'All right, cap,' said Huish. 'Anythink to oblige. Any other topic you would like to sudgest, the rynegyge, the lightnin' rod, Shykespeare, or the musical glasses? 'Ere's conversation on a tap. Put a penny in the slot, and . . . 'ullo! 'ere they are!' he cried. 'Now or never is 'e goin' to shoot?'
And the little man straightened himself into an alert and dashing attitude, and looked steadily at the enemy.
But the captain rose half up in the boat with eyes protruding.
'What's that?' he cried.
'Wot's wot?' said Huish.
'Those--blamed things,' said the captain.
And indeed it was something strange. Herrick and Attwater, both armed with Winchesters, had appeared out of the grove behind the figure-head; and to either hand of them, the sun glistened upon two metallic objects, locomotory like men, and occupying in the economy of these creatures the places of heads--only the heads were faceless. To Davis between wind and water, his mythology appeared to have come alive, and Tophet to be vomiting demons. But Huish was not mystified a moment.
'Divers' 'elmets, you ninny. Can't you see?' he said.
'So they are,' said Davis, with a gasp. 'And why? Oh, I see, it's for armour.'
'Wot did I tell you?' said Huish. 'Dyvid and Goliar all the w'y and back.'
The two natives (for they it was that were equipped in this unusual panoply of war) spread out to right and left, and at last lay down in the shade, on the extreme flank of the position.
Even now that the mystery was explained, Davis was hatefully preoccupied, stared at the flame on their crests, and forgot, and then remembered with a smile, the explanation.
Attwater withdrew again into the grove, and Herrick, with his gun under his arm, came down the pier alone.
About half-way down he halted and hailed the boat.
'What do you want?' he cried.
'I'll tell that to Mr Attwater,' replied Huish, stepping briskly on the ladder. 'I don't tell it to you, because you played the trucklin' sneak. Here's a letter for him: tyke it, and give it, and be 'anged to you!'
'Davis, is this all right?' said Herrick.
Davis raised his chin, glanced swiftly at Herrick and away again, and held his peace. The glance was charged with some deep emotion, but whether of hatred or of fear, it was beyond Herrick to divine.
'Well,' he said, 'I'll give the letter.' He drew a score with his foot on the boards of the gangway. 'Till I bring the answer, don't move a step past this.'
And he returned to where Attwater leaned against a tree, and gave him the letter. Attwater glanced it through.
'What does that mean?' he asked, passing it to Herrick.
'Treachery?'
'Oh, I suppose so!' said Herrick.
'Well, tell him to come on,' said Attwater. 'One isn't a fatalist for nothing. Tell him to come on and to look out.'
Herrick returned to the figure-head. Half-way down the pier the clerk was waiting, with Davis by his side.
'You are to come along, Huish,' said Herrick. 'He bids you look out, no tricks.'
Huish walked briskly up the pier, and paused face to face with the young man.
'W'ere is 'e?' said he, and to Herrick's surprise, the low-bred, insignificant face before him flushed suddenly crimson and went white again.
'Right forward,' said Herrick, pointing. 'Now your hands above your head.'
The clerk turned away from him and towards the figure-head, as though he were about to address to it his devotions; he was seen to heave a deep breath; and raised his arms. In common with many men of his unhappy physical endowments, Huish's hands were disproportionately long and broad, and the palms in particular enormous; a four-ounce jar was nothing in that capacious fist. The next moment he was plodding steadily forward on his mission.
Herrick at first followed. Then a noise in his rear startled him, and he turned about to find Davis already advanced as far as the figure-head. He came, crouching and open-mouthed, as the mesmerised may follow the mesmeriser; all human considerations, and even the care of his own life, swallowed up in one abominable and burning curiosity.
'Halt!' cried Herrick, covering him with his rifle. 'Davis, what are you doing, man? YOU are not to come.'
Davis instinctively paused, and regarded him with a dreadful vacancy of eye.
'Put your back to that figure-head, do you hear me? and stand fast!' said Herrick.
The captain fetched a breath, stepped back against the figure-head, and instantly redirected his glances after Huish.
There was a hollow place of the sand in that part, and, as it were, a glade among the cocoa palms in which the direct noonday sun blazed intolerably. At the far end, in the shadow, the tall figure of Attwater was to be seen leaning on a tree; towards him, with his hands over his head, and his steps smothered in the sand, the clerk painfully waded. The surrounding glare threw out and exaggerated the man's smallness; it seemed no less perilous an enterprise, this that he was gone upon, than for a whelp to besiege a citadel.
'There, Mr Whish. That will do,' cried Attwater. 'From that distance, and keeping your hands up, like a good boy, you can very well put me in possession of the skipper's views.'
