closed-to the door of the house behind him, and cast himself on a locker

in the cabin--not to sleep he thought--rather to think and to despair.

Yet he had scarce turned twice on his uneasy bed, before a drunken voice

hailed him in the ear, and he must go on deck again to stand the morning

watch.

The first evening set the model for those that were to follow. Two cases

of champagne scarce lasted the four-and-twenty hours, and almost the

whole was drunk by Huish and the captain. Huish seemed to thrive on the

excess; he was never sober, yet never wholly tipsy; the food and the sea

air had soon healed him of his disease, and he began to lay on flesh.

But with Davis things went worse. In the drooping, unbuttoned figure

that sprawled all day upon the lockers, tippling and reading novels;

in the fool who made of the evening watch a public carouse on the

quarter-deck, it would have been hard to recognise the vigorous seaman

of Papeete roads. He kept himself reasonably well in hand till he had

taken the sun and yawned and blotted through his calculations; but from

the moment he rolled up the chart, his hours were passed in slavish

self-indulgence or in hoggish slumber. Every other branch of his duty

was neglected, except maintaining a stern discipline about the dinner

table. Again and again Herrick would hear the cook called aft, and see

him running with fresh tins, or carrying away again a meal that had been

totally condemned. And the more the captain became sunk in drunkenness,

the more delicate his palate showed itself. Once, in the forenoon, he

had a bo'sun's chair rigged over the rail, stripped to his trousers,

and went overboard with a pot of paint. 'I don't like the way this

schooner's painted,' said he, 'and I've taken a down upon her name.' But

The Ebb-Tide