pretty free. At last, after Aden, it appears that he came round to the
general opinion, and went privately to the man in charge and made an
offer for all five ostriches.

"The next morning there was a fine shindy at breakfast. The man hadn't
any authority to deal with the birds, and nothing on earth would
induce him to sell; but it seems he told Padishah that a Eurasian
named Potter had already made him an offer, and on that Padishah
denounced Potter before us all. But I think the most of us thought it
rather smart of Potter, and I know that when Potter said that he'd
wired at Aden to London to buy the birds, and would have an answer at
Suez, I cursed pretty richly at a lost opportunity.

"At Suez, Padishah gave way to tears--actual wet tears--when Potter
became the owner of the birds, and offered him two hundred and fifty
right off for the five, being more than two hundred per cent. on what
Potter had given. Potter said he'd be hanged if he parted with a
feather of them--that he meant to kill them off one by one and find
the diamond; but afterwards, thinking it over, he relented a little.
He was a gambling hound, was this Potter, a little queer at cards, and
this kind of prize-packet business must have suited him down to the
ground. Anyhow, he offered, for a lark, to sell the birds separately
to separate people by auction at a starting price of £80 for a bird.
But one of them, he said, he meant to keep for luck.

"You must understand this diamond was a valuable one--a little Jew
chap, a diamond merchant, who was with us, had put it at three or
four thousand when Padishah had shown it to him--and this idea of an
ostrich gamble caught on. Now it happened that I'd been having a
few talks on general subjects with the man who looked after these