An odd question. ‘Eighteen. Why?’
‘We don’t take anyone over twenty-one or twenty-two. You in good health?’
An even odder question. ‘Yes, sir.’
The thin man straightened up. ‘I guess you’re fit. I’m leavin’ in an hour. The fare’s twenty pounds.’
Jamie could not believe his good fortune. ‘That’s wonderful! I’ll get my suitcase and –’
‘No suitcase. All you got room for is one shirt and a toothbrush.’
Jamie took a closer look at the dogcart. It was small and roughly built. The body formed a well in which the mail was stored, and over the well was a narrow, cramped space where a person could sit back to back behind the driver. It was going to be an uncomfortable journey.
‘It’s a deal,’ Jamie said. ‘I’ll fetch my shirt and toothbrush.’
When Jamie returned, the driver was hitching up a horse to the open cart. There were two large young men standing near the cart: one was short and dark, the other was a tall, blond Swede. The men were handing the driver some money.
‘Wait a minute,’ Jamie called to the driver. ‘You said I was going.’
‘You’re all goin’,’ the driver said. ‘Hop in.’
‘The three of us?’
‘That’s right.’
Jamie had no idea how the driver expected them all to fit in the small cart, but he knew he was going to be on it when it pulled out.
Jamie introduced himself to his two fellow passengers. ‘I’m Jamie McGregor.’
‘Wallach,’ the short, dark man said.
‘Pederson,’ the tall blond replied.
Jamie said, ‘We’re lucky we discovered this, aren’t we? It’s a good thing everybody doesn’t know about it.’
Pederson said, ‘Oh, they know about the post carts, McGregor. There just aren’t that many fit enough or desperate enough to travel in them.’
Before Jamie could ask what he meant, the driver said, ‘Let’s go.’
The three men – Jamie in the middle – squeezed into the seat, crowded against each other, their knees cramped, their backs pressing hard against the wooden back of the driver’s seat. There was no room to move or breathe. It’s not bad, Jamie reassured himself.
‘Hold on!’ the driver sang out, and a moment later they were racing through the streets of Cape Town on their way to the diamond fields at Klipdrift.
By bullock wagon, the journey was relatively comfortable. The wagons transporting passengers from Cape Town to the diamond fields were large and roomy, with tent covers to ward off the blazing winter sun. Each wagon accommodated a dozen passengers and was drawn by teams of horses or mules. Refreshments were provided at regular stations, and the journey took ten days.
The mail cart was different. It never stopped, except to change horses and drivers. The pace was a full gallop, over rough roads and fields and rutted trails. There were no springs on the cart, and each bounce was like the blow of a horse’s hoof. Jamie gritted his teeth and thought, I can stand it until we stop for the night, I’ll eat and get some sleep, and in the morning I’ll be fine. But when nighttime came, there was a ten-minute halt for a change of horse and driver, and they were off again at a full gallop.
‘When do we stop to eat?’ Jamie asked.
‘We don’t,’ the new driver grunted. ‘We go straight through. We’re carryin’ the mails, mister.’
They raced through the long night, travelling over dusty, bumpy roads by moonlight, the little cart bouncing up the rises, plunging down the valleys, springing over the flats. Every inch of Jamie’s body was battered and bruised from the constant jolting. He was exhausted, but it was impossible to sleep. Every time he started to doze off, he was jarred awake. His body was cramped and miserable and there was no room to stretch. He was starving and motion-sick. He had no idea how many days it would be before his next meal. It was a six-hundred-mile journey, and Jamie McGregor was not sure he was going to live through it. Neither was he sure that he wanted to.
By the end of the second day and night, the misery had turned to agony. Jamie’s travelling companions were in the same sorry state, no longer even able to complain. Jamie understood now why the company insisted that its passengers be young and strong.
When the next dawn came, they entered the Great Karroo, where the real wilderness began. Stretching to infinity, the monstrous veld lay flat and forbidding under a pitiless sun. The passengers were smothered in heat, dust and flies.
Occasionally, through a miasmic haze, Jamie saw groups of men slogging along on foot. There were solitary riders on horseback, and dozens of bullock wagons drawn by eighteen or twenty oxen, handled by drivers and voorlopers, with their sjamboks, the whips with long leather thongs, crying, ‘Trek! Trek!’ The huge wagons were laden with a thousand pounds of produce and goods, tents and digging equipment and wood-burning stoves, flour and coal and oil lamps. They carried coffee and rice, Russian hemp, sugar and wines, whiskey and boots and Belfast candles, and blankets. They were the lifeline to the fortune seekers at Klipdrift.
It was not until the mail cart crossed the Orange River that there was a change from the deadly monotony of the veld. The scrub gradually became taller and tinged with green. The earth was redder, patches of grass rippled in the breeze, and low thorn trees began to appear.
I’m going to make it, Jamie thought dully. I’m going to make it.
And he could feel hope begin to creep into his tired body.
They had been on the road for four continuous days and nights when they finally arrived at the outskirts of Klipdrift.
Young Jamie McGregor had not known what to expect, but the scene that met his weary, bloodshot eyes was like nothing he ever could have imagined. Klipdrift was a vast panorama of tents and wagons lined up on the main streets and on the shores of the Vaal River. The dirt roadway swarmed with kaffirs, naked except for brightly coloured jackets, and bearded prospectors, butchers, bakers, thieves, teachers. In the centre of Klipdrift, rows of wooden and iron shacks served as shops, canteens, billiard rooms, eating houses, diamond-buying offices and lawyers’ rooms. On a corner stood the ramshackle Royal Arch Hotel, a long chain of rooms without windows.
Jamie stepped out of the cart, and promptly fell to the ground, his cramped legs refusing to hold him up. He lay there, his head spinning, until he had strength enough to rise. He stumbled towards the hotel, pushing through the boisterous crowds that thronged the sidewalks and streets. The room they gave him was small, stifling hot and swarming with flies. But it had a cot. Jamie fell onto it, fully dressed, and was asleep instantly. He slept for eighteen hours.
Jamie awoke, his body unbelievably stiff and sore, but his soul filled with exultation. I am here! I have made it! Ravenously hungry, he went in search of food. The hotel served none, but there was a small, crowded restaurant across the street, where he devoured fried snook, a large fish resembling pike; carbonaatje, thinly sliced mutton grilled on a spit over a wood fire; a haunch of bok and, for dessert, koeksister, a dough deep-fried and soaked in syrup.
Jamie’s stomach, so long without food, began to give off alarming symptoms. He decided to let it rest before he continued eating, and turned his attention to his surroundings. At tables all around him, prospectors were feverishly discussing the subject uppermost in everyone’s mind: diamonds.
‘… There’s still a few diamonds left around Hopetown, but the mother lode’s at New Rush …’
‘… Kimberley’s got a bigger population than Joburg …’
‘… About the find up at Dutoitspan last