I

DAVID AND GOLIATH

Huish had bundled himself up from the glare of the day--his face to the
house, his knees retracted. The frail bones in the thin tropical raiment
seemed scarce more considerable than a fowl's; and Davis, sitting on the
rail with his arm about a stay, contemplated him with gloom, wondering
what manner of counsel that insignificant figure should contain. For
since Herrick had thrown him off and deserted to the enemy, Huish, alone
of mankind, remained to him to be a helper and oracle.

He considered their position with a sinking heart. The ship was a stolen
ship; the stores, whether from initial carelessness or ill
administration during the voyage, were insufficient to carry them to any
port except back to Papeete; and there retribution waited in the shape
of a gendarme, a judge with a queer-shaped hat, and the horror of
distant Noumea. Upon that side there was no glimmer of hope. Here, at
the island, the dragon was roused; Attwater with his men and his
Winchesters watched and patrolled the house; let him who dare approach
it. What else was then left but to sit there, inactive, pacing the
decks, until the _Trinity Hall_ arrived and they were cast into irons,
or until the food came to an end, and the pangs of famine succeeded? For
the _Trinity Hall_ Davis was prepared; he would barricade the house, and
die there defending it, like a rat in a crevice. But for the other? The
cruise of the _Farallone_, into which he had plunged, only a fortnight
before, with such golden expectations, could this be the nightmare end
of it? The ship rotting at anchor, the crew stumbling and dying in the
scuppers? It seemed as if any extreme of hazard were to be preferred to
so grisly a certainty; as if it would be better to up-anchor after all,
put to sea at a venture, and, perhaps, perish at the hands of cannibals
on one of the more obscure Paumotus. His eye roved swiftly over sea and
sky in quest of any promise of wind, but the fountains of the Trade were
empty. Where it had run yesterday and for weeks before, a roaring blue
river charioting clouds, silence now reigned; and the whole height of
the atmosphere stood balanced. On the endless ribbon of island that
stretched out to either hand of him its array of golden and green and
silvery palms, not the most volatile frond was to be seen stirring; they
drooped to their stable images in the lagoon like things carved of
metal, and already their long line began to reverbera