The captain and Herrick meanwhile turned their back upon the lights in
Attwater's verandah, and took a direction towards the pier and the beach
of the lagoon.
The isle, at this hour, with its smooth floor of sand, the pillared roof
overhead, and the prevalent illumination of the lamps, wore an air of
unreality like a deserted theatre or a public garden at midnight. A man
looked about him for the statues and tables. Not the least air of wind
was stirring among the palms, and the silence was emphasised by the
continuous clamour of the surf from the seashore, as it might be of
traffic in the next street.
Still talking, still soothing him, the captain hurried his patient on,
brought him at last to the lagoon-side, and leading him down the beach,
laved his head and face with the tepid water. The paroxysm gradually
subsided, the sobs became less convulsive and then ceased; by an odd but
not quite unnatural conjunction, the captain's soothing current of
talk died away at the same time and by proportional steps, and the
pair remained sunk in silence. The lagoon broke at their feet in petty
wavelets, and with a sound as delicate as a whisper; stars of all
degrees looked down on their own images in that vast mirror; and the
more angry colour of the Farallone's riding lamp burned in the middle
distance. For long they continued to gaze on the scene before them, and
hearken anxiously to the rustle and tinkle of that miniature surf, or
the more distant and loud reverberations from the outer coast. For long
speech was denied them; and when the words came at last, they came to
both simultaneously. 'Say, Herrick...'the captain was beginning.
But Herrick, turning swiftly towards his companion, bent him down with
the eager cry: 'Let's up anchor, captain, and to sea!'
'Where to, my son?' said the captain. 'Up anchor's easy saying. But
where to?'
'To sea,' responded Herrick. 'The sea's big enough! To sea--away from
this dreadful island and that, oh! that sinister man!'
'Oh, we'll see about that,' said Davis. 'You brace up, and we'll see
about that. You're all run down, that's what's wrong with you; you're
all nerves, like Jemimar; you've got to brace up good and be yourself
again, and then we'll talk.'
'To sea,' reiterated Herrick, 'to sea tonight--now--this moment!'
'It can't be, my son,' replied the captain firmly. 'No ship of mine puts
to sea without provisions, you can take that for settled.'
'You don't seem to understand,' said Herrick. 'The whole thing is over,
I tell you. There is nothing to do here, when he knows all. That man
there with the cat knows all; can't you take it in?'
'All what?' asked the captain, visibly discomposed. 'Why, he received us
like a perfect gentleman and treated us real handsome, until you began
with your foolery--and I must say I seen men shot for less, and nobody
sorry! What more do you expect anyway?'
Herrick rocked to and fro upon the sand, shaking his head.
'Guying us,' he said, 'he was guying us--only guying us; it's all we're
good for.'
'There was one queer thing, to be sure,' admitted the captain, with a
misgiving of the voice; 'that about the sherry. Damned if I caught on to
that. Say, Herrick, you didn't give me away?'
'Oh! give you away!' repeated Herrick with weary, querulous scorn. 'What
was there to give away? We're transparent; we've got rascal branded
on us: detected rascal--detected rascal! Why, before he came on board,
there was the name painted out, and he saw the whole thing. He made sure
we would kill him there and then, and stood guying you and Huish on the
chance. He calls that being frightened! Next he had me ashore; a fine
time I had! THE TWO WOLVES, he calls you and Huish.--WHAT IS THE PUPPY
DOING WITH THE TWO WOLVES? he asked. He showed me his pearls; he said
they might be dispersed before morning, and ALL HUNG BY A HAIr--and
smiled as he said it, such a smile! O, it's no use, I tell you! He knows
all, he sees through all; we only make him laugh with our pretences--he
looks at us and laughs like God!'
There was a silence. Davis stood with contorted brows, gazing into the
night.
'The pearls?' he said suddenly. 'He showed them to you? he has them?'
'No, he didn't show them; I forgot: only the safe they were in,' said
Herrick. 'But you'll never get them!'
'I've two words to say to that,' said the captain.
'Do you think he would have been so easy at table, unless he was
prepared?' cried Herrick. 'The servants were both armed. He was armed
himself; he always is; he told me. You will never deceive his vigilance.
Davis, I know it! It's all up; all up. There's nothing for it, there's
nothing to be done: all gone: life, honour, love. Oh, my God, my God,
why was I born?'
Another pause followed upon this outburst.
The captain put his hands to his brow.
'Another thing!' he broke out. 'Why did he tell you all this? Seems like
madness to me!'
Herrick shook his head with gloomy iteration. 'You wouldn't understand
if I were to tell you,' said he.
'I guess I can understand any blame' thing that you can tell me,' said
the captain.
'Well, then, he's a fatalist,' said Herrick.
'What's that, a fatalist?' said Davis.
'Oh, it's a fellow that believes a lot of things,' said Herrick,
'believes that his bullets go true; believes that all falls out as God
chooses, do as you like to prevent it; and all that.'
'Why, I guess I believe right so myself,' said Davis.
'You do?' said Herrick.
'You bet I do!' says Davis.
Herrick shrugged his shoulders. 'Well, you must be a fool,' said he, and
he leaned his head upon his knees.
The captain stood biting his hands.
'There's one thing sure,' he said at last. 'I must get Huish out of
that. HE'S not fit to hold his end up with a man like you describe.'
And he turned to go away. The words had been quite simple; not so the
tone; and the other was quick to catch it.
'Davis!' he cried, 'no! Don't do it. Spare ME, and don't do it--spare
yourself, and leave it alone--for God's sake, for your children's sake!'
His voice rose to a passionate shrillness; another moment, and he might
be overheard by their not distant victim. But Davis turned on him with a
savage oath and gesture; and the miserable young man rolled over on his
face on the sand, and lay speechless and helpless.
The captain meanwhile set out rapidly for Attwater's house. As he went,
he considered with himself eagerly, his thoughts racing. The man had
understood, he had mocked them from the beginning; he would teach him
to make a mockery of John Davis! Herrick thought him a god; give him a
second to aim in, and the god was overthrown. He chuckled as he felt the
butt of his revolver. It should be done now, as he went in. From behind?
It was difficult to get there. From across the table? No, the captain
preferred to shoot standing, so as you could be sure to get your hand
upon your gun. The best would be to summon Huish, and when Attwater
stood up and turned--ah, then would be the moment. Wrapped in his ardent
prefiguration of events, the captain posted towards the house with his
head down.
'Hands up! Halt!' cried the voice of Attwater.
And the captain, before he knew what he was doing, had obeyed. The
surprise was complete and irremediable. Coming on the top crest of his
murderous intentions, he had walked straight into an ambuscade, and now
stood, with his hands impotently lifted, staring at the verandah.
The party was now broken up. Attwater leaned on a post, and kept Davis
covered with a Winchester. One of the servants was hard by with a
second at the port arms, leaning a little forward, round-eyed with eager
expectancy. In the open space at the head of the stair, Huish was partly
supported by the other native; his face wreathed in meaningless smiles,
his mind seemingly sunk in the contemplation of an unlighted cigar.
'Well,' said Attwater, 'you seem to me to be a very twopenny pirate!'
The captain uttered a sound in his throat for which we have no name;
rage choked him.
'I am going to give you Mr Whish--or the wine-sop that remains of him,'
continued Attwater. 'He talks a great deal when he drinks, Captain
Davis of the Sea Ranger. But I have quite done with him--and return the
article with thanks. Now,' he cried sharply. 'Another false movement
like that, and your family will have to deplore the loss of an
invaluable parent; keep strictly still, Davis.'
Attwater said a word in the native, his eye still undeviatingly fixed on
the captain; and the servant thrust Huish smartly forward from the
brink of the stair. With an extraordinary simultaneous dispersion of
his members, that gentleman bounded forth into space, struck the earth,
ricocheted, and brought up with his arms about a palm. His mind was
quite a stranger to these events; the expression of anguish that
deformed his countenance at the moment of the leap was probably
mechanical; and he suffered these convulsions in silence; clung to the
tree like an infant; and seemed, by his dips, to suppose himself engaged
in the pastime of bobbing for apples. A more finely sympathetic mind or
a more observant eye might have remarked, a little in front of him on
the sand, and still quite beyond reach, the unlighted cigar.
'There is your Whitechapel carrion!' said Attwater. 'And now
you might very well ask me why I do not put a period to you at once, as
you deserve. I will tell you why, Davis. It is because I have nothing to
do with the Sea Ranger and the people you drowned, or the Farallone and
the champagne that you stole. That is your account with God, He keeps
it, and He will settle it when the clock strikes. In my own case, I have
nothing to go on but suspicion, and I do not kill on suspicion, not even
vermin like you. But understand! if ever I see any of you again, it is
another matter, and you shall eat a bullet. And now take yourself off.
March! and as you value what you call your life, keep your hands up as
you go!'
The captain remained as he was, his hands up, his mouth open: mesmerised
with fury.
'March!' said Attwater. 'One--two--three!'
And Davis turned and passed slowly away. But even as he went, he was
meditating a prompt, offensive return. In the twinkling of an eye,
he had leaped behind a tree; and was crouching there, pistol in hand,
peering from either side of his place of ambush with bared teeth; a
serpent already poised to strike. And already he was too late. Attwater
and his servants had disappeared; and only the lamps shone on the
deserted table and the bright sand about the house, and threw into the
night in all directions the strong and tall shadows of the palms.
Davis ground his teeth. Where were they gone, the cowards? to what hole
had they retreated beyond reach? It was in vain he should try anything,
he, single and with a second-hand revolver, against three persons,
armed with Winchesters, and who did not show an ear out of any of the
apertures of that lighted and silent house? Some of them might have
already ducked below it from the rear, and be drawing a bead upon him at
that moment from the low-browed crypt, the receptacle of empty bottles
and broken crockery. No, there was nothing to be done but to bring away
(if it were still possible) his shattered and demoralised forces.
'Huish,' he said, 'come along.'
''S lose my ciga',' said Huish, reaching vaguely forward.
The captain let out a rasping oath. 'Come right along here,' said he.
''S all righ'. Sleep here 'th Atty-Attwa. Go boar' t'morr',' replied the
festive one.
'If you don't come, and come now, by the living God, I'll shoot you!'
cried the captain.
It is not to be supposed that the sense of these words in any way
penetrated to the mind of Hulsh; rather that, in a fresh attempt upon
the cigar, he overbalanced himself and came flying erratically forward:
a course which brought him within reach of Davis.
'Now you walk straight,' said the captain, clutching him, 'or I'll know
why not!'
''S lose my ciga',' replied Huish.
The captain's contained fury blazed up for a moment. He twisted Huish
round, grasped him by the neck of the coat, ran him in front of him to
the pier end, and flung him savagely forward on his face.
'Look for your cigar then, you swine!' said he, and blew his boat call
till the pea in it ceased to rattle.
An immediate activity responded on board the Farallone; far away voices,
and soon the sound of oars, floated along the surface of the lagoon; and
at the same time, from nearer hand, Herrick aroused himself and strolled
languidly up. He bent over the insignificant figure of Huish, where it
grovelled, apparently insensible, at the base of the figure-head.
'Dead?' he asked.
'No, he's not dead,' said Davis.
'And Attwater?' asked Herrick.
'Now you just shut your head!' replied Davis. 'You can do that, I fancy,
and by God, I'll show you how! I'll stand no more of your drivel.'
They waited accordingly in silence till the boat bumped on the furthest
piers; then raised Huish, head and heels, carried him down the gangway,
and flung him summarily in the bottom. On the way out he was heard
murmuring of the loss of his cigar; and after he had been handed up the
side like baggage, and cast down in the alleyway to slumber, his last
audible expression was: 'Splen'l fl' Attwa'!' This the expert construed
into 'Splendid fellow, Attwater'; with so much innocence had this great
spirit issued from the adventures of the evening.
The captain went and walked in the waist with brief, irate turns;
Herrick leaned his arms on the taffrail; the crew had all turned in. The
ship had a gentle, cradling motion; at times a block piped like a bird.
On shore, through the colonnade of palm stems, Attwater's house was to
be seen shining steadily with many lamps. And there was nothing else
visible, whether in the heaven above or in the lagoon below, but the
stars and their reflections. It might have been minutes or it might have
been hours, that Herrick leaned there, looking in the glorified water
and drinking peace. 'A bath of stars,' he was thinking; when a hand was
laid at last on his shoulder.
'Herrick,' said the captain, 'I've been walking off my trouble.'
A sharp jar passed through the young man, but he neither answered nor so
much as turned his head.
'I guess I spoke a little rough to you on shore,' pursued the captain;
'the fact is, I was real mad; but now it's over, and you and me have to
turn to and think.'
'I will NOT think,' said Herrick.
'Here, old man!' said Davis, kindly; 'this won't fight, you know! You've
got to brace up and help me get things straight. You're not going back
on a friend? That's not like you, Herrick!'
'O yes, it is,' said Herrick.
'Come, come!' said the captain, and paused as if quite at a loss. 'Look
here,' he cried, 'you have a glass of champagne. I won't touch it, so
that'll show you if I'm in earnest. But it's just the pick-me-up for
you; it'll put an edge on you at once.'
'O, you leave me alone!' said Herrick, and turned away.
The captain caught him by the sleeve; and he shook him off and turned on
him, for the moment, like a demoniac.
'Go to hell in your own way!' he cried.
And he turned away again, this time unchecked, and stepped forward to
where the boat rocked alongside and ground occasionally against the
schooner. He looked about him. A corner of the house was interposed
between the captain and himself; all was well; no eye must see him in
that last act. He slid silently into the boat; thence, silently, into
the starry water.
Instinctively he swam a little; it would be time enough to stop by and
by.
The shock of the immersion brightened his mind immediately. The events
of the ignoble day passed before him in a frieze of pictures, and he
thanked 'whatever Gods there be' for that open door of suicide. In such
a little while he would be done with it, the random business at an end,
the prodigal son come home. A very bright planet shone before him and
drew a trenchant wake along the water. He took that for his line and
followed it. That was the last earthly thing that he should look upon;
that radiant speck, which he had soon magnified into a City of Laputa,
along whose terraces there walked men and women of awful and benignant
features, who viewed him with distant commiseration. These imaginary
spectators consoled him; he told himself their talk, one to another; it
was of himself and his sad destiny.
From such flights of fancy, he was aroused by the growing coldness of
the water. Why should he delay? Here, where he was now, let him drop the
curtain, let him seek the ineffable refuge, let him lie down with all
races and generations of men in the house of sleep. It was easy to say,
easy to do. To stop swimming: there was no mystery in that, if he could
do it. Could he? And he could not. He knew it instantly. He was aware
instantly of an opposition in his members, unanimous and invincible,
clinging to life with a single and fixed resolve, finger by finger,
sinew by sinew; something that was at once he and not he--at once within
and without him;--the shutting of some miniature valve in his brain,
which a single manly thought should suffice to open--and the grasp of an
external fate ineluctable as gravity. To any man there may come at times
a consciousness that there blows, through all the articulations of his
body, the wind of a spirit not wholly his; that his mind rebels; that
another girds him and carries him whither he would not. It came now
to Herrick, with the authority of a revelation. There was no escape
possible. The open door was closed in his recreant face. He must go back
into the world and amongst men without illusion. He must stagger on to
the end with the pack of his responsibility and his disgrace, until
a cold, a blow, a merciful chance ball, or the more merciful hangman,
should dismiss him from his infamy. There were men who could commit
suicide; there were men who could not; and he was one who could not.
For perhaps a minute, there raged in his mind the coil of this
discovery; then cheerless certitude followed; and, with an incredible
simplicity of submission to ascertained fact, he turned round and
struck out for shore. There was a courage in this which he could not
appreciate; the ignobility of his cowardice wholly occupying him. A
strong current set against him like a wind in his face; he contended
with it heavily, wearily, without enthusiasm, but with substantial
advantage; marking his progress the while, without pleasure, by the
outline of the trees. Once he had a moment of hope. He heard to the
southward of him, towards the centre of the lagoon, the wallowing of
some great fish, doubtless a shark, and paused for a little, treading
water. Might not this be the hangman? he thought. But the wallowing died
away; mere silence succeeded; and Herrick pushed on again for the shore,
raging as he went at his own nature. Ay, he would wait for the shark;
but if he had heard him coming!... His smile was tragic. He could have
spat upon himself.
About three in the morning, chance, and the set of the current, and the
bias of his own right-handed body, so decided it between them that he
came to shore upon the beach in front of Attwater's. There he sat down,
and looked forth into a world without any of the lights of hope. The
poor diving dress of self-conceit was sadly tattered! With the fairy
tale of suicide, of a refuge always open to him, he had hitherto
beguiled and supported himself in the trials of life; and behold!
that also was only a fairy tale, that also was folk-lore. With the
consequences of his acts he saw himself implacably confronted for the
duration of life: stretched upon a cross, and nailed there with the iron
bolts of his own cowardice. He had no tears; he told himself no stories.
His disgust with himself was so complete that even the process of
apologetic mythology had ceased. He was like a man cast down from a
pillar, and every bone broken. He lay there, and admitted the facts, and
did not attempt to rise.
Dawn began to break over the far side of the atoll, the sky brightened,
the clouds became dyed with gorgeous colours, the shadows of the night
lifted. And, suddenly, Herrick was aware that the lagoon and the trees
wore again their daylight livery; and he saw, on board the Farallone,
Davis extinguishing the lantern, and smoke rising from the galley.
Davis, without doubt, remarked and recognised the figure on the beach;
or perhaps hesitated to recognise it; for after he had gazed a long
while from under his hand, he went into the house and fetched a glass.
It was very powerful; Herrick had often used it. With an instinct of
shame, he hid his face in his hands.
'And what brings you here, Mr Herrick-Hay, or Mr Hay-Herrick?' asked
the voice of Attwater. 'Your back view from my present position is
remarkably fine, and I would continue to present it. We can get on very
nicely as we are, and if you were to turn round, do you know? I think it
would be awkward.'
Herrick slowly rose to his feet; his heart throbbed hard, a hideous
excitement shook him, but he was master of himself. Slowly he turned,
and faced Attwater and the muzzle of a pointed rifle. 'Why could I not
do that last night?' he thought.
'Well, why don't you fire?' he said aloud, with a voice that trembled.
Attwater slowly put his gun under his arm, then his hands in his
pockets.
'What brings you here?' he repeated.
'I don't know,' said Herrick; and then, with a cry: 'Can you do anything
with me?'
'Are you armed?' said Attwater. 'I ask for the form's sake.'
'Armed? No!' said Herrick. 'O yes, I am, too!' And he flung upon the
beach a dripping pistol.
'You are wet,' said Attwater.
'Yes, I am wet,' said Herrick. 'Can you do anything with me?'
Attwater read his face attentively.
'It would depend a good deal upon what you are,' said he.
'What I am? A coward!' said Herrick.
'There is very little to be done with that,' said Attwater. 'And yet the
description hardly strikes one as exhaustive.'
'Oh, what does it matter?' cried Herrick. 'Here I am. I am broken
crockery; I am a burst drum; the whole of my life is gone to water; I
have nothing left that I believe in, except my living horror of myself.
Why do I come to you? I don't know; you are cold, cruel, hateful; and
I hate you, or I think I hate you. But you are an honest man, an honest
gentleman. I put myself, helpless, in your hands. What must I do? If I
can't do anything, be merciful and put a bullet through me; it's only a
puppy with a broken leg!'
'If I were you, I would pick up that pistol, come up to the house, and
put on some dry clothes,' said Attwater.
'If you really mean it?' said Herrick. 'You know they--we--they. .. But
you know all.'
'I know quite enough,' said Attwater. 'Come up to the house.'
And the captain, from the deck of the Farallone, saw the two men pass
together under the shadow of the grove.