Still they doubted.

Clewe could see that in their faces as they intently listened to him.
"My friends," said he, "I have set before you nearly all the facts connected with my experience in the shaft, but one important fact I have not yet mentioned.

I am quite sure that few, if any of you, believe that I descended into the cleft of a great diamond lying beneath what we call the crust of the earth.

I will now state that before I left that cavity I picked up some fragments of the material of which it is composed, which were splintered off when my shell fell into it.

I will show you one of them." A man brought a table covered with a blue cloth, and from one of his pockets Clewe drew a small bag.