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 practised
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 snow-flake, hung,
and circled, and displayed, as it turned, the long vermilion feather of
its tail. 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 discern