“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.”