ay 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, wh