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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=419060" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Monster Diamond</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">A TALE OF THE PENAL COLONY OF WEST AUSTRALIA.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>'I’LL have it, I tell you! Curse you!—there!'<br>The long knife glittered, was sheathed, and was bare. <br>The sawyer staggered and tripped and fell, <br>And falling he uttered a frightened yell: <br>His face to the sky, he shuddered and gasped, <br>And tried to put from him the man he had grasped <br>A moment before in the terrible strife. <br>'I'll have it, I tell you, or have your life!<br>Where is it?' The sawyer grew weak, but still<br>His brown face gleamed with a desperate will.<br>'Where is it?' he heard, and the red knife's drip<br>In his slayer's hand fell down on his lip.<br>'Will you give it?' 'Never!' A curse, the knife<br>Was raised and buried.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Thus closed the life<br>Of Samuel Jones, known as 'Number Ten' <br>On his Ticket-of-Leave; and of all the men <br>In the Western Colony, bond or free, <br>None had manlier heart or hand than he.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In digging a sawpit, while all alone,—<br>For his mate was sleeping,—Sam struck a stone<br>With the edge of the spade, and it gleamed like fire,<br>And looked at Sam from its bed in the mire,<br>Till he dropped the spade and stooped and raised<br>The wonderful stone that glittered and blazed<br>As if it were mad at the spade's rude blow;<br>But its blaze set the sawyer's heart aglow<br>As he looked and trembled, then turned him round,<br>And crept from the pit, and lay on the ground,<br>Looking over the mold-heap at the camp<br>Where his mate still slept. Then down to the swamp<br>He ran with the stone, and washed it bright,<br>And felt like a drunken man at the sight<br>Of a diamond pure as spring-water and sun,<br>And larger than ever man's eyes looked on!</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then down sat Sam with the stone on his knees, <br>And fancies came to him, like swarms of bees <br>To a sugar-creamed hive; and he dreamed awake <br>Of the carriage and four in which he'd take <br>His pals from the Dials to Drury Lane, <br>The silks and the satins for Susan Jane, <br>The countless bottles of brandy and beer <br>He'd call for and pay for, and every year <br>The dinner he'd give to the Brummagem lads,— <br>He'd be king among cracksmen and chief among pads, <br>And he'd sport a— <br>Over him stooped his mate, <br>A pick in his hand, and his face all hate. <br>Sam saw the shadow, and guessed the pick, <br>And closed his dream with a spring so quick <br>The purpose was baffled of Aaron Mace, <br>And the sawyer mates stood face to face. <br>Sam folded his arms across his chest, <br>Having thrust the stone in his loose shirt-breast, <br>While he tried to think where he dropped the spade. <br>But Aaron Mace wore a long, keen blade <br>In his belt,—he drew it,—sprang on his man: <br>What happened, you read when the tale began. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then he looked—the murderer, Aaron Mace—<br>At the gray-blue lines in the dead man's face;<br>And he turned away, for he feared its frown<br>More in death than life. Then he knelt him down,—<br>Not to pray,—but he shrank from the staring eyes,<br>And felt in the breast for the fatal prize.<br>And this was the man, and this was the way<br>That he took the stone on its natal day;<br>And for this he was cursed for evermore<br>By the West Australian Koh-i-nor.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the half-dug pit the corpse was thrown,<br>And the murderer stood in the camp alone.<br>Alone? No, no! never more was he<br>To part from the terrible company<br>Of that gray-blue face and the bleeding breast<br>And the staring eyes in their awful rest.<br>The evening closed on the homicide,<br>And the blood of the buried sawyer cried<br>Through the night to God, and the shadows dark<br>That crossed the camp had the stiff and stark,<br>And horrible look of a murdered man!<br>Then he piled the fire, and crept within <br>The ring of its light, that closed him in <br>Like tender mercy, and drove away <br>For a time the specters that stood at bay, <br>And waited to clutch him as demons wait, <br>Shut out from the sinner by Faith's bright gate. <br>But the fire burnt low, and the slayer slept, <br>And the key of his sleep was always kept <br>By the leaden hand of him he had slain, <br>That oped the door but to drench the brain <br>With agony cruel. The night wind crept <br>Like a snake on the shuddering form that slept <br>And dreamt, and woke and shrieked; for there, <br>With its gray-blue lines and its ghastly stare, <br>Cutting into the vitals of Aaron Mace, <br>In the flickering light was the sawyer's face! <br>Evermore 'twas with him, that dismal sight,— <br>The white face set in the frame of night. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">He wandered away from the spot, but found <br>No inch of the West Australian ground <br>Where he could hide from the bleeding breast, <br>Or sink his head in a dreamless rest. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">And always with him he bore the prize <br>In a pouch of leather: the staring eyes <br>Might burn his soul, but the diamond's gleam <br>Was solace and joy for the haunted dream.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">So the years rolled on, while the murderer's mind <br>Was bent on a futile quest,—to find <br>A way of escape from the blood-stained soil <br>And the terrible wear of the penal toil. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">But this was a part of the diamond's curse,— <br>The toil that was heavy before grew worse, <br>Till the panting wretch in his fierce unrest <br>Would clutch the pouch as it lay on his breast, <br>And waking cower, with sob and moan,<br>Or shriek wild curses against the stone<br>That was only a stone; for he could not sell,<br>And he dare not break, and he feared to tell<br>Of his wealth: so he bore it through hopes and fears—<br>His God and his devil—for years and years.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">And thus did he draw near the end of his race,<br>With a form bent double and horror-lined face,<br>And a piteous look, as if asking for grace<br>Or for kindness from some one; but no kind word<br>Was flung to his misery: shunned, abhorred,<br>E'en by wretches themselves, till his life was a curse,<br>And he thought that e'en death could bring nothing worse<br>Than the phantoms that stirred at the diamond's weight,—<br>His own life's ghost and the ghost of his mate.<br>So he turned one day from the haunts of men,<br>And their friendless faces: an old man then,<br>In a convict's garb, with white flowing hair,<br>And a brow deep seared with the word, 'Despair.'<br>He gazed not back as his way he took<br>To the untrod forest; and oh! the look,<br>The piteous look in his sunken eyes,<br>Told that life was the bitterest sacrifice.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But little was heard of his later days: <br>'Twas deemed in the West that in change of ways <br>He tried with his tears to wash out the sin. <br>'Twas told by some natives who once came in <br>From the Kojunnp Hills, that lonely there <br>They had seen a figure with long white hair; <br>They encamped close by where his hut was made, <br>And were scared at night when they saw he prayed <br>To the white man's God; and on one wild night <br>They had heard his voice till the morning light.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Years passed, and a sandal wood-cutter stood <br>At a ruined hut in a Kojunup wood: <br>The rank weeds covered the desolate floor, <br>And an ant-hill stood on the fallen door; <br>The cupboard within to the snakes was loot, <br>And the hearth was the home of the bandicoot. <br>But neither at hut nor snake nor rat <br>Was the woodcutter staring intent, but at <br>A human skeleton clad in gray, <br>The hands clasped over the breast, as they <br>Had fallen in peace when he ceased to pray. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">As the bushman looked on the form, he saw <br>In the breast a paper: he stooped to draw <br>What might tell him the story, but at his touch <br>From under the hands rolled a leathern pouch, <br>And he raised it too,—on the paper's face <br>He read 'Ticket-of-Leave of Aaron Mace.' <br>Then he opened the pouch, and in dazed surprise <br>At its contents strange he unblessed his eyes: <br>'Twas a lump of quartz,—a pound weight in full,- <br>And it fell from his hand on the skeleton's skull!</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=John+Boyle+O%27Reilly">John Boyle O'Reilly</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=419060" data-title="The Monster Diamond de John Boyle O'Reilly" data-description="A TALE OF THE PENAL COLONY OF WEST AUSTRALIA.


'I’LL have it, I tell you! Curse you!—there!'
The long knife glittered, was sheathed, and was bare. 
The sawyer staggered and tripped and fell, 
And falling he uttered a frightened yell: 
His fac..."></div>
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