yes 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.

It must have been a strange spectacle--so strange that it made a lasting
impression on the least imaginative mind of the three, for he tried in his
rude way to reproduce it on that Cornish beach after the lapse of thirty
long years. He threw bits of rock on the sand to indicate the positions in
which they had sat. From his description Charles pictured the scene
adequately enough: the violet-black beach, exhaling sulphuric vapours, the
yellow-grey volcanic rocks, the gurgling ebullitions of a geyser throwing
off volumes of smoke high above them, and the faces of the three men
(ruddy in the fire-glow, white in the moonlight) intent on the division of
the heap of dull stones scattered on a flat rock between them. Thalassa
remembered all these things; he remembered also how startled they were,
the three of them, at the unexpected sound of a kind of throaty chuckle
near by, and turned in affright to see a large bird regarding them from
the shadow of the rocks--a sea bird with rounded wings, light-coloured
plumage, and curiously staring eyes above a yellow beak. When it saw it
was observed it vanished swiftly seaward in noiseless flight.

The division, commenced good-humouredly enough, soon developed the
elements of a gamble between Robert Turold and Remington. They forgot
Thalassa's existence as they argued and disputed over the allotment of
certain stones. The foot or so of flat rock became the circumference of
their thoughts, a