The stones they had travelled so far to obtain were there waiting for them.  Thalassa hurried over that part of the story, narrating it in barest outline with suspicious glances directed at his listener’s intent face.  Apparently he led his companions to the spot as soon as they landed—­up a path through a gap in the crater wall, across a furrowed slope all a-quake, where jets of steam issued from gurgling fissures in snaky spirals.  On the other side of this dreary waste Thalassa led the way across a ledge to firmer ground and a grave.  Charles gathered that the occupant of the grave had been coffined in a seaman’s chest in his clothes:  “There he was, with his bottles of diamonds in his coat pockets, and more in his leather bag in his breast pocket, just as I left him twelve months afore to go to the other end of the world looking for what I’d buried.”  A grim smile curved Thalassa’s face as he uttered these words; the idea seemed to contain elements of humour for him.

“They were diamonds, then?” said Charles curiously.

“Ay; they were diamonds right enough.  Him—­Turold—­said they were diamonds as soon as he uncorked one of the bottles and poured a few into the palm of his hand.  There was some rare big ones in one of the bottles—­enough to have brought all those fools tumbling out of Africa if they’d know of them.  From some papers they found on the chap Turold said he’d must a-been prospecting in nigh every part of the world.”

“How did he come to be buried there with his diamonds, in that lonely spot?” asked Charles wonderingly.

“He was a passenger, and died as we was passing the island.  ’Twas the skipper’s fancy to give him a land burial.  But that doesn’t matter a dump—­it’s outside the story.”  He turned his eyes away from Charles.

Dusk had fallen before they finished their search, and Thalassa would not undertake the risk of threading the boat out from the tortuous reef passage in the darkness.  They decided to camp on the island for the night, preferring the sulphur-impregnated air ("A lighted match would blaze and fizzle in it like a torch,” Thalassa declared) to the cramped discomfort of their little craft.  They brought some food ashore, and made a flimsy sort of camp above high water, at the foot of the encircling walls of the crater.  There they had their supper, and there, as they lounged smoking, Remington in an evil moment for himself suggested that they should sort the diamonds into three heaps—­share and share alike.  Robert Turold agreed, and they emptied the stones out of the bottles and leather bag into a single heap.  Remington took one bottle and Robert Turold another; to Thalassa fell the empty bag.  As the stones were sorted one was to be placed in each receptacle until the tally ran out.