The tension seemed to have gone out of Shelborne. 'Yes.'
Then there must be diamonds on the islands?'
'By no means. Nowhere in South-west Africa are diamonds found more than twelve miles inland. The absence of diamonds in the desert — except for that twelve-mile coastal strip — is an undeniable fact; and an inexplicable one.'
Shardelow, in reply to the Judge, said that the Mazy Zed outfit intended to call expert evidence regarding the nature of the diamond deposits off the Sperrgebiet. The fudge glanced at the big wall clock. Shelborne had been questioned for more than three hours.
Shardelow said, 'One last point, Mr Shelborne: have you ever made use of your so-called right to prospect the sea-bed?'
'In a manner of speaking, yes.'
'Yes or no? Have you or have you not prospected the off-shore concession area?'
Shelborne seemed uneasy. 'It is one of the wildest coastlines in the world… It has a formidable reputation…'
'Answer the question!' snapped the Judge.
'I have prospected as best I could. My equipment was somewhat primitive — grabs and dredges, weighted buoys with grease-traps to bring up samples from the ocean floor.'
Rhennin pulled at Shardelow's sleeve and whispered urgently. Shardelow grinned and nodded.
'Remembering an old custom among prospectors never to visit another's claim unless invited, I shall not ask you what you found,' he said blandly. 'You did say, however, that your equipment was… er…?'
'Somewhat primitive.'
'Somewhat primitive.' He turned the phrase appreciatively over on his tongue. 'And in your opinion wholly inadequate for the immense task of prospecting a wild coastline of 250 miles?'
'Yes, wholly inadequate. You see…'
'Quite so, quite so. Suppose you were floating a company to mine undersea diamonds, what would you estimate to be the capital required?'
'Half a million sterling at least.'
Shardelow almost bobbed. 'Thank you, Mr Shelborne, thank you very much. That is all I wanted to know.'
The proceedings, when the court sat again after lunch, lacked the tense air of the morning. Shelborne sat near the young woman. Dr Clive Stratton, Chief Government Geologist for Northern Namaqualand (which included Oranjemund), was round, sun-tanned, didactic. The Judge listened patiently while he explained how a diamond was a piece of carbon which had crystallized under heat and pressure. There were, he said, three distinct types of diamonds in South Africa — the mined diamonds from famous places like Kimberley and Premier Mine, Pretoria; ordinary river alluvial stones; and South-west African stones. He paused as he drew this last distinction.
Shardelow was on to it at once. 'Why do you stop there, Dr Stratton? What is so different about Southwest African stones?'
'They are distinct in kind; in fact, they are unique, though there are similarities with Brazil diamonds…'
'They are neither alluvial nor mined diamonds?'
'No. They occur in marine terraces close to the sea.'
'What are marine terraces, Dr Stratton?'
'I'll put it this way: millions of years ago diamonds in the Sperrgebiet were deposited in rock which has since been covered with sand — up to forty feet of overburden, as we call it. The sand must be scraped away until the diamonds are exposed in gravel beneath or in rocky potholes. We know the approximate age of the diamond deposits because of the Oyster Line…'
The Oyster Line, Dr Stratton?'
The Oyster Line, Dr Stratton explained, had been named and discovered by a German-born geologist, Dr Hans Merensky, in 1927 at the Orange River mouth. Dr Merensky had a theory about the origin of diamonds, a revolutionary theory which was widely derided at the time — until he found the Oyster Line. Dr Merensky believed that diamonds on the Sperrgebiet would be found in conjunction with ancient fossilized oyster shells in marine terraces. Dr Merensky had traced a line of these ancient prehistoric shells on the seashore. He sank a trench a few feet long — and took from it a king's ransom in diamonds. He had discovered the greatest diamond field the world has ever seen.
Shardelow said, 'Might one therefore assume that the same agency which distributed diamonds in the marine terraces of the Oyster Line a million years ago also deposited them on the bed of the sea?'
Stratton looked uncomfortable. 'No, not quite… You see…'
The Judge interrupted: 'The court does not see, Dr Stratton. Are you trying to convey to us that the diamonds in the Oyster Line terraces had a different point of origin from those in the sea proper?'
Stratton became voluble. There had been conflict for over half a century about the origin of the South-west Africa diamonds. There were three main theories: first, that the diamonds had been released by weathering from the ancient crystalline rocks of the basement system, but this had been exploded when no gem stones showed up among the shoreline rocks. The second theory had likewise been exploded, namely, that the South-west Africa stones had come originally from deep within the South African hinterland, had been washed down by the Orange River to the sea, and then been scattered by the powerful Benguela current. A variant of this second theory placed the point of origin in South-west, rather than South Africa, but this did not hold water either, because no diamonds had been found along the course of the Orange or of any other of the ancient rivers.
'And the third theory, Dr Stratton?' Shardelow pressed. Stratton had hesitated, as if unwilling to present something damaging to his academic reputation.
'Some people think there is a diamond pipe or pipes — you could call it the fountainhead or parent rock — buried under the sea off the Sperrgebiet, from which all diamonds have for thousands of years been spread along the coast by the current.'
What do you, as an expert, think of that?'
'Frankly, I think it is nonsense…'
Shardelow wasn't having the Mazy Zed's chances spoiled by Stratton's academic sectarianism. He said, smoothly:
'But it was a view held — propounded even — by no less an authority than Dr Merensky himself, was it not?'
'Merensky held radical theories which have not been proved.'
'That is what the experts said about his Oyster Line theory — before he discovered Oranjemund.'
The Judge intervened: 'Has evidence been brought forward, one way or the other, to prove or disprove this idea of an undersea origin of all the diamonds?'
'No, my lord. I said at the outset, that there is considerable controversy about the origin of diamonds on the Sperrgebiet. But we who have worked here with them for a lifetime…'
'Thank you, Dr Stratton. To sum up, then, you would consider it not unlikely that there are diamond deposits on the sea-bed off the Sperrgebiet?'
'Subject to various qualifications, yes.'
Stratton stood down as the Judge nodded for the next witness.
The court orderly rose.
'I call Mary Caldwell.'
3
The young woman sitting opposite me rose.
Shelborne, a few chairs away from her, had also half-risen. I thought it was out of courtesy — until I saw his face. It was like lead. The bald head was thrust forwards and sideways towards the smart, black-hatted figure in a poinsettia red costume very much a la mode. Incredulity, doubt, fear one might almost have said, were perceptible in his face as she edged past him.
Shardelow leaned across towards Rhennin and myself: The old man from the sea is in trouble.'
Shelborne may or may not have taken leave of Caldwell in the way he had described, but the past was certainly coming up and hitting him right now.
Mennin, the counsel who had brushed off our inquiry by saying he was merely holding a watching brief for an important client, grinned across at the Mazy Zed side, scarcely able to contain his triumph at our discomfiture. Until that moment it seemed to have been generally accepted that Caldwell had been a bachelor.