My test

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“This mother is going to make us rich.” Gert scanned the trawler's weather-beaten deck; his bloodshot eyes alight with the gleam of a gambler who has nothing left to lose, but somehow is still at the table. He had been pushing the trawler closer to the smoking thunder of the Atlantic surf, all week, in the hope of finding a seam of diamond bearing gravel too shallow for the bigger commercial boats that worked Namibia's Skeleton Coast. “Does that mean I'll finally get paid?” asked Dave, his cocky grin fading a moment later as he pulled on the wetsuit, still clammy from yesterday's dive. “You just get the gravel vac going and let me sort the diamonds.” Gert settled his bulk against the rusty capstan and scratched his salty stubble. “Think I'll light me a white pipe while I sort.” Oh great; mandrax, thought Dave. Apartheid's last poisonous gift to the world just kept on giving. Gert would either be passed out or in a murderous rage by the time he surfaced. He strapped on the bulky Kirby Morgan bandmask favoured by commercial divers and clipped in the comms line; not that Gert would be listening anyway. He crashed into the oily, green sea ina cloud of bubbles and gasped as the nine degree water found its way into his wetsuit. Descending the vacuum line he grinned. Gert had it right, they were on a solid seam of kimberlite; there had to be diamonds in there. Dave worked the seam for an hour until he felt rather than heard a rumbling. He moved backwards just in time as the overhang of gravel he had been mining collapsed; time to call it a morning and see what Gert had found in the gravel sieve. Dave dropped his gear and pulled on tattered denims and a t-shirt. He strolled to the sieve rig and noticed that Gert had left a sizable pile... ... middle of paper ... ...s ears were still ringing. His ear was going to need attention. The dizziness faded enough for Dave to look up. Gert lay next to him with his head a bloody ruin. That last desperate shove had saved him. He picked up Gert's water bottle and drank long, greedy draughts; his thirst making a mockery of his reluctance to drink from a dead man's water bottle. Satisfied, he tore strips off Gert's shirt and bound his ear and leg. Still weak with shock, he turned and looked down the endless beach to where Port Nolloth lay beyond the horizon. It was a long walk and there were guard posts at the edge of the Diamond Area that would hand out a lengthy prison sentence if he was caught with a diamond, but there were ways of avoiding that and friends in town who could help him get to Joburg where he would sell the diamond. Perhaps he would end up being paid for this job after all.

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