't like that…'

Then how was it, Mr Shelborne?'

'As I have told you.'

Shelborne's faded clothes were soaked with sweat under the armpits, and he wiped his hairless head with a crumpled handkerchief.

Shardelow merely stood and looked at him while the tape recorded only silence. Then he said in a matter-of-fact voice, 'We'll leave Caldwell's death and go on to the next point: it is particularly germane to my client's case.

I presume you began prospecting the sea-bed immediately?'

'No. I had no resources.'

Shardelow picked up Shelborne's affidavit. 'I see that on your return to Walvis Bay from Strandloper's Water you signed on in a deep-sea Swedish sailing ship.'

'That is correct.'

'Your first step towards becoming a master mariner in sail?'

'Yes.'

'How long did it take — from ordinary seaman to master mariner?'

'Close on ten years.'

'What was your first command?'

'I signed off before — in South America.'

'Remarkable! You were nearly ten years in sail — with no doubt poor food and a hard life — in order to achieve a master's ticket and then you signed off without trying for a ship. Why? On the run from your conscience?'

'I crossed the Atacama desert.'

That is in Chile, is it not?'

'Yes.'

'Just keeping your hand in with deserts?'

Shelborne grinned for the first time. 'You can call it that.'

Then?'

'I signed on as first mate in a Finnish windjammer loading nitrates in Valparaiso. We sailed across the Pacific to Vladivostok. From there I went inland and crossed the Takla Makan desert.'

That's Tibet — Turkestan, rather. The roof of the world.'

'Yes.'

'You successfully braved these two deserts, which are as remote as you could hope to find anywhere in the world, yet you were not prepared in 1930 to venture in companionship with an experienced man like Caldwell into a. small desert just over 100 miles wide because you thought the going would be too tough?'

Shelborne remained silent.

'Although a self-styled collector of deserts, you shrank from putting on the hook, so to speak, the gem of them all?'

'I returned to Mercury just before the outbreak of war. I have been there ever since.'

The guano islands are, geologically and geographically speaking, part of the Namib — the desert which is rich in diamonds?'