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?"