Let who will prefer to have sailed with Jason or Aeneas or Sinbad; but
the Farallone and its precious freight of rascality gets my money every
time. Think of the three incomparable reprobates afloat, with one case
of smallpox and a cargo of champagne, daring to make no port, with over
a hundred million square miles of ocean around them, every ten lookout
knots of it containing a possible peril! It was simply grand--not
pirates, shipwrecks or mutinies could beat that problem. And the pathos
of the sixth day, when, with every man Jack of them looking delirium
tremens in the face and suspecting each the other, Mr. Huish opened a
new case of champagne and--found clear spring water under the French
label! The honest scoundrels had been laid by the heels by a common wine
merchant in the regular way of business! Oh, gentlemen, there should be
honor in business; so that gallant villains can be free of betrayal.

The keynote of these gentlemen is struck in the second chapter, where
all three of them writing lies home--Davis and Herrick, sentimental
equivocations, Huish the strongest of brag with nobody to send it to.
In a burst of weakness Davis tells Herrick what a villain he has been,
through rum, and how he can not let his daughter, "little Adar," know
it. "Yes, there was a woman on board," he said, describing the ship he
had scuttled. "Guess I sent her to hell, if there's such a place. I
never dared go home again, and I don't know," he added, bitterly,
"what's come to them."

"Thank you, Captain," said Herrick, "I never liked you better!"

Is it not in human nature to cuddle to a great sheepish murderer like
that, who groans in secret for his little girl--if even the girl was
truth? I think she turned out a myth, but he had the sentiment.