n?"

"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. He's the real article, I
said, and I don't like it; here's the real, first-rate, copper-bottomed
aristocrat. '_Aw! don't know ye, do I? God damn ye, did God make ye?_'
No, that couldn't be nothing but genuine; a man's 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 flunkeys; 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