er 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 prepa