Chapter 11. 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, either 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

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The Ebb-Tide