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, whether 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. “O,
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 Pond’s
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?”
“O, 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 cham on my ’ot coppers.” He
drank a glass off, and affected to listen. “’Ark!”
said he, “’ear it fizz. Like ’am
frying, 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 of 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 don’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 ashymed 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.
“W’en your 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 ’olé 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 daresay 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. Look
at me, Dyvis, there ain’t any shilly-shally about
me. 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.
“O, 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!”
“O, 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.
“O, 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 Dyvis.”
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 ears 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 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
bogey business?”
“O, 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 ryne-gyge,
the lightnin’-rod, Shykespeare, or the musical
glasses? ’Ere’s conversation on 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? O, 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 halfway 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?”
“O, 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 to 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 coco-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 may 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 a 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 thousandfold 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 diver’s 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 is
the true penitent.”