“Hear me!” Herrick burst out suddenly.
“No, you better hear me first,” said Davis. “Hear me and understand me. We’ve got no use for that fellow, whatever you may have. He’s your kind, he’s not ours; he’s took to you, and he’s wiped his boots on me and Huish. Save him if you can!”
“Save him?” repeated Herrick.
“Save him, if you’re able!” reiterated Davis, with a blow of his clenched fist. “Go ashore, and talk him smooth; and if you get him and his pearls aboard, I’ll spare him. If you don’t, there’s going to be a funeral. Is that so, Huish? does that suit you?”
“I ain’t a forgiving man,” said Huish, “but I’m not the sort to spoil business neither. Bring the bloke on board and bring his pearls along with him, and you can have it your own way; maroon him where you like,—I’m agreeable.”
“Well, and if I can’t?” cried Herrick, while the sweat streamed upon his face. “You talk to me as if I was God Almighty, to do this and that! But if I can’t?”
“My son,” said the captain, “you better do your level best, or you’ll see sights!”
“O yes,” said Huish. “O crikey, yes!” He looked across at Herrick with a toothless smile that was shocking in its savagery; and, his ear caught apparently by the trivial expression he had used, broke into a piece of the chorus of a comic song which he must have heard twenty years before in London: meaningless gibberish that, in that hour and place, seemed hateful as a blasphemy: “Hikey, pikey, crikey, fikey, chillingawallaba dory.”
The captain suffered him to finish; his face was unchanged.
“The way things are, there’s many a man that wouldn’t let you go ashore,” he resumed. “But I’m not that kind. I know you’d never go back on me, Herrick! Or if you choose to,—go, and do it, and be damned!” he cried, and rose abruptly from the table.