I at once went on deck, where I found the captain, and reported to him what I had seen. He viewed me in silence, with a stare of astonishment and incredulity. What I had seen, he said, was not the diamond. I told him the thing that had dropped into the Major’s hand was bright, and, as I thought, sparkled, but it was so held I could not see it.
I was talking to him on this extraordinary affair when the Major came on deck. The captain said to me, “Hold him in chat. I’ll judge for myself,” and asked me to describe how he might quickly find the pistol-case. This I did, and he went below.
I joined the Major, and talked on the first subjects that entered my head. He was restless in his manner, inattentive, slightly flushed in the face; wore a lofty manner, and being half a head taller than I, glanced down at me from time to time in a condescending way. This behaviour in him was what Captain North and I had agreed to call his “injured air.” He’d occasionally put it on to remind us that he was affronted by the captain’s insensibility to his loss, and that the assistance of the police would be demanded on our arrival at Capetown.
Presently looking down the skylight, I perceived the captain. Mackenzie had charge of the watch. I descended the steps, and Captain North’s first words to me were—
“It’s no diamond!”
“What, then, is it?”
“A common piece of glass not worth a quarter of a farthing.”
“What’s it all about, then?” said I. “Upon my soul, there’s nothing in Euclid to beat it. Glass?”
“A little lump of common glass; a fragment of bull’s-eye, perhaps.”