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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.'
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