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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ebb-Tide, by
+Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyde Osbourne
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Ebb-Tide
+       A Trio And Quartette
+
+Author: Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyde Osbourne
+
+Posting Date: October 5, 2008 [EBook #1604]
+Release Date: January, 1999
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EBB-TIDE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Dianne Bean
+
+
+
+
+
+THE EBB-TIDE
+
+A TRIO AND QUARTETTE
+
+
+By Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyde Osbourne
+
+
+
+          'There is a tide in the affairs of men.'
+
+
+
+
+Part I.
+
+
+
+Chapter 1. NIGHT ON THE BEACH
+
+Throughout the island world of the Pacific, scattered men of many
+European races and from almost every grade of society carry activity and
+disseminate disease. Some prosper, some vegetate. Some have mounted the
+steps of thrones and owned islands and navies. Others again must marry
+for a livelihood; a strapping, merry, chocolate-coloured dame supports
+them in sheer idleness; and, dressed like natives, but still retaining
+some foreign element of gait or attitude, still perhaps with some relic
+(such as a single eye-glass) of the officer and gentleman, they sprawl
+in palm-leaf verandahs and entertain an island audience with memoirs of
+the music-hall. And there are still others, less pliable, less capable,
+less fortunate, perhaps less base, who continue, even in these isles of
+plenty, to lack bread.
+
+At the far end of the town of Papeete, three such men were seated on the
+beach under a purao tree.
+
+It was late. Long ago the band had broken up and marched musically home,
+a motley troop of men and women, merchant clerks and navy officers,
+dancing in its wake, arms about waist and crowned with garlands. Long
+ago darkness and silence had gone from house to house about the tiny
+pagan city. Only the street lamps shone on, making a glow-worm halo in
+the umbrageous alleys or drawing a tremulous image on the waters of the
+port. A sound of snoring ran among the piles of lumber by the Government
+pier. It was wafted ashore from the graceful clipper-bottomed schooners,
+where they lay moored close in like dinghies, and their crews were
+stretched upon the deck under the open sky or huddled in a rude tent
+amidst the disorder of merchandise.
+
+But the men under the purao had no thought of sleep. The same
+temperature in England would have passed without remark in summer; but
+it was bitter cold for the South Seas. Inanimate nature knew it, and the
+bottle of cocoanut oil stood frozen in every bird-cage house about
+the island; and the men knew it, and shivered. They wore flimsy cotton
+clothes, the same they had sweated in by day and run the gauntlet of the
+tropic showers; and to complete their evil case, they had no breakfast
+to mention, less dinner, and no supper at all.
+
+In the telling South Sea phrase, these three men were ON THE BEACH.
+Common calamity had brought them acquainted, as the three most miserable
+English-speaking creatures in Tahiti; and beyond their misery, they knew
+next to nothing of each other, not even their true names. For each had
+made a long apprenticeship in going downward; and each, at some stage of
+the descent, had been shamed into the adoption of an alias. And yet not
+one of them had figured in a court of justice; two were men of kindly
+virtues; and one, as he sat and shivered under the purao, had a tattered
+Virgil in his pocket.
+
+Certainly, if money could have been raised upon the book, Robert Herrick
+would long ago have sacrificed that last possession; but the demand
+for literature, which is so marked a feature in some parts of the South
+Seas, extends not so far as the dead tongues; and the Virgil, which he
+could not exchange against a meal, had often consoled him in his hunger.
+He would study it, as he lay with tightened belt on the floor of the
+old calaboose, seeking favourite passages and finding new ones only less
+beautiful because they lacked the consecration of remembrance. Or he
+would pause on random country walks; sit on the path side, gazing over
+the sea on the mountains of Eimeo; and dip into the Aeneid, seeking
+sortes. And if the oracle (as is the way of oracles) replied with no
+very certain nor encouraging voice, visions of England at least
+would throng upon the exile's memory: the busy schoolroom, the green
+playing-fields, holidays at home, and the perennial roar of London, and
+the fireside, and the white head of his father. For it is the destiny of
+those grave, restrained and classic writers, with whom we make enforced
+and often painful acquaintanceship at school, to pass into the blood and
+become native in the memory; so that a phrase of Virgil speaks not so
+much of Mantua or Augustus, but of English places and the student's own
+irrevocable youth.
+
+Robert Herrick was the son of an intelligent, active, and ambitious man,
+small partner in a considerable London house. Hopes were conceived
+of the boy; he was sent to a good school, gained there an Oxford
+scholarship, and proceeded in course to the Western University. With all
+his talent and taste (and he had much of both) Robert was deficient
+in consistency and intellectual manhood, wandered in bypaths of study,
+worked at music or at metaphysics when he should have been at Greek, and
+took at last a paltry degree. Almost at the same time, the London house
+was disastrously wound up; Mr Herrick must begin the world again as
+a clerk in a strange office, and Robert relinquish his ambitions and
+accept with gratitude a career that he detested and despised. He had
+no head for figures, no interest in affairs, detested the constraint of
+hours, and despised the aims and the success of merchants. To grow rich
+was none of his ambitions; rather to do well. A worse or a more bold
+young man would have refused the destiny; perhaps tried his future with
+his pen; perhaps enlisted. Robert, more prudent, possibly more timid,
+consented to embrace that way of life in which he could most readily
+assist his family. But he did so with a mind divided; fled the
+neighbourhood of former comrades; and chose, out of several positions
+placed at his disposal, a clerkship in New York.
+
+His career thenceforth was one of unbroken shame. He did not drink,
+he was exactly honest, he was never rude to his employers, yet was
+everywhere discharged. Bringing no interest to his duties, he brought
+no attention; his day was a tissue of things neglected and things done
+amiss; and from place to place and from town to town, he carried the
+character of one thoroughly incompetent. No man can bear the word
+applied to him without some flush of colour, as indeed there is
+none other that so emphatically slams in a man's face the door
+of self-respect. And to Herrick, who was conscious of talents and
+acquirements, who looked down upon those humble duties in which he was
+found wanting, the pain was the more exquisite. Early in his fall, he
+had ceased to be able to make remittances; shortly after, having nothing
+but failure to communicate, he ceased writing home; and about a year
+before this tale begins, turned suddenly upon the streets of San
+Francisco by a vulgar and infuriated German Jew, he had broken the last
+bonds of self-respect, and upon a sudden Impulse, changed his name and
+invested his last dollar in a passage on the mail brigantine, the City
+of Papeete. With what expectation he had trimmed his flight for the
+South Seas, Herrick perhaps scarcely knew. Doubtless there were fortunes
+to be made in pearl and copra; doubtless others not more gifted than
+himself had climbed in the island world to be queen's consorts and
+king's ministers. But if Herrick had gone there with any manful purpose,
+he would have kept his father's name; the alias betrayed his moral
+bankruptcy; he had struck his flag; he entertained no hope to reinstate
+himself or help his straitened family; and he came to the islands (where
+he knew the climate to be soft, bread cheap, and manners easy) a skulker
+from life's battle and his own immediate duty. Failure, he had said, was
+his portion; let it be a pleasant failure.
+
+It is fortunately not enough to say 'I will be base.' Herrick continued
+in the islands his career of failure; but in the new scene and under the
+new name, he suffered no less sharply than before. A place was got, it
+was lost in the old style; from the long-suffering of the keepers of
+restaurants he fell to more open charity upon the wayside; as time went
+on, good nature became weary, and after a repulse or two, Herrick became
+shy. There were women enough who would have supported a far worse and a
+far uglier man; Herrick never met or never knew them: or if he did both,
+some manlier feeling would revolt, and he preferred starvation. Drenched
+with rains, broiling by day, shivering by night, a disused and ruinous
+prison for a bedroom, his diet begged or pilfered out of rubbish heaps,
+his associates two creatures equally outcast with himself, he had
+drained for months the cup of penitence. He had known what it was to
+be resigned, what it was to break forth in a childish fury of rebellion
+against fate, and what it was to sink into the coma of despair. The time
+had changed him. He told himself no longer tales of an easy and perhaps
+agreeable declension; he read his nature otherwise; he had proved
+himself incapable of rising, and he now learned by experience that he
+could not stoop to fall. Something that was scarcely pride or strength,
+that was perhaps only refinement, withheld him from capitulation; but
+he looked on upon his own misfortune with a growing rage, and sometimes
+wondered at his patience.
+
+It was now the fourth month completed, and still there was no change
+or sign of change. The moon, racing through a world of flying clouds
+of every size and shape and density, some black as ink stains, some
+delicate as lawn, threw the marvel of her Southern brightness over the
+same lovely and detested scene: the island mountains crowned with the
+perennial island cloud, the embowered city studded with rare lamps, the
+masts in the harbour, the smooth mirror of the lagoon, and the mole of
+the barrier reef on which the breakers whitened. The moon shone too,
+with bull's-eye sweeps, on his companions; on the stalwart frame of the
+American who called himself Brown, and was known to be a master
+mariner in some disgrace; and on the dwarfish person, the pale eyes
+and toothless smile of a vulgar and bad-hearted cockney clerk. Here was
+society for Robert Herrick! The Yankee skipper was a man at least: he
+had sterling qualities of tenderness and resolution; he was one whose
+hand you could take without a blush. But there was no redeeming grace
+about the other, who called himself sometimes Hay and sometimes Tomkins,
+and laughed at the discrepancy; who had been employed in every store in
+Papeete, for the creature was able in his way; who had been discharged
+from each in turn, for he was wholly vile; who had alienated all his old
+employers so that they passed him in the street as if he were a dog, and
+all his old comrades so that they shunned him as they would a creditor.
+
+Not long before, a ship from Peru had brought an influenza, and it now
+raged in the island, and particularly in Papeete. From all round the
+purao arose and fell a dismal sound of men coughing, and strangling
+as they coughed. The sick natives, with the islander's impatience of a
+touch of fever, had crawled from their houses to be cool and, squatting
+on the shore or on the beached canoes, painfully expected the new day.
+Even as the crowing of cocks goes about the country in the night from
+farm to farm, accesses of coughing arose, and spread, and died in
+the distance, and sprang up again. Each miserable shiverer caught the
+suggestion from his neighbour, was torn for some minutes by that cruel
+ecstasy, and left spent and without voice or courage when it passed. If
+a man had pity to spend, Papeete beach, in that cold night and in that
+infected season, was a place to spend it on. And of all the sufferers,
+perhaps the least deserving, but surely the most pitiable, was the
+London clerk. He was used to another life, to houses, beds, nursing,
+and the dainties of the sickroom; he lay there now, in the cold open,
+exposed to the gusting of the wind, and with an empty belly. He was
+besides infirm; the disease shook him to the vitals; and his companions
+watched his endurance with surprise. A profound commiseration filled
+them, and contended with and conquered their abhorrence. The disgust
+attendant on so ugly a sickness magnified this dislike; at the same
+time, and with more than compensating strength, shame for a sentiment so
+inhuman bound them the more straitly to his service; and even the evil
+they knew of him swelled their solicitude, for the thought of death is
+always the least supportable when it draws near to the merely sensual
+and selfish. Sometimes they held him up; sometimes, with mistaken
+helpfulness, they beat him between the shoulders; and when the poor
+wretch lay back ghastly and spent after a paroxysm of coughing, they
+would sometimes peer into his face, doubtfully exploring it for any
+mark of life. There is no one but has some virtue: that of the clerk was
+courage; and he would make haste to reassure them in a pleasantry not
+always decent.
+
+'I'm all right, pals,' he gasped once: 'this is the thing to strengthen
+the muscles of the larynx.'
+
+'Well, you take the cake!' cried the captain.
+
+'O, I'm good plucked enough,' pursued the sufferer with a broken
+utterance. 'But it do seem bloomin' hard to me, that I should be the
+only party down with this form of vice, and the only one to do the funny
+business. I think one of you other parties might wake up. Tell a fellow
+something.'
+
+'The trouble is we've nothing to tell, my son,' returned the captain.
+
+'I'll tell you, if you like, what I was thinking,' said Herrick.
+
+'Tell us anything,' said the clerk, 'I only want to be reminded that I
+ain't dead.'
+
+Herrick took up his parable, lying on his face and speaking slowly and
+scarce above his breath, not like a man who has anything to say, but
+like one talking against time.
+
+'Well, I was thinking this,' he began: 'I was thinking I lay on Papeete
+beach one night--all moon and squalls and fellows coughing--and I was
+cold and hungry, and down in the mouth, and was about ninety years of
+age, and had spent two hundred and twenty of them on Papeete beach. And
+I was thinking I wished I had a ring to rub, or had a fairy godmother,
+or could raise Beelzebub. And I was trying to remember how you did it. I
+knew you made a ring of skulls, for I had seen that in the Freischutz:
+and that you took off your coat and turned up your sleeves, for I had
+seen Formes do that when he was playing Kaspar, and you could see (by
+the way he went about it) it was a business he had studied; and that you
+ought to have something to kick up a smoke and a bad smell, I dare say
+a cigar might do, and that you ought to say the Lord's Prayer backwards.
+Well, I wondered if I could do that; it seemed rather a feat, you see.
+And then I wondered if I would say it forward, and I thought I did.
+Well, no sooner had I got to WORLD WITHOUT END, than I saw a man in a
+pariu, and with a mat under his arm, come along the beach from the town.
+He was rather a hard-favoured old party, and he limped and crippled, and
+all the time he kept coughing. At first I didn't cotton to his looks,
+I thought, and then I got sorry for the old soul because he coughed so
+hard. I remembered that we had some of that cough mixture the American
+consul gave the captain for Hay. It never did Hay a ha'porth of service,
+but I thought it might do the old gentleman's business for him, and
+stood up. "Yorana!" says I. "Yorana!" says he. "Look here," I said,
+"I've got some first-rate stuff in a bottle; it'll fix your cough,
+savvy? _Haere mai_ and I'll measure you a tablespoonful in the palm of my
+hand, for all our plate is at the bankers." So I thought the old party
+came up, and the nearer he came, the less I took to him. But I had
+passed my word, you see.'
+
+'Wot is this bloomin' drivel?' interrupted the clerk. 'It's like the rot
+there is in tracts.'
+
+'It's a story; I used to tell them to the kids at home,' said Herrick.
+'If it bores you, I'll drop it.'
+
+'O, cut along!' returned the sick man, irritably. 'It's better than
+nothing.'
+
+'Well,' continued Herrick, 'I had no sooner given him the cough mixture
+than he seemed to straighten up and change, and I saw he wasn't a
+Tahitian after all, but some kind of Arab, and had a long beard on his
+chin. "One good turn deserves another," says he. "I am a magician out
+of the Arabian Nights, and this mat that I have under my arm is the
+original carpet of Mohammed Ben Somebody-or-other. Say the word, and you
+can have a cruise upon the carpet." "You don't mean to say this is the
+Travelling Carpet?" I cried. "You bet I do," said he. "You've been
+to America since last I read the Arabian Nights," said I, a little
+suspicious. "I should think so," said he. "Been everywhere. A man with a
+carpet like this isn't going to moulder in a semi-detached villa." Well,
+that struck me as reasonable. "All right," I said; "and do you mean to
+tell me I can get on that carpet and go straight to London, England?" I
+said, "London, England," captain, because he seemed to have been so long
+in your part of the world. "In the crack of a whip," said he. I
+figured up the time. What is the difference between Papeete and London,
+captain?'
+
+'Taking Greenwich and Point Venus, nine hours, odd minutes and seconds,'
+replied the mariner.
+
+'Well, that's about what I made it,' resumed Herrick, 'about nine hours.
+Calling this three in the morning, I made out I would drop into London
+about noon; and the idea tickled me immensely. "There's only one
+bother," I said, "I haven't a copper cent. It would be a pity to go
+to London and not buy the morning Standard." "O!" said he, "you don't
+realise the conveniences of this carpet. You see this pocket? you've
+only got to stick your hand in, and you pull it out filled with
+sovereigns."
+
+'Double-eagles, wasn't iff inquired the captain.
+
+'That was what it was!' cried Herrick. 'I thought they seemed unusually
+big, and I remember now I had to go to the money-changers at Charing
+Cross and get English silver.'
+
+'O, you went there?' said the clerk. 'Wot did you do? Bet you had a B.
+and S.!'
+
+'Well, you see, it was just as the old boy said--like the cut of a
+whip,' said Herrick. 'The one minute I was here on the beach at three in
+the morning, the next I was in front of the Golden Cross at midday.
+At first I was dazzled, and covered my eyes, and there didn't seem the
+smallest change; the roar of the Strand and the roar of the reef were
+like the same: hark to it now, and you can hear the cabs and buses
+rolling and the streets resound! And then at last I could look about,
+and there was the old place, and no mistake! With the statues in
+the square, and St Martin's-in-the-Fields, and the bobbies, and the
+sparrows, and the hacks; and I can't tell you what I felt like. I felt
+like crying, I believe, or dancing, or jumping clean over the Nelson
+Column. I was like a fellow caught up out of Hell and flung down into
+the dandiest part of Heaven. Then I spotted for a hansom with a spanking
+horse. "A shilling for yourself, if you're there in twenty minutes!"
+said I to the jarvey. He went a good pace, though of course it was a
+trifle to the carpet; and in nineteen minutes and a half I was at the
+door.'
+
+'What door?' asked the captain.
+
+'Oh, a house I know of,' returned Herrick.
+
+'But it was a public-house!' cried the clerk--only these were not his
+words. 'And w'y didn't you take the carpet there instead of trundling in
+a growler?'
+
+'I didn't want to startle a quiet street,' said the narrator.
+
+'Bad form. And besides, it was a hansom.'
+
+'Well, and what did you do next?' inquired the captain.
+
+'Oh, I went in,' said Herrick.
+
+'The old folks?' asked the captain.
+
+'That's about it,' said the other, chewing a grass.
+
+'Well, I think you are about the poorest 'and at a yarn!' cried the
+clerk. 'Crikey, it's like Ministering Children! I can tell you there
+would be more beer and skittles about my little jaunt. I would go and
+have a B. and S. for luck. Then I would get a big ulster with astrakhan
+fur, and take my cane and do the la-de-la down Piccadilly. Then I would
+go to a slap-up restaurant, and have green peas, and a bottle of fizz,
+and a chump chop--Oh! and I forgot, I'd 'ave some devilled whitebait
+first--and green gooseberry tart, and 'ot coffee, and some of that form
+of vice in big bottles with a seal--Benedictine--that's the bloomin'
+nyme! Then I'd drop into a theatre, and pal on with some chappies,
+and do the dancing rooms and bars, and that, and wouldn't go 'ome
+till morning, till daylight doth appear. And the next day I'd have
+water-cresses, 'am, muffin, and fresh butter; wouldn't I just, O my!'
+
+The clerk was interrupted by a fresh attack of coughing.
+
+'Well, now, I'll tell you what I would do,' said the captain: 'I would
+have none of your fancy rigs with the man driving from the mizzen
+cross-trees, but a plain fore-and-aft hack cab of the highest registered
+tonnage. First of all, I would bring up at the market and get a turkey
+and a sucking-pig. Then I'd go to a wine merchant's and get a dozen of
+champagne, and a dozen of some sweet wine, rich and sticky and strong,
+something in the port or madeira line, the best in the store. Then I'd
+bear up for a toy-store, and lay out twenty dollars in assorted toys
+for the piccaninnies; and then to a confectioner's and take in cakes and
+pies and fancy bread, and that stuff with the plums in it; and then to
+a news-agency and buy all the papers, all the picture ones for the kids,
+and all the story papers for the old girl about the Earl discovering
+himself to Anna-Mariar and the escape of the Lady Maude from the private
+madhouse; and then I'd tell the fellow to drive home.'
+
+'There ought to be some syrup for the kids,' suggested Herrick; 'they
+like syrup.'
+
+'Yes, syrup for the kids, red syrup at that!' said the captain. 'And
+those things they pull at, and go pop, and have measly poetry inside.
+And then I tell you we'd have a thanksgiving day and Christmas tree
+combined. Great Scott, but I would like to see the kids! I guess they
+would light right out of the house, when they saw daddy driving up. My
+little Adar--'
+
+The captain stopped sharply.
+
+'Well, keep it up!' said the clerk.
+
+'The damned thing is, I don't know if they ain't starving!' cried the
+captain.
+
+'They can't be worse off than we are, and that's one comfort,' returned
+the clerk. 'I defy the devil to make me worse off.'
+
+It seemed as if the devil heard him. The light of the moon had been
+some time cut off and they had talked in darkness. Now there was heard a
+roar, which drew impetuously nearer; the face of the lagoon was seen to
+whiten; and before they had staggered to their feet, a squall burst in
+rain upon the outcasts. The rage and volume of that avalanche one must
+have lived in the tropics to conceive; a man panted in its assault, as
+he might pant under a shower-bath; and the world seemed whelmed in night
+and water.
+
+They fled, groping for their usual shelter--it might be almost called
+their home--in the old calaboose; came drenched into its empty chambers;
+and lay down, three sops of humanity on the cold coral floors, and
+presently, when the squall was overpast, the others could hear in the
+darkness the chattering of the clerk's teeth.
+
+'I say, you fellows,' he walled, 'for God's sake, lie up and try to warm
+me. I'm blymed if I don't think I'll die else!'
+
+So the three crept together into one wet mass, and lay until day came,
+shivering and dozing off, and continually re-awakened to wretchedness by
+the coughing of the clerk.
+
+
+
+Chapter 2. MORNING ON THE BEACH--THE THREE LETTERS
+
+The clouds were all fled, the beauty of the tropic day was spread upon
+Papeete; and the wall of breaking seas upon the reef, and the palms upon
+the islet, already trembled in the heat. A French man-of-war was going
+out, homeward bound; she lay in the middle distance of the port, an ant
+heap for activity. In the night a schooner had come in, and now lay far
+out, hard by the passage; and the yellow flag, the emblem of pestilence,
+flew on her. From up the coast, a long procession of canoes headed
+round the point and towards the market, bright as a scarf with the
+many-coloured clothing of the natives and the piles of fruit. But not
+even the beauty and the welcome warmth of the morning, not even these
+naval movements, so interesting to sailors and to idlers, could engage
+the attention of the outcasts. They were still cold at heart, their
+mouths sour from the want of steep, their steps rambling from the
+lack of food; and they strung like lame geese along the beach in a
+disheartened silence. It was towards the town they moved; towards the
+town whence smoke arose, where happier folk were breakfasting; and as
+they went, their hungry eyes were upon all sides, but they were only
+scouting for a meal.
+
+A small and dingy schooner lay snug against the quay, with which it was
+connected by a plank. On the forward deck, under a spot of awning, five
+Kanakas who made up the crew, were squatted round a basin of fried feis,
+and drinking coffee from tin mugs.
+
+'Eight bells: knock off for breakfast!' cried the captain with a
+miserable heartiness. 'Never tried this craft before; positively my
+first appearance; guess I'll draw a bumper house.'
+
+He came close up to where the plank rested on the grassy quay; turned
+his back upon the schooner, and began to whistle that lively air, 'The
+Irish Washerwoman.' It caught the ears of the Kanaka seamen like a
+preconcerted signal; with one accord they looked up from their meal and
+crowded to the ship's side, fei in hand and munching as they looked.
+Even as a poor brown Pyrenean bear dances in the streets of English
+towns under his master's baton; even so, but with how much more
+of spirit and precision, the captain footed it in time to his own
+whistling, and his long morning shadow capered beyond him on the grass.
+The Kanakas smiled on the performance; Herrick looked on heavy-eyed,
+hunger for the moment conquering all sense of shame; and a little
+farther off, but still hard by, the clerk was torn by the seven devils
+of the influenza.
+
+The captain stopped suddenly, appeared to perceive his audience for the
+first time, and represented the part of a man surprised in his private
+hour of pleasure.
+
+'Hello!' said he.
+
+The Kanakas clapped hands and called upon him to go on.
+
+'No, SIR!' said the captain. 'No eat, no dance. Savvy?'
+
+'Poor old man!' returned one of the crew. 'Him no eat?'
+
+'Lord, no!' said the captain. 'Like-um too much eat. No got.'
+
+'All right. Me got,' said the sailor; 'you tome here. Plenty toffee,
+plenty fei. Nutha man him tome too.'
+
+'I guess we'll drop right in,' observed the captain; and he and his
+companions hastened up the plank. They were welcomed on board with the
+shaking of hands; place was made for them about the basin; a sticky
+demijohn of molasses was added to the feast in honour of company, and
+an accordion brought from the forecastle and significantly laid by the
+performer's side.
+
+'Ariana,' said he lightly, touching the instrument as he spoke; and
+he fell to on a long savoury fei, made an end of it, raised his mug of
+coffee, and nodded across at the spokesman of the crew. 'Here's your
+health, old man; you're a credit to the South Pacific,' said he.
+
+With the unsightly greed of hounds they glutted themselves with the hot
+food and coffee; and even the clerk revived and the colour deepened in
+his eyes. The kettle was drained, the basin cleaned; their entertainers,
+who had waited on their wants throughout with the pleased hospitality of
+Polynesians, made haste to bring forward a dessert of island tobacco and
+rolls of pandanus leaf to serve as paper; and presently all sat about
+the dishes puffing like Indian Sachems.
+
+'When a man 'as breakfast every day, he don't know what it is,' observed
+the clerk.
+
+'The next point is dinner,' said Herrick; and then with a passionate
+utterance: 'I wish to God I was a Kanaka!'
+
+'There's one thing sure,' said the captain. 'I'm about desperate, I'd
+rather hang than rot here much longer.' And with the word he took the
+accordion and struck up. 'Home, sweet home.'
+
+'O, drop that!' cried Herrick, 'I can't stand that.'
+
+'No more can I,' said the captain. 'I've got to play something though:
+got to pay the shot, my son.' And he struck up 'John Brown's Body' in
+a fine sweet baritone: 'Dandy Jim of Carolina,' came next; 'Rorin the
+Bold,' 'Swing low, Sweet Chariot,' and 'The Beautiful Land' followed.
+The captain was paying his shot with usury, as he had done many a
+time before; many a meal had he bought with the same currency from the
+melodious-minded natives, always, as now, to their delight.
+
+He was in the middle of 'Fifteen Dollars in the Inside Pocket,' singing
+with dogged energy, for the task went sore against the grain, when a
+sensation was suddenly to be observed among the crew.
+
+'Tapena Tom harry my,' said the spokesman, pointing.
+
+And the three beachcombers, following his indication, saw the figure of
+a man in pyjama trousers and a white jumper approaching briskly from the
+town.
+
+'Captain Tom is coming.'
+
+'That's Tapena Tom, is it?' said the captain, pausing in his music. 'I
+don't seem to place the brute.'
+
+'We'd better cut,' said the clerk. ''E's no good.'
+
+'Well,' said the musician deliberately, 'one can't most generally always
+tell. I'll try it on, I guess. Music has charms to soothe the savage
+Tapena, boys. We might strike it rich; it might amount to iced punch in
+the cabin.'
+
+'Hiced punch? O my!' said the clerk. 'Give him something 'ot, captain.
+"Way down the Swannee River"; try that.'
+
+'No, sir! Looks Scotch,' said the captain; and he struck, for his life,
+into 'Auld Lang Syne.'
+
+Captain Tom continued to approach with the same business-like alacrity;
+no change was to be perceived in his bearded face as he came swinging up
+the plank: he did not even turn his eyes on the performer.
+
+    'We twa hae paidled in the burn
+     Frae morning tide till dine,'
+
+went the song.
+
+Captain Tom had a parcel under his arm, which he laid on the house roof,
+and then turning suddenly to the strangers: 'Here, you!' he bellowed,
+'be off out of that!'
+
+The clerk and Herrick stood not on the order of their going, but fled
+incontinently by the plank. The performer, on the other hand, flung down
+the instrument and rose to his full height slowly.
+
+'What's that you say?' he said. 'I've half a mind to give you a lesson
+in civility.'
+
+'You set up any more of your gab to me,' returned the Scotsman, 'and
+I'll show ye the wrong side of a jyle. I've heard tell of the three
+of ye. Ye're not long for here, I can tell ye that. The Government has
+their eyes upon ye. They make short work of damned beachcombers, I'll
+say that for the French.'
+
+'You wait till I catch you off your ship!' cried the captain: and
+then, turning to the crew, 'Good-bye, you fellows!' he said. 'You're
+gentlemen, anyway! The worst nigger among you would look better upon a
+quarter-deck than that filthy Scotchman.'
+
+Captain Tom scorned to reply; he watched with a hard smile the departure
+of his guests; and as soon as the last foot was off the plank; turned to
+the hands to work cargo.
+
+The beachcombers beat their inglorious retreat along the shore; Herrick
+first, his face dark with blood, his knees trembling under him with
+the hysteria of rage. Presently, under the same purao where they had
+shivered the night before, he cast himself down, and groaned aloud, and
+ground his face into the sand.
+
+'Don't speak to me, don't speak to me. I can't stand it,' broke from
+him.
+
+The other two stood over him perplexed.
+
+'Wot can't he stand now?' said the clerk. ''Asn't he 'ad a meal? I'M
+lickin' my lips.'
+
+Herrick reared up his wild eyes and burning face. 'I can't beg!' he
+screamed, and again threw himself prone.
+
+'This thing's got to come to an end,' said the captain with an intake of
+the breath.
+
+'Looks like signs of an end, don't it?' sneered the clerk.
+
+'He's not so far from it, and don't you deceive yourself,' replied the
+captain. 'Well,' he added in a livelier voice, 'you fellows hang on
+here, and I'll go and interview my representative.'
+
+Whereupon he turned on his heel, and set off at a swinging sailor's walk
+towards Papeete.
+
+It was some half hour later when he returned. The clerk was dozing with
+his back against the tree: Herrick still lay where he had flung himself;
+nothing showed whether he slept or waked.
+
+'See, boys!' cried the captain, with that artificial heartiness of his
+which was at times so painful, 'here's a new idea.' And he produced note
+paper, stamped envelopes, and pencils, three of each. 'We can all write
+home by the mail brigantine; the consul says I can come over to his
+place and ink up the addresses.'
+
+'Well, that's a start, too,' said the clerk. 'I never thought of that.'
+
+'It was that yarning last night about going home that put me up to it,'
+said the captain.
+
+'Well, 'and over,' said the clerk. 'I'll 'ave a shy,' and he retired a
+little distance to the shade of a canoe.
+
+The others remained under the purao. Now they would write a word or two,
+now scribble it out; now they would sit biting at the pencil end and
+staring seaward; now their eyes would rest on the clerk, where he sat
+propped on the canoe, leering and coughing, his pencil racing glibly on
+the paper.
+
+'I can't do it,' said Herrick suddenly. 'I haven't got the heart.'
+
+'See here,' said the captain, speaking with unwonted gravity; 'it may be
+hard to write, and to write lies at that; and God knows it is; but it's
+the square thing. It don't cost anything to say you're well and happy,
+and sorry you can't make a remittance this mail; and if you don't, I'll
+tell you what I think it is--I think it's about the high-water mark of
+being a brute beast.'
+
+'It's easy to talk,' said Herrick. 'You don't seem to have written much
+yourself, I notice.'
+
+'What do you bring in me for?' broke from the captain. His voice was
+indeed scarce raised above a whisper, but emotion clanged in it. 'What
+do you know about me? If you had commanded the finest barque that ever
+sailed from Portland; if you had been drunk in your berth when she
+struck the breakers in Fourteen Island Group, and hadn't had the wit to
+stay there and drown, but came on deck, and given drunken orders, and
+lost six lives--I could understand your talking then! There,' he said
+more quietly, 'that's my yarn, and now you know it. It's a pretty one
+for the father of a family. Five men and a woman murdered. Yes, there
+was a woman on board, and hadn't no business to be either. Guess I sent
+her to Hell, if there is such a place. I never dared go home again; and
+the wife and the little ones went to England to her father's place. I
+don't know what's come to them,' he added, with a bitter shrug.
+
+'Thank you, captain,' said Herrick. 'I never liked you better.'
+
+They shook hands, short and hard, with eyes averted, tenderness swelling
+in their bosoms.
+
+'Now, boys! to work again at lying!' said the captain.
+
+'I'll give my father up,' returned Herrick with a writhen smile. 'I'll
+try my sweetheart instead for a change of evils.'
+
+And here is what he wrote:
+
+'Emma, I have scratched out the beginning to my father, for I think I
+can write more easily to you. This is my last farewell to all, the last
+you will ever hear or see of an unworthy friend and son. I have failed
+in life; I am quite broken down and disgraced. I pass under a false
+name; you will have to tell my father that with all your kindness. It is
+my own fault. I know, had I chosen, that I might have done well; and yet
+I swear to you I tried to choose. I could not bear that you should think
+I did not try. For I loved you all; you must never doubt me in that,
+you least of all. I have always unceasingly loved, but what was my love
+worth? and what was I worth? I had not the manhood of a common clerk,
+I could not work to earn you; I have lost you now, and for your sake I
+could be glad of it. When you first came to my father's house--do you
+remember those days? I want you to--you saw the best of me then, all
+that was good in me. Do you remember the day I took your hand and would
+not let it go--and the day on Battersea Bridge, when we were looking at
+a barge, and I began to tell you one of my silly stories, and broke off
+to say I loved you? That was the beginning, and now here is the end.
+When you have read this letter, you will go round and kiss them all
+good-bye, my father and mother, and the children, one by one, and poor
+uncle; And tell them all to forget me, and forget me yourself. Turn
+the key in the door; let no thought of me return; be done with the poor
+ghost that pretended he was a man and stole your love. Scorn of myself
+grinds in me as I write. I should tell you I am well and happy, and want
+for nothing. I do not exactly make money, or I should send a remittance;
+but I am well cared for, have friends, live in a beautiful place and
+climate, such as we have dreamed of together, and no pity need be wasted
+on me. In such places, you understand, it is easy to live, and live
+well, but often hard to make sixpence in money. Explain this to my
+father, he will understand. I have no more to say; only linger, going
+out, like an unwilling guest. God in heaven bless you. Think of me to
+the last, here, on a bright beach, the sky and sea immoderately blue,
+and the great breakers roaring outside on a barrier reef, where a little
+isle sits green with palms. I am well and strong. It is a more pleasant
+way to die than if you were crowding about me on a sick-bed. And yet I
+am dying. This is my last kiss. Forgive, forget the unworthy.'
+
+So far he had written, his paper was all filled, when there returned a
+memory of evenings at the piano, and that song, the masterpiece of love,
+in which so many have found the expression of their dearest thoughts.
+'Einst, O wunder!' he added. More was not required; he knew that in his
+love's heart the context would spring up, escorted with fair images and
+harmony; of how all through life her name should tremble in his ears,
+her name be everywhere repeated in the sounds of nature; and when death
+came, and he lay dissolved, her memory lingered and thrilled among his
+elements.
+
+    'Once, O wonder! once from the ashes of my heart
+     Arose a blossom--'
+
+Herrick and the captain finished their letters about the same time; each
+was breathing deep, and their eyes met and were averted as they closed
+the envelopes.
+
+'Sorry I write so big,' said the captain gruffly. 'Came all of a rush,
+when it did come.'
+
+'Same here,' said Herrick. 'I could have done with a ream when I got
+started; but it's long enough for all the good I had to say.'
+
+They were still at the addresses when the clerk strolled up, smirking
+and twirling his envelope, like a man well pleased. He looked over
+Herrick's shoulder.
+
+'Hullo,' he said, 'you ain't writing 'ome.'
+
+'I am, though,' said Herrick; 'she lives with my father. Oh, I see what
+you mean,' he added. 'My real name is Herrick. No more Hay'--they had
+both used the same alias--'no more Hay than yours, I dare say.'
+
+'Clean bowled in the middle stump!' laughed the clerk. 'My name's 'Uish
+if you want to know. Everybody has a false nyme in the Pacific. Lay you
+five to three the captain 'as.'
+
+'So I have too,' replied the captain; 'and I've never told my own since
+the day I tore the title page out of my Bowditch and flung the damned
+thing into the sea. But I'll tell it to you, boys. John Davis is my
+name. I'm Davis of the Sea Ranger.'
+
+'Dooce you are!' said Hush. 'And what was she? a pirate or a slyver?'
+
+'She was the fastest barque out of Portland, Maine,' replied the
+captain; 'and for the way I lost her, I might as well have bored a hole
+in her side with an auger.'
+
+'Oh, you lost her, did you?' said the clerk. ''Ope she was insured?'
+
+No answer being returned to this sally, Huish, still brimming over with
+vanity and conversation, struck into another subject.
+
+'I've a good mind to read you my letter,' said he. 'I've a good fist
+with a pen when I choose, and this is a prime lark. She was a barmaid
+I ran across in Northampton; she was a spanking fine piece, no end
+of style; and we cottoned at first sight like parties in the play. I
+suppose I spent the chynge of a fiver on that girl. Well, I 'appened to
+remember her nyme, so I wrote to her, and told her 'ow I had got rich,
+and married a queen in the Hislands, and lived in a blooming palace.
+Such a sight of crammers! I must read you one bit about my opening the
+nigger parliament in a cocked 'at. It's really prime.'
+
+The captain jumped to his feet. 'That's what you did with the paper that
+I went and begged for you?' he roared.
+
+It was perhaps lucky for Huish--it was surely in the end unfortunate for
+all--that he was seized just then by one of his prostrating accesses of
+cough; his comrades would have else deserted him, so bitter was their
+resentment. When the fit had passed, the clerk reached out his hand,
+picked up the letter, which had fallen to the earth, and tore it into
+fragments, stamp and all.
+
+'Does that satisfy you?' he asked sullenly.
+
+'We'll say no more about it,' replied Davis.
+
+
+
+Chapter 3. THE OLD CALABOOSE--DESTINY AT THE DOOR
+
+The old calaboose, in which the waifs had so long harboured, is a low,
+rectangular enclosure of building at the corner of a shady western
+avenue and a little townward of the British consulate. Within was
+a grassy court, littered with wreckage and the traces of vagrant
+occupation. Six or seven cells opened from the court: the doors, that
+had once been locked on mutinous whalermen, rotting before them in the
+grass. No mark remained of their old destination, except the rusty bars
+upon the windows.
+
+The floor of one of the cells had been a little cleared; a bucket (the
+last remaining piece of furniture of the three caitiffs) stood full of
+water by the door, a half cocoanut shell beside it for a drinking cup;
+and on some ragged ends of mat Huish sprawled asleep, his mouth open,
+his face deathly. The glow of the tropic afternoon, the green of
+sunbright foliage, stared into that shady place through door and window;
+and Herrick, pacing to and fro on the coral floor, sometimes paused
+and laved his face and neck with tepid water from the bucket. His long
+arrears of suffering, the night's vigil, the insults of the morning, and
+the harrowing business of the letter, had strung him to that point when
+pain is almost pleasure, time shrinks to a mere point, and death and
+life appear indifferent. To and fro he paced like a caged brute; his
+mind whirling through the universe of thought and memory; his eyes, as
+he went, skimming the legends on the wall. The crumbling whitewash was
+all full of them: Tahitian names, and French, and English, and rude
+sketches of ships under sail and men at fisticuffs.
+
+It came to him of a sudden that he too must leave upon these walls the
+memorial of his passage. He paused before a clean space, took the pencil
+out, and pondered. Vanity, so hard to dislodge, awoke in him. We call it
+vanity at least; perhaps unjustly. Rather it was the bare sense of his
+existence prompted him; the sense of his life, the one thing wonderful,
+to which he scarce clung with a finger. From his jarred nerves there
+came a strong sentiment of coming change; whether good or ill he could
+not say: change, he knew no more--change, with inscrutable veiled face,
+approaching noiseless. With the feeling, came the vision of a concert
+room, the rich hues of instruments, the silent audience, and the loud
+voice of the symphony. 'Destiny knocking at the door,' he thought; drew
+a stave on the plaster, and wrote in the famous phrase from the Fifth
+Symphony. 'So,' thought he, 'they will know that I loved music and had
+classical tastes. They? He, I suppose: the unknown, kindred spirit that
+shall come some day and read my memor querela. Ha, he shall have Latin
+too!' And he added: terque quaterque beati Queis ante ora patrum.
+
+He turned again to his uneasy pacing, but now with an irrational and
+supporting sense of duty done. He had dug his grave that morning; now he
+had carved his epitaph; the folds of the toga were composed, why should
+he delay the insignificant trifle that remained to do? He paused and
+looked long in the face of the sleeping Huish, drinking disenchantment
+and distaste of life. He nauseated himself with that vile countenance.
+Could the thing continue? What bound him now? Had he no rights?--only
+the obligation to go on, without discharge or furlough, bearing the
+unbearable? Ich trage unertragliches, the quotation rose in his mind; he
+repeated the whole piece, one of the most perfect of the most perfect of
+poets; and a phrase struck him like a blow: Du, stolzes Herz, A hast
+es ja gewolit. Where was the pride of his heart? And he raged against
+himself, as a man bites on a sore tooth, in a heady sensuality of scorn.
+'I have no pride, I have no heart, no manhood,' he thought, 'or why
+should I prolong a life more shameful than the gallows? Or why should I
+have fallen to it? No pride, no capacity, no force. Not even a bandit!
+and to be starving here with worse than banditti--with this trivial
+hell-hound!' His rage against his comrade rose and flooded him, and he
+shook a trembling fist at the sleeper.
+
+A swift step was audible. The captain appeared upon the threshold of the
+cell, panting and flushed, and with a foolish face of happiness. In his
+arms he carried a loaf of bread and bottles of beer; the pockets of his
+coat were bulging with cigars.
+
+He rolled his treasures on the floor, grasped Herrick by both hands, and
+crowed with laughter.
+
+'Broach the beer!' he shouted. 'Broach the beer, and glory hallelujah!'
+
+'Beer?' repeated Huish, struggling to his feet. 'Beer it is!' cried
+Davis. 'Beer and plenty of it. Any number of persons can use it (like
+Lyon's tooth-tablet) with perfect propriety and neatness. Who's to
+officiate?'
+
+'Leave me alone for that,' said the clerk. He knocked the necks off with
+a lump of coral, and each drank in succession from the shell.
+
+'Have a weed,' said Davis. 'It's all in the bill.'
+
+'What is up?' asked Herrick.
+
+The captain fell suddenly grave. 'I'm coming to that,' said he. 'I want
+to speak with Herrick here. You, Hay--or Huish, or whatever your name
+is--you take a weed and the other bottle, and go and see how the wind is
+down by the purao. I'll call you when you're wanted!'
+
+'Hay? Secrets? That ain't the ticket,' said Huish.
+
+'Look here, my son,' said the captain, 'this is business, and don't you
+make any mistake about it. If you're going to make trouble, you can
+have it your own way and stop right here. Only get the thing right: if
+Herrick and I go, we take the beer. Savvy?'
+
+'Oh, I don't want to shove my oar in,' returned Huish. 'I'll cut right
+enough. Give me the swipes. You can jaw till you're blue in the face for
+what I care. I don't think it's the friendly touch: that's all.' And he
+shambled grumbling out of the cell into the staring sun.
+
+The captain watched him clear of the courtyard; then turned to Herrick.
+
+'What is it?' asked Herrick thickly.
+
+'I'll tell you,' said Davis. 'I want to consult you. It's a chance we've
+got. What's that?' he cried, pointing to the music on the wall.
+
+'What?' said the other. 'Oh, that! It's music; it's a phrase of
+Beethoven's I was writing up. It means Destiny knocking at the door.'
+
+'Does it?' said the captain, rather low; and he went near and studied
+the inscription; 'and this French?' he asked, pointing to the Latin.
+
+'O, it just means I should have been luckier if I had died at horne,'
+returned Herrick impatiently. 'What is this business?'
+
+'Destiny knocking at the door,' repeated the captain; and then, looking
+over his shoulder. 'Well, Mr Herrick, that's about what it comes to,' he
+added.
+
+'What do you mean? Explain yourself,' said Herrick.
+
+But the captain was again staring at the music. 'About how long ago
+since you wrote up this truck?' he asked.
+
+'What does it matter?' exclaimed Herrick. 'I dare say half an hour.'
+
+'My God, it's strange!' cried Davis. 'There's some men would call that
+accidental: not me. That--' and he drew his thick finger under the
+music--'that's what I call Providence.'
+
+'You said we had a chance,' said Herrick.
+
+'Yes, SIR!' said the captain, wheeling suddenly face to face with
+his companion. 'I did so. If you're the man I take you for, we have a
+chance.'
+
+'I don't know what you take me for,' was the reply. 'You can scarce take
+me too low.'
+
+'Shake hands, Mr Herrick,' said the captain. 'I know you. You're a
+gentleman and a man of spirit. I didn't want to speak before that bummer
+there; you'll see why. But to you I'll rip it right out. I got a ship.'
+
+'A ship?' cried Herrick. 'What ship?'
+
+'That schooner we saw this morning off the passage.'
+
+'The schooner with the hospital flag?'
+
+'That's the hooker,' said Davis. 'She's the Farallone, hundred and
+sixty tons register, out of 'Frisco for Sydney, in California champagne.
+Captain, mate, and one hand all died of the smallpox, same as they had
+round in the Paumotus, I guess. Captain and mate were the only white
+men; all the hands Kanakas; seems a queer kind of outfit from a
+Christian port. Three of them left and a cook; didn't know where they
+were; I can't think where they were either, if you come to that;
+Wiseman must have been on the booze, I guess, to sail the course he did.
+However, there HE was, dead; and here are the Kanakas as good as lost.
+They bummed around at sea like the babes in the wood; and tumbled
+end-on upon Tahiti. The consul here took charge. He offered the berth to
+Williams; Williams had never had the smallpox and backed down. That was
+when I came in for the letter paper; I thought there was something up
+when the consul asked me to look in again; but I never let on to you
+fellows, so's you'd not be disappointed. Consul tried M'Neil; scared of
+smallpox. He tried Capirati, that Corsican and Leblue, or whatever his
+name is, wouldn't lay a hand on it; all too fond of their sweet lives.
+Last of all, when there wasn't nobody else left to offer it to, he
+offers it to me. "Brown, will you ship captain and take her to Sydney?"
+says he. "Let me choose my own mate and another white hand," says I,
+"for I don't hold with this Kanaka crew racket; give us all two months'
+advance to get our clothes and instruments out of pawn, and I'll take
+stock tonight, fill up stores, and get to sea tomorrow before dark!"
+That's what I said. "That's good enough," says the consul, "and you
+can count yourself damned lucky, Brown," says he. And he said it pretty
+meaningful-appearing, too. However, that's all one now. I'll ship Huish
+before the mast--of course I'll let him berth aft--and I'll ship you
+mate at seventy-five dollars and two months' advance.'
+
+'Me mate? Why, I'm a landsman!' cried Herrick.
+
+'Guess you've got to learn,' said the captain. 'You don't fancy I'm
+going to skip and leave you rotting on the beach perhaps? I'm not that
+sort, old man. And you're handy anyway; I've been shipmates with worse.'
+
+'God knows I can't refuse,' said Herrick. 'God knows I thank you from my
+heart.'
+
+'That's all right,' said the captain. 'But it ain't all.' He turned
+aside to light a cigar.
+
+'What else is there?' asked the other, with a pang of undefinable alarm.
+
+'I'm coming to that,' said Davis, and then paused a little. 'See here,'
+he began, holding out his cigar between his finger and thumb, 'suppose
+you figure up what this'll amount to. You don't catch on? Well, we
+get two months' advance; we can't get away from Papeete--our creditors
+wouldn't let us go--for less; it'll take us along about two months
+to get to Sydney; and when we get there, I just want to put it to you
+squarely: What the better are we?'
+
+'We're off the beach at least,' said Herrick.
+
+'I guess there's a beach at Sydney,' returned the captain; 'and I'll
+tell you one thing, Mr Herrick--I don't mean to try. No, SIR! Sydney
+will never see me.'
+
+'Speak out plain,' said Herrick.
+
+'Plain Dutch,' replied the captain. 'I'm going to own that schooner.
+It's nothing new; it's done every year in the Pacific. Stephens stole a
+schooner the other day, didn't he? Hayes and Pease stole vessels all
+the time. And it's the making of the crowd of us. See here--you think of
+that cargo. Champagne! why, it's like as if it was put up on purpose. In
+Peru we'll sell that liquor off at the pier-head, and the schooner after
+it, if we can find a fool to buy her; and then light out for the mines.
+If you'll back me up, I stake my life I carry it through.'
+
+'Captain,' said Herrick, with a quailing voice, 'don't do it!'
+
+'I'm desperate,' returned Davis. 'I've got a chance; I may never get
+another. Herrick, say the word; back me up; I think we've starved
+together long enough for that.'
+
+'I can't do it. I'm sorry. I can't do it. I've not fallen as low as
+that,' said Herrick, deadly pale.
+
+'What did you say this morning?' said Davis. 'That you couldn't beg?
+It's the one thing or the other, my son.'
+
+'Ah, but this is the jail!' cried Herrick. 'Don't tempt me. It's the
+jail.'
+
+'Did you hear what the skipper said on board that schooner?' pursued the
+captain. 'Well, I tell you he talked straight. The French have let us
+alone for a long time; It can't last longer; they've got their eye on
+us; and as sure as you live, in three weeks you'll be in jail whatever
+you do. I read it in the consul's face.'
+
+'You forget, captain,' said the young man. 'There is another way. I can
+die; and to say truth, I think I should have died three years ago.'
+
+The captain folded his arms and looked the other in the face. 'Yes,'
+said he, 'yes, you can cut your throat; that's a frozen fact; much good
+may it do you! And where do I come in?'
+
+The light of a strange excitement came in Herrick's face. 'Both of us,'
+said he, 'both of us together. It's not possible you can enjoy this
+business. Come,' and he reached out a timid hand, 'a few strokes in the
+lagoon--and rest!'
+
+'I tell you, Herrick, I'm 'most tempted to answer you the way the man
+does in the Bible, and say, "Get thee behind me, Satan!"' said the
+captain. 'What! you think I would go drown myself, and I got children
+starving? Enjoy it? No, by God, I do not enjoy it! but it's the row
+I've got to hoe, and I'll hoe it till I drop right here. I have three of
+them, you see, two boys and the one girl, Adar. The trouble is that you
+are not a parent yourself. I tell you, Herrick, I love you,' the man
+broke out; 'I didn't take to you at first, you were so anglified and
+tony, but I love you now; it's a man that loves you stands here and
+wrestles with you. I can't go to sea with the bummer alone; it's not
+possible. Go drown yourself, and there goes my last chance--the last
+chance of a poor miserable beast, earning a crust to feed his family.
+I can't do nothing but sail ships, and I've no papers. And here I get
+a chance, and you go back on me! Ah, you've no family, and that's where
+the trouble is!'
+
+'I have indeed,' said Herrick.
+
+'Yes, I know,' said the captain, 'you think so. But no man's got
+a family till he's got children. It's only the kids count. There's
+something about the little shavers... I can't talk of them. And if
+you thought a cent about this father that I hear you talk of, or that
+sweetheart you were writing to this morning, you would feel like me. You
+would say, What matters laws, and God, and that? My folks are hard up,
+I belong to them, I'll get them bread, or, by God! I'll get them wealth,
+if I have to burn down London for it. That's what you would say. And
+I'll tell you more: your heart is saying so this living minute. I can
+see it in your face. You're thinking, Here's poor friendship for the man
+I've starved along of, and as for the girl that I set up to be in love
+with, here's a mighty limp kind of a love that won't carry me as far
+as 'most any man would go for a demijohn of whisky. There's not much
+ROmance to that love, anyway; it's not the kind they carry on about in
+songbooks. But what's the good of my carrying on talking, when it's all
+in your inside as plain as print? I put the question to you once for
+all. Are you going to desert me in my hour of need?--you know if I've
+deserted you--or will you give me your hand, and try a fresh deal, and
+go home (as like as not) a millionaire? Say no, and God pity me! Say
+yes, and I'll make the little ones pray for you every night on their
+bended knees. "God bless Mr Herrick!" that's what they'll say, one after
+the other, the old girl sitting there holding stakes at the foot of the
+bed, and the damned little innocents.. . He broke off. 'I don't often
+rip out about the kids,' he said; 'but when I do, there's something
+fetches loose.'
+
+'Captain,' said Herrick faintly, 'is there nothing else?'
+
+'I'll prophesy if you like,' said the captain with renewed vigour.
+'Refuse this, because you think yourself too honest, and before a
+month's out you'll be jailed for a sneak-thief. I give you the word
+fair. I can see it, Herrick, if you can't; you're breaking down.
+Don't think, if you refuse this chance, that you'll go on doing the
+evangelical; you're about through with your stock; and before you know
+where you are, you'll be right out on the other side. No, it's either
+this for you; or else it's Caledonia. I bet you never were there, and
+saw those white, shaved men, in their dust clothes and straw hats,
+prowling around in gangs in the lamplight at Noumea; they look like
+wolves, and they look like preachers, and they look like the sick; Hulsh
+is a daisy to the best of them. Well, there's your company. They're
+waiting for you, Herrick, and you got to go; and that's a prophecy.'
+
+And as the man stood and shook through his great stature, he seemed
+indeed like one in whom the spirit of divination worked and might utter
+oracles. Herrick looked at him, and looked away; It seemed not decent to
+spy upon such agitation; and the young man's courage sank.
+
+'You talk of going home,' he objected. 'We could never do that.'
+
+'WE could,' said the other. 'Captain Brown couldn't, nor Mr Hay, that
+shipped mate with him couldn't. But what's that to do with Captain Davis
+or Mr Herrick, you galoot?'
+
+'But Hayes had these wild islands where he used to call,' came the next
+fainter objection.
+
+'We have the wild islands of Peru,' retorted Davis. 'They were wild
+enough for Stephens, no longer agone than just last year. I guess
+they'll be wild enough for us.'
+
+'And the crew?'
+
+'All Kanakas. Come, I see you're right, old man. I see you'll stand by.'
+And the captain once more offered his hand.
+
+'Have it your own way then,' said Herrick. 'I'll do it: a strange thing
+for my father's son. But I'll do it. I'll stand by you, man, for good or
+evil.'
+
+'God bless you!' cried the captain, and stood silent. 'Herrick,' he
+added with a smile, 'I believe I'd have died in my tracks, if you'd
+said, No!'
+
+And Herrick, looking at the man, half believed so also.
+
+'And now we'll go break it to the bummer,' said Davis.
+
+'I wonder how he'll take it,' said Herrick.
+
+'Him? Jump at it!' was the reply.
+
+
+
+Chapter 4. THE YELLOW FLAG
+
+The schooner Farallone lay well out in the jaws of the pass, where the
+terrified pilot had made haste to bring her to her moorings and escape.
+Seen from the beach through the thin line of shipping, two objects stood
+conspicuous to seaward: the little isle, on the one hand, with its palms
+and the guns and batteries raised forty years before in defence of Queen
+Pomare's capital; the outcast Farallone, upon the other, banished to the
+threshold of the port, rolling there to her scuppers, and flaunting the
+plague-flag as she rolled. A few sea birds screamed and cried about the
+ship; and within easy range, a man-of-war guard boat hung off and on and
+glittered with the weapons of marines. The exuberant daylight and the
+blinding heaven of the tropics picked out and framed the pictures.
+
+A neat boat, manned by natives in uniform, and steered by the doctor
+of the port, put from shore towards three of the afternoon, and pulled
+smartly for the schooner. The fore-sheets were heaped with sacks of
+flour, onions, and potatoes, perched among which was Huish dressed as
+a foremast hand; a heap of chests and cases impeded the action of the
+oarsmen; and in the stern, by the left hand of the doctor, sat Herrick,
+dressed in a fresh rig of slops, his brown beard trimmed to a point, a
+pile of paper novels on his lap, and nursing the while between his feet
+a chronometer, for which they had exchanged that of the Farallone, long
+since run down and the rate lost.
+
+They passed the guard boat, exchanging hails with the boat-swain's
+mate in charge, and drew near at last to the forbidden ship. Not a cat
+stirred, there was no speech of man; and the sea being exceeding high
+outside, and the reef close to where the schooner lay, the clamour of
+the surf hung round her like the sound of battle.
+
+'Ohe la goelette!' sang out the doctor, with his best voice.
+
+Instantly, from the house where they had been stowing away stores, first
+Davis, and then the ragamuffin, swarthy crew made their appearance.
+
+'Hullo, Hay, that you?' said the captain, leaning on the rail. 'Tell the
+old man to lay her alongside, as if she was eggs. There's a hell of a
+run of sea here, and his boat's brittle.'
+
+The movement of the schooner was at that time more than usually violent.
+Now she heaved her side as high as a deep sea steamer's, and showed the
+flashing of her copper; now she swung swiftly toward the boat until her
+scuppers gurgled.
+
+'I hope you have sea legs,' observed the doctor. 'You will require
+them.'
+
+Indeed, to board the Farallone, in that exposed position where she lay,
+was an affair of some dexterity. The less precious goods were hoisted
+roughly in; the chronometer, after repeated failures, was passed gently
+and successfully from hand to hand; and there remained only the more
+difficult business of embarking Huish. Even that piece of dead weight
+(shipped A.B. at eighteen dollars, and described by the captain to the
+consul as an invaluable man) was at last hauled on board without mishap;
+and the doctor, with civil salutations, took his leave.
+
+The three co-adventurers looked at each other, and Davis heaved a breath
+of relief.
+
+'Now let's get this chronometer fixed,' said he, and led the way
+into the house. It was a fairly spacious place; two staterooms and a
+good-sized pantry opened from the main cabin; the bulkheads were
+painted white, the floor laid with waxcloth. No litter, no sign of
+life remained; for the effects of the dead men had been disinfected and
+conveyed on shore. Only on the table, in a saucer, some sulphur burned,
+and the fumes set them coughing as they entered. The captain peered into
+the starboard stateroom, where the bed-clothes still lay tumbled in
+the bunk, the blanket flung back as they had flung it back from the
+disfigured corpse before its burial.
+
+'Now, I told these niggers to tumble that truck overboard,' grumbled
+Davis. 'Guess they were afraid to lay hands on it. Well, they've hosed
+the place out; that's as much as can be expected, I suppose. Huish, lay
+on to these blankets.'
+
+'See you blooming well far enough first,' said Huish, drawing back.
+
+'What's that?' snapped the captain. 'I'll tell you, my young friend, I
+think you make a mistake. I'm captain here.'
+
+'Fat lot I care,' returned the clerk.
+
+'That so?' said Davis. 'Then you'll berth forward with the niggers! Walk
+right out of this cabin.'
+
+'Oh, I dessay!' said Huish. 'See any green in my eye? A lark's a lark.'
+
+'Well, now, I'll explain this business, and you'll see (once for all)
+just precisely how much lark there is to it,' said Davis. 'I'm captain,
+and I'm going to be it. One thing of three. First, you take my orders
+here as cabin steward, in which case you mess with us. Or second, you
+refuse, and I pack you forward--and you get as quick as the word's said.
+Or, third and last, I'll signal that man-of-war and send you ashore
+under arrest for mutiny.'
+
+'And, of course, I wouldn't blow the gaff? O no!' replied the jeering
+Huish.
+
+'And who's to believe you, my son?' inquired the captain. 'No, sir!
+There ain't no lark about my captainising. Enough said. Up with these
+blankets.'
+
+Huish was no fool, he knew when he was beaten; and he was no coward
+either, for he stepped to the bunk, took the infected bed-clothes
+fairly in his arms, and carried them out of the house without a check or
+tremor.
+
+'I was waiting for the chance,' said Davis to Herrick. 'I needn't do the
+same with you, because you understand it for yourself.'
+
+'Are you going to berth here?' asked Herrick, following the captain into
+the stateroom, where he began to adjust the chronometer in its place at
+the bed-head.
+
+'Not much!' replied he. 'I guess I'll berth on deck. I don't know as I'm
+afraid, but I've no immediate use for confluent smallpox.'
+
+'I don't know that I'm afraid either,' said Herrick. 'But the thought of
+these two men sticks in my throat; that captain and mate dying here, one
+opposite to the other. It's grim. I wonder what they said last?'
+
+'Wiseman and Wishart?' said the captain. 'Probably mighty small
+potatoes. That's a thing a fellow figures out for himself one way, and
+the real business goes quite another. Perhaps Wiseman said, "Here old
+man, fetch up the gin, I'm feeling powerful rocky." And perhaps Wishart
+said, "Oh, hell!"'
+
+'Well, that's grim enough,' said Herrick.
+
+'And so it is,' said Davis. 'There; there's that chronometer fixed. And
+now it's about time to up anchor and clear out.'
+
+He lit a cigar and stepped on deck.
+
+'Here, you! What's YOUR name?' he cried to one of the hands, a
+lean-flanked, clean-built fellow from some far western island, and of a
+darkness almost approaching to the African.
+
+'Sally Day,' replied the man.
+
+'Devil it is,' said the captain. 'Didn't know we had ladies on board.
+Well, Sally, oblige me by hauling down that rag there. I'll do the same
+for you another time.' He watched the yellow bunting as it was eased
+past the cross-trees and handed down on deck. 'You'll float no more
+on this ship,' he observed. 'Muster the people aft, Mr Hay,' he added,
+speaking unnecessarily loud, 'I've a word to say to them.'
+
+It was with a singular sensation that Herrick prepared for the first
+time to address a crew. He thanked his stars indeed, that they were
+natives. But even natives, he reflected, might be critics too quick
+for such a novice as himself; they might perceive some lapse from that
+precise and cut-and-dry English which prevails on board a ship; it was
+even possible they understood no other; and he racked his brain, and
+overhauled his reminiscences of sea romance for some appropriate words.
+
+'Here, men! tumble aft!' he said. 'Lively now! All hands aft!'
+
+They crowded in the alleyway like sheep.
+
+'Here they are, sir,' said Herrick.
+
+For some time the captain continued to face the stern; then turned with
+ferocious suddenness on the crew, and seemed to enjoy their shrinking.
+
+'Now,' he said, twisting his cigar in his mouth and toying with the
+spokes of the wheel, 'I'm Captain Brown. I command this ship. This is
+Mr Hay, first officer. The other white man is cabin steward, but he'll
+stand watch and do his trick. My orders shall be obeyed smartly. You
+savvy, "smartly"? There shall be no growling about the kaikai, which
+will be above allowance. You'll put a handle to the mate's name, and
+tack on "sir" to every order I give you. If you're smart and quick, I'll
+make this ship comfortable for all hands.' He took the cigar out of his
+mouth. 'If you're not,' he added, in a roaring voice, 'I'll make it a
+floating hell. Now, Mr Hay, we'll pick watches, if you please.'
+
+'All right,' said Herrick.
+
+'You will please use "sir" when you address me, Mr Hay,' said the
+captain. 'I'll take the lady. Step to starboard, Sally.' And then he
+whispered in Herrick's ear: 'take the old man.'
+
+'I'll take you, there,' said Herrick.
+
+'What's your name?' said the captain. 'What's that you say? Oh, that's
+no English; I'll have none of your highway gibberish on my ship. We'll
+call you old Uncle Ned, because you've got no wool on the top of your
+head, just the place where the wool ought to grow. Step to port, Uncle.
+Don't you hear Mr Hay has picked you? Then I'll take the white man.
+White Man, step to starboard. Now which of you two is the cook? You?
+Then Mr Hay takes your friend in the blue dungaree. Step to port,
+Dungaree. There, we know who we all are: Dungaree, Uncle Ned, Sally Day,
+White Man, and Cook. All F.F.V.'s I guess. And now, Mr Hay, we'll up
+anchor, if you please.'
+
+'For Heaven's sake, tell me some of the words,' whispered Herrick.
+
+An hour later, the Farallone was under all plain sail, the rudder hard
+a-port, and the cheerfully clanking windlass had brought the anchor
+home.
+
+'All clear, sir,' cried Herrick from the bow.
+
+The captain met her with the wheel, as she bounded like a stag from
+her repose, trembling and bending to the puffs. The guard boat gave a
+parting hail, the wake whitened and ran out; the Farallone was under
+weigh.
+
+Her berth had been close to the pass. Even as she forged ahead Davis
+slewed her for the channel between the pier ends of the reef, the
+breakers sounding and whitening to either hand. Straight through the
+narrow band of blue, she shot to seaward: and the captain's heart
+exulted as he felt her tremble underfoot, and (looking back over the
+taffrail) beheld the roofs of Papeete changing position on the shore and
+the island mountains rearing higher in the wake.
+
+But they were not yet done with the shore and the horror of the yellow
+flag. About midway of the pass, there was a cry and a scurry, a man was
+seen to leap upon the rail, and, throwing his arms over his head, to
+stoop and plunge into the sea.
+
+'Steady as she goes,' the captain cried, relinquishing the wheel to
+Huish.
+
+The next moment he was forward in the midst of the Kanakas, belaying pin
+in hand.
+
+'Anybody else for shore?' he cried, and the savage trumpeting of his
+voice, no less than the ready weapon in his hand, struck fear in all.
+Stupidly they stared after their escaped companion, whose black head
+was visible upon the water, steering for the land. And the schooner
+meanwhile slipt like a racer through the pass, and met the long sea of
+the open ocean with a souse of spray.
+
+'Fool that I was, not to have a pistol ready!' exclaimed Davis. 'Well,
+we go to sea short-handed, we can't help that. You have a lame watch of
+it, Mr Hay.'
+
+'I don't see how we are to get along,' said Herrick.
+
+'Got to,' said the captain. 'No more Tahiti for me.'
+
+Both turned instinctively and looked astern. The fair island was
+unfolding mountain top on mountain top; Eimeo, on the port board, lifted
+her splintered pinnacles; and still the schooner raced to the open sea.
+
+'Think!' cried the captain with a gesture, 'yesterday morning I danced
+for my breakfast like a poodle dog.'
+
+
+
+Chapter 5. THE CARGO OF CHAMPAGNE
+
+The ship's head was laid to clear Eimeo to the north, and the captain
+sat down in the cabin, with a chart, a ruler, and an epitome.
+
+'East a half no'the,' said he, raising his face from his labours. 'Mr
+Hay, you'll have to watch your dead reckoning; I want every yard she
+makes on every hair's-breadth of a course. I'm going to knock a hole
+right straight through the Paumotus, and that's always a near touch.
+Now, if this South East Trade ever blew out of the S.E., which it don't,
+we might hope to lie within half a point of our course. Say we lie
+within a point of it. That'll just about weather Fakarava. Yes, sir,
+that's what we've got to do, if we tack for it. Brings us through this
+slush of little islands in the cleanest place: see?' And he showed
+where his ruler intersected the wide-lying labyrinth of the Dangerous
+Archipelago. 'I wish it was night, and I could put her about right now;
+we're losing time and easting. Well, we'll do our best. And if we don't
+fetch Peru, we'll bring up to Ecuador. All one, I guess. Depreciated
+dollars down, and no questions asked. A remarkable fine institootion,
+the South American don.'
+
+Tahiti was already some way astern, the Diadem rising from among broken
+mountains--Eimeo was already close aboard, and stood black and strange
+against the golden splendour of the west--when the captain took his
+departure from the two islands, and the patent log was set.
+
+Some twenty minutes later, Sally Day, who was continually leaving
+the wheel to peer in at the cabin clock, announced in a shrill cry
+'Fo'bell,' and the cook was to be seen carrying the soup into the cabin.
+
+'I guess I'll sit down and have a pick with you,' said Davis to Herrick.
+'By the time I've done, it'll be dark, and we'll clap the hooker on the
+wind for South America.'
+
+In the cabin at one corner of the table, immediately below the lamp, and
+on the lee side of a bottle of champagne, sat Huish. 'What's this? Where
+did that come from?' asked the captain.
+
+'It's fizz, and it came from the after-'old, if you want to know,' said
+Huish, and drained his mug.
+
+'This'll never do,' exclaimed Davis, the merchant seaman's horror of
+breaking into cargo showing incongruously forth on board that stolen
+ship. 'There was never any good came of games like that.'
+
+'You byby!' said Huish. 'A fellow would think (to 'ear him) we were
+on the square! And look 'ere, you've put this job up 'ansomely for me,
+'aven't you? I'm to go on deck and steer while you two sit and guzzle,
+and I'm to go by nickname, and got to call you "sir" and "mister." Well,
+you look here, my bloke: I'll have fizz ad lib., or it won't wash. I
+tell you that. And you know mighty well, you ain't got any man-of-war to
+signal now.'
+
+Davis was staggered. 'I'd give fifty dollars this had never happened,'
+he said weakly.
+
+'Well, it 'as 'appened, you see,' returned Huish. 'Try some; it's
+devilish good.'
+
+The Rubicon was crossed without another struggle. The captain filled a
+mug and drank.
+
+'I wish it was beer,' he said with a sigh. 'But there's no denying it's
+the genuine stuff and cheap at the money. Now, Huish, you clear out and
+take your wheel.'
+
+The little wretch had gained a point, and he was gay. 'Ay, ay, sir,'
+said he, and left the others to their meal.
+
+'Pea soup!' exclaimed the captain. 'Blamed if I thought I should taste
+pea soup again!'
+
+Herrick sat inert and silent. It was impossible after these months of
+hopeless want to smell the rough, high-spiced sea victuals without
+lust, and his mouth watered with desire of the champagne. It was no less
+impossible to have assisted at the scene between Huish and the captain,
+and not to perceive, with sudden bluntness, the gulf where he had
+fallen. He was a thief among thieves. He said it to himself. He could
+not touch the soup. If he had moved at all, it must have been to leave
+the table, throw himself overboard, and drown--an honest man.
+
+'Here,' said the captain, 'you look sick, old man; have a drop of this.'
+
+The champagne creamed and bubbled in the mug; its bright colour, its
+lively effervescence, seized his eye. 'It is too late to hesitate,'
+he thought; his hand took the mug instinctively; he drank, with
+unquenchable pleasure and desire of more; drained the vessel dry, and
+set it down with sparkling eyes.
+
+'There is something in life after all!' he cried. 'I had forgot what it
+was like. Yes, even this is worth while. Wine, food, dry clothes--why,
+they're worth dying, worth hanging, for! Captain, tell me one thing: why
+aren't all the poor folk foot-pads?'
+
+'Give it up,' said the captain.
+
+'They must be damned good,' cried Herrick. 'There's something here
+beyond me. Think of that calaboose! Suppose we were sent suddenly back.'
+He shuddered as though stung by a convulsion, and buried his face in his
+clutching hands.
+
+'Here, what's wrong with you?' cried the captain. There was no reply;
+only Herrick's shoulders heaved, so that the table was shaken. 'Take
+some more of this. Here, drink this. I order you to. Don't start crying
+when you're out of the wood.'
+
+'I'm not crying,' said Herrick, raising his face and showing his dry
+eyes. 'It's worse than crying. It's the horror of that grave that we've
+escaped from.'
+
+'Come now, you tackle your soup; that'll fix you,' said Davis kindly.
+'I told you you were all broken up. You couldn't have stood out another
+week.'
+
+'That's the dreadful part of it!' cried Herrick. 'Another week and I'd
+have murdered someone for a dollar! God! and I know that? And I'm still
+living? It's some beastly dream.'
+
+'Quietly, quietly! Quietly does it, my son. Take your pea soup. Food,
+that's what you want,' said Davis.
+
+The soup strengthened and quieted Herrick's nerves; another glass of
+wine, and a piece of pickled pork and fried banana completed what the
+soup began; and he was able once more to look the captain in the face.
+
+'I didn't know I was so much run down,' he said.
+
+'Well,' said Davis, 'you were as steady as a rock all day: now you've
+had a little lunch, you'll be as steady as a rock again.'
+
+'Yes,'was the reply, 'I'm steady enough now, but I'm a queer kind of a
+first officer.'
+
+'Shucks!' cried the captain. 'You've only got to mind the ship's course,
+and keep your slate to half a point. A babby could do that, let alone
+a college graduate like you. There ain't nothing TO sailoring, when you
+come to look it in the face. And now we'll go and put her about. Bring
+the slate; we'll have to start our dead reckoning right away.'
+
+The distance run since the departure was read off the log by the
+binnacle light and entered on the slate.
+
+'Ready about,' said the captain. 'Give me the wheel, White Man, and you
+stand by the mainsheet. Boom tackle, Mr Hay, please, and then you can
+jump forward and attend head sails.'
+
+'Ay, ay, sir,' responded Herrick.
+
+'All clear forward?' asked Davis.
+
+'All clear, sir.'
+
+'Hard a-lee!' cried the captain. 'Haul in your slack as she comes,' he
+called to Huish. 'Haul in your slack, put your back into it; keep your
+feet out of the coils.' A sudden blow sent Huish flat along the deck,
+and the captain was in his place. 'Pick yourself up and keep the wheel
+hard over!' he roared. 'You wooden fool, you wanted to get killed, I
+guess. Draw the jib,' he cried a moment later; and then to Huish, 'Give
+me the wheel again, and see if you can coil that sheet.'
+
+But Huish stood and looked at Davis with an evil countenance. 'Do you
+know you struck me?' said he.
+
+'Do you know I saved your life?' returned the other, not deigning to
+look at him, his eyes travelling instead between the compass and the
+sails. 'Where would you have been, if that boom had swung out and
+you bundled in the clack? No, SIR, we'll have no more of you at the
+mainsheet. Seaport towns are full of mainsheet-men; they hop upon one
+leg, my son, what's left of them, and the rest are dead. (Set your boom
+tackle, Mr Hay.) Struck you, did I? Lucky for you I did.'
+
+'Well,' said Huish slowly, 'I daresay there may be somethink in that.
+'Ope there is.' He turned his back elaborately on the captain, and
+entered the house, where the speedy explosion of a champagne cork showed
+he was attending to his comfort.
+
+Herrick came aft to the captain. 'How is she doing now?' he asked.
+
+'East and by no'the a half no'the,' said Davis. 'It's about as good as I
+expected.'
+
+'What'll the hands think of it?' said Herrick.
+
+'Oh, they don't think. They ain't paid to,' says the captain.
+
+'There was something wrong, was there not? between you and--' Herrick
+paused.
+
+'That's a nasty little beast, that's a biter,' replied the captain,
+shaking his head. 'But so long as you and me hang in, it don't matter.'
+
+Herrick lay down in the weather alleyway; the night was cloudless, the
+movement of the ship cradled him, he was oppressed besides by the first
+generous meal after so long a time of famine; and he was recalled from
+deep sleep by the voice of Davis singing out: 'Eight bells!'
+
+He rose stupidly, and staggered aft, where the captain gave him the
+wheel.
+
+'By the wind,' said the captain. 'It comes a little puffy; when you get
+a heavy puff, steal all you can to windward, but keep her a good full.'
+
+He stepped towards the house, paused and hailed the forecastle.
+
+'Got such a thing as a concertina forward?' said he. 'Bully for you,
+Uncle Ned. Fetch it aft, will you?'
+
+The schooner steered very easy; and Herrick, watching the moon-whitened
+sails, was overpowered by drowsiness. A sharp report from the cabin
+startled him; a third bottle had been opened; and Herrick remembered
+the Sea Ranger and Fourteen Island Group. Presently the notes of the
+accordion sounded, and then the captain's voice:
+
+  'O honey, with our pockets full of money,
+
+  We will trip, trip, trip, we will trip it on the quay,
+
+  And I will dance with Kate, and Tom will dance with Sall,
+
+  When we're all back from South Amerikee.'
+
+So it went to its quaint air; and the watch below lingered and listened
+by the forward door, and Uncle Ned was to be seen in the moonlight
+nodding time; and Herrick smiled at the wheel, his anxieties a while
+forgotten. Song followed song; another cork exploded; there were voices
+raised, as though the pair in the cabin were in disagreement; and
+presently it seemed the breach was healed; for it was now the voice of
+Huish that struck up, to the captain's accompaniment--
+
+
+     'Up in a balloon, boys,
+
+      Up in a balloon,
+
+     All among the little stars
+
+      And round about the moon.'
+
+
+A wave of nausea overcame Herrick at the wheel. He wondered why the air,
+the words (which were yet written with a certain knack), and the voice
+and accent of the singer, should all jar his spirit like a file on a
+man's teeth. He sickened at the thought of his two comrades drinking
+away their reason upon stolen wine, quarrelling and hiccupping and
+waking up, while the doors of the prison yawned for them in the near
+future. 'Shall I have sold my honour for nothing?' he thought; and
+a heat of rage and resolution glowed in his bosom--rage against his
+comrades--resolution to carry through this business if it might be
+carried; pluck profit out of shame, since the shame at least was now
+inevitable; and come home, home from South America--how did the song
+go?--'with his pockets full of money':
+
+
+'O honey, with our pockets full of money,
+
+We will trip, trip, trip, we will trip it on the quay:'
+
+so the words ran in his head; and the honey took on visible form, the
+quay rose before him and he knew it for the lamplit Embankment, and
+he saw the lights of Battersea bridge bestride the sullen river. All
+through the remainder of his trick, he stood entranced, reviewing the
+past. He had been always true to his love, but not always sedulous
+to recall her. In the growing calamity of his life, she had swum
+more distant, like the moon in mist. The letter of farewell, the
+dishonourable hope that had surprised and corrupted him in his distress,
+the changed scene, the sea, the night and the music--all stirred him
+to the roots of manhood. 'I WILL win her,' he thought, and ground his
+teeth. 'Fair or foul, what matters if I win her?'
+
+'Fo' bell, matey. I think um fo' bell'--he was suddenly recalled by
+these words in the voice of Uncle Ned.
+
+'Look in at the clock, Uncle,' said he. He would not look himself, from
+horror of the tipplers.
+
+'Him past, matey,' repeated the Hawaiian.
+
+'So much the better for you, Uncle,' he replied; and he gave up the
+wheel, repeating the directions as he had received them.
+
+He took two steps forward and remembered his dead reckoning. 'How has
+she been heading?' he thought; and he flushed from head to foot. He had
+not observed or had forgotten; here was the old incompetence; the slate
+must be filled up by guess. 'Never again!' he vowed to himself in silent
+fury, 'never again. It shall be no fault of mine if this miscarry.' And
+for the remainder of his watch, he stood close by Uncle Ned, and read
+the face of the compass as perhaps he had never read a letter from his
+sweetheart.
+
+All the time, and spurring him to the more attention, song, loud talk,
+fleering laughter and the occasional popping of a cork, reached his ears
+from the interior of the house; and when the port watch was relieved
+at midnight, Huish and the captain appeared upon the quarter-deck with
+flushed faces and uneven steps, the former laden with bottles, the
+latter with two tin mugs. Herrick silently passed them by. They hailed
+him in thick voices, he made no answer, they cursed him for a churl,
+he paid no heed although his belly quivered with disgust and rage. He
+closed-to the door of the house behind him, and cast himself on a locker
+in the cabin--not to sleep he thought--rather to think and to despair.
+Yet he had scarce turned twice on his uneasy bed, before a drunken voice
+hailed him in the ear, and he must go on deck again to stand the morning
+watch.
+
+The first evening set the model for those that were to follow. Two cases
+of champagne scarce lasted the four-and-twenty hours, and almost the
+whole was drunk by Huish and the captain. Huish seemed to thrive on the
+excess; he was never sober, yet never wholly tipsy; the food and the sea
+air had soon healed him of his disease, and he began to lay on flesh.
+But with Davis things went worse. In the drooping, unbuttoned figure
+that sprawled all day upon the lockers, tippling and reading novels;
+in the fool who made of the evening watch a public carouse on the
+quarter-deck, it would have been hard to recognise the vigorous seaman
+of Papeete roads. He kept himself reasonably well in hand till he had
+taken the sun and yawned and blotted through his calculations; but from
+the moment he rolled up the chart, his hours were passed in slavish
+self-indulgence or in hoggish slumber. Every other branch of his duty
+was neglected, except maintaining a stern discipline about the dinner
+table. Again and again Herrick would hear the cook called aft, and see
+him running with fresh tins, or carrying away again a meal that had been
+totally condemned. And the more the captain became sunk in drunkenness,
+the more delicate his palate showed itself. Once, in the forenoon, he
+had a bo'sun's chair rigged over the rail, stripped to his trousers,
+and went overboard with a pot of paint. 'I don't like the way this
+schooner's painted,' said he, 'and I've taken a down upon her name.' But
+he tired of it in half an hour, and the schooner went on her way with
+an incongruous patch of colour on the stern, and the word Farallone part
+obliterated and part looking through. He refused to stand either the
+middle or the morning watch. It was fine-weather sailing, he said;
+and asked, with a laugh, 'Who ever heard of the old man standing watch
+himself?' To the dead reckoning which Herrick still tried to keep, he
+would pay not the least attention nor afford the least assistance.
+
+'What do we want of dead reckoning?' he asked. 'We get the sun all
+right, don't we?'
+
+'We mayn't get it always though,' objected Herrick. 'And you told me
+yourself you weren't sure of the chronometer.'
+
+'Oh, there ain't no flies in the chronometer!' cried Davis.
+
+'Oblige me so far, captain,' said Herrick stiffly. 'I am anxious to keep
+this reckoning, which is a part of my duty; I do not know what to allow
+for current, nor how to allow for it. I am too inexperienced; and I beg
+of you to help me.'
+
+'Never discourage zealous officer,' said the captain, unrolling the
+chart again, for Herrick had taken him over his day's work and while he
+was still partly sober. 'Here it is: look for yourself; anything from
+west to west no'the-west, and anyways from five to twenty-five miles.
+That's what the A'm'ralty chart says; I guess you don't expect to get on
+ahead of your own Britishers?'
+
+'I am trying to do my duty, Captain Brown,' said Herrick, with a dark
+flush, 'and I have the honour to inform you that I don't enjoy being
+trifled with.'
+
+'What in thunder do you want?' roared Davis. 'Go and look at the blamed
+wake. If you're trying to do your duty, why don't you go and do it? I
+guess it's no business of mine to go and stick my head over the ship's
+rump? I guess it's yours. And I'll tell you what it is, my fine fellow,
+I'll trouble you not to come the dude over me. You're insolent, that's
+what's wrong with you. Don't you crowd me, Mr Herrick, Esquire.'
+
+Herrick tore up his papers, threw them on the floor, and left the cabin.
+
+'He's turned a bloomin' swot, ain't he?' sneered Huish.
+
+'He thinks himself too good for his company, that's what ails Herrick,
+Esquire,' raged the captain. 'He thinks I don't understand when he comes
+the heavy swell. Won't sit down with us, won't he? won't say a civil
+word? I'll serve the son of a gun as he deserves. By God, Huish, I'll
+show him whether he's too good for John Davis!'
+
+'Easy with the names, cap',' said Huish, who was always the more sober.
+'Easy over the stones, my boy!'
+
+'All right, I will. You're a good sort, Huish. I didn't take to you at
+first, but I guess you're right enough. Let's open another bottle,'
+said the captain; and that day, perhaps because he was excited by the
+quarrel, he drank more recklessly, and by four o'clock was stretched
+insensible upon the locker.
+
+Herrick and Huish supped alone, one after the other, opposite his
+flushed and snorting body. And if the sight killed Herrick's hunger, the
+isolation weighed so heavily on the clerk's spirit, that he was scarce
+risen from table ere he was currying favour with his former comrade.
+
+Herrick was at the wheel when he approached, and Huish leaned
+confidentially across the binnacle.
+
+'I say, old chappie,' he said, 'you and me don't seem to be such pals
+somehow.'
+
+Herrick gave her a spoke or two in silence; his eye, as it skirted
+from the needle to the luff of the foresail, passed the man by without
+speculation. But Huish was really dull, a thing he could support with
+difficulty, having no resources of his own. The idea of a private talk
+with Herrick, at this stage of their relations, held out particular
+inducements to a person of his character. Drink besides, as it renders
+some men hyper-sensitive, made Huish callous. And it would almost have
+required a blow to make him quit his purpose.
+
+'Pretty business, ain't it?' he continued; 'Dyvis on the lush? Must say
+I thought you gave it 'im A1 today. He didn't like it a bit; took on
+hawful after you were gone.--"'Ere," says I, "'old on, easy on the
+lush," I says. "'Errick was right, and you know it. Give 'im a chanst,"
+I says.--"Uish," sezee, "don't you gimme no more of your jaw, or I'll
+knock your bloomin' eyes out." Well, wot can I do, 'Errick? But I tell
+you, I don't 'arf like it. It looks to me like the Sea Rynger over
+again.'
+
+Still Herrick was silent.
+
+'Do you hear me speak?' asked Huish sharply. 'You're pleasant, ain't
+you?'
+
+'Stand away from that binnacle,' said Herrick.
+
+The clerk looked at him, long and straight and black; his figure seemed
+to writhe like that of a snake about to strike; then he turned on his
+heel, went back to the cabin and opened a bottle of champagne. When
+eight bells were cried, he slept on the floor beside the captain on the
+locker; and of the whole starboard watch, only Sally Day appeared upon
+the summons. The mate proposed to stand the watch with him, and let
+Uncle Ned lie down; it would make twelve hours on deck, and probably
+sixteen, but in this fair-weather sailing, he might safely sleep between
+his tricks of wheel, leaving orders to be called on any sign of squalls.
+So far he could trust the men, between whom and himself a close relation
+had sprung up. With Uncle Ned he held long nocturnal conversations, and
+the old man told him his simple and hard story of exile, suffering, and
+injustice among cruel whites. The cook, when he found Herrick messed
+alone, produced for him unexpected and sometimes unpalatable dainties,
+of which he forced himself to eat. And one day, when he was forward,
+he was surprised to feel a caressing hand run down his shoulder, and to
+hear the voice of Sally Day crooning in his ear: 'You gootch man!' He
+turned, and, choking down a sob, shook hands with the negrito. They were
+kindly, cheery, childish souls. Upon the Sunday each brought forth
+his separate Bible--for they were all men of alien speech even to each
+other, and Sally Day communicated with his mates in English only, each
+read or made believe to read his chapter, Uncle Ned with spectacles on
+his nose; and they would all join together in the singing of missionary
+hymns. It was thus a cutting reproof to compare the islanders and the
+whites aboard the Farallone. Shame ran in Herrick's blood to remember
+what employment he was on, and to see these poor souls--and even Sally
+Day, the child of cannibals, in all likelihood a cannibal himself--so
+faithful to what they knew of good. The fact that he was held in
+grateful favour by these innocents served like blinders to his
+conscience, and there were times when he was inclined, with Sally Day,
+to call himself a good man. But the height of his favour was only now to
+appear. With one voice, the crew protested; ere Herrick knew what they
+were doing, the cook was aroused and came a willing volunteer; all hands
+clustered about their mate with expostulations and caresses; and he was
+bidden to lie down and take his customary rest without alarm.
+
+'He tell you tlue,' said Uncle Ned. 'You sleep. Evely man hae he do all
+light. Evely man he like you too much.'
+
+Herrick struggled, and gave way; choked upon some trivial words of
+gratitude; and walked to the side of the house, against which he leaned,
+struggling with emotion.
+
+Uncle Ned presently followed him and begged him to lie down.
+
+'It's no use, Uncle Ned,' he replied. 'I couldn't sleep. I'm knocked
+over with all your goodness.'
+
+'Ah, no call me Uncle Ned no mo'!' cried the old man. 'No my name! My
+name Taveeta, all-e-same Taveeta King of Islael. Wat for he call that
+Hawaii? I think no savvy nothing--all-e-same Wise-a-mana.'
+
+It was the first time the name of the late captain had been mentioned,
+and Herrick grasped the occasion. The reader shall be spared Uncle Ned's
+unwieldy dialect, and learn in less embarrassing English, the sum of
+what he now communicated. The ship had scarce cleared the Golden Gates
+before the captain and mate had entered on a career of drunkenness,
+which was scarcely interrupted by their malady and only closed by death.
+For days and weeks they had encountered neither land nor ship; and
+seeing themselves lost on the huge deep with their insane conductors,
+the natives had drunk deep of terror.
+
+At length they made a low island, and went in; and Wiseman and Wishart
+landed in the boat.
+
+There was a great village, a very fine village, and plenty Kanakas in
+that place; but all mighty serious; and from every here and there in
+the back parts of the settlement, Taveeta heard the sounds of island
+lamentation. 'I no savvy TALK that island,' said he. 'I savvy hear
+um CLY. I think, Hum! too many people die here!' But upon Wiseman and
+Wishart the significance of that barbaric keening was lost. Full of
+bread and drink, they rollicked along unconcerned, embraced the girls
+who had scarce energy to repel them, took up and joined (with drunken
+voices) in the death wail, and at last (on what they took to be
+an invitation) entered under the roof of a house in which was a
+considerable concourse of people sitting silent. They stooped below the
+eaves, flushed and laughing; within a minute they came forth again with
+changed faces and silent tongues; and as the press severed to make way
+for them, Taveeta was able to perceive, in the deep shadow of the house,
+the sick man raising from his mat a head already defeatured by disease.
+The two tragic triflers fled without hesitation for their boat,
+screaming on Taveeta to make haste; they came aboard with all speed
+of oars, raised anchor and crowded sail upon the ship with blows and
+curses, and were at sea again--and again drunk--before sunset. A week
+after, and the last of the two had been committed to the deep. Herrick
+asked Taveeta where that island was, and he replied that, by what he
+gathered of folks' talk as they went up together from the beach, he
+supposed it must be one of the Paumotus. This was in itself probable
+enough, for the Dangerous Archipelago had been swept that year from east
+to west by devastating smallpox; but Herrick thought it a strange course
+to lie from Sydney. Then he remembered the drink.
+
+'Were they not surprised when they made the island?' he asked.
+
+'Wise-a-mana he say "dam! what this?"' was the reply.
+
+'O, that's it then,' said Herrick. 'I don't believe they knew where they
+were.'
+
+'I think so too,' said Uncle Ned. 'I think no savvy. This one mo'
+betta,' he added, pointing to the house where the drunken captain
+slumbered: 'Take-a-sun all-e-time.'
+
+The implied last touch completed Herrick's picture of the life and death
+of his two predecessors; of their prolonged, sordid, sodden sensuality
+as they sailed, they knew not whither, on their last cruise. He held but
+a twinkling and unsure belief in any future state; the thought of one
+of punishment he derided; yet for him (as for all) there dwelt a horror
+about the end of the brutish man. Sickness fell upon him at the image
+thus called up; and when he compared it with the scene in which himself
+was acting, and considered the doom that seemed to brood upon the
+schooner, a horror that was almost superstitious fell upon him. And
+yet the strange thing was, he did not falter. He who had proved his
+incapacity in so many fields, being now falsely placed amid duties
+which he did not understand, without help, and it might be said without
+countenance, had hitherto surpassed expectation; and even the shameful
+misconduct and shocking disclosures of that night seemed but to nerve
+and strengthen him. He had sold his honour; he vowed it should not be in
+vain; 'it shall be no fault of mine if this miscarry,' he repeated. And
+in his heart he wondered at himself. Living rage no doubt supported him;
+no doubt also, the sense of the last cast, of the ships burned, of all
+doors closed but one, which is so strong a tonic to the merely weak, and
+so deadly a depressant to the merely cowardly.
+
+For some time the voyage went otherwise well. They weathered Fakarava
+with one board; and the wind holding well to the southward and
+blowing fresh, they passed between Ranaka and Ratiu, and ran some days
+north-east by east-half-east under the lee of Takume and Honden, neither
+of which they made. In about 14 degrees South and between 134 and 135
+degrees West, it fell a dead calm with rather a heavy sea. The captain
+refused to take in sail, the helm was lashed, no watch was set, and the
+Farallone rolled and banged for three days, according to observation, in
+almost the same place. The fourth morning, a little before day, a breeze
+sprang up and rapidly freshened. The captain had drunk hard the night
+before; he was far from sober when he was roused; and when he came on
+deck for the first time at half-past eight, it was plain he had already
+drunk deep again at breakfast. Herrick avoided his eye; and resigned the
+deck with indignation to a man more than half-seas over.
+
+By the loud commands of the captain and the singing out of fellows at
+the ropes, he could judge from the house that sail was being crowded on
+the ship; relinquished his half-eaten breakfast; and came on deck again,
+to find the main and the jib topsails set, and both watches and the cook
+turned out to hand the staysail. The Farallone lay already far over;
+the sky was obscured with misty scud; and from the windward an ominous
+squall came flying up, broadening and blackening as it rose.
+
+Fear thrilled in Herrick's vitals. He saw death hard by; and if not
+death, sure ruin. For if the Farallone lived through the coming squall,
+she must surely be dismasted. With that their enterprise was at an end,
+and they themselves bound prisoners to the very evidence of their crime.
+The greatness of the peril and his own alarm sufficed to silence him.
+Pride, wrath, and shame raged without issue in his mind; and he shut his
+teeth and folded his arms close.
+
+The captain sat in the boat to windward, bellowing orders and insults,
+his eyes glazed, his face deeply congested; a bottle set between his
+knees, a glass in his hand half empty. His back was to the squall, and
+he was at first intent upon the setting of the sail. When that was done,
+and the great trapezium of canvas had begun to draw and to trail the
+lee-rail of the Farallone level with the foam, he laughed out an empty
+laugh, drained his glass, sprawled back among the lumber in the boat,
+and fetched out a crumpled novel.
+
+Herrick watched him, and his indignation glowed red hot. He glanced to
+windward where the squall already whitened the near sea and heralded its
+coming with a singular and dismal sound. He glanced at the steersman,
+and saw him clinging to the spokes with a face of a sickly blue. He saw
+the crew were running to their stations without orders. And it seemed
+as if something broke in his brain; and the passion of anger, so long
+restrained, so long eaten in secret, burst suddenly loose and shook him
+like a sail. He stepped across to the captain and smote his hand heavily
+on the drunkard's shoulder.
+
+'You brute,' he said, in a voice that tottered, 'look behind you!'
+
+'Wha's that?' cried Davis, bounding in the boat and upsetting the
+champagne.
+
+'You lost the Sea Ranger because you were a drunken sot,' said Herrick.
+'Now you're going to lose the Farallone. You're going to drown here the
+same way as you drowned others, and be damned. And your daughter shall
+walk the streets, and your sons be thieves like their father.'
+
+For the moment, the words struck the captain white and foolish. 'My
+God!' he cried, looking at Herrick as upon a ghost; 'my God, Herrick!'
+
+'Look behind you, then!' reiterated the assailant.
+
+The wretched man, already partly sobered, did as he was told, and in the
+same breath of time leaped to his feet. 'Down staysail!' he trumpeted.
+The hands were thrilling for the order, and the great sail came with
+a run, and fell half overboard among the racing foam. 'Jib
+topsail-halyards! Let the stays'l be,' he said again.
+
+But before it was well uttered, the squall shouted aloud and fell, in
+a solid mass of wind and rain commingled, on the Farallone; and she
+stooped under the blow, and lay like a thing dead. From the mind of
+Herrick reason fled; he clung in the weather rigging, exulting; he was
+done with life, and he gloried in the release; he gloried in the wild
+noises of the wind and the choking onslaught of the rain; he gloried to
+die so, and now, amid this coil of the elements. And meanwhile, in the
+waist up to his knees in water--so low the schooner lay--the captain
+was hacking at the foresheet with a pocket knife. It was a question of
+seconds, for the Farallone drank deep of the encroaching seas. But the
+hand of the captain had the advance; the foresail boom tore apart the
+last strands of the sheet and crashed to leeward; the Farallone leaped
+up into the wind and righted; and the peak and throat halyards, which
+had long been let go, began to run at the same instant.
+
+For some ten minutes more she careered under the impulse of the squall;
+but the captain was now master of himself and of his ship, and all
+danger at an end. And then, sudden as a trick change upon the stage, the
+squall blew by, the wind dropped into light airs, the sun beamed forth
+again upon the tattered schooner; and the captain, having secured the
+foresail boom and set a couple of hands to the pump, walked aft, sober,
+a little pale, and with the sodden end of a cigar still stuck between
+his teeth even as the squall had found it. Herrick followed him; he
+could scarce recall the violence of his late emotions, but he felt
+there was a scene to go through, and he was anxious and even eager to go
+through with it.
+
+The captain, turning at the house end, met him face to face, and averted
+his eyes. 'We've lost the two tops'ls and the stays'l,' he gabbled.
+'Good business, we didn't lose any sticks. I guess you think we're all
+the better without the kites.'
+
+'That's not what I'm thinking,' said Herrick, in a voice strangely
+quiet, that yet echoed confusion in the captain's mind.
+
+'I know that,' he cried, holding up his hand. 'I know what you're
+thinking. No use to say it now. I'm sober.'
+
+'I have to say it, though,' returned Herrick.
+
+'Hold on, Herrick; you've said enough,' said Davis. 'You've said what I
+would take from no man breathing but yourself; only I know it's true.'
+
+'I have to tell you, Captain Brown,' pursued Herrick, 'that I resign my
+position as mate. You can put me in irons or shoot me, as you please; I
+will make no resistance--only, I decline in any way to help or to obey
+you; and I suggest you should put Mr Huish in my place. He will make a
+worthy first officer to your captain, sir.' He smiled, bowed, and turned
+to walk forward.
+
+'Where are you going, Herrick?' cried the captain, detaining him by the
+shoulder.
+
+'To berth forward with the men, sir,' replied Herrick, with the same
+hateful smile. 'I've been long enough aft here with you--gentlemen.
+
+'You're wrong there,' said Davis. 'Don't you be too quick with me; there
+ain't nothing wrong but the drink--it's the old story, man! Let me get
+sober once, and then you'll see,' he pleaded.
+
+'Excuse me, I desire to see no more of you,' said Herrick.
+
+The captain groaned aloud. 'You know what you said about my children?'
+he broke out.
+
+'By rote. In case you wish me to say it you again?' asked Herrick.
+
+'Don't!' cried the captain, clapping his hands to his ears. 'Don't make
+me kill a man I care for! Herrick, if you see me put glass to my lips
+again till we're ashore, I give you leave to put bullet through me;
+I beg you to do it! You're the only man aboard whose carcase is worth
+losing; do you think I don't know that? do you think I ever went back on
+you? I always knew you were in the right of it--drunk or sober, I knew
+that. What do you want?--an oath? Man, you're clever enough to see that
+this is sure-enough earnest.'
+
+'Do you mean there shall be no more drinking?' asked Herrick, 'neither
+by you nor Huish? that you won't go on stealing my profits and drinking
+my champagne that I gave my honour for? and that you'll attend to your
+duties, and stand watch and watch, and bear your proper share of the
+ship's work, instead of leaving it all on the shoulders of a landsman,
+and making yourself the butt and scoff of native seamen? Is that what
+you mean? If it is, be so good as to say it categorically.'
+
+'You put these things in a way hard for a gentleman to swallow,' said
+the captain. 'You wouldn't have me say I was ashamed of myself? Trust me
+this once; I'll do the square thing, and there's my hand on it.'
+
+'Well, I'll try it once,' said Herrick. 'Fail me again...'
+
+'No more now!' interrupted Davis. 'No more, old man! Enough said. You've
+a riling tongue when your back's up, Herrick. Just be glad we're friends
+again, the same as what I am; and go tender on the raws; I'll see as you
+don't repent it. We've been mighty near death this day--don't say whose
+fault it was!--pretty near hell, too, I guess. We're in a mighty bad
+line of life, us two, and ought to go easy with each other.'
+
+He was maundering; yet it seemed as if he were maundering with some
+design, beating about the bush of some communication that he feared to
+make, or perhaps only talking against time in terror of what Herrick
+might say next. But Herrick had now spat his venom; his was a kindly
+nature, and, content with his triumph, he had now begun to pity. With
+a few soothing words, he sought to conclude the interview, and proposed
+that they should change their clothes.
+
+'Not right yet,' said Davis. 'There's another thing I want to tell you
+first. You know what you said about my children? I want to tell you why
+it hit me so hard; I kind of think you'll feel bad about it too. It's
+about my little Adar. You hadn't ought to have quite said that--but of
+course I know you didn't know. She--she's dead, you see.'
+
+'Why, Davis!' cried Herrick. 'You've told me a dozen times she was
+alive! Clear your head, man! This must be the drink.'
+
+'No, SIR,' said Davis. 'She's dead. Died of a bowel complaint. That was
+when I was away in the brig Oregon. She lies in Portland, Maine. "Adar,
+only daughter of Captain John Davis and Mariar his wife, aged five."
+I had a doll for her on board. I never took the paper off'n that doll,
+Herrick; it went down the way it was with the Sea Ranger, that day I was
+damned.'
+
+The Captain's eyes were fixed on the horizon, he talked with an
+extraordinary softness but a complete composure; and Herrick looked upon
+him with something that was almost terror.
+
+'Don't think I'm crazy neither,' resumed Davis. 'I've all the cold sense
+that I know what to do with. But I guess a man that's unhappy's like a
+child; and this is a kind of a child's game of mine. I never could act
+up to the plain-cut truth, you see; so I pretend. And I warn you square;
+as soon as we're through with this talk, I'll start in again with
+the pretending. Only, you see, she can't walk no streets,' added the
+captain, 'couldn't even make out to live and get that doll!'
+
+Herrick laid a tremulous hand upon the captain's shoulder.
+
+'Don't do that,' cried Davis, recoiling from the touch. 'Can't you see
+I'm all broken up the way it is? Come along, then; come along, old
+man; you can put your trust in me right through; come along and get dry
+clothes.'
+
+They entered the cabin, and there was Huish on his knees prising open a
+case of champagne.
+
+''Vast, there!' cried the captain. 'No more of that. No more drinking on
+this ship.'
+
+'Turned teetotal, 'ave you?' inquired Hu'sh. 'I'm agreeable. About time,
+eh? Bloomin' nearly lost another ship, I fancy.' He took out a bottle
+and began calmly to burst the wire with the spike of a corkscrew.
+
+'Do you hear me speak?' cried Davis.
+
+'I suppose I do. You speak loud enough,' said Huish. 'The trouble is
+that I don't care.'
+
+Herrick plucked the captain's sleeve. 'Let him free now,' he said.
+'We've had all we want this morning.'
+
+'Let him have it then,' said the captain. 'It's his last.'
+
+By this time the wire was open, the string was cut, the head of glided
+paper was torn away; and Huish waited, mug in hand, expecting the usual
+explosion. It did not follow. He eased the cork with his thumb; still
+there was no result. At last he took the screw and drew it. It came out
+very easy and with scarce a sound.
+
+''Illo!'said Huish. ''Ere's a bad bottle.'
+
+He poured some of the wine into the mug; it was colourless and still. He
+smelt and tasted it.
+
+'W'y, wot's this?' he said. 'It's water!'
+
+If the voice of trumpets had suddenly sounded about the ship in the
+midst of the sea, the three men in the house could scarcely have been
+more stunned than by this incident. The mug passed round; each sipped,
+each smelt of it; each stared at the bottle in its glory of gold paper
+as Crusoe may have stared at the footprint; and their minds were swift
+to fix upon a common apprehension. The difference between a bottle of
+champagne and a bottle of water is not great; between a shipload of one
+or the other lay the whole scale from riches to ruin.
+
+A second bottle was broached. There were two cases standing ready in a
+stateroom; these two were brought out, broken open, and tested. Still
+with the same result: the contents were still colourless and tasteless,
+and dead as the rain in a beached fishing-boat.
+
+'Crikey!' said Huish.
+
+'Here, let's sample the hold!' said the captain, mopping his brow with
+a back-handed sweep; and the three stalked out of the house, grim and
+heavy-footed.
+
+All hands were turned out; two Kanakas were sent below, another
+stationed at a purchase; and Davis, axe in hand, took his place beside
+the coamings.
+
+'Are you going to let the men know?' whispered Herrick.
+
+'Damn the men!' said Davis. 'It's beyond that. We've got to know
+ourselves.'
+
+Three cases were sent on deck and sampled in turn; from each bottle,
+as the captain smashed it with the axe, the champagne ran bubbling and
+creaming.
+
+'Go deeper, can't you?' cried Davis to the Kanakas in the hold.
+
+The command gave the signal for a disastrous change. Case after case
+came up, bottle after bottle was burst and bled mere water. Deeper
+yet, and they came upon a layer where there was scarcely so much as
+the intention to deceive; where the cases were no longer branded, the
+bottles no longer wired or papered, where the fraud was manifest and
+stared them in the face.
+
+'Here's about enough of this foolery!' said Davis. 'Stow back the cases
+in the hold, Uncle, and get the broken crockery overboard. Come with
+me,' he added to his co-adventurers, and led the way back into the
+cabin.
+
+
+
+Chapter 6. THE PARTNERS
+
+Each took a side of the fixed table; it was the first time they had sat
+down at it together; but now all sense of incongruity, all memory of
+differences, was quite swept away by the presence of the common ruin.
+
+'Gentlemen,' said the captain, after a pause, and with very much the air
+of a chairman opening a board-meeting, 'we're sold.'
+
+Huish broke out in laughter. 'Well, if this ain't the 'ighest old rig!'
+he cried. 'And Dyvis, 'ere, who thought he had got up so bloomin' early
+in the mornin'! We've stolen a cargo of spring water! Oh, my crikey!'
+and he squirmed with mirth.
+
+The captain managed to screw out a phantom smile.
+
+'Here's Old Man Destiny again,' said he to Herrick, 'but this time I
+guess he's kicked the door right in.'
+
+Herrick only shook his head.
+
+'O Lord, it's rich!' laughed Huish. 'It would really be a scrumptious
+lark if it 'ad 'appened to somebody else! And wot are we to do next? Oh,
+my eye! with this bloomin' schooner, too?'
+
+'That's the trouble,' said Davis. 'There's only one thing certain: it's
+no use carting this old glass and ballast to Peru. No, SIR, we're in a
+hole.'
+
+'O my, and the merchand' cried Huish; 'the man that made this shipment!
+He'll get the news by the mail brigantine; and he'll think of course
+we're making straight for Sydney.'
+
+'Yes, he'll be a sick merchant,' said the captain. 'One thing: this
+explains the Kanaka crew. If you're going to lose a ship, I would ask
+no better myself than a Kanaka crew. But there's one thing it don't
+explain; it don't explain why she came down Tahiti ways.'
+
+'Wy, to lose her, you byby!' said Huish.
+
+'A lot you know,' said the captain. 'Nobody wants to lose a schooner;
+they want to lose her ON HER COURSE, you skeericks! You seem to think
+underwriters haven't got enough sense to come in out of the rain.'
+
+'Well,' said Herrick, 'I can tell you (I am afraid) why she came so
+far to the eastward. I had it of Uncle Ned. It seems these two unhappy
+devils, Wiseman and Wishart, were drunk on the champagne from the
+beginning--and died drunk at the end.'
+
+The captain looked on the table.
+
+'They lay in their two bunks, or sat here in this damned house,' he
+pursued, with rising agitation, 'filling their skins with the accursed
+stuff, till sickness took them. As they sickened and the fever rose,
+they drank the more. They lay here howling and groaning, drunk and
+dying, all in one. They didn't know where they were, they didn't care.
+They didn't even take the sun, it seems.'
+
+'Not take the sun?' cried the captain, looking up. 'Sacred Billy! what a
+crowd!'
+
+'Well, it don't matter to Joe!' said Huish. 'Wot are Wiseman and the
+t'other buffer to us?'
+
+'A good deal, too,' says the captain. 'We're their heirs, I guess.'
+
+'It is a great inheritance,' said Herrick.
+
+'Well, I don't know about that,' returned Davis. 'Appears to me as if it
+might be worse. 'Tain't worth what the cargo would have been of course,
+at least not money down. But I'll tell you what it appears to figure up
+to. Appears to me as if it amounted to about the bottom dollar of the
+man in 'Frisco.'
+
+''Old on,' said Huish. 'Give a fellow time; 'ow's this, umpire?'
+
+'Well, my sons,' pursued the captain, who seemed to have recovered his
+assurance, 'Wiseman and Wishart were to be paid for casting away this
+old schooner and its cargo. We're going to cast away the schooner right
+enough; and I'll make it my private business to see that we get paid.
+What were W. and W. to get? That's more'n I can tell. But W. and W. went
+into this business themselves, they were on the crook. Now WE'RE on
+the square, we only stumbled into it; and that merchant has just got to
+squeal, and I'm the man to see that he squeals good. No, sir! there's
+some stuffing to this Farallone racket after all.'
+
+'Go it, cap!' cried Huish. 'Yoicks! Forrard! 'Old 'ard! There's your
+style for the money! Blow me if I don't prefer this to the hother.'
+
+'I do not understand,' said Herrick. 'I have to ask you to excuse me; I
+do not understand.'
+
+'Well now, see here, Herrick,' said Davis, 'I'm going to have a word
+with you anyway upon a different matter, and it's good that Huish should
+hear it too. We're done with this boozing business, and we ask your
+pardon for it right here and now. We have to thank you for all you did
+for us while we were making hogs of ourselves; you'll find me turn-to
+all right in future; and as for the wine, which I grant we stole from
+you, I'll take stock and see you paid for it. That's good enough, I
+believe. But what I want to point out to you is this. The old game was
+a risky game. The new game's as safe as running a Vienna Bakery. We just
+put this Farallone before the wind, and run till we're well to looard
+of our port of departure and reasonably well up with some other place,
+where they have an American Consul. Down goes the Farallone, and
+good-bye to her! A day or so in the boat; the consul packs us home,
+at Uncle Sam's expense, to 'Frisco; and if that merchant don't put the
+dollars down, you come to me!'
+
+'But I thought,' began Herrick; and then broke out; 'oh, let's get on to
+Peru!'
+
+'Well, if you're going to Peru for your health, I won't say no!'
+replied the captain. 'But for what other blame' shadow of a reason you
+should want to go there, gets me clear. We don't want to go there with
+this cargo; I don't know as old bottles is a lively article anywheres;
+leastways, I'll go my bottom cent, it ain't Peru. It was always a doubt
+if we could sell the schooner; I never rightly hoped to, and now I'm
+sure she ain't worth a hill of beans; what's wrong with her, I don't
+know; I only know it's something, or she wouldn't be here with this
+truck in her inside. Then again, if we lose her, and land in Peru, where
+are we? We can't declare the loss, or how did we get to Peru? In that
+case the merchant can't touch the insurance; most likely he'll go bust;
+and don't you think you see the three of us on the beach of Callao?'
+
+'There's no extradition there,' said Herrick.
+
+'Well, my son, and we want to be extraded,' said the captain.
+
+'What's our point? We want to have a consul extrade us as far as San
+Francisco and that merchant's office door. My idea is that Samoa would
+be found an eligible business centre. It's dead before the wind; the
+States have a consul there, and 'Frisco steamers call, so's we could
+skip right back and interview the merchant.'
+
+'Samoa?' said Herrick. 'It will take us for ever to get there.'
+
+'Oh, with a fair wind!' said the captain.
+
+'No trouble about the log, eh?' asked Huish.
+
+'No, SIR,' said Davis. 'Light airs and baffling winds. Squalls and
+calms. D. R.: five miles. No obs. Pumps attended. And fill in the
+barometer and thermometer off of last year's trip.' 'Never saw such a
+voyage,' says you to the consul. 'Thought I was going to run short...'
+He stopped in mid career. 'Say,' he began again, and once more stopped.
+'Beg your pardon, Herrick,' he added with undisguised humility, 'but did
+you keep the run of the stores?'
+
+'Had I been told to do so, it should have been done, as the rest was
+done, to the best of my little ability,' said Herrick. 'As it was, the
+cook helped himself to what he pleased.'
+
+Davis looked at the table.
+
+'I drew it rather fine, you see,' he said at last. 'The great thing was
+to clear right out of Papeete before the consul could think better of
+it. Tell you what: I guess I'll take stock.'
+
+And he rose from table and disappeared with a lamp in the lazarette.
+
+''Ere's another screw loose,' observed Huish.
+
+'My man,' said Herrick, with a sudden gleam of animosity, 'it is still
+your watch on deck, and surely your wheel also?'
+
+'You come the 'eavy swell, don't you, ducky?' said Huish.
+
+'Stand away from that binnacle. Surely your w'eel, my man. Yah.'
+
+He lit a cigar ostentatiously, and strolled into the waist with his
+hands in his pockets.
+
+In a surprisingly short time, the captain reappeared; he did not look at
+Herrick, but called Huish back and sat down.
+
+'Well,' he began, 'I've taken stock--roughly.' He paused as if for
+somebody to help him out; and none doing so, both gazing on him instead
+with manifest anxiety, he yet more heavily resumed. 'Well, it won't
+fight. We can't do it; that's the bed rock. I'm as sorry as what you can
+be, and sorrier. We can't look near Samoa. I don't know as we could get
+to Peru.'
+
+'Wot-ju mean?' asked Huish brutally.
+
+'I can't 'most tell myself,' replied the captain. 'I drew it fine; I
+said I did; but what's been going on here gets me! Appears as if the
+devil had been around. That cook must be the holiest kind of fraud. Only
+twelve days, too! Seems like craziness. I'll own up square to one thing:
+I seem to have figured too fine upon the flour. But the rest--my land!
+I'll never understand it! There's been more waste on this twopenny
+ship than what there is to an Atlantic Liner.' He stole a glance at his
+companions; nothing good was to be gleaned from their dark faces; and he
+had recourse to rage. 'You wait till I interview that cook!' he roared
+and smote the table with his fist. 'I'll interview the son of a gun so's
+he's never been spoken to before. I'll put a bead upon the--'
+
+'You will not lay a finger on the man,' said Herrick. 'The fault is
+yours and you know it. If you turn a savage loose in your store-room,
+you know what to expect. I will not allow the man to be molested.'
+
+It is hard to say how Davis might have taken this defiance; but he was
+diverted to a fresh assailant.
+
+'Well!' drawled Huish, 'you're a plummy captain, ain't you? You're a
+blooming captain! Don't you, set up any of your chat to me, John Dyvis:
+I know you now, you ain't any more use than a bloomin' dawl! Oh, you
+"don't know", don't you? Oh, it "gets you", do it? Oh, I dessay! W'y,
+we en't you 'owling for fresh tins every blessed day? 'Ow often 'ave I
+'eard you send the 'ole bloomin' dinner off and tell the man to chuck it
+in the swill tub? And breakfast? Oh, my crikey! breakfast for ten, and
+you 'ollerin' for more! And now you "can't 'most tell"! Blow me, if it
+ain't enough to make a man write an insultin' letter to Gawd! You dror
+it mild, John Dyvis; don't 'andle me; I'm dyngerous.'
+
+Davis sat like one bemused; it might even have been doubted if he heard,
+but the voice of the clerk rang about the cabin like that of a cormorant
+among the ledges of the cliff.
+
+'That will do, Huish,' said Herrick.
+
+'Oh, so you tyke his part, do you? you stuck-up sneerin' snob! Tyke it
+then. Come on, the pair of you. But as for John Dyvis, let him look out!
+He struck me the first night aboard, and I never took a blow yet but
+wot I gave as good. Let him knuckle down on his marrow bones and beg my
+pardon. That's my last word.'
+
+'I stand by the Captain,' said Herrick. 'That makes us two to one, both
+good men; and the crew will all follow me. I hope I shall die very soon;
+but I have not the least objection to killing you before I go. I should
+prefer it so; I should do it with no more remorse than winking. Take
+care--take care, you little cad!'
+
+The animosity with which these words were uttered was so marked in
+itself, and so remarkable in the man who uttered them that Huish stared,
+and even the humiliated Davis reared up his head and gazed at his
+defender. As for Herrick, the successive agitations and disappointments
+of the day had left him wholly reckless; he was conscious of a pleasant
+glow, an agreeable excitement; his head seemed empty, his eyeballs
+burned as he turned them, his throat was dry as a biscuit; the least
+dangerous man by nature, except in so far as the weak are always
+dangerous, at that moment he was ready to slay or to be slain with equal
+unconcern.
+
+Here at least was the gage thrown down, and battle offered; he who
+should speak next would bring the matter to an issue there and then; all
+knew it to be so and hung back; and for many seconds by the cabin clock,
+the trio sat motionless and silent.
+
+Then came an interruption, welcome as the flowers in May.
+
+'Land ho!' sang out a voice on deck. 'Land a weatha bow!'
+
+'Land!' cried Davis, springing to his feet. 'What's this? There ain't no
+land here.'
+
+And as men may run from the chamber of a murdered corpse, the three ran
+forth out of the house and left their quarrel behind them, undecided.
+
+The sky shaded down at the sea level to the white of opals; the sea
+itself, insolently, inkily blue, drew all about them the uncompromising
+wheel of the horizon. Search it as they pleased, not even the practisect
+eye of Captain Davis could descry the smallest interruption. A few filmy
+clouds were slowly melting overhead; and about the schooner, as around
+the only point of interest, a tropic bird, white as a snowflake, hung,
+and circled, and displayed, as it turned, the long vermilion feather of
+its tall. Save the sea and the heaven, that was all.
+
+'Who sang out land?' asked Davis. 'If there's any boy playing funny dog
+with me, I'll teach him skylarking!'
+
+But Uncle Ned contentedly pointed to a part of the horizon, where a
+greenish, filmy iridescence could be discerned floating like smoke on
+the pale heavens.
+
+Davis applied his glass to it, and then looked at the Kanaka. 'Call that
+land?' said he. 'Well, it's more than I do.'
+
+'One time long ago,' said Uncle Ned, 'I see Anaa all-e-same that, four
+five hours befo' we come up. Capena he say sun go down, sun go up again;
+he say lagoon all-e-same milla.'
+
+'All-e-same WHAT?' asked Davis.
+
+'Milla, sah,' said Uncle Ned.
+
+'Oh, ah! mirror,' said Davis. 'I see; reflection from the lagoon. Well,
+you know, it is just possible, though it's strange I never heard of it.
+Here, let's look at the chart.'
+
+They went back to the cabin, and found the position of the schooner well
+to windward of the archipelago in the midst of a white field of paper.
+
+'There! you see for yourselves,' said Davis.
+
+'And yet I don't know,' said Herrick, 'I somehow think there's something
+in it. I'll tell you one thing too, captain; that's all right about the
+reflection; I heard it in Papeete.'
+
+'Fetch up that Findlay, then!' said Davis. 'I'll try it all ways. An
+island wouldn't come amiss, the way we're fixed.'
+
+The bulky volume was handed up to him, broken-backed as is the way with
+Findlay; and he turned to the place and began to run over the text,
+muttering to himself and turning over the pages with a wetted finger.
+
+'Hullo!' he exclaimed. 'How's this?' And he read aloud. 'New Island.
+According to M. Delille this island, which from private interests would
+remain unknown, lies, it is said, in lat. 12 degrees 49' 10" S. long.
+113 degrees 6' W. In addition to the position above given Commander
+Matthews, H.M.S. Scorpion, states that an island exists in lat. 12
+degrees 0' S. long. 13 degrees 16' W. This must be the same, if such
+an island exists, which is very doubtful, and totally disbelieved in by
+South Sea traders.'
+
+'Golly!' said Huish.
+
+'It's rather in the conditional mood,' said Herrick.
+
+'It's anything you please,' cried Davis, 'only there it is! That's our
+place, and don't you make any mistake.'
+
+"'Which from private interests would remain unknown,"' read Herrick,
+over his shoulder. 'What may that mean?'
+
+'It should mean pearls,' said Davis. 'A pearling island the government
+don't know about? That sounds like real estate. Or suppose it don't mean
+anything. Suppose it's just an island; I guess we could fill up with
+fish, and cocoanuts, and native stuff, and carry out the Samoa scheme
+hand over fist. How long did he say it was before they raised Anaa? Five
+hours, I think?'
+
+'Four or five,' said Herrick.
+
+Davis stepped to the door. 'What breeze had you that time you made Anaa,
+Uncle Ned?' said he.
+
+'Six or seven knots,' was the reply.
+
+'Thirty or thirty-five miles,' said Davis. 'High time we were shortening
+sail, then. If it is an island, we don't want to be butting our head
+against it in the dark; and if it isn't an island, we can get through it
+just as well by daylight. Ready about!' he roared.
+
+And the schooner's head was laid for that elusive glimmer in the sky,
+which began already to pale in lustre and diminish in size, as the stain
+of breath vanishes from a window pane. At the same time she was reefed
+close down.
+
+
+
+Part II
+
+THE QUARTETTE
+
+Chapter 7. THE PEARL-FISHER
+
+About four in the morning, as the captain and Herrick sat together on
+the rail, there arose from the midst of the night in front of them the
+voice of breakers. Each sprang to his feet and stared and listened. The
+sound was continuous, like the passing of a train; no rise or fall
+could be distinguished; minute by minute the ocean heaved with an equal
+potency against the invisible isle; and as time passed, and Herrick
+waited in vain for any vicissitude in the volume of that roaring, a
+sense of the eternal weighed upon his mind. To the expert eye the isle
+itself was to be inferred from a certain string of blots along the
+starry heaven. And the schooner was laid to and anxiously observed till
+daylight.
+
+There was little or no morning bank. A brightening came in the east;
+then a wash of some ineffable, faint, nameless hue between crimson and
+silver; and then coals of fire. These glimmered a while on the sea line,
+and seemed to brighten and darken and spread out, and still the night
+and the stars reigned undisturbed; it was as though a spark should
+catch and glow and creep along the foot of some heavy and almost
+incombustible wall-hanging, and the room itself be scarce menaced. Yet
+a little after, and the whole east glowed with gold and scarlet, and the
+hollow of heaven was filled with the daylight.
+
+The isle--the undiscovered, the scarce believed-in--now lay before them
+and close aboard; and Herrick thought that never in his dreams had he
+beheld anything more strange and delicate. The beach was excellently
+white, the continuous barrier of trees inimitably green; the land
+perhaps ten feet high, the trees thirty more. Every here and there, as
+the schooner coasted northward, the wood was intermitted; and he could
+see clear over the inconsiderable strip of land (as a man looks over a
+wall) to the lagoon within--and clear over that again to where the far
+side of the atoll prolonged its pencilling of trees against the morning
+sky. He tortured himself to find analogies. The isle was like the rim
+of a great vessel sunken in the waters; it was like the embankment of
+an annular railway grown upon with wood: so slender it seemed amidst the
+outrageous breakers, so frail and pretty, he would scarce have wondered
+to see it sink and disappear without a sound, and the waves close
+smoothly over its descent.
+
+Meanwhile the captain was in the forecross-trees, glass in hand, his
+eyes in every quarter, spying for an entrance, spying for signs of
+tenancy. But the isle continued to unfold itself in joints, and to run
+out in indeterminate capes, and still there was neither house nor
+man, nor the smoke of fire. Here a multitude of sea-birds soared and
+twinkled, and fished in the blue waters; and there, and for miles
+together, the fringe of cocoa-palm and pandanus extended desolate, and
+made desirable green bowers for nobody to visit, and the silence of
+death was only broken by the throbbing of the sea.
+
+The airs were very light, their speed was small; the heat intense. The
+decks were scorching underfoot, the sun flamed overhead, brazen, out
+of a brazen sky; the pitch bubbled in the seams, and the brains in the
+brain-pan. And all the while the excitement of the three adventurers
+glowed about their bones like a fever. They whispered, and nodded, and
+pointed, and put mouth to ear, with a singular instinct of secrecy,
+approaching that island underhand like eavesdroppers and thieves; and
+even Davis from the cross-trees gave his orders mostly by gestures. The
+hands shared in this mute strain, like dogs, without comprehending it;
+and through the roar of so many miles of breakers, it was a silent ship
+that approached an empty island.
+
+At last they drew near to the break in that interminable gangway. A spur
+of coral sand stood forth on the one hand; on the other a high and thick
+tuft of trees cut off the view; between was the mouth of the huge laver.
+Twice a day the ocean crowded in that narrow entrance and was heaped
+between these frail walls; twice a day, with the return of the ebb, the
+mighty surplusage of water must struggle to escape. The hour in which
+the Farallone came there was the hour of flood. The sea turned (as
+with the instinct of the homing pigeon) for the vast receptacle, swept
+eddying through the gates, was transmuted, as it did so, into a wonder
+of watery and silken hues, and brimmed into the inland sea beyond. The
+schooner looked up close-hauled, and was caught and carried away by the
+influx like a toy. She skimmed; she flew; a momentary shadow touched her
+decks from the shore-side trees; the bottom of the channel showed up for
+a moment and was in a moment gone; the next, she floated on the bosom of
+the lagoon, and below, in the transparent chamber of waters, a myriad
+of many-coloured fishes were sporting, a myriad pale-flowers of coral
+diversified the floor.
+
+Herrick stood transported. In the gratified lust of his eye, he forgot
+the past and the present; forgot that he was menaced by a prison on the
+one hand and starvation on the other; forgot that he was come to that
+island, desperately foraging, clutching at expedients. A drove of
+fishes, painted like the rainbow and billed like parrots, hovered up in
+the shadow of the schooner, and passed clear of it, and glinted in the
+submarine sun. They were beautiful, like birds, and their silent passage
+impressed him like a strain of song.
+
+Meanwhile, to the eye of Davis in the cross-trees, the lagoon continued
+to expand its empty waters, and the long succession of the shore-side
+trees to be paid out like fishing line off a reel. And still there was
+no mark of habitation. The schooner, immediately on entering, had been
+kept away to the nor'ard where the water seemed to be the most deep; and
+she was now skimming past the tall grove of trees, which stood on that
+side of the channel and denied further view. Of the whole of the low
+shores of the island, only this bight remained to be revealed. And
+suddenly the curtain was raised; they began to open out a haven, snugly
+elbowed there, and beheld, with an astonishment beyond words, the roofs
+of men.
+
+The appearance, thus 'instantaneously disclosed' to those on the deck of
+the Farallone, was not that of a city, rather of a substantial country
+farm with its attendant hamlet: a long line of sheds and store-houses;
+apart, upon the one side, a deep-verandah'ed dwelling-house; on the
+other, perhaps a dozen native huts; a building with a belfry and some
+rude offer at architectural features that might be thought to mark it
+out for a chapel; on the beach in front some heavy boats drawn up, and
+a pile of timber running forth into the burning shallows of the
+lagoon. From a flagstaff at the pierhead, the red ensign of England was
+displayed. Behind, about, and over, the same tall grove of palms,
+which had masked the settlement in the beginning, prolonged its root
+of tumultuous green fans, and turned and ruffled overhead, and sang its
+silver song all day in the wind. The place had the indescribable but
+unmistakable appearance of being in commission; yet there breathed from
+it a sense of desertion that was almost poignant, no human figure was to
+be observed going to and fro about the houses, and there was no sound of
+human industry or enjoyment. Only, on the top of the beach and hard by
+the flagstaff, a woman of exorbitant stature and as white as snow was to
+be seen beckoning with uplifted arm. The second glance identified her
+as a piece of naval sculpture, the figure-head of a ship that had long
+hovered and plunged into so many running billows, and was now brought
+ashore to be the ensign and presiding genius of that empty town.
+
+The Farallone made a soldier's breeze of it; the wind, besides, was
+stronger inside than without under the lee of the land; and the stolen
+schooner opened out successive objects with the swiftness of a panorama,
+so that the adventurers stood speechless. The flag spoke for itself; it
+was no frayed and weathered trophy that had beaten itself to pieces on
+the post, flying over desolation; and to make assurance stronger, there
+was to be descried in the deep shade of the verandah, a glitter of
+crystal and the fluttering of white napery. If the figure-head at the
+pier end, with its perpetual gesture and its leprous whiteness, reigned
+alone in that hamlet as it seemed to do, it would not have reigned long.
+Men's hands had been busy, men's feet stirring there, within the circuit
+of the clock. The Farallones were sure of it; their eyes dug in the deep
+shadow of the palms for some one hiding; if intensity of looking might
+have prevailed, they would have pierced the walls of houses; and there
+came to them, in these pregnant seconds, a sense of being watched and
+played with, and of a blow impending, that was hardly bearable.
+
+The extreme point of palms they had just passed enclosed a creek, which
+was thus hidden up to the last moment from the eyes of those on board;
+and from this, a boat put suddenly and briskly out, and a voice hailed.
+
+'Schooner ahoy!' it cried. 'Stand in for the pier! In two cables'
+lengths you'll have twenty fathoms water and good holding ground.'
+
+The boat was manned with a couple of brown oarsmen in scanty kilts of
+blue. The speaker, who was steering, wore white clothes, the full dress
+of the tropics; a wide hat shaded his face; but it could be seen that he
+was of stalwart size, and his voice sounded like a gentleman's. So much
+could be made out. It was plain, besides, that the Farallone had been
+descried some time before at sea, and the inhabitants were prepared for
+its reception.
+
+Mechanically the orders were obeyed, and the ship berthed; and the three
+adventurers gathered aft beside the house and waited, with galloping
+pulses and a perfect vacancy of mind, the coming of the stranger who
+might mean so much to them. They had no plan, no story prepared; there
+was no time to make one; they were caught red-handed and must stand
+their chance. Yet this anxiety was chequered with hope. The island being
+undeclared, it was not possible the man could hold any office or be in a
+position to demand their papers. And beyond that, if there was any truth
+in Findlay, as it now seemed there should be, he was the representative
+of the 'private reasons,' he must see their coming with a profound
+disappointment; and perhaps (hope whispered) he would be willing and
+able to purchase their silence.
+
+The boat was by that time forging alongside, and they were able at last
+to see what manner of man they had to do with. He was a huge fellow,
+six feet four in height, and of a build proportionately strong, but
+his sinews seemed to be dissolved in a listlessness that was more than
+languor. It was only the eye that corrected this impression; an eye
+of an unusual mingled brilliancy and softness, sombre as coal and
+with lights that outshone the topaz; an eye of unimpaired health and
+virility; an eye that bid you beware of the man's devastating anger.
+A complexion, naturally dark, had been tanned in the island to a hue
+hardly distinguishable from that of a Tahitian; only his manners and
+movements, and the living force that dwelt in him, like fire in flint,
+betrayed the European. He was dressed in white drill, exquisitely made;
+his scarf and tie were of tender-coloured silks; on the thwart beside
+him there leaned a Winchester rifle.
+
+'Is the doctor on board?' he cried as he came up. 'Dr Symonds, I mean?
+You never heard of him? Nor yet of the Trinity Hall? Ah!'
+
+He did not look surprised, seemed rather to affect it in politeness;
+but his eye rested on each of the three white men in succession with a
+sudden weight of curiosity that was almost savage. 'Ah, THEN!' said he,
+'there is some small mistake, no doubt, and I must ask you to what I am
+indebted for this pleasure?'
+
+He was by this time on the deck, but he had the art to be quite
+unapproachable; the friendliest vulgarian, three parts drunk, would have
+known better than take liberties; and not one of the adventurers so much
+as offered to shake hands.
+
+'Well,' said Davis, 'I suppose you may call it an accident. We had heard
+of your island, and read that thing in the Directory about the PRIVATE
+REASONS, you see; so when we saw the lagoon reflected in the sky, we put
+her head for it at once, and so here we are.'
+
+''Ope we don't intrude!' said Huish.
+
+The stranger looked at Huish with an air of faint surprise, and looked
+pointedly away again. It was hard to be more offensive in dumb show.
+
+'It may suit me, your coming here,' he said. 'My own schooner is
+overdue, and I may put something in your way in the meantime. Are you
+open to a charter?'
+
+'Well, I guess so,' said Davis; 'it depends.'
+
+'My name is Attwater,' continued the stranger. 'You, I presume, are the
+captain?'
+
+'Yes, sir. I am the captain of this ship: Captain Brown,' was the reply.
+
+'Well, see 'ere!' said Huish, 'better begin fair! 'E's skipper on deck
+right enough, but not below. Below, we're all equal, all got a lay in
+the adventure; when it comes to business, I'm as good as 'e; and what I
+say is, let's go into the 'ouse and have a lush, and talk it over among
+pals. We've some prime fizz,' he said, and winked.
+
+The presence of the gentleman lighted up like a candle the vulgarity of
+the clerk; and Herrick instinctively, as one shields himself from pain,
+made haste to interrupt.
+
+'My name is Hay,' said he, 'since introductions are going. We shall be
+very glad if you will step inside.'
+
+Attwater leaned to him swiftly. 'University man?' said he.
+
+'Yes, Merton,' said Herrick, and the next moment blushed scarlet at his
+indiscretion.
+
+'I am of the other lot,' said Attwater: 'Trinity Hall, Cambridge. I
+called my schooner after the old shop. Well! this is a queer place and
+company for us to meet in, Mr Hay,' he pursued, with easy incivility to
+the others. 'But do you bear out ... I beg this gentleman's pardon, I
+really did not catch his name.'
+
+'My name is 'Uish, sir,' returned the clerk, and blushed in turn.
+
+'Ah!' said Attwater. And then turning again to Herrick, 'Do you bear out
+Mr Whish's description of your vintage? or was it only the unaffected
+poetry of his own nature bubbling up?'
+
+Herrick was embarrassed; the silken brutality of their visitor made
+him blush; that he should be accepted as an equal, and the others thus
+pointedly ignored, pleased him in spite of himself, and then ran through
+his veins in a recoil of anger.
+
+'I don't know,' he said. 'It's only California; it's good enough, I
+believe.'
+
+Attwater seemed to make up his mind. 'Well then, I'll tell you what: you
+three gentlemen come ashore this evening and bring a basket of wine with
+you; I'll try and find the food,' he said. 'And by the by, here is a
+question I should have asked you when I come on board: have you had
+smallpox?'
+
+'Personally, no,' said Herrick. 'But the schooner had it.'
+
+'Deaths?' from Attwater.
+
+'Two,' said Herrick.
+
+'Well, it is a dreadful sickness,' said Attwater.
+
+''Ad you any deaths?' asked Huish, ''ere on the island?'
+
+'Twenty-nine,' said Attwater. 'Twenty-nine deaths and thirty-one cases,
+out of thirty-three souls upon the island.--That's a strange way to
+calculate, Mr Hay, is it not? Souls! I never say it but it startles me.'
+
+'Oh, so that's why everything's deserted?' said Huish.
+
+'That is why, Mr Whish,' said Attwater; 'that is why the house is empty
+and the graveyard full.'
+
+'Twenty-nine out of thirty-three!' exclaimed Herrick, 'Why, when it came
+to burying--or did you bother burying?'
+
+'Scarcely,' said Attwater; 'or there was one day at least when we gave
+up. There were five of the dead that morning, and thirteen of the dying,
+and no one able to go about except the sexton and myself. We held a
+council of war, took the... empty bottles... into the lagoon, and buried
+them.' He looked over his shoulder, back at the bright water. 'Well,
+so you'll come to dinner, then? Shall we say half-past six. So good of
+you!'
+
+His voice, in uttering these conventional phrases, fell at once into
+the false measure of society; and Herrick unconsciously followed the
+example.
+
+'I am sure we shall be very glad,' he said. 'At half-past six? Thank you
+so very much.'
+
+     '"For my voice has been tuned to the note of the gun
+
+     That startles the deep when the combat's begun,"'
+
+quoted Attwater, with a smile, which instantly gave way to an air
+of funereal solemnity. 'I shall particularly expect Mr Whish,' he
+continued. 'Mr Whish, I trust you understand the invitation?'
+
+'I believe you, my boy!' replied the genial Huish.
+
+'That is right then; and quite understood, is it not?' said Attwater.
+'Mr Whish and Captain Brown at six-thirty without fault--and you, Hay,
+at four sharp.'
+
+And he called his boat.
+
+During all this talk, a load of thought or anxiety had weighed upon the
+captain. There was no part for which nature had so liberally endowed
+him as that of the genial ship captain. But today he was silent and
+abstracted. Those who knew him could see that he hearkened close to
+every syllable, and seemed to ponder and try it in balances. It
+would have been hard to say what look there was, cold, attentive, and
+sinister, as of a man maturing plans, which still brooded over the
+unconscious guest; it was here, it was there, it was nowhere; it was now
+so little that Herrick chid himself for an idle fancy; and anon it was
+so gross and palpable that you could say every hair on the man's head
+talked mischief.
+
+He woke up now, as with a start. 'You were talking of a charter,' said
+he.
+
+'Was I?' said Attwater. 'Well, let's talk of it no more at present.'
+
+'Your own schooner is overdue, I understand?' continued the captain.
+
+'You understand perfectly, Captain Brown,' said Attwater; 'thirty-three
+days overdue at noon today.'
+
+'She comes and goes, eh? plies between here and...?' hinted the captain.
+
+'Exactly; every four months; three trips in the year,' said Attwater.
+
+'You go in her, ever?' asked Davis.
+
+'No, one stops here,' said Attwater, 'one has plenty to attend to.'
+
+'Stop here, do you?' cried Davis. 'Say, how long?'
+
+'How long, O Lord,' said Attwater with perfect, stern gravity. 'But it
+does not seem so,' he added, with a smile.
+
+'No, I dare say not,' said Davis. 'No, I suppose not. Not with all your
+gods about you, and in as snug a berth as this. For it is a pretty snug
+berth,' said he, with a sweeping look.
+
+'The spot, as you are good enough to indicate, is not entirely
+intolerable,' was the reply.
+
+'Shell, I suppose?' said Davis.
+
+'Yes, there was shell,' said Attwater.
+
+'This is a considerable big beast of a lagoon, sir,' said the captain.
+'Was there a--was the fishing--would you call the fishing anyways GOOD?'
+
+'I don't know that I would call it anyways anything,' said Attwater, 'if
+you put it to me direct.'
+
+'There were pearls too?' said Davis.
+
+'Pearls, too,' said Attwater.
+
+'Well, I give out!' laughed Davis, and his laughter rang cracked like a
+false piece. 'If you're not going to tell, you're not going to tell, and
+there's an end to it.'
+
+'There can be no reason why I should affect the least degree of secrecy
+about my island,' returned Attwater; 'that came wholly to an end with
+your arrival; and I am sure, at any rate, that gentlemen like you and Mr
+Whish, I should have always been charmed to make perfectly at home. The
+point on which we are now differing--if you can call it a difference--is
+one of times and seasons. I have some information which you think I
+might impart, and I think not. Well, we'll see tonight! By-by, Whish!'
+He stepped into his boat and shoved off. 'All understood, then?' said
+he. 'The captain and Mr Whish at six-thirty, and you, Hay, at four
+precise. You understand that, Hay? Mind, I take no denial. If you're not
+there by the time named, there will be no banquet; no song, no supper,
+Mr Whish!'
+
+White birds whisked in the air above, a shoal of parti-coloured fishes
+in the scarce denser medium below; between, like Mahomet's coffin, the
+boat drew away briskly on the surface, and its shadow followed it over
+the glittering floor of the lagoon. Attwater looked steadily back
+over his shoulders as he sat; he did not once remove his eyes from the
+Farallone and the group on her quarter-deck beside the house, till
+his boat ground upon the pier. Thence, with an agile pace, he hurried
+ashore, and they saw his white clothes shining in the chequered dusk of
+the grove until the house received him.
+
+The captain, with a gesture and a speaking countenance, called the
+adventurers into the cabin.
+
+'Well,' he said to Herrick, when they were seated, 'there's one good job
+at least. He's taken to you in earnest.'
+
+'Why should that be a good job?' said Herrick.
+
+'Oh, you'll see how it pans out presently,' returned Davis. 'You go
+ashore and stand in with him, that's all! You'll get lots of pointers;
+you can find out what he has, and what the charter is, and who's the
+fourth man--for there's four of them, and we're only three.'
+
+'And suppose I do, what next?' cried Herrick. 'Answer me that!'
+
+'So I will, Robert Herrick,' said the captain. 'But first, let's see all
+clear. I guess you know,' he said with an imperious solemnity, 'I guess
+you know the bottom is out of this Farallone speculation? I guess you
+know it's RIGHT out? and if this old island hadn't been turned up right
+when it did, I guess you know where you and I and Huish would have
+been?'
+
+'Yes, I know that,' said Herrick. 'No matter who's to blame, I know it.
+And what next?'
+
+'No matter who's to blame, you know it, right enough,' said the captain,
+'and I'm obliged to you for the reminder. Now here's this Attwater: what
+do you think of him?'
+
+'I do not know,' said Herrick. 'I am attracted and repelled. He was
+insufferably rude to you.'
+
+'And you, Huish?' said the captain.
+
+Huish sat cleaning a favourite briar root; he scarce looked up from that
+engrossing task. 'Don't ast me what I think of him!' he said. 'There's a
+day comin', I pray Gawd, when I can tell it him myself.'
+
+'Huish means the same as what I do,' said Davis. 'When that man came
+stepping around, and saying "Look here, I'm Attwater"--and you knew it
+was so, by God!--I sized him right straight up. Here's the real
+article, I said, and I don't like it; here's the real, first-rate,
+copper-bottomed aristocrat. 'AW' I DON'T KNOW YE, DO I? GOD DAMN YE, DID
+GOD MAKE YE?' No, that couldn't be nothing but genuine; a man got to be
+born to that, and notice! smart as champagne and hard as nails; no kind
+of a fool; no, SIR! not a pound of him! Well, what's he here upon this
+beastly island for? I said. HE'S not here collecting eggs. He's a palace
+at home, and powdered flunkies; and if he don't stay there, you bet he
+knows the reason why! Follow?'
+
+'O yes, I 'ear you,' said Huish.
+
+'He's been doing good business here, then,' continued the captain. 'For
+ten years, he's been doing a great business. It's pearl and shell, of
+course; there couldn't be nothing else in such a place, and no doubt
+the shell goes off regularly by this Trinity Hall, and the money for it
+straight into the bank, so that's no use to us. But what else is there?
+Is there nothing else he would be likely to keep here? Is there nothing
+else he would be bound to keep here? Yes, sir; the pearls! First,
+because they're too valuable to trust out of his hands. Second, because
+pearls want a lot of handling and matching; and the man who sells his
+pearls as they come in, one here, one there, instead of hanging back and
+holding up--well, that man's a fool, and it's not Attwater.'
+
+'Likely,' said Huish, 'that's w'at it is; not proved, but likely.'
+
+'It's proved,' said Davis bluntly.
+
+'Suppose it was?' said Herrick. 'Suppose that was all so, and he had
+these pearls--a ten years' collection of them?--Suppose he had? There's
+my question.'
+
+The captain drummed with his thick hands on the board in front of him;
+he looked steadily in Herrick's face, and Herrick as steadily looked
+upon the table and the pattering fingers; there was a gentle oscillation
+of the anchored ship, and a big patch of sunlight travelled to and fro
+between the one and the other.
+
+'Hear me!' Herrick burst out suddenly.
+
+'No, you better hear me first,' said Davis. 'Hear me and understand me.
+WE'VE got no use for that fellow, whatever you may have. He's your kind,
+he's not ours; he's took to you, and he's wiped his boots on me and
+Huish. Save him if you can!'
+
+'Save him?' repeated Herrick.
+
+'Save him, if you're able!' reiterated Davis, with a blow of his
+clenched fist. 'Go ashore, and talk him smooth; and if you get him and
+his pearls aboard, I'll spare him. If you don't, there's going to be a
+funeral. Is that so, Huish? does that suit you?'
+
+'I ain't a forgiving man,' said Huish, 'but I'm not the sort to spoil
+business neither. Bring the bloke on board and bring his pearls along
+with him, and you can have it your own way; maroon him where you
+like--I'm agreeable.'
+
+'Well, and if I can't?' cried Herrick, while the sweat streamed upon his
+face. 'You talk to me as if I was God Almighty, to do this and that! But
+if I can't?'
+
+'My son,' said the captain, 'you better do your level best, or you'll
+see sights!'
+
+'O yes,' said Huish. 'O crikey, yes!' He looked across at Herrick with
+a toothless smile that was shocking in its savagery; and his ear caught
+apparently by the trivial expression he had used, broke into a piece of
+the chorus of a comic song which he must have heard twenty years before
+in London: meaningless gibberish that, in that hour and place, seemed
+hateful as a blasphemy: 'Hikey, pikey, crikey, fikey, chillingawallaba
+dory.'
+
+The captain suffered him to finish; his face was unchanged.
+
+'The way things are, there's many a man that wouldn't let you go
+ashore,' he resumed. 'But I'm not that kind. I know you'd never go back
+on me, Herrick! Or if you choose to--go, and do it, and be damned!' he
+cried, and rose abruptly from the table.
+
+He walked out of the house; and as he reached the door, turned and
+called Huish, suddenly and violently, like the barking of a dog. Huish
+followed, and Herrick remained alone in the cabin.
+
+'Now, see here!' whispered Davis. 'I know that man. If you open your
+mouth to him again, you'll ruin all.'
+
+
+
+Chapter 8. BETTER ACQUAINTANCE
+
+The boat was gone again, and already half-way to the Farallone, before
+Herrick turned and went unwillingly up the pier. From the crown of
+the beach, the figure-head confronted him with what seemed irony,
+her helmeted head tossed back, her formidable arm apparently hurling
+something, whether shell or missile, in the direction of the anchored
+schooner. She seemed a defiant deity from the island, coming forth to
+its threshold with a rush as of one about to fly, and perpetuated in
+that dashing attitude. Herrick looked up at her, where she towered above
+him head and shoulders, with singular feelings of curiosity and romance,
+and suffered his mind to travel to and fro in her life-history. So long
+she had been the blind conductress of a ship among the waves; so long
+she had stood here idle in the violent sun, that yet did not avail
+to blister her; and was even this the end of so many adventures? he
+wondered, or was more behind? And he could have found in his heart to
+regret that she was not a goddess, nor yet he a pagan, that he might
+have bowed down before her in that hour of difficulty.
+
+When he now went forward, it was cool with the shadow of many well-grown
+palms; draughts of the dying breeze swung them together overhead; and on
+all sides, with a swiftness beyond dragon-flies or swallows, the spots
+of sunshine flitted, and hovered, and returned. Underfoot, the sand was
+fairly solid and quite level, and Herrick's steps fell there noiseless
+as in new-fallen snow. It bore the marks of having been once weeded like
+a garden alley at home; but the pestilence had done its work, and the
+weeds were returning. The buildings of the settlement showed here and
+there through the stems of the colonnade, fresh painted, trim and dandy,
+and all silent as the grave. Only, here and there in the crypt, there
+was a rustle and scurry and some crowing of poultry; and from behind the
+house with the verandahs, he saw smoke arise and heard the crackling of
+a fire.
+
+The stone houses were nearest him upon his right. The first was locked;
+in the second, he could dimly perceive, through a window, a certain
+accumulation of pearl-shell piled in the far end; the third, which stood
+gaping open on the afternoon, seized on the mind of Herrick with its
+multiplicity and disorder of romantic things. Therein were cables,
+windlasses and blocks of every size and capacity; cabin windows and
+ladders; rusty tanks, a companion hutch; a binnacle with its brass
+mountings and its compass idly pointing, in the confusion and dusk of
+that shed, to a forgotten pole; ropes, anchors, harpoons, a blubber
+dipper of copper, green with years, a steering wheel, a tool chest with
+the vessel's name upon the top, the Asia: a whole curiosity-shop of sea
+curios, gross and solid, heavy to lift, ill to break, bound with brass
+and shod with iron. Two wrecks at the least must have contributed to
+this random heap of lumber; and as Herrick looked upon it, it seemed to
+him as if the two ships' companies were there on guard, and he heard
+the tread of feet and whisperings, and saw with the tail of his eye the
+commonplace ghosts of sailor men.
+
+This was not merely the work of an aroused imagination, but had
+something sensible to go upon; sounds of a stealthy approach were no
+doubt audible; and while he still stood staring at the lumber, the voice
+of his host sounded suddenly, and with even more than the customary
+softness of enunciation, from behind.
+
+'Junk,', it said, 'only old junk! And does Mr Hay find a parable?'
+
+'I find at least a strong impression,' replied Herrick, turning quickly,
+lest he might be able to catch, on the face of the speaker, some
+commentary on the words.
+
+Attwater stood in the doorway, which he almost wholly filled; his hands
+stretched above his head and grasping the architrave. He smiled when
+their eyes Met, but the expression was inscrutable.
+
+'Yes, a powerful impression. You are like me; nothing so affecting as
+ships!' said he. 'The ruins of an empire would leave me frigid, when a
+bit of an old rail that an old shellback leaned on in the middle watch,
+would bring me up all standing. But come, let's see some more of the
+island. It's all sand and coral and palm trees; but there's a kind of a
+quaintness in the place.'
+
+'I find it heavenly,' said Herrick, breathing deep, with head bared in
+the shadow.
+
+'Ah, that's because you're new from sea,' said Attwater. 'I dare say,
+too, you can appreciate what one calls it. It's a lovely name. It has
+a flavour, it has a colour, it has a ring and fall to it; it's like its
+author--it's half Christian! Remember your first view of the island, and
+how it's only woods and water; and suppose you had asked somebody for
+the name, and he had answered--nemorosa Zacynthos!'
+
+'Jam medio apparet fluctu!' exclaimed Herrick. 'Ye gods, yes, how good!'
+
+'If it gets upon the chart, the skippers will make nice work of it,'
+said Attwater. 'But here, come and see the diving-shed.'
+
+He opened a door, and Herrick saw a large display of apparatus neatly
+ordered: pumps and pipes, and the leaded boots, and the huge snouted
+helmets shining in rows along the wall; ten complete outfits.
+
+'The whole eastern half of my lagoon is shallow, you must understand,'
+said Attwater; 'so we were able to get in the dress to great advantage.
+It paid beyond belief, and was a queer sight when they were at it,
+and these marine monsters'--tapping the nearest of the helmets--'kept
+appearing and reappearing in the midst of the lagoon. Fond of parables?'
+he asked abruptly.
+
+'O yes!' said Herrick.
+
+'Well, I saw these machines come up dripping and go down again, and come
+up dripping and go down again, and all the while the fellow inside as
+dry as toast!' said Attwater; 'and I thought we all wanted a dress to
+go down into the world in, and come up scatheless. What do you think the
+name was?' he inquired.
+
+'Self-conceit,' said Herrick.
+
+'Ah, but I mean seriously!' said Attwater.
+
+'Call it self-respect, then!' corrected Herrick, with a laugh.
+
+'And why not Grace? Why not God's Grace, Hay?' asked Attwater. 'Why
+not the grace of your Maker and Redeemer, He who died for you, He
+who upholds you, He whom you daily crucify afresh? There is nothing
+here,'--striking on his bosom--'nothing there'--smiting the wall--'and
+nothing there'--stamping--'nothing but God's Grace! We walk upon it, we
+breathe it; we live and die by it; it makes the nails and axles of the
+universe; and a puppy in pyjamas prefers self-conceit!' The huge dark
+man stood over against Herrick by the line of the divers' helmets, and
+seemed to swell and glow; and the next moment the life had gone from
+him. 'I beg your pardon,' said he; 'I see you don't believe in God?'
+
+'Not in your sense, I am afraid,' said Herrick.
+
+'I never argue with young atheists or habitual drunkards,' said Attwater
+flippantly. 'Let us go across the island to the outer beach.'
+
+It was but a little way, the greatest width of that island scarce
+exceeding a furlong, and they walked gently. Herrick was like one in
+a dream. He had come there with a mind divided; come prepared to study
+that ambiguous and sneering mask, drag out the essential man from
+underneath, and act accordingly; decision being till then postponed.
+Iron cruelty, an iron insensibility to the suffering of others, the
+uncompromising pursuit of his own interests, cold culture, manners
+without humanity; these he had looked for, these he still thought he
+saw. But to find the whole machine thus glow with the reverberation of
+religious zeal, surprised him beyond words; and he laboured in vain, as
+he walked, to piece together into any kind of whole his odds and ends
+of knowledge--to adjust again into any kind of focus with itself, his
+picture of the man beside him.
+
+'What brought you here to the South Seas?' he asked presently.
+
+'Many things,' said Attwater. 'Youth, curiosity, romance, the love of
+the sea, and (it will surprise you to hear) an interest in missions.
+That has a good deal declined, which will surprise you less. They go the
+wrong way to work; they are too parsonish, too much of the old wife, and
+even the old apple wife. CLOTHES, CLOTHES, are their idea; but clothes
+are not Christianity, any more than they are the sun in heaven, or could
+take the place of it! They think a parsonage with roses, and church
+bells, and nice old women bobbing in the lanes, are part and parcel
+of religion. But religion is a savage thing, like the universe it
+illuminates; savage, cold, and bare, but infinitely strong.'
+
+'And you found this island by an accident?' said Herrick.
+
+'As you did!' said Attwater. 'And since then I have had a business, and
+a colony, and a mission of my own. I was a man of the world before I was
+a Christian; I'm a man of the world still, and I made my mission pay.
+No good ever came of coddling. A man has to stand up in God's sight
+and work up to his weight avoirdupois; then I'll talk to him, but not
+before. I gave these beggars what they wanted: a judge in Israel, the
+bearer of the sword and scourge; I was making a new people here; and
+behold, the angel of the Lord smote them and they were not!'
+
+With the very uttering of the words, which were accompanied by a
+gesture, they came forth out of the porch of the palm wood by the margin
+of the sea and full in front of the sun which was near setting. Before
+them the surf broke slowly. All around, with an air of imperfect wooden
+things inspired with wicked activity, the crabs trundled and scuttled
+into holes. On the right, whither Attwater pointed and abruptly turned,
+was the cemetery of the island, a field of broken stones from the
+bigness of a child's hand to that of his head, diversified by many
+mounds of the same material, and walled by a rude rectangular enclosure.
+Nothing grew there but a shrub or two with some white flowers; nothing
+but the number of the mounds, and their disquieting shape, indicated the
+presence of the dead.
+
+  'The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep!'
+
+quoted Attwater as he entered by the open gateway into that unholy
+close. 'Coral to coral, pebbles to pebbles,' he said, 'this has been the
+main scene of my activity in the South Pacific. Some were good, and some
+bad, and the majority (of course and always) null. Here was a fellow,
+now, that used to frisk like a dog; if you had called him he came like
+an arrow from a bow; if you had not, and he came unbidden, you should
+have seen the deprecating eye and the little intricate dancing
+step. Well, his trouble is over now, he has lain down with kings and
+councillors; the rest of his acts, are they not written in the book
+of the chronicles? That fellow was from Penrhyn; like all the Penrhyn
+islanders he was ill to manage; heady, jealous, violent: the man with
+the nose! He lies here quiet enough. And so they all lie.
+
+ "And darkness was the burier of the dead!"'
+
+He stood, in the strong glow of the sunset, with bowed head; his voice
+sounded now sweet and now bitter with the varying sense.
+
+'You loved these people?' cried Herrick, strangely touched.
+
+'I?' said Attwater. 'Dear no! Don't think me a philanthropist. I dislike
+men, and hate women. If I like the islands at all, it is because you see
+them here plucked of their lendings, their dead birds and cocked hats,
+their petticoats and coloured hose. Here was one I liked though,' and he
+set his foot upon a mound. 'He was a fine savage fellow; he had a dark
+soul; yes, I liked this one. I am fanciful,' he added, looking hard at
+Herrick, 'and I take fads. I like you.'
+
+Herrick turned swiftly and looked far away to where the clouds were
+beginning to troop together and amass themselves round the obsequies of
+day. 'No one can like me,' he said.
+
+'You are wrong there,' said the other, 'as a man usually is about
+himself. You are attractive, very attractive.'
+
+'It is not me,' said Herrick; 'no one can like me. If you knew how I
+despised myself--and why!' His voice rang out in the quiet graveyard.
+
+'I knew that you despised yourself,' said Attwater. 'I saw the blood
+come into your face today when you remembered Oxford. And I could have
+blushed for you myself, to see a man, a gentleman, with these two vulgar
+wolves.'
+
+Herrick faced him with a thrill. 'Wolves?' he repeated.
+
+'I said wolves and vulgar wolves,' said Attwater. 'Do you know that
+today, when I came on board, I trembled?'
+
+'You concealed it well,' stammered Herrick.
+
+'A habit of mine,' said Attwater. 'But I was afraid, for all that: I was
+afraid of the two wolves.' He raised his hand slowly. 'And now, Hay, you
+poor lost puppy, what do you do with the two wolves?'
+
+'What do I do? I don't do anything,' said Herrick. 'There is nothing
+wrong; all is above board; Captain Brown is a good soul; he is a... he
+is...' The phantom voice of Davis called in his ear: 'There's going to
+be a funeral' and the sweat burst forth and streamed on his brow. 'He
+is a family man,' he resumed again, swallowing; 'he has children at
+home--and a wife.'
+
+'And a very nice man?' said Attwater. 'And so is Mr Whish, no doubt?'
+
+'I won't go so far as that,' said Herrick. 'I do not like Huish. And
+yet... he has his merits too.'
+
+'And, in short, take them for all in all, as good a ship's company as
+one would ask?' said Attwater.
+
+'O yes,' said Herrick, 'quite.'
+
+'So then we approach the other point of why you despise yourself?' said
+Attwater.
+
+'Do we not all despise ourselves?' cried Herrick. 'Do not you?'
+
+'Oh, I say I do. But do I?' said Attwater. 'One thing I know at least:
+I never gave a cry like yours. Hay! it came from a bad conscience! Ah,
+man, that poor diving dress of self-conceit is sadly tattered! Today,
+now, while the sun sets, and here in this burying place of brown
+innocents, fall on your knees and cast your sins and sorrows on the
+Redeemer. Hay--'
+
+'Not Hay!' interrupted the other, strangling. 'Don't call me that! I
+mean... For God's sake, can't you see I'm on the rack?'
+
+'I see it, I know it, I put and keep you there, my fingers are on the
+screws!' said Attwater. 'Please God, I will bring a penitent this
+night before His throne. Come, come to the mercy-seat! He waits to be
+gracious, man--waits to be gracious!'
+
+He spread out his arms like a crucifix, his face shone with the
+brightness of a seraph's; in his voice, as it rose to the last word, the
+tears seemed ready.
+
+Herrick made a vigorous call upon himself. 'Attwater,' he said, 'you
+push me beyond bearing. What am I to do? I do not believe. It is living
+truth to you; to me, upon my conscience, only folk-lore. I do not
+believe there is any form of words under heaven by which I can lift the
+burthen from my shoulders. I must stagger on to the end with the pack of
+my responsibility; I cannot shift it; do you suppose I would not, if I
+thought I could? I cannot--cannot--cannot--and let that suffice.'
+
+The rapture was all gone from Artwater's countenance; the dark apostle
+had disappeared; and in his place there stood an easy, sneering
+gentleman, who took off his hat and bowed. It was pertly done, and the
+blood burned in Herrick's face.
+
+'What do you mean by that?' he cried.
+
+'Well, shall we go back to the house?' said Attwater. 'Our guests will
+soon be due.'
+
+Herrick stood his ground a moment with clenched fists and teeth; and as
+he so stood, the fact of his errand there slowly swung clear in front of
+him, like the moon out of clouds. He had come to lure that man on board;
+he was failing, even if it could be said that he had tried; he was sure
+to fail now, and knew it, and knew it was better so. And what was to be
+next?
+
+With a groan he turned to follow his host, who was standing with polite
+smile, and instantly and somewhat obsequiously led the way in the now
+darkened colonnade of palms. There they went in silence, the earth
+gave up richly of her perfume, the air tasted warm and aromatic in the
+nostrils; and from a great way forward in the wood, the brightness of
+lights and fire marked out the house of Attwater.
+
+Herrick meanwhile resolved and resisted an immense temptation to go up,
+to touch him on the arm and breathe a word in his ear: 'Beware, they are
+going to murder you.' There would be one life saved; but what of the two
+others? The three lives went up and down before him like buckets in a
+well, or like the scales of balances. It had come to a choice, and one
+that must be speedy. For certain invaluable minutes, the wheels of life
+ran before him, and he could still divert them with a touch to the one
+side or the other, still choose who was to live and who was to die. He
+considered the men. Attwater intrigued, puzzled, dazzled, enchanted and
+revolted him; alive, he seemed but a doubtful good; and the thought of
+him lying dead was so unwelcome that it pursued him, like a vision, with
+every circumstance of colour and sound. Incessantly, he had before him
+the image of that great mass of man stricken down in varying attitudes
+and with varying wounds; fallen prone, fallen supine, fallen on his
+side; or clinging to a doorpost with the changing face and the relaxing
+fingers of the death-agony. He heard the click of the trigger, the thud
+of the ball, the cry of the victim; he saw the blood flow. And this
+building up of circumstance was like a consecration of the man, till he
+seemed to walk in sacrificial fillets. Next he considered Davis, with
+his thick-fingered, coarse-grained, oat-bread commonness of nature, his
+indomitable valour and mirth in the old days of their starvation, the
+endearing blend of his faults and virtues, the sudden shining forth of a
+tenderness that lay too deep for tears; his children, Adar and her bowel
+complaint, and Adar's doll. No, death could not be suffered to approach
+that head even in fancy; with a general heat and a bracing of his
+muscles, it was borne in on Herrick that Adar's father would find in him
+a son to the death. And even Huish showed a little in that sacredness;
+by the tacit adoption of daily life they were become brothers; there was
+an implied bond of loyalty in their cohabitation of the ship and their
+passed miseries, to which Herrick must be a little true or wholly
+dishonoured. Horror of sudden death for horror of sudden death, there
+was here no hesitation possible: it must be Attwater. And no sooner was
+the thought formed (which was a sentence) than his whole mind of man ran
+in a panic to the other side: and when he looked within himself, he was
+aware only of turbulence and inarticulate outcry.
+
+In all this there was no thought of Robert Herrick. He had complied with
+the ebb-tide in man's affairs, and the tide had carried him away; he
+heard already the roaring of the maelstrom that must hurry him under.
+And in his bedevilled and dishonoured soul there was no thought of self.
+
+For how long he walked silent by his companion Herrick had no guess.
+The clouds rolled suddenly away; the orgasm was over; he found himself
+placid with the placidity of despair; there returned to him the power of
+commonplace speech; and he heard with surprise his own voice say: 'What
+a lovely evening!'
+
+'Is it not?' said Attwater. 'Yes, the evenings here would be very
+pleasant if one had anything to do. By day, of course, one can shoot.'
+
+'You shoot?' asked Herrick.
+
+'Yes, I am what you would call a fine shot,' said Attwater. 'It is
+faith; I believe my balls will go true; if I were to miss once, it would
+spoil me for nine months.'
+
+'You never miss, then?' said Herrick.
+
+'Not unless I mean to,' said Attwater. 'But to miss nicely is the art.
+There was an old king one knew in the western islands, who used to empty
+a Winchester all round a man, and stir his hair or nick a rag out of his
+clothes with every ball except the last; and that went plump between the
+eyes. It was pretty practice.'
+
+'You could do that?' asked Herrick, with a sudden chill.
+
+'Oh, I can do anything,' returned the other. 'You do not understand:
+what must be, must.'
+
+They were now come near to the back part of the house. One of the men
+was engaged about the cooking fire, which burned with the clear, fierce,
+essential radiance of cocoanut shells. A fragrance of strange meats was
+in the air. All round in the verandahs lamps were lighted, so that
+the place shone abroad in the dusk of the trees with many complicated
+patterns of shadow.
+
+'Come and wash your hands,' said Attwater, and led the way into a clean,
+matted room with a cot bed, a safe, or shelf or two of books in a glazed
+case, and an iron washing-stand. Presently he cried in the native, and
+there appeared for a moment in the doorway a plump and pretty young
+woman with a clean towel.
+
+'Hullo!' cried Herrick, who now saw for the first time the fourth
+survivor of the pestilence, and was startled by the recollection of the
+captain's orders.
+
+'Yes,' said Attwater, 'the whole colony lives about the house, what's
+left of it. We are all afraid of devils, if you please! and Taniera and
+she sleep in the front parlour, and the other boy on the verandah.'
+
+'She is pretty,' said Herrick.
+
+'Too pretty,' said Attwater. 'That was why I had her married. A man
+never knows when he may be inclined to be a fool about women; so when we
+were left alone, I had the pair of them to the chapel and performed the
+ceremony. She made a lot of fuss. I do not take at all the romantic view
+of marriage,' he explained.
+
+'And that strikes you as a safeguard?' asked Herrick with amazement.
+
+'Certainly. I am a plain man and very literal. WHOM GOD HATH JOINED
+TOGETHER, are the words, I fancy. So one married them, and respects the
+marriage,' said Attwater.
+
+'Ah!' said Herrick.
+
+'You see, I may look to make an excellent marriage when I go home,'
+began Attwater, confidentially. 'I am rich. This safe alone'--laying his
+hand upon it--'will be a moderate fortune, when I have the time to place
+the pearls upon the market. Here are ten years' accumulation from a
+lagoon, where I have had as many as ten divers going all day long; and I
+went further than people usually do in these waters, for I rotted a lot
+of shell, and did splendidly. Would you like to see them?'
+
+This confirmation of the captain's guess hit Herrick hard, and he
+contained himself with difficulty. 'No, thank you, I think not,' said
+he. 'I do not care for pearls. I am very indifferent to all these...'
+
+'Gewgaws?' suggested Attwater. 'And yet I believe you ought to cast an
+eye on my collection, which is really unique, and which--oh! it is the
+case with all of us and everything about us!--hangs by a hair. Today
+it groweth up and flourisheth; tomorrow it is cut down and cast into the
+oven. Today it is here and together in this safe; tomorrow--tonight!--it
+may be scattered. Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of
+thee.'
+
+'I do not understand you,' said Herrick.
+
+'Not?' said Attwater.
+
+'You seem to speak in riddles,' said Herrick, unsteadily. 'I do not
+understand what manner of man you are, nor what you are driving at.'
+
+Attwater stood with his hands upon his hips, and his head bent forward.
+'I am a fatalist,' he replied, 'and just now (if you insist on it)
+an experimentalist. Talking of which, by the bye, who painted out the
+schooner's name?' he said, with mocking softness, 'because, do you know?
+one thinks it should be done again. It can still be partly read; and
+whatever is worth doing, is surely worth doing well. You think with
+me? That is so nice! Well, shall we step on the verandah? I have a dry
+sherry that I would like your opinion of.'
+
+Herrick followed him forth to where, under the light of the hanging
+lamps, the table shone with napery and crystal; followed him as the
+criminal goes with the hangman, or the sheep with the butcher; took the
+sherry mechanically, drank it, and spoke mechanical words of praise. The
+object of his terror had become suddenly inverted; till then he had seen
+Attwater trussed and gagged, a helpless victim, and had longed to run in
+and save him; he saw him now tower up mysterious and menacing, the angel
+of the Lord's wrath, armed with knowledge and threatening judgment. He
+set down his glass again, and was surprised to see it empty.
+
+'You go always armed?' he said, and the next moment could have plucked
+his tongue out.
+
+'Always,' said Attwater. 'I have been through a mutiny here; that was
+one of my incidents of missionary life.'
+
+And just then the sound of voices reached them, and looking forth from
+the verandah they saw Huish and the captain drawing near.
+
+
+
+Chapter 9. THE DINNER PARTY
+
+They sat down to an island dinner, remarkable for its variety and
+excellence; turtle soup and steak, fish, fowls, a sucking pig, a
+cocoanut salad, and sprouting cocoanut roasted for dessert. Not a tin
+had been opened; and save for the oil and vinegar in the salad, and some
+green spears of onion which Attwater cultivated and plucked with his own
+hand, not even the condiments were European. Sherry, hock, and claret
+succeeded each other, and the Farallone champagne brought up the rear
+with the dessert.
+
+It was plain that, like so many of the extremely religious in the
+days before teetotalism, Attwater had a dash of the epicure. For such
+characters it is softening to eat well; doubly so to have designed and
+had prepared an excellent meal for others; and the manners of their host
+were agreeably mollified in consequence.
+
+A cat of huge growth sat on his shoulders purring, and occasionally,
+with a deft paw, capturing a morsel in the air. To a cat he might be
+likened himself, as he lolled at the head of his table, dealing
+out attentions and innuendoes, and using the velvet and the claw
+indifferently. And both Huish and the captain fell progressively under
+the charm of his hospitable freedom.
+
+Over the third guest, the incidents of the dinner may be said to have
+passed for long unheeded. Herrick accepted all that was offered him, ate
+and drank without tasting, and heard without comprehension. His mind
+was singly occupied in contemplating the horror of the circumstances in
+which he sat. What Attwater knew, what the captain designed, from which
+side treachery was to be first expected, these were the ground of his
+thoughts. There were times when he longed to throw down the table and
+flee into the night. And even that was debarred him; to do anything,
+to say anything, to move at all, were only to precipitate the barbarous
+tragedy; and he sat spellbound, eating with white lips. Two of his
+companions observed him narrowly, Attwater with raking, sidelong glances
+that did not interrupt his talk, the captain with a heavy and anxious
+consideration.
+
+'Well, I must say this sherry is a really prime article,' said Huish.
+''Ow much does it stand you in, if it's a fair question?'
+
+'A hundred and twelve shillings in London, and the freight to
+Valparaiso, and on again,' said Attwater. 'It strikes one as really not
+a bad fluid.'
+
+'A 'undred and twelve!' murmured the clerk, relishing the wine and the
+figures in a common ecstasy: 'O my!'
+
+'So glad you like it,' said Attwater. 'Help yourself, Mr Whish, and keep
+the bottle by you.'
+
+'My friend's name is Huish and not Whish, sit,' said the captain with a
+flush.
+
+'I beg your pardon, I am sure. Huish and not Whish, certainly,' said
+Attwater. 'I was about to say that I have still eight dozen,' he added,
+fixing the captain with his eye.
+
+'Eight dozen what?' said Davis.
+
+'Sherry,' was the reply. 'Eight dozen excellent sherry. Why, it seems
+almost worth it in itself; to a man fond of wine.'
+
+The ambiguous words struck home to guilty consciences, and Huish and the
+captain sat up in their places and regarded him with a scare.
+
+'Worth what?' said Davis.
+
+'A hundred and twelve shillings,' replied Attwater.
+
+The captain breathed hard for a moment. He reached out far and wide to
+find any coherency in these remarks; then, with a great effort, changed
+the subject.
+
+'I allow we are about the first white men upon this island, sir,' said
+he.
+
+Attwater followed him at once, and with entire gravity, to the new
+ground. 'Myself and Dr Symonds excepted, I should say the only ones,' he
+returned. 'And yet who can tell? In the course of the ages someone may
+have lived here, and we sometimes think that someone must. The cocoa
+palms grow all round the island, which is scarce like nature's planting.
+We found besides, when we landed, an unmistakable cairn upon the beach;
+use unknown; but probably erected in the hope of gratifying some mumbo
+jumbo whose very name is forgotten, by some thick-witted gentry whose
+very bones are lost. Then the island (witness the Directory) has been
+twice reported; and since my tenancy, we have had two wrecks, both
+derelict. The rest is conjecture.'
+
+'Dr Symonds is your partner, I guess?' said Davis.
+
+'A dear fellow, Symonds! How he would regret it, if he knew you had been
+here!' said Attwater.
+
+''E's on the Trinity 'All, ain't he?' asked Huish.
+
+'And if you could tell me where the Trinity 'All was, you would confer a
+favour, Mr Whish!' was the reply.
+
+'I suppose she has a native crew?' said Davis.
+
+'Since the secret has been kept ten years, one would suppose she had,'
+replied Attwater.
+
+'Well, now, see 'ere!' said Huish. 'You have everything about you in
+no end style, and no mistake, but I tell you it wouldn't do for me. Too
+much of "the old rustic bridge by the mill"; too retired, by 'alf. Give
+me the sound of Bow Bells!'
+
+'You must not think it was always so,' replied Attwater, 'This was once
+a busy shore, although now, hark! you can hear the solitude. I find it
+stimulating. And talking of the sound of bells, kindly follow a little
+experiment of mine in silence.' There was a silver bell at his right
+hand to call the servants; he made them a sign to stand still, struck
+the bell with force, and leaned eagerly forward. The note rose clear and
+strong; it rang out clear and far into the night and over the deserted
+island; it died into the distance until there only lingered in the
+porches of the ear a vibration that was sound no longer. 'Empty houses,
+empty sea, solitary beaches!' said Attwater. 'And yet God hears the
+bell! And yet we sit in this verandah on a lighted stage with all heaven
+for spectators! And you call that solitude?'
+
+There followed a bar of silence, during which the captain sat
+mesmerised.
+
+Then Attwater laughed softly. 'These are the diversions of a lonely,
+man,' he resumed, 'and possibly not in good taste. One tells oneself
+these little fairy tales for company. If there SHOULD happen to be
+anything in folk-lore, Mr Hay? But here comes the claret. One does not
+offer you Lafitte, captain, because I believe it is all sold to the
+railroad dining cars in your great country; but this Brine-Mouton is of
+a good year, and Mr Whish will give me news of it.'
+
+'That's a queer idea of yours!' cried the captain, bursting with a sigh
+from the spell that had bound him. 'So you mean to tell me now, that
+you sit here evenings and ring up... well, ring on the angels... by
+yourself?'
+
+'As a matter of historic fact, and since you put it directly, one does
+not,' said Attwater. 'Why ring a bell, when there flows out from oneself
+and everything about one a far more momentous silence? the least beat of
+my heart and the least thought in my mind echoing into eternity for ever
+and for ever and for ever.'
+
+'O look 'ere,' said Huish, 'turn down the lights at once, and the Band
+of 'Ope will oblige! This ain't a spiritual seance.'
+
+'No folk-lore about Mr Whish--I beg your pardon, captain: Huish not
+Whish, of course,' said Attwater.
+
+As the boy was filling Huish's glass, the bottle escaped from his hand
+and was shattered, and the wine spilt on the verandah floor. Instant
+grimness as of death appeared on the face of Attwater; he smote the
+bell imperiously, and the two brown natives fell into the attitude
+of attention and stood mute and trembling. There was just a moment of
+silence and hard looks; then followed a few savage words in the native;
+and, upon a gesture of dismissal, the service proceeded as before.
+
+None of the party had as yet observed upon the excellent bearing of the
+two men. They were dark, undersized, and well set up; stepped softly,
+waited deftly, brought on the wines and dishes at a look, and their eyes
+attended studiously on their master.
+
+'Where do you get your labour from anyway?' asked Davis.
+
+'Ah, where not?' answered Attwater.
+
+'Not much of a soft job, I suppose?' said the captain.
+
+'If you will tell me where getting labour is!' said Attwater with a
+shrug. 'And of course, in our case, as we could name no destination,
+we had to go far and wide and do the best we could. We have gone as far
+west as the Kingsmills and as far south as Rapa-iti. Pity Symonds isn't
+here! He is full of yarns. That was his part, to collect them. Then
+began mine, which was the educational.'
+
+'You mean to run them?' said Davis.
+
+'Ay! to run them,' said Attwater.
+
+'Wait a bit,' said Davis, 'I'm out of my depth. How was this? Do you
+mean to say you did it single-handed?'
+
+
+'One did it single-handed,' said Attwater, 'because there was nobody to
+help one.'
+
+'By God, but you must be a holy terror!' cried the captain, in a glow of
+admiration.
+
+'One does one's best,' said Attwater.
+
+'Well, now!' said Davis, 'I have seen a lot of driving in my time and
+been counted a good driver myself; I fought my way, third mate, round
+the Cape Horn with a push of packet rats that would have turned the
+devil out of hell and shut the door on him; and I tell you, this racket
+of Mr Attwater's takes the cake. In a ship, why, there ain't nothing to
+it! You've got the law with you, that's what does it. But put me down on
+this blame' beach alone, with nothing but a whip and a mouthful of bad
+words, and ask me to... no, SIR! it's not good enough! I haven't got the
+sand for that!' cried Davis. 'It's the law behind,' he added; 'it's the
+law does it, every time!'
+
+'The beak ain't as black as he's sometimes pynted,' observed Huish,
+humorously.
+
+'Well, one got the law after a fashion,' said Attwater. 'One had to be a
+number of things. It was sometimes rather a bore.'
+
+'I should smile!' said Davis. 'Rather lively, I should think!'
+
+'I dare say we mean the same thing,' said Attwater. 'However, one way
+or another, one got it knocked into their heads that they MUST work, and
+they DID... until the Lord took them!'
+
+''Ope you made 'em jump,' said Huish.
+
+'When it was necessary, Mr Whish, I made them jump,' said Attwater.
+
+'You bet you did,' cried the captain. He was a good deal flushed, but
+not so much with wine as admiration; and his eyes drank in the huge
+proportions of the other with delight. 'You bet you did, and you bet
+that I can see you doing it! By God, you're a man, and you can say I
+said so.'
+
+'Too good of you, I'm sure,' said Attwater.
+
+'Did you--did you ever have crime here?' asked Herrick, breaking his
+silence with a pungent voice.
+
+'Yes,' said Attwater, 'we did.'
+
+'And how did you handle that, sir?' cried the eager captain.
+
+'Well, you see, it was a queer case,' replied Attwater, 'it was a case
+that would have puzzled Solomon. Shall I tell it you? yes?'
+
+The captain rapturously accepted.
+
+'Well,' drawled Attwater, 'here is what it was. I dare say you know two
+types of natives, which may be called the obsequious and the sullen?
+Well, one had them, the types themselves, detected in the fact; and one
+had them together. Obsequiousness ran out of the first like wine out
+of a bottle, sullenness congested in the second. Obsequiousness was all
+smiles; he ran to catch your eye, he loved to gabble; and he had about
+a dozen words of beach English, and an eighth-of-an-inch veneer of
+Christianity. Sullens was industrious; a big down-looking bee. When
+he was spoken to, he answered with a black look and a shrug of one
+shoulder, but the thing would be done. I don't give him to you for a
+model of manners; there was nothing showy about Sullens; but he was
+strong and steady, and ungraciously obedient. Now Sullens got into
+trouble; no matter how; the regulations of the place were broken, and
+he was punished accordingly--without effect. So, the next day, and the
+next, and the day after, till I began to be weary of the business, and
+Sullens (I am afraid) particularly so. There came a day when he was in
+fault again, for the--oh, perhaps the thirtieth time; and he rolled a
+dull eye upon me, with a spark in it, and appeared to speak. Now
+the regulations of the place are formal upon one point: we allow no
+explanations; none are received, none allowed to be offered. So one
+stopped him instantly; but made a note of the circumstance. The next
+day, he was gone from the settlement. There could be nothing more
+annoying; if the labour took to running away, the fishery was wrecked.
+There are sixty miles of this island, you see, all in length like the
+Queen's Highway; the idea of pursuit in such a place was a piece of
+single-minded childishness, which one did not entertain. Two days later,
+I made a discovery; it came in upon me with a flash that Sullens had
+been unjustly punished from beginning to end, and the real culprit
+throughout had been Obsequiousness. The native who talks, like the woman
+who hesitates, is lost. You set him talking and lying; and he talks, and
+lies, and watches your face to see if he has pleased you; till at
+last, out comes the truth! It came out of Obsequiousness in the regular
+course. I said nothing to him; I dismissed him; and late as it was, for
+it was already night, set off to look for Sullens. I had not far to go:
+about two hundred yards up the island, the moon showed him to me. He was
+hanging in a cocoa palm--I'm not botanist enough to tell you how--but
+it's the way, in nine cases out of ten, these natives commit suicide.
+His tongue was out, poor devil, and the birds had got at him; I spare
+you details, he was an ugly sight! I gave the business six good hours of
+thinking in this verandah. My justice had been made a fool of; I don't
+suppose that I was ever angrier. Next day, I had the conch sounded and
+all hands out before sunrise. One took one's gun, and led the way, with
+Obsequiousness. He was very talkative; the beggar supposed that all was
+right now he had confessed; in the old schoolboy phrase, he was
+plainly 'sucking up' to me; full of protestations of goodwill and
+good behaviour; to which one answered one really can't remember what.
+Presently the tree came in sight, and the hanged man. They all burst out
+lamenting for their comrade in the island way, and Obsequiousness was
+the loudest of the mourners. He was quite genuine; a noxious creature,
+without any consciousness of guilt. Well, presently--to make a long
+story short--one told him to go up the tree. He stared a bit, looked at
+one with a trouble in his eye, and had rather a sickly smile; but went.
+He was obedient to the last; he had all the pretty virtues, but the
+truth was not in him. So soon as he was up, he looked down, and there
+was the rifle covering him; and at that he gave a whimper like a dog.
+You could bear a pin drop; no more keening now. There they all crouched
+upon the ground, with bulging eyes; there was he in the tree top, the
+colour of the lead; and between was the dead man, dancing a bit in the
+air. He was obedient to the last, recited his crime, recommended his
+soul to God. And then...'
+
+Attwater paused, and Herrick, who had been listening attentively, made a
+convulsive movement which upset his glass.
+
+'And then?' said the breathless captain.
+
+'Shot,' said Attwater. 'They came to ground together.'
+
+Herrick sprang to his feet with a shriek and an insensate gesture.
+
+'It was a murder,' he screamed. 'A cold-hearted, bloody-minded
+murder! You monstrous being! Murderer and hypocrite--murderer and
+hypocrite--murderer and hypocrite--' he repeated, and his tongue
+stumbled among the words.
+
+The captain was by him in a moment. 'Herrick!' he cried, 'behave
+yourself! Here, don't be a blame' fool!'
+
+Herrick struggled in his embrace like a frantic child, and suddenly
+bowing his face in his hands, choked into a sob, the first of many,
+which now convulsed his body silently, and now jerked from him
+indescribable and meaningless sounds.
+
+'Your friend appears over-excited,' remarked Attwater, sitting unmoved
+but all alert at table.
+
+'It must be the wine,' replied the captain. 'He ain't no drinking
+man, you see. I--I think I'll take him away. A walk'll sober him up, I
+guess.'
+
+He led him without resistance out of the verandah and into the night, in
+which they soon melted; but still for some time, as they drew away,
+his comfortable voice was to be heard soothing and remonstrating, and
+Herrick answering, at intervals, with the mechanical noises of hysteria.
+
+''E's like a bloomin' poultry yard!' observed Huish, helping himself to
+wine (of which he spilled a good deal) with gentlemanly ease. 'A man
+should learn to beyave at table,' he added.
+
+'Rather bad form, is it not?' said Attwater. 'Well, well, we are left
+tete-a-tete. A glass of wine with you, Mr Whish!'
+
+
+
+Chapter 10. THE OPEN DOOR
+
+The captain and Herrick meanwhile turned their back upon the lights in
+Attwater's verandah, and took a direction towards the pier and the beach
+of the lagoon.
+
+The isle, at this hour, with its smooth floor of sand, the pillared roof
+overhead, and the prevalent illumination of the lamps, wore an air of
+unreality like a deserted theatre or a public garden at midnight. A man
+looked about him for the statues and tables. Not the least air of wind
+was stirring among the palms, and the silence was emphasised by the
+continuous clamour of the surf from the seashore, as it might be of
+traffic in the next street.
+
+Still talking, still soothing him, the captain hurried his patient on,
+brought him at last to the lagoon-side, and leading him down the beach,
+laved his head and face with the tepid water. The paroxysm gradually
+subsided, the sobs became less convulsive and then ceased; by an odd but
+not quite unnatural conjunction, the captain's soothing current of
+talk died away at the same time and by proportional steps, and the
+pair remained sunk in silence. The lagoon broke at their feet in petty
+wavelets, and with a sound as delicate as a whisper; stars of all
+degrees looked down on their own images in that vast mirror; and the
+more angry colour of the Farallone's riding lamp burned in the middle
+distance. For long they continued to gaze on the scene before them, and
+hearken anxiously to the rustle and tinkle of that miniature surf, or
+the more distant and loud reverberations from the outer coast. For long
+speech was denied them; and when the words came at last, they came to
+both simultaneously. 'Say, Herrick...'the captain was beginning.
+
+But Herrick, turning swiftly towards his companion, bent him down with
+the eager cry: 'Let's up anchor, captain, and to sea!'
+
+'Where to, my son?' said the captain. 'Up anchor's easy saying. But
+where to?'
+
+'To sea,' responded Herrick. 'The sea's big enough! To sea--away from
+this dreadful island and that, oh! that sinister man!'
+
+'Oh, we'll see about that,' said Davis. 'You brace up, and we'll see
+about that. You're all run down, that's what's wrong with you; you're
+all nerves, like Jemimar; you've got to brace up good and be yourself
+again, and then we'll talk.'
+
+'To sea,' reiterated Herrick, 'to sea tonight--now--this moment!'
+
+'It can't be, my son,' replied the captain firmly. 'No ship of mine puts
+to sea without provisions, you can take that for settled.'
+
+'You don't seem to understand,' said Herrick. 'The whole thing is over,
+I tell you. There is nothing to do here, when he knows all. That man
+there with the cat knows all; can't you take it in?'
+
+'All what?' asked the captain, visibly discomposed. 'Why, he received us
+like a perfect gentleman and treated us real handsome, until you began
+with your foolery--and I must say I seen men shot for less, and nobody
+sorry! What more do you expect anyway?'
+
+Herrick rocked to and fro upon the sand, shaking his head.
+
+'Guying us,' he said, 'he was guying us--only guying us; it's all we're
+good for.'
+
+'There was one queer thing, to be sure,' admitted the captain, with a
+misgiving of the voice; 'that about the sherry. Damned if I caught on to
+that. Say, Herrick, you didn't give me away?'
+
+'Oh! give you away!' repeated Herrick with weary, querulous scorn. 'What
+was there to give away? We're transparent; we've got rascal branded
+on us: detected rascal--detected rascal! Why, before he came on board,
+there was the name painted out, and he saw the whole thing. He made sure
+we would kill him there and then, and stood guying you and Huish on the
+chance. He calls that being frightened! Next he had me ashore; a fine
+time I had! THE TWO WOLVES, he calls you and Huish.--WHAT IS THE PUPPY
+DOING WITH THE TWO WOLVES? he asked. He showed me his pearls; he said
+they might be dispersed before morning, and ALL HUNG BY A HAIr--and
+smiled as he said it, such a smile! O, it's no use, I tell you! He knows
+all, he sees through all; we only make him laugh with our pretences--he
+looks at us and laughs like God!'
+
+There was a silence. Davis stood with contorted brows, gazing into the
+night.
+
+'The pearls?' he said suddenly. 'He showed them to you? he has them?'
+
+'No, he didn't show them; I forgot: only the safe they were in,' said
+Herrick. 'But you'll never get them!'
+
+'I've two words to say to that,' said the captain.
+
+'Do you think he would have been so easy at table, unless he was
+prepared?' cried Herrick. 'The servants were both armed. He was armed
+himself; he always is; he told me. You will never deceive his vigilance.
+Davis, I know it! It's all up; all up. There's nothing for it, there's
+nothing to be done: all gone: life, honour, love. Oh, my God, my God,
+why was I born?'
+
+Another pause followed upon this outburst.
+
+The captain put his hands to his brow.
+
+'Another thing!' he broke out. 'Why did he tell you all this? Seems like
+madness to me!'
+
+Herrick shook his head with gloomy iteration. 'You wouldn't understand
+if I were to tell you,' said he.
+
+'I guess I can understand any blame' thing that you can tell me,' said
+the captain.
+
+'Well, then, he's a fatalist,' said Herrick.
+
+'What's that, a fatalist?' said Davis.
+
+'Oh, it's a fellow that believes a lot of things,' said Herrick,
+'believes that his bullets go true; believes that all falls out as God
+chooses, do as you like to prevent it; and all that.'
+
+'Why, I guess I believe right so myself,' said Davis.
+
+'You do?' said Herrick.
+
+'You bet I do!' says Davis.
+
+Herrick shrugged his shoulders. 'Well, you must be a fool,' said he, and
+he leaned his head upon his knees.
+
+The captain stood biting his hands.
+
+'There's one thing sure,' he said at last. 'I must get Huish out of
+that. HE'S not fit to hold his end up with a man like you describe.'
+
+And he turned to go away. The words had been quite simple; not so the
+tone; and the other was quick to catch it.
+
+'Davis!' he cried, 'no! Don't do it. Spare ME, and don't do it--spare
+yourself, and leave it alone--for God's sake, for your children's sake!'
+
+His voice rose to a passionate shrillness; another moment, and he might
+be overheard by their not distant victim. But Davis turned on him with a
+savage oath and gesture; and the miserable young man rolled over on his
+face on the sand, and lay speechless and helpless.
+
+The captain meanwhile set out rapidly for Attwater's house. As he went,
+he considered with himself eagerly, his thoughts racing. The man had
+understood, he had mocked them from the beginning; he would teach him
+to make a mockery of John Davis! Herrick thought him a god; give him a
+second to aim in, and the god was overthrown. He chuckled as he felt the
+butt of his revolver. It should be done now, as he went in. From behind?
+It was difficult to get there. From across the table? No, the captain
+preferred to shoot standing, so as you could be sure to get your hand
+upon your gun. The best would be to summon Huish, and when Attwater
+stood up and turned--ah, then would be the moment. Wrapped in his ardent
+prefiguration of events, the captain posted towards the house with his
+head down.
+
+'Hands up! Halt!' cried the voice of Attwater.
+
+And the captain, before he knew what he was doing, had obeyed. The
+surprise was complete and irremediable. Coming on the top crest of his
+murderous intentions, he had walked straight into an ambuscade, and now
+stood, with his hands impotently lifted, staring at the verandah.
+
+The party was now broken up. Attwater leaned on a post, and kept Davis
+covered with a Winchester. One of the servants was hard by with a
+second at the port arms, leaning a little forward, round-eyed with eager
+expectancy. In the open space at the head of the stair, Huish was partly
+supported by the other native; his face wreathed in meaningless smiles,
+his mind seemingly sunk in the contemplation of an unlighted cigar.
+
+'Well,' said Attwater, 'you seem to me to be a very twopenny pirate!'
+
+The captain uttered a sound in his throat for which we have no name;
+rage choked him.
+
+'I am going to give you Mr Whish--or the wine-sop that remains of him,'
+continued Attwater. 'He talks a great deal when he drinks, Captain
+Davis of the Sea Ranger. But I have quite done with him--and return the
+article with thanks. Now,' he cried sharply. 'Another false movement
+like that, and your family will have to deplore the loss of an
+invaluable parent; keep strictly still, Davis.'
+
+Attwater said a word in the native, his eye still undeviatingly fixed on
+the captain; and the servant thrust Huish smartly forward from the
+brink of the stair. With an extraordinary simultaneous dispersion of
+his members, that gentleman bounded forth into space, struck the earth,
+ricocheted, and brought up with his arms about a palm. His mind was
+quite a stranger to these events; the expression of anguish that
+deformed his countenance at the moment of the leap was probably
+mechanical; and he suffered these convulsions in silence; clung to the
+tree like an infant; and seemed, by his dips, to suppose himself engaged
+in the pastime of bobbing for apples. A more finely sympathetic mind or
+a more observant eye might have remarked, a little in front of him on
+the sand, and still quite beyond reach, the unlighted cigar.
+
+ 'There is your Whitechapel carrion!' said Attwater. 'And now
+you might very well ask me why I do not put a period to you at once, as
+you deserve. I will tell you why, Davis. It is because I have nothing to
+do with the Sea Ranger and the people you drowned, or the Farallone and
+the champagne that you stole. That is your account with God, He keeps
+it, and He will settle it when the clock strikes. In my own case, I have
+nothing to go on but suspicion, and I do not kill on suspicion, not even
+vermin like you. But understand! if ever I see any of you again, it is
+another matter, and you shall eat a bullet. And now take yourself off.
+March! and as you value what you call your life, keep your hands up as
+you go!'
+
+The captain remained as he was, his hands up, his mouth open: mesmerised
+with fury.
+
+'March!' said Attwater. 'One--two--three!'
+
+And Davis turned and passed slowly away. But even as he went, he was
+meditating a prompt, offensive return. In the twinkling of an eye,
+he had leaped behind a tree; and was crouching there, pistol in hand,
+peering from either side of his place of ambush with bared teeth; a
+serpent already poised to strike. And already he was too late. Attwater
+and his servants had disappeared; and only the lamps shone on the
+deserted table and the bright sand about the house, and threw into the
+night in all directions the strong and tall shadows of the palms.
+
+Davis ground his teeth. Where were they gone, the cowards? to what hole
+had they retreated beyond reach? It was in vain he should try anything,
+he, single and with a second-hand revolver, against three persons,
+armed with Winchesters, and who did not show an ear out of any of the
+apertures of that lighted and silent house? Some of them might have
+already ducked below it from the rear, and be drawing a bead upon him at
+that moment from the low-browed crypt, the receptacle of empty bottles
+and broken crockery. No, there was nothing to be done but to bring away
+(if it were still possible) his shattered and demoralised forces.
+
+'Huish,' he said, 'come along.'
+
+''S lose my ciga',' said Huish, reaching vaguely forward.
+
+The captain let out a rasping oath. 'Come right along here,' said he.
+
+''S all righ'. Sleep here 'th Atty-Attwa. Go boar' t'morr',' replied the
+festive one.
+
+'If you don't come, and come now, by the living God, I'll shoot you!'
+cried the captain.
+
+It is not to be supposed that the sense of these words in any way
+penetrated to the mind of Hulsh; rather that, in a fresh attempt upon
+the cigar, he overbalanced himself and came flying erratically forward:
+a course which brought him within reach of Davis.
+
+'Now you walk straight,' said the captain, clutching him, 'or I'll know
+why not!'
+
+''S lose my ciga',' replied Huish.
+
+The captain's contained fury blazed up for a moment. He twisted Huish
+round, grasped him by the neck of the coat, ran him in front of him to
+the pier end, and flung him savagely forward on his face.
+
+'Look for your cigar then, you swine!' said he, and blew his boat call
+till the pea in it ceased to rattle.
+
+An immediate activity responded on board the Farallone; far away voices,
+and soon the sound of oars, floated along the surface of the lagoon; and
+at the same time, from nearer hand, Herrick aroused himself and strolled
+languidly up. He bent over the insignificant figure of Huish, where it
+grovelled, apparently insensible, at the base of the figure-head.
+
+'Dead?' he asked.
+
+'No, he's not dead,' said Davis.
+
+'And Attwater?' asked Herrick.
+
+'Now you just shut your head!' replied Davis. 'You can do that, I fancy,
+and by God, I'll show you how! I'll stand no more of your drivel.'
+
+They waited accordingly in silence till the boat bumped on the furthest
+piers; then raised Huish, head and heels, carried him down the gangway,
+and flung him summarily in the bottom. On the way out he was heard
+murmuring of the loss of his cigar; and after he had been handed up the
+side like baggage, and cast down in the alleyway to slumber, his last
+audible expression was: 'Splen'l fl' Attwa'!' This the expert construed
+into 'Splendid fellow, Attwater'; with so much innocence had this great
+spirit issued from the adventures of the evening.
+
+The captain went and walked in the waist with brief, irate turns;
+Herrick leaned his arms on the taffrail; the crew had all turned in. The
+ship had a gentle, cradling motion; at times a block piped like a bird.
+On shore, through the colonnade of palm stems, Attwater's house was to
+be seen shining steadily with many lamps. And there was nothing else
+visible, whether in the heaven above or in the lagoon below, but the
+stars and their reflections. It might have been minutes or it might have
+been hours, that Herrick leaned there, looking in the glorified water
+and drinking peace. 'A bath of stars,' he was thinking; when a hand was
+laid at last on his shoulder.
+
+'Herrick,' said the captain, 'I've been walking off my trouble.'
+
+A sharp jar passed through the young man, but he neither answered nor so
+much as turned his head.
+
+'I guess I spoke a little rough to you on shore,' pursued the captain;
+'the fact is, I was real mad; but now it's over, and you and me have to
+turn to and think.'
+
+'I will NOT think,' said Herrick.
+
+'Here, old man!' said Davis, kindly; 'this won't fight, you know! You've
+got to brace up and help me get things straight. You're not going back
+on a friend? That's not like you, Herrick!'
+
+'O yes, it is,' said Herrick.
+
+'Come, come!' said the captain, and paused as if quite at a loss. 'Look
+here,' he cried, 'you have a glass of champagne. I won't touch it, so
+that'll show you if I'm in earnest. But it's just the pick-me-up for
+you; it'll put an edge on you at once.'
+
+'O, you leave me alone!' said Herrick, and turned away.
+
+The captain caught him by the sleeve; and he shook him off and turned on
+him, for the moment, like a demoniac.
+
+'Go to hell in your own way!' he cried.
+
+And he turned away again, this time unchecked, and stepped forward to
+where the boat rocked alongside and ground occasionally against the
+schooner. He looked about him. A corner of the house was interposed
+between the captain and himself; all was well; no eye must see him in
+that last act. He slid silently into the boat; thence, silently, into
+the starry water.
+
+Instinctively he swam a little; it would be time enough to stop by and
+by.
+
+The shock of the immersion brightened his mind immediately. The events
+of the ignoble day passed before him in a frieze of pictures, and he
+thanked 'whatever Gods there be' for that open door of suicide. In such
+a little while he would be done with it, the random business at an end,
+the prodigal son come home. A very bright planet shone before him and
+drew a trenchant wake along the water. He took that for his line and
+followed it. That was the last earthly thing that he should look upon;
+that radiant speck, which he had soon magnified into a City of Laputa,
+along whose terraces there walked men and women of awful and benignant
+features, who viewed him with distant commiseration. These imaginary
+spectators consoled him; he told himself their talk, one to another; it
+was of himself and his sad destiny.
+
+From such flights of fancy, he was aroused by the growing coldness of
+the water. Why should he delay? Here, where he was now, let him drop the
+curtain, let him seek the ineffable refuge, let him lie down with all
+races and generations of men in the house of sleep. It was easy to say,
+easy to do. To stop swimming: there was no mystery in that, if he could
+do it. Could he? And he could not. He knew it instantly. He was aware
+instantly of an opposition in his members, unanimous and invincible,
+clinging to life with a single and fixed resolve, finger by finger,
+sinew by sinew; something that was at once he and not he--at once within
+and without him;--the shutting of some miniature valve in his brain,
+which a single manly thought should suffice to open--and the grasp of an
+external fate ineluctable as gravity. To any man there may come at times
+a consciousness that there blows, through all the articulations of his
+body, the wind of a spirit not wholly his; that his mind rebels; that
+another girds him and carries him whither he would not. It came now
+to Herrick, with the authority of a revelation. There was no escape
+possible. The open door was closed in his recreant face. He must go back
+into the world and amongst men without illusion. He must stagger on to
+the end with the pack of his responsibility and his disgrace, until
+a cold, a blow, a merciful chance ball, or the more merciful hangman,
+should dismiss him from his infamy. There were men who could commit
+suicide; there were men who could not; and he was one who could not.
+
+For perhaps a minute, there raged in his mind the coil of this
+discovery; then cheerless certitude followed; and, with an incredible
+simplicity of submission to ascertained fact, he turned round and
+struck out for shore. There was a courage in this which he could not
+appreciate; the ignobility of his cowardice wholly occupying him. A
+strong current set against him like a wind in his face; he contended
+with it heavily, wearily, without enthusiasm, but with substantial
+advantage; marking his progress the while, without pleasure, by the
+outline of the trees. Once he had a moment of hope. He heard to the
+southward of him, towards the centre of the lagoon, the wallowing of
+some great fish, doubtless a shark, and paused for a little, treading
+water. Might not this be the hangman? he thought. But the wallowing died
+away; mere silence succeeded; and Herrick pushed on again for the shore,
+raging as he went at his own nature. Ay, he would wait for the shark;
+but if he had heard him coming!... His smile was tragic. He could have
+spat upon himself.
+
+About three in the morning, chance, and the set of the current, and the
+bias of his own right-handed body, so decided it between them that he
+came to shore upon the beach in front of Attwater's. There he sat down,
+and looked forth into a world without any of the lights of hope. The
+poor diving dress of self-conceit was sadly tattered! With the fairy
+tale of suicide, of a refuge always open to him, he had hitherto
+beguiled and supported himself in the trials of life; and behold!
+that also was only a fairy tale, that also was folk-lore. With the
+consequences of his acts he saw himself implacably confronted for the
+duration of life: stretched upon a cross, and nailed there with the iron
+bolts of his own cowardice. He had no tears; he told himself no stories.
+His disgust with himself was so complete that even the process of
+apologetic mythology had ceased. He was like a man cast down from a
+pillar, and every bone broken. He lay there, and admitted the facts, and
+did not attempt to rise.
+
+Dawn began to break over the far side of the atoll, the sky brightened,
+the clouds became dyed with gorgeous colours, the shadows of the night
+lifted. And, suddenly, Herrick was aware that the lagoon and the trees
+wore again their daylight livery; and he saw, on board the Farallone,
+Davis extinguishing the lantern, and smoke rising from the galley.
+
+Davis, without doubt, remarked and recognised the figure on the beach;
+or perhaps hesitated to recognise it; for after he had gazed a long
+while from under his hand, he went into the house and fetched a glass.
+It was very powerful; Herrick had often used it. With an instinct of
+shame, he hid his face in his hands.
+
+'And what brings you here, Mr Herrick-Hay, or Mr Hay-Herrick?' asked
+the voice of Attwater. 'Your back view from my present position is
+remarkably fine, and I would continue to present it. We can get on very
+nicely as we are, and if you were to turn round, do you know? I think it
+would be awkward.'
+
+Herrick slowly rose to his feet; his heart throbbed hard, a hideous
+excitement shook him, but he was master of himself. Slowly he turned,
+and faced Attwater and the muzzle of a pointed rifle. 'Why could I not
+do that last night?' he thought.
+
+'Well, why don't you fire?' he said aloud, with a voice that trembled.
+
+Attwater slowly put his gun under his arm, then his hands in his
+pockets.
+
+'What brings you here?' he repeated.
+
+'I don't know,' said Herrick; and then, with a cry: 'Can you do anything
+with me?'
+
+'Are you armed?' said Attwater. 'I ask for the form's sake.'
+
+'Armed? No!' said Herrick. 'O yes, I am, too!' And he flung upon the
+beach a dripping pistol.
+
+'You are wet,' said Attwater.
+
+'Yes, I am wet,' said Herrick. 'Can you do anything with me?'
+
+Attwater read his face attentively.
+
+'It would depend a good deal upon what you are,' said he.
+
+'What I am? A coward!' said Herrick.
+
+'There is very little to be done with that,' said Attwater. 'And yet the
+description hardly strikes one as exhaustive.'
+
+'Oh, what does it matter?' cried Herrick. 'Here I am. I am broken
+crockery; I am a burst drum; the whole of my life is gone to water; I
+have nothing left that I believe in, except my living horror of myself.
+Why do I come to you? I don't know; you are cold, cruel, hateful; and
+I hate you, or I think I hate you. But you are an honest man, an honest
+gentleman. I put myself, helpless, in your hands. What must I do? If I
+can't do anything, be merciful and put a bullet through me; it's only a
+puppy with a broken leg!'
+
+'If I were you, I would pick up that pistol, come up to the house, and
+put on some dry clothes,' said Attwater.
+
+'If you really mean it?' said Herrick. 'You know they--we--they. .. But
+you know all.'
+
+'I know quite enough,' said Attwater. 'Come up to the house.'
+
+And the captain, from the deck of the Farallone, saw the two men pass
+together under the shadow of the grove.
+
+
+
+Chapter 11. DAVID AND GOLIATH
+
+Huish had bundled himself up from the glare of the day--his face to the
+house, his knees retracted. The frail bones in the thin tropical raiment
+seemed scarce more considerable than a fowl's; and Davis, sitting on the
+rail with his arm about a stay, contemplated him with gloom, wondering
+what manner of counsel that insignificant figure should contain. For
+since Herrick had thrown him off and deserted to the enemy, Huish, alone
+of mankind, remained to him to be a helper and oracle.
+
+He considered their position with a sinking heart. The ship was a stolen
+ship; the stores, either from initial carelessness or ill administration
+during the voyage, were insufficient to carry them to any port except
+back to Papeete; and there retribution waited in the shape of a
+gendarme, a judge with a queer-shaped hat, and the horror of distant
+Noumea. Upon that side, there was no glimmer of hope. Here, at the
+island, the dragon was roused; Attwater with his men and his Winchesters
+watched and patrolled the house; let him who dare approach it. What else
+was then left but to sit there, inactive, pacing the decks--until the
+Trinity Hall arrived and they were cast into irons, or until the food
+came to an end, and the pangs of famine succeeded? For the Trinity
+Hall Davis was prepared; he would barricade the house, and die there
+defending it, like a rat in a crevice. But for the other? The cruise of
+the Farallone, into which he had plunged only a fortnight before, with
+such golden expectations, could this be the nightmare end of it? The
+ship rotting at anchor, the crew stumbling and dying in the scuppers? It
+seemed as if any extreme of hazard were to be preferred to so grisly a
+certainty; as if it would be better to up-anchor after all, put to sea
+at a venture, and, perhaps, perish at the hands of cannibals on one of
+the more obscure Paumotus. His eye roved swiftly over sea and sky in
+quest of any promise of wind, but the fountains of the Trade were empty.
+Where it had run yesterday and for weeks before, a roaring blue river
+charioting clouds, silence now reigned; and the whole height of
+the atmosphere stood balanced. On the endless ribbon of island that
+stretched out to either hand of him its array of golden and green and
+silvery palms, not the most volatile frond was to be seen stirring;
+they drooped to their stable images in the lagoon like things carved of
+metal, and already their long line began to reverberate heat. There was
+no escape possible that day, none probable on the morrow. And still the
+stores were running out!
+
+Then came over Davis, from deep down in the roots of his being, or at
+least from far back among his memories of childhood and innocence, a
+wave of superstition. This run of ill luck was something beyond natural;
+the chances of the game were in themselves more various; it seemed as
+if the devil must serve the pieces. The devil? He heard again the clear
+note of Attwater's bell ringing abroad into the night, and dying away.
+How if God...?
+
+Briskly, he averted his mind. Attwater: that was the point. Attwater
+had food and a treasure of pearls; escape made possible in the present,
+riches in the future. They must come to grips, with Attwater; the man
+must die. A smoky heat went over his face, as he recalled the impotent
+figure he had made last night and the contemptuous speeches he must bear
+in silence. Rage, shame, and the love of life, all pointed the one way;
+and only invention halted: how to reach him? had he strength enough? was
+there any help in that misbegotten packet of bones against the house?
+
+His eyes dwelled upon him with a strange avidity, as though he would
+read into his soul; and presently the sleeper moved, stirred uneasily,
+turned suddenly round, and threw him a blinking look. Davis maintained
+the same dark stare, and Huish looked away again and sat up.
+
+'Lord, I've an 'eadache on me!' said he. 'I believe I was a bit swipey
+last night. W'ere's that cry-byby 'Errick?'
+
+'Gone,' said the captain.
+
+'Ashore?' cried Huish. 'Oh, I say! I'd 'a gone too.'
+
+'Would you?' said the captain.
+
+'Yes, I would,' replied Huish. 'I like Attwater. 'E's all right; we
+got on like one o'clock when you were gone. And ain't his sherry in it,
+rather? It's like Spiers and Ponds' Amontillado! I wish I 'ad a drain of
+it now.' He sighed.
+
+'Well, you'll never get no more of it--that's one thing,' said Davis,
+gravely.
+
+''Ere! wot's wrong with you, Dyvis? Coppers 'ot? Well, look at me! I
+ain't grumpy,' said Huish; 'I'm as plyful as a canary-bird, I am.'
+
+'Yes,' said Davis, 'you're playful; I own that; and you were playful
+last night, I believe, and a damned fine performance you made of it.'
+
+''Allo!' said Huish. ''Ow's this? Wot performance?'
+
+'Well, I'll tell you,' said the captain, getting slowly off the rail.
+
+And he did: at full length, with every wounding epithet and absurd
+detail repeated and emphasised; he had his own vanity and Huish's upon
+the grill, and roasted them; and as he spoke, he inflicted and endured
+agonies of humiliation. It was a plain man's masterpiece of the
+sardonic.
+
+'What do you think of it?' said he, when he had done, and looked down at
+Huish, flushed and serious, and yet jeering.
+
+'I'll tell you wot it is,' was the reply, 'you and me cut a pretty dicky
+figure.'
+
+'That's so,' said Davis, 'a pretty measly figure, by God! And, by God, I
+want to see that man at my knees.'
+
+'Ah!' said Huish. ''Ow to get him there?'
+
+'That's it!' cried Davis. 'How to get hold of him! They're four to two;
+though there's only one man among them to count, and that's Attwater.
+Get a bead on Attwater, and the others would cut and run and sing out
+like frightened poultry--and old man Herrick would come round with
+his hat for a share of the pearls. No, SIR! it's how to get hold of
+Attwater! And we daren't even go ashore; he would shoot us in the boat
+like dogs.'
+
+'Are you particular about having him dead or alive?' asked Huish.
+
+'I want to see him dead,' said the captain.
+
+'Ah, well!' said Huish, 'then I believe I'll do a bit of breakfast.'
+
+And he turned into the house.
+
+The captain doggedly followed him.
+
+'What's this?' he asked. 'What's your idea, anyway?'
+
+'Oh, you let me alone, will you?' said Huish, opening a bottle of
+champagne. 'You'll 'ear my idea soon enough. Wyte till I pour some
+chain on my 'ot coppers.' He drank a glass off, and affected to listen.
+''Ark!' said he, ''ear it fizz. Like 'am fryin', I declyre. 'Ave a
+glass, do, and look sociable.'
+
+'No!' said the captain, with emphasis; 'no, I will not! there's
+business.'
+
+'You p'ys your money and you tykes your choice, my little man,' returned
+Huish. 'Seems rather a shyme to me to spoil your breakfast for wot's
+really ancient 'istory.'
+
+He finished three parts of a bottle of champagne, and nibbled a corner
+of biscuit, with extreme deliberation; the captain sitting opposite and
+champing the bit like an impatient horse. Then Huish leaned his arms on
+the table and looked Davis in the face.
+
+'W'en you're ready!' said he.
+
+'Well, now, what's your idea?' said Davis, with a sigh.
+
+'Fair play!' said Huish. 'What's yours?'
+
+'The trouble is that I've got none,' replied Davis; and wandered for
+some time in aimless discussion of the difficulties in their path, and
+useless explanations of his own fiasco.
+
+'About done?' said Huish.
+
+'I'll dry up right here,' replied Davis.
+
+'Well, then,' said Huish, 'you give me your 'and across the table, and
+say, "Gawd strike me dead if I don't back you up."'
+
+His voice was hardly raised, yet it thrilled the hearer. His face seemed
+the epitome of cunning, and the captain recoiled from it as from a blow.
+
+'What for?' said he.
+
+'Luck,' said Huish. 'Substantial guarantee demanded.'
+
+And he continued to hold out his hand.
+
+'I don't see the good of any such tomfoolery,' said the other.
+
+'I do, though,' returned Huish. 'Gimme your 'and and say the words; then
+you'll 'ear my view of it. Don't, and you won't.'
+
+The captain went through the required form, breathing short, and gazing
+on the clerk with anguish. What to fear, he knew not; yet he feared
+slavishly what was to fall from the pale lips.
+
+'Now, if you'll excuse me 'alf a second,' said Huish, 'I'll go and fetch
+the byby.'
+
+'The baby?' said Davis. 'What's that?'
+
+'Fragile. With care. This side up,' replied the clerk with a wink, as he
+disappeared.
+
+He returned, smiling to himself, and carrying in his hand a silk
+handkerchief. The long stupid wrinkles ran up Davis's brow, as he saw
+it. What should it contain? He could think of nothing more recondite
+than a revolver.
+
+Huish resumed his seat.
+
+'Now,' said he, 'are you man enough to take charge of 'Errick and the
+niggers? Because I'll take care of Hattwater.'
+
+'How?' cried Davis. 'You can't!'
+
+'Tut, tut!' said the clerk. 'You gimme time. Wot's the first point? The
+first point is that we can't get ashore, and I'll make you a present of
+that for a 'ard one. But 'ow about a flag of truce? Would that do the
+trick, d'ye think? or would Attwater simply blyze aw'y at us in the
+bloomin' boat like dawgs?'
+
+'No,' said Davis, 'I don't believe he would.'
+
+'No more do I,' said Huish; 'I don't believe he would either; and I'm
+sure I 'ope he won't! So then you can call us ashore. Next point is
+to get near the managin' direction. And for that I'm going to 'ave you
+write a letter, in w'ich you s'y you're ashamed to meet his eye, and
+that the bearer, Mr J. L. 'Uish, is empowered to represent you. Armed
+with w'ich seemin'ly simple expedient, Mr J. L. 'Uish will proceed to
+business.'
+
+He paused, like one who had finished, but still held Davis with his eye.
+
+'How?' said Davis. 'Why?'
+
+'Well, you see, you're big,' returned Huish; ''e knows you 'ave a gun in
+your pocket, and anybody can see with 'alf an eye that you ain't the
+man to 'esitate about usin' it. So it's no go with you, and never was;
+you're out of the runnin', Dyvis. But he won't be afryde of me, I'm such
+a little un! I'm unarmed--no kid about that--and I'll hold my 'ands up
+right enough.' He paused. 'If I can manage to sneak up nearer to him as
+we talk,' he resumed, 'you look out and back me up smart. If I don't, we
+go aw'y again, and nothink to 'urt. See?'
+
+The captain's face was contorted by the frenzied effort to comprehend.
+
+'No, I don't see,' he cried, 'I can't see. What do you mean?'
+
+'I mean to do for the Beast!' cried Huish, in a burst of venomous
+triumph. 'I'll bring the 'ulkin' bully to grass. He's 'ad his larks out
+of me; I'm goin' to 'ave my lark out of 'im, and a good lark too!'
+
+'What is it?' said the captain, almost in a whisper.
+
+'Sure you want to know?' asked Huish.
+
+Davis rose and took a turn in the house.
+
+'Yes, I want to know,' he said at last with an effort.
+
+'We'n you're back's at the wall, you do the best you can, don't you?'
+began the clerk. 'I s'y that, because I 'appen to know there's a
+prejudice against it; it's considered vulgar, awf'ly vulgar.' He
+unrolled the handkerchief and showed a four-ounce jar. 'This 'ere's
+vitriol, this is,' said he.
+
+The captain stared upon him with a whitening face.
+
+'This is the stuff!' he pursued, holding it up. 'This'll burn to the
+bone; you'll see it smoke upon 'im like 'ell fire! One drop upon 'is
+bloomin' heyesight, and I'll trouble you for Attwater!'
+
+'No, no, by God!' exclaimed the captain.
+
+'Now, see 'ere, ducky,' said Huish, 'this is my bean feast, I believe?
+I'm goin' up to that man single-'anded, I am. 'E's about seven foot
+high, and I'm five foot one. 'E's a rifle in his 'and, 'e's on the
+look-out, 'e wasn't born yesterday. This is Dyvid and Goliar, I tell
+you! If I'd ast you to walk up and face the music I could understand.
+But I don't. I on'y ast you to stand by and spifflicate the niggers.
+It'll all come in quite natural; you'll see, else! Fust thing, you know,
+you'll see him running round and owling like a good un...'
+
+'Don't!' said Davis. 'Don't talk of it!'
+
+'Well, you ARE a juggins!' exclaimed Huish. 'What did you want? You
+wanted to kill him, and tried to last night. You wanted to kill the 'ole
+lot of them and tried to, and 'ere I show you 'ow; and because there's
+some medicine in a bottle you kick up this fuss!'
+
+'I suppose that's so,' said Davis. 'It don't seem someways reasonable,
+only there it is.'
+
+'It's the happlication of science, I suppose?' sneered Huish.
+
+'I don't know what it is,' cried Davis, pacing the floor; 'it's there!
+I draw the line at it. I can't put a finger to no such piggishness. It's
+too damned hateful!'
+
+'And I suppose it's all your fancy pynted it,' said Huish, 'w'en you
+take a pistol and a bit o' lead, and copse a man's brains all over him?
+No accountin' for tystes.'
+
+'I'm not denying it,' said Davis, 'It's something here, inside of me.
+It's foolishness; I dare say it's dam foolishness. I don't argue, I just
+draw the line. Isn't there no other way?'
+
+'Look for yourself,' said Huish. 'I ain't wedded to this, if you think I
+am; I ain't ambitious; I don't make a point of playin' the lead; I offer
+to, that's all, and if you can't show me better, by Gawd, I'm goin' to!'
+
+'Then the risk!' cried Davis.
+
+'If you ast me straight, I should say it was a case of seven to one and
+no takers,' said Huish. 'But that's my look-out, ducky, and I'm gyme,
+that's wot I am: gyme all through.'
+
+The captain looked at him. Huish sat there, preening his sinister
+vanity, glorying in his precedency in evil; and the villainous courage
+and readiness of the creature shone out of him like a candle from a
+lantern. Dismay and a kind of respect seized hold on Davis in his own
+despite. Until that moment, he had seen the clerk always hanging
+back, always listless, uninterested, and openly grumbling at a word of
+anything to do; and now, by the touch of an enchanter's wand, he beheld
+him sitting girt and resolved, and his face radiant. He had raised the
+devil, he thought; and asked who was to control him? and his spirits
+quailed.
+
+'Look as long as you like,' Huish was going on. 'You don't see any green
+in my eye! I ain't afryde of Attwater, I ain't afryde of you, and I
+ain't afryde of words. You want to kill people, that's wot YOU want; but
+you want to do it in kid gloves, and it can't be done that w'y. Murder
+ain't genteel, it ain't easy, it ain't safe, and it tykes a man to do
+it. 'Ere's the man.'
+
+'Huish!' began the captain with energy; and then stopped, and remained
+staring at him with corrugated brows.
+
+'Well, hout with it!' said Huish. ''Ave you anythink else to put up? Is
+there any other chanst to try?'
+
+The captain held his peace.
+
+'There you are then!' said Huish with a shrug.
+
+Davis fell again to his pacing.
+
+'Oh, you may do sentry-go till you're blue in the mug, you won't find
+anythink else,' said Huish.
+
+There was a little silence; the captain, like a man launched on a swing,
+flying dizzily among extremes of conjecture and refusal.
+
+'But see,' he said, suddenly pausing. 'Can you? Can the thing be done?
+It--it can't be easy.'
+
+'If I get within twenty foot of 'im it'll be done; so you look out,'
+said Huish, and his tone of certainty was absolute.
+
+'How can you know that?' broke from the captain in a choked cry. 'You
+beast, I believe you've done it before!'
+
+'Oh, that's private affyres,' returned Huish, 'I ain't a talking man.'
+
+A shock of repulsion struck and shook the captain; a scream rose almost
+to his lips; had he uttered it, he might have cast himself at the same
+moment on the body of Huish, might have picked him up, and flung him
+down, and wiped the cabin with him, in a frenzy of cruelty that seemed
+half moral. But the moment passed; and the abortive crisis left the man
+weaker. The stakes were so high--the pearls on the one hand--starvation
+and shame on the other. Ten years of pearls! The imagination of Davis
+translated them into a new, glorified existence for himself and his
+family. The seat of this new life must be in London; there were deadly
+reasons against Portland, Maine; and the pictures that came to him were
+of English manners. He saw his boys marching in the procession of a
+school, with gowns on, an usher marshalling them and reading as he
+walked in a great book. He was installed in a villa, semi-detached;
+the name, Rosemore, on the gateposts. In a chair on the gravel walk, he
+seemed to sit smoking a cigar, a blue ribbon in his buttonhole, victor
+over himself and circumstances, and the malignity of bankers. He saw the
+parlour with red curtains and shells on the mantelpiece--and with the
+fine inconsistency of visions, mixed a grog at the mahogany table ere he
+turned in. With that the Farallone gave one of the aimless and nameless
+movements which (even in an anchored ship and even in the most profound
+calm) remind one of the mobility of fluids; and he was back again under
+the cover of the house, the fierce daylight besieging it all round and
+glaring in the chinks, and the clerk in a rather airy attitude, awaiting
+his decision.
+
+He began to walk again. He aspired after the realisation of these
+dreams, like a horse nickering for water; the lust of them burned in his
+inside. And the only obstacle was Attwater, who had insulted him from
+the first. He gave Herrick a full share of the pearls, he insisted on
+it; Huish opposed him, and he trod the opposition down; and praised
+himself exceedingly. He was not going to use vitriol himself; was he
+Huish's keeper? It was a pity he had asked, but after all!... he saw the
+boys again in the school procession, with the gowns he had thought to be
+so 'tony' long since... And at the same time the incomparable shame of
+the last evening blazed up in his mind.
+
+'Have it your own way!' he said hoarsely.
+
+'Oh, I knew you would walk up,' said Huish. 'Now for the letter. There's
+paper, pens and ink. Sit down and I'll dictyte.'
+
+The captain took a seat and the pen, looked a while helplessly at the
+paper, then at Huish. The swing had gone the other way; there was a blur
+upon his eyes. 'It's a dreadful business,' he said, with a strong twitch
+of his shoulders.
+
+'It's rather a start, no doubt,' said Huish. 'Tyke a dip of ink. That's
+it. William John Hattwater, Esq., Sir': he dictated.
+
+'How do you know his name is William John?' asked Davis.
+
+'Saw it on a packing case,' said Huish. 'Got that?'
+
+'No,' said Davis. 'But there's another thing. What are we to write?'
+
+'O my golly!' cried the exasperated Huish. 'Wot kind of man do YOU call
+yourself? I'M goin' to tell you wot to write; that's my pitch; if you'll
+just be so bloomin' condescendin' as to write it down! WILLIAM JOHN
+ATTWATER, ESQ., SIR': he reiterated. And the captain at last beginning
+half mechanically to move his pen, the dictation proceeded:
+
+It is with feelings of shyme and 'artfelt contrition that I approach you
+after the yumiliatin' events of last night. Our Mr 'Errick has left
+the ship, and will have doubtless communicated to you the nature of our
+'opes. Needless to s'y, these are no longer possible: Fate 'as declyred
+against us, and we bow the 'ead. Well awyre as I am of the just
+suspicions with w'ich I am regarded, I do not venture to solicit the
+fyvour of an interview for myself, but in order to put an end to a
+situytion w'ich must be equally pyneful to all, I 'ave deputed my friend
+and partner, Mr J. L. Huish, to l'y before you my proposals, and w'ich
+by their moderytion, Will, I trust, be found to merit your attention.
+Mr J. L. Huish is entirely unarmed, I swear to Gawd! and will 'old 'is
+'ands over 'is 'ead from the moment he begins to approach you. I am your
+fytheful servant, John Davis.
+
+
+Huish read the letter with the innocent joy of amateurs, chuckled
+gustfully to himself, and reopened it more than once after it was
+folded, to repeat the pleasure; Davis meanwhile sitting inert and
+heavily frowning.
+
+Of a sudden he rose; he seemed all abroad. 'No!' he cried. 'No! it can't
+be! It's too much; it's damnation. God would never forgive it.'
+
+'Well, and 'oo wants Him to?' returned Huish, shrill with fury. 'You
+were damned years ago for the Sea Rynger, and said so yourself. Well
+then, be damned for something else, and 'old your tongue.'
+
+The captain looked at him mistily. 'No,' he pleaded, 'no, old man! don't
+do it.'
+
+''Ere now,' said Huish, 'I'll give you my ultimytum. Go or st'y w'ere you
+are; I don't mind; I'm goin' to see that man and chuck this vitriol in
+his eyes. If you st'y I'll go alone; the niggers will likely knock me
+on the 'ead, and a fat lot you'll be the better! But there's one thing
+sure: I'll 'ear no more of your moonin', mullygrubbin' rot, and tyke it
+stryte.'
+
+The captain took it with a blink and a gulp. Memory, with phantom
+voices, repeated in his cars something similar, something he had once
+said to Herrick--years ago it seemed.
+
+'Now, gimme over your pistol,' said Huish. 'I 'ave to see all clear. Six
+shots, and mind you don't wyste them.'
+
+The captain, like a man in a nightmare, laid down his revolver on the
+table, and Huish wiped the cartridges and oiled the works.
+
+It was close on noon, there was no breath of wind, and the heat was
+scarce bearable, when the two men came on deck, had the boat manned, and
+passed down, one after another, into the stern-sheets. A white shirt at
+the end of an oar served as a flag of truce; and the men, by direction,
+and to give it the better chance to be observed, pulled with extreme
+slowness. The isle shook before them like a place incandescent; on
+the face of the lagoon blinding copper suns, no bigger than sixpences,
+danced and stabbed them in the eyeballs; there went up from sand and
+sea, and even from the boat, a glare of scathing brightness; and as they
+could only peer abroad from between closed lashes, the excess of light
+seemed to be changed into a sinister darkness, comparable to that of a
+thundercloud before it bursts.
+
+The captain had come upon this errand for any one of a dozen reasons,
+the last of which was desire for its success. Superstition rules all
+men; semi-ignorant and gross natures, like that of Davis, it rules
+utterly. For murder he had been prepared; but this horror of the
+medicine in the bottle went beyond him, and he seemed to himself to be
+parting the last strands that united him to God. The boat carried him
+on to reprobation, to damnation; and he suffered himself to be carried
+passively consenting, silently bidding farewell to his better self
+and his hopes. Huish sat by his side in towering spirits that were not
+wholly genuine. Perhaps as brave a man as ever lived, brave as a weasel,
+he must still reassure himself with the tones of his own voice; he must
+play his part to exaggeration, he must out-Herod Herod, insult all
+that was respectable, and brave all that was formidable, in a kind of
+desperate wager with himself.
+
+'Golly, but it's 'ot!' said he. 'Cruel 'ot, I call it. Nice d'y to get
+your gruel in! I s'y, you know, it must feel awf'ly peculiar to get
+bowled over on a d'y like this. I'd rather 'ave it on a cowld and frosty
+morning, wouldn't you? (Singing) "'Ere we go round the mulberry bush
+on a cowld and frosty mornin'." (Spoken) Give you my word, I 'aven't
+thought o' that in ten year; used to sing it at a hinfant school in
+'Ackney, 'Ackney Wick it was. (Singing) "This is the way the tyler does,
+the tyler does." (Spoken) Bloomin' 'umbug. 'Ow are you off now, for the
+notion of a future styte? Do you cotton to the tea-fight views, or the
+old red 'ot boguey business?'
+
+'Oh, dry up!' said the captain.
+
+'No, but I want to know,' said Huish. 'It's within the sp'ere of
+practical politics for you and me, my boy; we may both be bowled over,
+one up, t'other down, within the next ten minutes. It would be rather a
+lark, now, if you only skipped across, came up smilin' t'other side,
+and a hangel met you with a B. and S. under his wing. 'Ullo, you'd s'y:
+come, I tyke this kind.'
+
+The captain groaned. While Huish was thus airing and exercising his
+bravado, the man at his side was actually engaged in prayer. Prayer,
+what for? God knows. But out of his inconsistent, illogical, and
+agitated spirit, a stream of supplication was poured forth, inarticulate
+as himself, earnest as death and judgment.
+
+'Thou Gawd seest me!' continued Huish. 'I remember I had that written
+in my Bible. I remember the Bible too, all about Abinadab and parties.
+Well, Gawd!' apostrophising the meridian, 'you're goin' to see a rum
+start presently, I promise you that!'
+
+The captain bounded.
+
+'I'll have no blasphemy!' he cried, 'no blasphemy in my boat.'
+
+'All right, cap,' said Huish. 'Anythink to oblige. Any other topic you
+would like to sudgest, the rynegyge, the lightnin' rod, Shykespeare, or
+the musical glasses? 'Ere's conversation on a tap. Put a penny in the
+slot, and... 'ullo! 'ere they are!' he cried. 'Now or never is 'e goin'
+to shoot?'
+
+And the little man straightened himself into an alert and dashing
+attitude, and looked steadily at the enemy. But the captain rose half up
+in the boat with eyes protruding.
+
+'What's that?' he cried.
+
+'Wot's wot?' said Huish.
+
+'Those--blamed things,' said the captain.
+
+And indeed it was something strange. Herrick and Attwater, both armed
+with Winchesters, had appeared out of the grove behind the figure-head;
+and to either hand of them, the sun glistened upon two metallic objects,
+locomotory like men, and occupying in the economy of these creatures the
+places of heads--only the heads were faceless. To Davis between wind
+and water, his mythology appeared to have come alive, and Tophet to be
+vomiting demons. But Huish was not mystified a moment.
+
+'Divers' 'elmets, you ninny. Can't you see?' he said.
+
+'So they are,' said Davis, with a gasp. 'And why? Oh, I see, it's for
+armour.'
+
+'Wot did I tell you?' said Huish. 'Dyvid and Goliar all the w'y and
+back.'
+
+The two natives (for they it was that were equipped in this unusual
+panoply of war) spread out to right and left, and at last lay down
+in the shade, on the extreme flank of the position. Even now that the
+mystery was explained, Davis was hatefully preoccupied, stared at the
+flame on their crests, and forgot, and then remembered with a smile, the
+explanation.
+
+Attwater withdrew again into the grove, and Herrick, with his gun under
+his arm, came down the pier alone.
+
+About half-way down he halted and hailed the boat.
+
+'What do you want?' he cried.
+
+'I'll tell that to Mr Attwater,' replied Huish, stepping briskly on the
+ladder. 'I don't tell it to you, because you played the trucklin' sneak.
+Here's a letter for him: tyke it, and give it, and be 'anged to you!'
+
+'Davis, is this all right?' said Herrick.
+
+Davis raised his chin, glanced swiftly at Herrick and away again, and
+held his peace. The glance was charged with some deep emotion, but
+whether of hatred or of fear, it was beyond Herrick to divine.
+
+'Well,' he said, 'I'll give the letter.' He drew a score with his foot
+on the boards of the gangway. 'Till I bring the answer, don't move a
+step past this.'
+
+And he returned to where Attwater leaned against a tree, and gave him
+the letter. Attwater glanced it through.
+
+'What does that mean?' he asked, passing it to Herrick.
+
+'Treachery?'
+
+'Oh, I suppose so!' said Herrick.
+
+'Well, tell him to come on,' said Attwater. 'One isn't a fatalist for
+nothing. Tell him to come on and to look out.'
+
+Herrick returned to the figure-head. Half-way down the pier the clerk
+was waiting, with Davis by his side.
+
+'You are to come along, Huish,' said Herrick. 'He bids you look out, no
+tricks.'
+
+Huish walked briskly up the pier, and paused face to face with the young
+man.
+
+'W'ere is 'e?' said he, and to Herrick's surprise, the low-bred,
+insignificant face before him flushed suddenly crimson and went white
+again.
+
+'Right forward,' said Herrick, pointing. 'Now your hands above your
+head.'
+
+The clerk turned away from him and towards the figure-head, as though he
+were about to address to it his devotions; he was seen to heave a deep
+breath; and raised his arms. In common with many men of his unhappy
+physical endowments, Huish's hands were disproportionately long and
+broad, and the palms in particular enormous; a four-ounce jar was
+nothing in that capacious fist. The next moment he was plodding steadily
+forward on his mission.
+
+Herrick at first followed. Then a noise in his rear startled him, and he
+turned about to find Davis already advanced as far as the figure-head.
+He came, crouching and open-mouthed, as the mesmerised may follow the
+mesmeriser; all human considerations, and even the care of his own life,
+swallowed up in one abominable and burning curiosity.
+
+'Halt!' cried Herrick, covering him with his rifle. 'Davis, what are you
+doing, man? YOU are not to come.'
+
+Davis instinctively paused, and regarded him with a dreadful vacancy of
+eye.
+
+'Put your back to that figure-head, do you hear me? and stand fast!'
+said Herrick.
+
+The captain fetched a breath, stepped back against the figure-head, and
+instantly redirected his glances after Huish.
+
+There was a hollow place of the sand in that part, and, as it were,
+a glade among the cocoa palms in which the direct noonday sun blazed
+intolerably. At the far end, in the shadow, the tall figure of Attwater
+was to be seen leaning on a tree; towards him, with his hands over his
+head, and his steps smothered in the sand, the clerk painfully waded.
+The surrounding glare threw out and exaggerated the man's smallness; it
+seemed no less perilous an enterprise, this that he was gone upon, than
+for a whelp to besiege a citadel.
+
+'There, Mr Whish. That will do,' cried Attwater. 'From that distance,
+and keeping your hands up, like a good boy, you can very well put me in
+possession of the skipper's views.'
+
+The interval betwixt them was perhaps forty feet; and Huish measured
+it with his eye, and breathed a curse. He was already distressed with
+labouring in the loose sand, and his arms ached bitterly from their
+unnatural position. In the palm of his right hand, the jar was ready;
+and his heart thrilled, and his voice choked as he began to speak.
+
+'Mr Hattwater,' said he, 'I don't know if ever you 'ad a mother...'
+
+'I can set your mind at rest: I had,' returned Attwater; 'and
+henceforth, if I might venture to suggest it, her name need not recur in
+our communications. I should perhaps tell you that I am not amenable to
+the pathetic.'
+
+'I am sorry, sir, if I 'ave seemed to tresparse on your private
+feelin's,' said the clerk, cringing and stealing a step. 'At least, sir,
+you will never pe'suade me that you are not a perfec' gentleman; I
+know a gentleman when I see him; and as such, I 'ave no 'esitation in
+throwin' myself on your merciful consideration. It IS 'ard lines, no
+doubt; it's 'ard lines to have to hown yourself beat; it's 'ard lines to
+'ave to come and beg to you for charity.'
+
+'When, if things had only gone right, the whole place was as good as
+your own?' suggested Attwater. 'I can understand the feeling.'
+
+'You are judging me, Mr Attwater,' said the clerk, 'and God knows how
+unjustly! THOU GAWD SEEST ME, was the tex' I 'ad in my Bible, w'ich my
+father wrote it in with 'is own 'and upon the fly leaft.'
+
+'I am sorry I have to beg your pardon once more,' said Attwater; 'but,
+do you know, you seem to me to be a trifle nearer, which is entirely
+outside of our bargain. And I would venture to suggest that you take
+one--two--three--steps back; and stay there.'
+
+The devil, at this staggering disappointment, looked out of Huish's
+face, and Attwater was swift to suspect. He frowned, he stared on the
+little man, and considered. Why should he be creeping nearer? The next
+moment, his gun was at his shoulder.
+
+'Kindly oblige me by opening your hands. Open your hands wide--let me
+see the fingers spread, you dog--throw down that thing you're holding!'
+he roared, his rage and certitude increasing together.
+
+And then, at almost the same moment, the indomitable Huish decided to
+throw, and Attwater pulled the trigger. There was scarce the difference
+of a second between the two resolves, but it was in favour of the man
+with the rifle; and the jar had not yet left the clerk's hand, before
+the ball shattered both. For the twinkling of an eye the wretch was in
+hell's agonies, bathed in liquid flames, a screaming bedlamite; and then
+a second and more merciful bullet stretched him dead.
+
+The whole thing was come and gone in a breath. Before Herrick could turn
+about, before Davis could complete his cry of horror, the clerk lay in
+the sand, sprawling and convulsed.
+
+Attwater ran to the body; he stooped and viewed it; he put his finger in
+the vitriol, and his face whitened and hardened with anger.
+
+Davis had not yet moved; he stood astonished, with his back to the
+figure-head, his hands clutching it behind him, his body inclined
+forward from the waist.
+
+Attwater turned deliberately and covered him with his rifle.
+
+'Davis,' he cried, in a voice like a trumpet, 'I give you sixty seconds
+to make your peace with God!'
+
+Davis looked, and his mind awoke. He did not dream of self-defence, he
+did not reach for his pistol. He drew himself up instead to face death,
+with a quivering nostril.
+
+'I guess I'll not trouble the Old Man,' he said; 'considering the job I
+was on, I guess it's better business to just shut my face.'
+
+Attwater fired; there came a spasmodic movement of the victim, and
+immediately above the middle of his forehead, a black hole marred the
+whiteness of the figure-head. A dreadful pause; then again the report,
+and the solid sound and jar of the bullet in the wood; and this time the
+captain had felt the wind of it along his cheek. A third shot, and he
+was bleeding from one ear; and along the levelled rifle Attwater smiled
+like a Red Indian.
+
+The cruel game of which he was the puppet was now clear to Davis; three
+times he had drunk of death, and he must look to drink of it seven times
+more before he was despatched. He held up his hand.
+
+'Steady!' he cried; 'I'll take your sixty seconds.'
+
+'Good!' said Attwater.
+
+The captain shut his eyes tight like a child: he held his hands up at
+last with a tragic and ridiculous gesture.
+
+'My God, for Christ's sake, look after my two kids,' he said; and then,
+after a pause and a falter, 'for Christ's sake, Amen.'
+
+And he opened his eyes and looked down the rifle with a quivering mouth.
+
+'But don't keep fooling me long!' he pleaded.
+
+'That's all your prayer?' asked Attwater, with a singular ring in his
+voice.
+
+'Guess so,' said Davis.
+
+So?' said Attwater, resting the butt of his rifle on the ground, 'is
+that done? Is your peace made with Heaven? Because it is with me. Go,
+and sin no more, sinful father. And remember that whatever you do to
+others, God shall visit it again a thousand-fold upon your innocents.'
+
+The wretched Davis came staggering forward from his place against the
+figure-head, fell upon his knees, and waved his hands, and fainted.
+
+When he came to himself again, his head was on Attwater's arm, and close
+by stood one of the men in divers' helmets, holding a bucket of water,
+from which his late executioner now laved his face. The memory of that
+dreadful passage returned upon him in a clap; again he saw Huish lying
+dead, again he seemed to himself to totter on the brink of an unplumbed
+eternity. With trembling hands he seized hold of the man whom he had
+come to slay; and his voice broke from him like that of a child among
+the nightmares of fever: 'O! isn't there no mercy? O! what must I do to
+be saved?'
+
+'Ah!' thought Attwater, 'here's the true penitent.'
+
+
+
+Chapter 12. TAIL-PIECE
+
+On a very bright, hot, lusty, strongly blowing noon, a fortnight after
+the events recorded, and a month since the curtain rose upon this
+episode, a man might have been spied, praying on the sand by the lagoon
+beach. A point of palm trees isolated him from the settlement; and from
+the place where he knelt, the only work of man's hand that interrupted
+the expanse, was the schooner Farallone, her berth quite changed, and
+rocking at anchor some two miles to windward in the midst of the lagoon.
+The noise of the Trade ran very boisterous in all parts of the island;
+the nearer palm trees crashed and whistled in the gusts, those farther
+off contributed a humming bass like the roar of cities; and yet, to any
+man less absorbed, there must have risen at times over this turmoil
+of the winds, the sharper note of the human voice from the settlement.
+There all was activity. Attwater, stripped to his trousers and lending
+a strong hand of help, was directing and encouraging five Kanakas; from
+his lively voice, and their more lively efforts, it was to be gathered
+that some sudden and joyful emergency had set them in this bustle; and
+the Union Jack floated once more on its staff. But the suppliant on the
+beach, unconscious of their voices, prayed on with instancy and fervour,
+and the sound of his voice rose and fell again, and his countenance
+brightened and was deformed with changing moods of piety and terror.
+
+Before his closed eyes, the skiff had been for some time tacking towards
+the distant and deserted Farallone; and presently the figure of Herrick
+might have been observed to board her, to pass for a while into the
+house, thence forward to the forecastle, and at last to plunge into the
+main hatch. In all these quarters, his visit was followed by a coil of
+smoke; and he had scarce entered his boat again and shoved off, before
+flames broke forth upon the schooner. They burned gaily; kerosene had
+not been spared, and the bellows of the Trade incited the conflagration.
+About half way on the return voyage, when Herrick looked back, he beheld
+the Farallone wrapped to the topmasts in leaping arms of fire, and
+the voluminous smoke pursuing him along the face of the lagoon. In one
+hour's time, he computed, the waters would have closed over the stolen
+ship.
+
+It so chanced that, as his boat flew before the wind with much vivacity,
+and his eyes were continually busy in the wake, measuring the progress
+of the flames, he found himself embayed to the northward of the point
+of palms, and here became aware at the same time of the figure of Davis
+immersed in his devotion. An exclamation, part of annoyance, part of
+amusement, broke from him: and he touched the helm and ran the prow
+upon the beach not twenty feet from the unconscious devotee. Taking the
+painter in his hand, he landed, and drew near, and stood over him. And
+still the voluble and incoherent stream of prayer continued unabated. It
+was not possible for him to overhear the suppliant's petitions, which he
+listened to some while in a very mingled mood of humour and pity: and
+it was only when his own name began to occur and to be conjoined with
+epithets, that he at last laid his hand on the captain's shoulder.
+
+'Sorry to interrupt the exercise,' said he; 'but I want you to look at
+the Farallone.'
+
+The captain scrambled to his feet, and stood gasping and staring. 'Mr
+Herrick, don't startle a man like that!' he said. 'I don't seem someways
+rightly myself since...' he broke off. 'What did you say anyway? O, the
+Farallone,' and he looked languidly out.
+
+'Yes,' said Herrick. 'There she burns! and you may guess from that what
+the news is.'
+
+'The Trinity Hall, I guess,' said the captain.
+
+'The same,' said Herrick; 'sighted half an hour ago, and coming up hand
+over fist.'
+
+'Well, it don't amount to a hill of beans,' said the captain with a
+sigh.
+
+'O, come, that's rank ingratitude!' cried Herrick.
+
+'Well,' replied the captain, meditatively, 'you mayn't just see the way
+that I view it in, but I'd 'most rather stay here upon this island. I
+found peace here, peace in believing. Yes, I guess this island is about
+good enough for John Davis.'
+
+'I never heard such nonsense!' cried Herrick. 'What! with all turning
+out in your favour the way it does, the Farallone wiped out, the crew
+disposed of, a sure thing for your wife and family, and you, yourself,
+Attwater's spoiled darling and pet penitent!'
+
+'Now, Mr Herrick, don't say that,' said the captain gently; 'when you
+know he don't make no difference between us. But, O! why not be one of
+us? why not come to Jesus right away, and let's meet in yon beautiful
+land? That's just the one thing wanted; just say, Lord, I believe, help
+thou mine unbelief! And He'll fold you in His arms. You see, I know!
+I've been a sinner myself!'
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Ebb-Tide, by
+Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyde Osbourne
+
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