"And now tell me this," cried Mrs. Cliff. "Whom does this gold belong to?
That is what I want to know. Whose is if?"

"Come, come!" said the captain, "let us stop talking about this thing,
and thinking about it. We shall all be maniacs if we don't quiet
ourselves a little, and, besides, it cannot be long before those black
fellows come back, and we do not want to be speaking about it then.
To-morrow we will examine the mound and see what it is we have
discovered. In the meantime, let us quiet our minds and get a good
night's sleep, if we can. This whole affair is astounding, but we must
not let it make us crazy before we understand it."

Miss Markham was a young woman very capable of controlling herself. It
was true she had been more affected in consequence of the opening of the
mound than any of the others, but that was because she understood, or
thought she understood, what the discovery meant, and to the others it
was something which at first they could not appreciate. Now she saw the
good common sense of the captain's remarks, and said no more that evening
on the subject of the stone mound.

But Mrs. Cliff and Ralph could not be quiet. They must talk, and as the
captain walked away that they might not speak to him, they talked to
each other.

It was nearly an hour after this that Captain Horn, standing on the outer
end of the plateau, saw some black dots moving on the moonlit beach. They
moved very slowly, and it was a long time--at least, it seemed so to the
captain--before Maka and his companions reached the plateau.