“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 the board in front of him; he looked steadily in Herrick’s face, and Herrick as steadily looked upon the table and the pattering fingers; there was a gentle oscillation of the anchored ship, and a big patch of sunlight travelled to and fro between the one and the other.