Master of the Game by Sidney Sheldon Read Free Book Online

dressed in rags swarmed through the streets. Jamie stared in amazement. The silver houses glistening in the sun were made of tin jam pots, flattened out, fastened together and nailed over the crude shacks. He walked on, and an hour later, when he looked back, he could still see the glow of the village. It was a sight he never forgot.
    Jamie kept moving north. He followed the riverbank where the diamonds might be, digging until his arms refused to lift the heavy pick, then sifting the wet gravel through the hand sieve. When it got dark, he slept as though drugged.
    At the end of the second week, he moved upstream again, just north of a small settlement called Paardspan. He stopped near a bend in the river and fixed himself a meal of carbonaatje, grilled on a spit over a wood fire, and hot tea, then sat in front of his tent, looking up at the wheeling stars in the vast sky. He had not seen a human being in two weeks, and an eddy of loneliness washed over him. What the hell am I doing here? he wondered. Sitting in the middle of a blasted wilderness like a bloody fool, killing myself breaking rocks and digging up dirt? I was better off at the farm. Come Saturday, if I don’t find a diamond, I’m going home . He looked up at the uncaring stars and yelled, “Do you hear me, damn you?” Oh, Jesus , he thought, I’m losing my mind .
    Jamie sat there, idly sifting the sand through his fingers. They closed on a large stone, and he looked at it a moment, thenthrew it away. He had seen a thousand worthless stones like it in the past weeks. What was it Van der Merwe had called them? Schlenters . Yet, there was something about this one that belatedly caught Jamie’s attention. He rose, went over to it and picked it up. It was much larger than the other stones and of an odd shape. He rubbed some of the dirt off it against the leg of his trousers and examined it more closely. It looked like a diamond. The only thing that made Jamie doubt his senses was the size of it. It was almost as large as a hen’s egg. Oh, God. If it is a diamond …He suddenly had difficulty breathing. He grabbed his lantern and began searching the ground around him. In fifteen minutes he had found four more like it. None of them was as large as the first one, but they were large enough to fill him with a wild excitement.
    He was up before dawn, digging like a madman, and by noon he had found half a dozen more diamonds. He spent the next week feverishly digging up diamonds and burying them at night in a safe place where no passers-by could find them. There were fresh diamonds every day, and as Jamie watched his fortune pile up, he was filled with an ineffable joy. Only half of this treasure was his, but it was enough to make him rich beyond anything he had ever dared to dream.
    At the end of the week, Jamie made a note on his map and staked out his claim by carefully marking the boundaries with his pick. He dug up his hidden treasure, carefully stored it deep down in his backpack and headed back to Magerdam.
    The sign outside the small building read: DIAMANT KOOPER .
    Jamie walked into the office, a small, airless room, and he was filled with a sudden sense of trepidation. He had heard dozens of stories of prospectors who had found diamonds that had turned out to be worthless stones. What if I’m wrong? What if—?
    The assayer was seated at a cluttered desk in the tiny office. “Somethin’ I can do for you?”
    Jamie took a deep breath. “Yes, sir. I would like to have these valued, please.”
    Under the watchful eye of the assayer, Jamie started laying the stones on his desk. When he was finished, there was a total of twenty-seven, and the assayer was gazing at them in astonishment.
    “Where—where did you find these?”
    “I’ll tell you after you tell me whether they’re diamonds.”
    The assayer picked up the largest stone and examined it with a jeweler’s loupe. “My God!” he said. “This is the biggest diamond I’ve ever seen!” And Jamie