'You beast, I believe you've done it before!' 'Oh, 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.