The Blue Lagoon: A Romance

Published：2026-08-02 18:38:20 Source: fantasy figures for 9 year olds under 20 dollars Author: Stress Relief Toys

The musical shakers for road tripsBlue Lagoon: A Romance

by H. de Vere Stacpoole

CONTENTS

BOOK I

PART I

PART II

PART III

BOOK II

PART I

PART II

BOOK III

THE BLUE LAGOON

BOOK I

PART I

CHAPTER I

WHERE THE SLUSH LAMP BURNS

Mr Button was seated on a sea-chest with a fiddle under his left ear.He was playing the “Shan van vaught,” and accompanying the tune,punctuating it, with blows of his left heel on the fo’cs’le deck.

“O the Frinchare in the bay,
Says the Shan van vaught.”

He was dressed in dungaree trousers, a striped shirt, and a jacketbaize—green in parts from the influence of sun and salt. A typical oldshell-back, round-shouldered, hooked of finger; a figure with stronghints of a crab about it.

His face was like a moon, seen red through tropical mists; and as heplayed it wore an expression of strained attention as though the fiddlewere telling him tales much more marvellous than the old bald statementabout Bantry Bay.

“Left-handed Pat,” was his fo’cs’le name; not because he wasleft-handed, but simply because everything he did he did wrong—ornearly so. Reefing or furling, or handling a slush tub—if a mistakewas to be made, he made it.

He was a Celt, and all the salt seas that had flowed between him andConnaught these forty years and more had not washed the Celtic elementfrom his blood, nor the belief in fairies from his soul. The Celticnature is a fast dye, and Mr Button’s nature was such that though hehad been shanghaied by Larry Marr in ’Frisco, though he had got drunkin most ports of the world, though he had sailed with Yankee captainsand been man-handled by Yankee mates, he still carried his fairiesabout with him—they, and a very large stock of original innocence.

Nearly over the musician’s head swung a hammock from which hung a leg;other hammocks hanging in the semi-gloom called up suggestions oflemurs and arboreal bats. The swinging kerosene lamp cast its lightforward, past the heel of the bowsprit to the knightheads, lighting herea naked foot hanging over the side of a bunk, here a face from whichprotruded a pipe, here a breast covered with dark mossy hair, here anarm tattooed.

It was in the days before double topsail yards had reduced ships’crews, and the fo’cs’le of the Northumberlandhad a full company: acrowd of packet rats such as often is to be found on a Cape Horner“Dutchmen” Americans—men who were farm labourers and tendingpigs in Ohio three months back, old seasoned sailors like PaddyButton—a mixture of the best and the worst of the earth, such as youfind nowhere else in so small a space as in a ship’s fo’cs’le.

The Northumberlandhad experienced a terrible rounding of the Horn.Bound from New Orleans to ’Frisco she had spent thirty days battlingwith head-winds and storms—down there, where the seas are so vast thatthree waves may cover with their amplitude more than a mile of seaspace; thirty days she had passed off Cape Stiff, and just now, at themoment of this story, she was locked in a calm south of the line.

Mr Button finished his tune with a sweep of the bow, and drew his rightcoat sleeve across his forehead. Then he took out a sooty pipe, filledit with tobacco, and lit it.

“Pawthrick,” drawled a voice from the hammock above, from whichdepended the leg, “what was that yarn you wiz beginnin’ to spin ternight ’bout a lip me dawn?”

“A which me dawn?” asked Mr Button, cocking his eye up at the bottom ofthe hammock while he held the match to his pipe.

“It vas about a green thing,” came a sleepy Dutch voice from a bunk.

“Oh, a Leprachaun you mane. Sure, me mother’s sister had one down inConnaught.”

“Vat vas it like?” asked the dreamy Dutch voice—a voice seeminglypossessed by the calm that had made the sea like a mirror for the lastthree days, reducing the whole ship’s company meanwhile to the level ofwasters.

“Like? Sure, it was like a Leprachaun; and what else would it be like?”

“What like vas that?” persisted the voice.

“It was like a little man no bigger than a big forked raddish, an’ asgreen as a cabbidge. Me a’nt had one in her house down in Connaught inthe ould days. O musha! musha! the ould days, the ould days! Now, youmay b’lave me or b’lave me not, but you could have put him in yourpocket, and the grass-green head of him wouldn’t more than’v stuck out.She kept him in a cupboard, and out of the cupboard he’d pop if it wasa crack open, an’ into the milk pans he’d be, or under the beds, orpullin’ the stool from under you, or at some other divarsion. He’dchase the pig—the crathur!—till it’d be all ribs like an ouldumbrilla with the fright, an’ as thin as a greyhound with the runnin’by the marnin; he’d addle the eggs so the cocks an’ hens wouldn’t knowwhat they wis afther wid the chickens comin’ out wid two heads on them,an’ twinty-seven legs fore and aft. And you’d start to chase him, an’then it’d be mainsail haul, and away he’d go, you behint him, tillyou’d landed tail over snout in a ditch, an’ he’d be back in thecupboard.”

“He was a Troll,” murmured the Dutch voice.

“I’m tellin’ you he was a Leprachaun, and there’s no knowin’ thedivilments he’d be up to. He’d pull the cabbidge, maybe, out of the potboilin’ on the fire forenint your eyes, and baste you in the face withit; and thin, maybe, you’d hold out your fist to him, and he’d put agoulden soverin in it.”

“Wisht he was here!” murmured a voice from a bunk near the knightheads.

“Pawthrick,” drawled the voice from the hammock above, “what’d you dofirst if you found y’self with twenty pound in your pocket?”

“What’s the use of askin’ me?” replied Mr Button. “What’s the use oftwenty pound to a sayman at say, where the grog’s all wather an’ thebeef’s all horse? Gimme it ashore, an’ you’d see what I’d do wid it!”

“I guess the nearest grog-shop keeper wouldn’t see you comin’ fordust,” said a voice from Ohio.

“He would not,” said Mr Button; “nor you afther me. Be damned to thegrog and thim that sells it!”

“It’s all darned easy to talk,” said Ohio. “You curse the grog at seawhen you can’t get it; set you ashore, and you’re bung full.”

“I likes me dhrunk,” said Mr Button, “I’m free to admit; an’ I’m thedivil when it’s in me, and it’ll be the end of me yet, or me ouldmother was a liar. ‘Pat,’ she says, first time I come home from sayrowlin’, ‘storms you may escape, an’ wimmen you may escape, but thepotheen ’ill have you.’ Forty year ago—forty year ago!”

“Well,” said Ohio, “it hasn’t had you yet.”

“No,” replied Mr Button, “but it will.”

CHAPTER II

UNDER THE STARS

It was a wonderful night up on deck, filled with all the majesty andbeauty of starlight and a tropic calm.

The Pacific slept; a vast, vague swell flowing from far away down southunder the night, lifted the Northumberlandon its undulations to therattling sound of the reef points and the occasional creak of therudder; whilst overhead, near the fiery arch of the Milky Way, hung theSouthern Cross like a broken kite.

Stars in the sky, stars in the sea, stars by the million and themillion; so many lamps ablaze that the firmament filled the mind withthe idea of a vast and populous city—yet from all that living andflashing splendour not a sound.

Down in the cabin—or saloon, as it was called by courtesy—were seatedthe three passengers of the ship; one reading at the table, two playingon the floor.

The man at the table, Arthur Lestrange, was seated with his large,deep-sunken eyes fixed on a book. He was most evidently inconsumption—very near, indeed, to reaping the result of that last andmost desperate remedy, a long sea voyage.

Emmeline Lestrange, his little niece—eight years of age, a mysteriousmite, small for her age, with thoughts of her own, wide-pupilled eyesthat seemed the doors for visions, and a face that seemed just to havepeeped into this world for a moment ere it was as suddenlywithdrawn—sat in a corner nursing something in her arms, and rockingherself to the tune of her own thoughts.

Dick, Lestrange’s little son, eight and a bit, was somewhere under thetable. They were Bostonians, bound for San Francisco, or rather for thesun and splendour of Los Angeles, where Lestrange had bought a smallestate, hoping there to enjoy the life whose lease would be renewed bythe long sea voyage.

As he sat reading, the cabin door opened, and appeared an angularfemale form. This was Mrs Stannard, the stewardess, and Mrs Stannardmeant bedtime.

“Dicky,” said Mr Lestrange, closing his book, and raising thetable-cloth a few inches, “bedtime.”

“Oh, not yet, daddy!” came a sleep-freighted voice from under thetable; “I ain’t ready. I dunno want to go to bed, I— Hi yow!”

Mrs Stannard, who knew her work, had stooped under the table, seized him bythe foot, and hauled him out kicking and fighting and blubbering all atthe same time.

As for Emmeline, she having glanced up and recognised the inevitable,rose to her feet, and, holding the hideous rag-doll she had beennursing, head down and dangling in one hand, she stood waiting tillDicky, after a few last perfunctory bellows, suddenly dried his eyesand held up a tear-wet face for his father to kiss. Then she presentedher brow solemnly to her uncle, received a kiss and vanished, led bythe hand into a cabin on the port side of the saloon.

Mr Lestrange returned to his book, but he had not read for long whenthe cabin door was opened, and Emmeline, in her nightdress, reappeared,holding a brown paper parcel in her hand, a parcel of about the samesize as the book you are reading.

“My box,” said she; and as she spoke, holding it up as if to prove itssafety, the little plain face altered to the face of an angel.

She had smiled.

When Emmeline Lestrange smiled it was absolutely as if the light ofParadise had suddenly flashed upon her face: the happiest form ofchildish beauty suddenly appeared before your eyes, dazzled them—andwas gone.

Then she vanished with her box, and Mr Lestrange resumed his book.

This box of Emmeline’s, I may say in parenthesis, had given moretrouble aboard ship than all of the rest of the passengers’ luggage puttogether.

It had been presented to her on her departure from Boston by a ladyfriend, and what it contained was a dark secret to all on board, saveits owner and her uncle; she was a woman, or, at all events, thebeginning of a woman, yet she kept this secret to herself—a fact whichyou will please note.

The trouble of the thing was that it was frequently being lost.Suspecting herself, maybe, as an unpractical dreamer in a world filledwith robbers, she would cart it about with her for safety, sit downbehind a coil of rope and fall into a fit of abstraction: be recalledto life by the evolutions of the crew reefing or furling or what not,rise to superintend the operations—and then suddenly find she had losther box.

Then she would absolutely haunt the ship. Wide-eyed and distressed offace she would wander hither and thither, peeping into the galley,peeping down the forescuttle, never uttering a word or wail, searchinglike an uneasy ghost, but dumb.

She seemed ashamed to tell of her loss, ashamed to let any one know ofit; but every one knew of it directly they saw her, to use Mr Button’sexpression, “on the wandher,” and every one hunted for it.

Strangely enough it was Paddy Button who usually found it. He who wasalways doing the wrong thing in the eyes of men, generally did theright thing in the eyes of children. Children, in fact, when they couldget at Mr Button, went for him con amore. He was as attractive to themas a Punch and Judy show or a German band—almost.

Mr Lestrange after a while closed the book he was reading, lookedaround him and sighed.

The cabin of the Northumberlandwas a cheerful enough place, pierced bythe polished shaft of the mizzen mast, carpeted with an Axminstercarpet, and garnished with mirrors let into the white pine panelling.Lestrange was staring at the reflection of his own face in one of thesemirrors fixed just opposite to where he sat.

His emaciation was terrible, and it was just perhaps at this momentthat he first recognised the fact that he must not only die, but diesoon.

He turned from the mirror and sat for a while with his chin restingupon his hand, and his eyes fixed on an ink spot upon the table-cloth;then he arose, and crossing the cabin climbed laboriously up thecompanion-way to the deck.

As he leaned against the bulwark rail to recover his breath, thesplendour and beauty of the Southern night struck him to the heart witha cruel pang. He took his seat on a deck chair and gazed up at theMilky Way, that great triumphal arch built of suns that the dawn wouldsweep away like a dream.

In the Milky Way, near the Southern Cross, occurs a terrible circularabyss, the Coal Sack. So sharply defined is it, so suggestive of a voidand bottomless cavern, that the contemplation of it afflicts theimaginative mind with vertigo. To the naked eye it is as black and asdismal as death, but the smallest telescope reveals it beautiful andpopulous with stars.

Lestrange’s eyes travelled from this mystery to the burning cross, andthe nameless and numberless stars reaching to the sea-line, where theypaled and vanished in the light of the rising moon. Then he becameaware of a figure promenading the quarter-deck. It was the “Old Man.”

A sea captain is always the “old man,” be his age what it may. CaptainLe Farges’ age might have been forty-five. He was a sailor of the JeanBart type, of French descent, but a naturalised American.

“I don’t know where the wind’s gone,” said the captain as he drew nearthe man in the deck chair. “I guess it’s blown a hole in the firmament,and escaped somewheres to the back of beyond.”

“It’s been a long voyage,” said Lestrange; “and I’m thinking, Captain,it will be a very long voyage for me. My port’s not ’Frisco; I feel it.”

“Don’t you be thinking that sort of thing,” said the other, taking hisseat in a chair close by. “There’s no manner of use forecastin’ theweather a month ahead. Now we’re in warm latitoods, your glass willrise steady, and you’ll be as right and spry as any one of us, beforewe fetch the Golden Gates.”

“I’m thinking about the children,” said Lestrange, seeming not to hearthe captain’s words. “Should anything happen to me before we reachport, I should like you to do something for me. It’s only this: disposeof my body without—without the children knowing. It has been in mymind to ask you this for some days. Captain, those children knownothing of death.”

Le Farge moved uneasily in his chair.

“Little Emmeline’s mother died when she was two. Her father—mybrother—died before she was born. Dicky never knew a mother; she diedgiving him birth. My God, Captain, death has laid a heavy hand on myfamily; can you wonder that I have hid his very name from those twocreatures that I love!”

“Ay, ay,” said Le Farge, “it’s sad! it’s sad!”

“When I was quite a child,” went on Lestrange, “a child no older thanDicky, my nurse used to terrify me with tales about dead people. I wastold I’d go to hell when I died if I wasn’t a good child. I cannot tellyou how much that has poisoned my life, for the thoughts we think inchildhood, Captain, are the fathers of the thoughts we think when weare grown up. And can a diseased father—have healthy children?”

“I guess not.”

“So I just said, when these two tiny creatures came into my care, thatI would do all in my power to protect them from the terrors of life—orrather, I should say, from the terror of death. I don’t know whether Ihave done right, but I have done it for the best. They had a cat, andone day Dicky came in to me and said: ‘Father, pussy’s in the gardenasleep, and I can’t wake her.’ So I just took him out for a walk; therewas a circus in the town, and I took him to it. It so filled his mindthat he quite forgot the cat. Next day he asked for her. I did not tellhim she was buried in the garden, I just said she must have run away.In a week he had forgotten all about her—children soon forget.”

“Ay, that’s true,” said the sea captain. “But ’pears to me they mustlearn some time they’ve got to die.”

“Should I pay the penalty before we reach land, and be cast into thatgreat, vast sea, I would not wish the children’s dreams to be hauntedby the thought: just tell them I’ve gone on board another ship. Youwill take them back to Boston; I have here, in a letter, the name of alady who will care for them. Dicky will be well off, as far as worldlygoods are concerned, and so will Emmeline. Just tell them I’ve gone onboard another ship—children soon forget.”

“I’ll do what you ask,” said the seaman.

The moon was over the horizon now, and the Northumberlandlay adrift ina river of silver. Every spar was distinct, every reef point on thegreat sails, and the decks lay like spaces of frost cut by shadowsblack as ebony.

As the two men sat without speaking, thinking their own thoughts, alittle white figure emerged from the saloon hatch. It was Emmeline. Shewas a professed sleepwalker—a past mistress of the art.

Scarcely had she stepped into dreamland than she had lost her preciousbox, and now she was hunting for it on the decks of the Northumberland.

Mr Lestrange put his finger to his lips, took off his shoes andsilently followed her. She searched behind a coil of rope, she tried toopen the galley door; hither and thither she wandered, wide-eyed andtroubled of face, till at last, in the shadow of the hencoop, she foundher visionary treasure. Then back she came, holding up her littlenightdress with one hand, so as not to trip, and vanished down thesaloon companion very hurriedly, as if anxious to get back to bed, heruncle close behind, with one hand outstretched so as to catch her incase she stumbled.

CHAPTER III

THE SHADOW AND THE FIRE

It was the fourth day of the long calm. An awning had been rigged up onthe poop for the passengers, and under it sat Lestrange, trying toread, and the children trying to play. The heat and monotony hadreduced even Dicky to just a surly mass, languid in movement as a grub.As for Emmeline, she seemed dazed. The rag-doll lay a yard away fromher on the poop deck unnursed; even the wretched box and itswhereabouts she seemed to have quite forgotten.

“Daddy!” suddenly cried Dick, who had clambered up, and was lookingover the after-rail.

“What?”

“Fish!”

Lestrange rose to his feet, came aft and looked over the rail.

Down in the vague green of the water something moved, something paleand long—a ghastly form. It vanished; and yet another came, neared thesurface, and displayed itself more fully. Lestrange saw its eyes, hesaw the dark fin, and the whole hideous length of the creature; ashudder ran through him as he clasped Dicky.

“Ain’t he fine?” said the child. “I guess, daddy, I’d pull him aboardif I had a hook. Why haven’t I a hook, daddy?—why haven’t I a hook,daddy?— Ow, you’re squeezin’me!”

Something plucked at Lestrange’s coat: it was Emmeline—she also wantedto look. He lifted her up in his arms; her little pale face peeped overthe rail, but there was nothing to see: the forms of terror hadvanished, leaving the green depths untroubled and unstained.

“What’s they called, daddy?” persisted Dick, as his father took himdown from the rail, and led him back to the chair.

“Sharks,” said Lestrange, whose face was covered with perspiration.

He picked up the book he had been reading—it was a volume ofTennyson—and he sat with it on his knees staring at the white sunlitmain-deck barred with the white shadows of the standing rigging.

The sea had disclosed to him a vision. Poetry, Philosophy, Beauty, Art,the love and joy of life—was it possible that these should exist inthe same world as those?

He glanced at the book upon his knees, and contrasted the beautifulthings in it which he remembered with the terrible things he had justseen, the things that were waiting for their food under the keel of theship.

It was three bells—half-past three in the afternoon—and the ship’sbell had just rung out. The stewardess appeared to take the childrenbelow; and as they vanished down the saloon companion-way Captain LeFarge came aft, on to the poop, and stood for a moment looking over thesea on the port side, where a bank of fog had suddenly appeared likethe spectre of a country.

“The sun has dimmed a bit,” said he; “I can a’most look at it. Glasssteady enough—there’s a fog coming up—ever seen a Pacific fog?”

“No, never.”

“Well, you won’t want to see another,” replied the mariner, shading hiseyes and fixing them upon the sea-line. The sea-line away to starboardhad lost somewhat its distinctness, and over the day an almostimperceptible shade had crept.

The captain suddenly turned from his contemplation of the sea and sky,raised his head and sniffed.

“Something is burning somewhere—smell it? Seems to me like an old mator summat. It’s that swab of a steward, maybe; if he isn’t breakingglass, he’s upsetting lamps and burning holes in the carpet. Bless mysoul, I’d sooner have a dozen Mary Anns an’ their dustpans round theplace than one tomfool steward like Jenkins.” He went to the saloonhatch. “Below there!”

“Ay, ay, sir.”

“What are you burning?”

“I an’t burnin’ northen, sir.”

“Tell you, I smell it!”

“There’s northen burnin’ here, sir.”

“Neither is there, it’s all on deck. Something in the galley,maybe—rags, most likely, they’ve thrown on the fire.”

“Captain!” said Lestrange.

“Ay, ay.”

“Come here, please.”

Le Farge climbed on to the poop.

“I don’t know whether it’s my weakness that’s affecting my eyes, butthere seems to me something strange about the main-mast.”

The main-mast near where it entered the deck, and for some distance up,seemed in motion—a corkscrew movement most strange to watch from theshelter of the awning.

This apparent movement was caused by a spiral haze of smoke so vaguethat one could only tell of its existence from the mirage-like tremorof the mast round which it curled.

“My God!” cried Le Farge, as he sprang from the poop and rushed forward.

Lestrange followed him slowly, stopping every moment to clutch thebulwark rail and pant for breath. He heard the shrill bird-like notesof the bosun’s pipe. He saw the hands emerging from the forecastle,like bees out of a hive; he watched them surrounding the main-hatch. Hewatched the tarpaulin and locking-bars removed. He saw the hatchopened, and a burst of smoke—black, villainous smoke—ascend to thesky, solid as a plume in the windless air.

Lestrange was a man of a highly nervous temperament, and it is justthis sort of man who keeps his head in an emergency, whilst yourlevel-headed, phlegmatic individual loses his balance. His firstthought was of the children, his second of the boats.

In the battering off Cape Horn the Northumberlandlost several of herboats. There were left the long-boat, a quarter-boat, and the dinghy.He heard Le Farge’s voice ordering the hatch to be closed and the pumpsmanned, so as to flood the hold; and, knowing that he could do nothingon deck, he made as swiftly as he could for the saloon companion-way.

Mrs Stannard was just coming out of the children’s cabin.

“Are the children lying down, Mrs Stannard?” asked Lestrange, almostbreathless from the excitement and exertion of the last few minutes.

The woman glanced at him with frightened eyes. He looked like the veryherald of disaster.

“For if they are, and you have undressed them, then you must put theirclothes on again. The ship is on fire, Mrs Stannard.”

“Good God, sir!”

“Listen!” said Lestrange.

From a distance, thin, and dreary as the crying of sea-gulls on adesolate beach, came the clanking of the pumps.

CHAPTER IV

AND LIKE A DREAM DISSOLVED

Before the woman had time to speak a thunderous step was heard on thecompanion stairs, and Le Farge broke into the saloon. The man’s facewas injected with blood, his eyes were fixed and glassy like the eyesof a drunkard, and the veins stood on his temples like twisted cords.

“Get those children ready!” he shouted, as he rushed into his owncabin. “Get you all ready—boats are being swung out and victualled.H--l! where are those papers?”

They heard him furiously searching and collecting things in hiscabin—the ship’s papers, accounts, things the master mariner clings toas he clings to his life; and as he searched, and found, and packed, hekept bellowing orders for the children to be got on deck. Half mad heseemed, and half mad he was with the knowledge of the terrible thingthat was stowed amidst the cargo.

Up on deck the crew, under the direction of the first mate, wereworking in an orderly manner, and with a will, utterly unconscious ofthere being anything beneath their feet but an ordinary cargo on fire.The covers had been stripped from the boats, kegs of water and bags ofbiscuit placed in them. The dinghy, smallest of the boats and mosteasily got away, was hanging at the port quarter-boat davits flush withthe bulwarks; and Paddy Button was in the act of stowing a keg of waterin her, when Le Farge broke on to the deck, followed by the stewardesscarrying Emmeline, and Mr Lestrange leading Dick. The dinghy was rathera larger boat than the ordinary ships’ dinghy, and possessed a smallmast and long sail. Two sailors stood ready to man the falls, and PaddyButton was just turning to trundle forward again when the captainseized him.

“Into the dinghy with you,” he cried, “and row these children and thepassenger out a mile from the ship—two miles—three miles—make anoffing.”

“Sure, Captain dear, I’ve left me fiddle in the——”

Le Farge dropped the bundle of things he was holding under his leftarm, seized the old sailor and rushed him against the bulwarks, as ifhe meant to fling him into the sea throughthe bulwarks.

Next moment Mr Button was in the boat. Emmeline was handed to him, paleof face and wide-eyed, and clasping something wrapped in a littleshawl; then Dick, and then Mr Lestrange was helped over.

“No room for more!” cried Le Farge. “Your place will be in thelong-boat, Mrs Stannard, if we have to leave the ship. Lower away,lower away!”

The boat sank towards the smooth blue sea, kissed it and was afloat.

Now Mr Button, before joining the ship at Boston, had spent a goodwhile lingering by the quay, having no money wherewith to enjoy himselfin a tavern. He had seen something of the lading of the Northumberland,and heard more from a stevedore. No sooner had he cast off the fallsand seized the oars, than his knowledge awoke in his mind, living andlurid. He gave a whoop that brought the two sailors leaning over theside.

“Bullies!”

“Ay, ay!”

“Run for your lives—I’ve just rimimbered—there’s two bar’ls ofblastin’ powther in the hould!”

Then he bent to his oars, as no man ever bent before.

Lestrange, sitting in the stern-sheets clasping Emmeline and Dick, saw nothing fora moment after hearing these words. The children, who knew nothing ofblasting powder or its effects, though half frightened by all thebustle and excitement, were still amused and pleased at findingthemselves in the little boat so close to the blue pretty sea.

Dick put his finger over the side, so that it made a ripple in thewater (the most delightful experience of childhood). Emmeline, with onehand clasped in her uncle’s, watched Mr Button with a grave sort ofhalf pleasure.

He certainly was a sight worth watching. His soul was filled withtragedy and terror. His Celtic imagination heard the ship blowing up,saw himself and the little dinghy blown to pieces—nay, saw himself inhell, being toasted by “divils.”

But tragedy and terror could find no room for expression on hisfortunate or unfortunate face. He puffed and he blew, bulging hischeeks out at the sky as he tugged at the oars, making a hundred andone grimaces—all the outcome of agony of mind, but none expressing it.Behind lay the ship, a picture not without its lighter side. Thelong-boat and the quarter-boat, lowered with a rush and seaborne by themercy of Providence, were floating by the side of the Northumberland.

From the ship men were casting themselves overboard like water-rats,swimming in the water like ducks, scrambling on board the boats anyhow.

From the half-opened main-hatch the black smoke, mixed now with sparks,rose steadily and swiftly and spitefully, as if driven through thehalf-closed teeth of a dragon.

A mile away beyond the Northumberlandstood the fog bank. It lookedsolid, like a vast country that had suddenly and strangely built itselfon the sea—a country where no birds sang and no trees grew. A countrywith white, precipitous cliffs, solid to look at as the cliffs of Dover.

“I’m spint!” suddenly gasped the oarsman, resting the oar handles underthe crook of his knees, and bending down as if he was preparing to buttat the passengers in the stern-sheets. “Blow up or blow down, I’mspint—don’t ax me, I’m spint!”

Mr Lestrange, white as a ghost, but recovered somewhat from his firsthorror, gave the Spent One time to recover himself and turned to lookat the ship. She seemed a great distance off, and the boats, well awayfrom her, were making at a furious pace towards the dinghy. Dick wasstill playing with the water, but Emmeline’s eyes were entirelyoccupied with Paddy Button. New things were always of vast interest toher contemplative mind, and these evolutions of her old friend wereeminently new.

She had seen him swilling the decks, she had seen him dancing a jig,she had seen him going round the main deck on all fours with Dick onhis back, but she had never seen him going on like this before.

She perceived now that he was exhausted, and in trouble aboutsomething, and, putting her hand in the pocket of her dress, shesearched for something that she knew was there. She produced aTangerine orange, and leaning forward she touched the Spent One’s headwith it.

Mr Button raised his head, stared vacantly for a second, saw theproffered orange, and at the sight of it the thought of “the childer”and their innocence, himself and the blasting powder, cleared hisdazzled wits, and he took to the sculls again.

“Daddy,” said Dick, who had been looking astern, “there’s clouds nearthe ship.”

In an incredibly short space of time the solid cliffs of fog hadbroken. The faint wind that had banked it had pierced it, and was nowmaking pictures and devices of it, most wonderful and weird to see.Horsemen of the mist rode on the water, and were dissolved; billowsrolled on the sea, yet were not of the sea; blankets and spirals ofvapour ascended to high heaven. And all with a terrible languor ofmovement. Vast and lazy and sinister, yet steadfast of purpose as Fateor Death, the fog advanced, taking the world for its own.

Against this grey and indescribably sombre background stood thesmouldering ship with the breeze already shivering in her sails, andthe smoke from her main-hatch blowing and beckoning as if to theretreating boats.

“Why’s the ship smoking like that?” asked Dick. “And look at thoseboats coming—when are we going back, daddy?”

“Uncle,” said Emmeline, putting her hand in his, as she gazed towardsthe ship and beyond it, “I’m ’fraid.”

“What frightens you, Emmy?” he asked, drawing her to him.

“Shapes,” replied Emmeline, nestling up to his side.

“Oh, Glory be to God!” gasped the old sailor, suddenly resting on hisoars. “Will yiz look at the fog that’s comin’—”

“I think we had better wait here for the boats,” said Mr Lestrange; “weare far enough now to be safe if—anything happens.”

“Ay, ay,” replied the oarsman, whose wits had returned. “Blow up orblow down, she won’t hit us from here.”

“Daddy,” said Dick, “when are we going back? I want my tea.”

“We aren’t going back, my child,” replied his father. “The ship’s onfire; we are waiting for another ship.”

“Where’s the other ship?” asked the child, looking round at the horizonthat was clear.

“We can’t see it yet,” replied the unhappy man, “but it will come.”

The long-boat and the quarter-boat were slowly approaching. They lookedlike beetles crawling over the water, and after them across theglittering surface came a dullness that took the sparkle from thesea—a dullness that swept and spread like an eclipse shadow.

Now the wind struck the dinghy. It was like a wind from fairyland,almost imperceptible, chill, and dimming the sun. A wind from Lilliput.As it struck the dinghy, the fog took the distant ship.

It was a most extraordinary sight, for in less than thirty seconds theship of wood became a ship of gauze, a tracery—flickered, and was goneforever from the sight of man.

CHAPTER V

VOICES HEARD IN THE MIST

The sun became fainter still, and vanished. Though the air round thedinghy seemed quite clear, the on-coming boats were hazy and dim, andthat part of the horizon that had been fairly clear was now blotted out.

The long-boat was leading by a good way. When she was within hailingdistance the captain’s voice came.

“Dinghy ahoy!”

“Ahoy!”

“Fetch alongside here!”

The long-boat ceased rowing to wait for the quarter-boat that wasslowly creeping up. She was a heavy boat to pull at all times, and nowshe was overloaded.

The wrath of Captain Le Farge with Paddy Button for the way he hadstampeded the crew was profound, but he had not time to give vent to it.

“Here, get aboard us, Mr Lestrange!” said he, when the dinghy wasalongside; “we have room for one. Mrs Stannard is in the quarter-boat,and it’s overcrowded; she’s better aboard the dinghy, for she can lookafter the kids. Come, hurry up, the smother is coming down on us fast.Ahoy!”—to the quarter-boat—“hurry up, hurry up!”

The quarter-boat had suddenly vanished.

Mr Lestrange climbed into the long-boat. Paddy pushed the dinghy a fewyards away with the tip of a scull, and then lay on his oars waiting.

“Ahoy! ahoy!” cried Le Farge.

“Ahoy!” came from the fog bank.

Next moment the long-boat and the dinghy vanished from each other’ssight: the great fog bank had taken them.

Now a couple of strokes of the port scull would have brought Mr Buttonalongside the long-boat, so close was he; but the quarter-boat was inhis mind, or rather imagination, so what must he do but take threepowerful strokes in the direction in which he fancied the quarter-boatto be.

The rest was voices.

“Dinghy ahoy!”

“Ahoy!”

“Ahoy!”

“Don’t be shoutin’ together, or I’ll not know which way to pull.Quarter-boat ahoy! where are yiz?”

“Port your helm!”

“Ay, ay!”—putting his helm, so to speak, to starboard—“I’ll be wid yizin wan minute—two or three minutes’ hard pulling.”

“Ahoy!”—much more faint.

“What d’ye mane rowin’ away from me?”—a dozen strokes.

“Ahoy!”—fainter still.

Mr Button rested on his oars.

“Divil mend them—I b’lave that was the long-boat shoutin’.”

He took to his oars again and pulled vigorously.

“Paddy,” came Dick’s small voice, apparently from nowhere, “where arewe now?”

“Sure, we’re in a fog; where else would we be? Don’t you be affeared.”

“I ain’t affeared, but Em’s shivering.”

“Give her me coat,” said the oarsman, resting on his oars and taking itoff. “Wrap it round her; and when it’s round her we’ll all let one bighalloo together. There’s an ould shawl som’er in the boat, but I can’tbe after lookin’ for it now.”

He held out the coat and an almost invisible hand took it; at the samemoment a tremendous report shook the sea and sky.

“There she goes,” said Mr Button; “an’ me old fiddle an’ all. Don’t befrightened, childer; it’s only a gun they’re firin’ for divarsion. Nowwe’ll all halloo togither—are yiz ready?”

“Ay, ay,” said Dick, who was a picker-up of sea terms.

“Halloo!” yelled Pat.

“Halloo! Halloo!” piped Dick and Emmeline.

A faint reply came, but from where, it was difficult to say. The oldman rowed a few strokes and then paused on his oars. So still was thesurface of the sea that the chuckling of the water at the boat’s bow asshe drove forward under the impetus of the last powerful stroke couldbe heard distinctly. It died out as she lost way, and silence closedround them like a ring.

The light from above, a light that seemed to come through a vastscuttle of deeply-muffed glass, faint though it was, almost toextinction, still varied as the little boat floated through the strataof the mist.

A great sea fog is not homogeneous—its density varies: it ishoneycombed with streets, it has its caves of clear air, its cliffs ofsolid vapour, all shifting and changing place with the subtlety oflegerdemain. It has also this wizard peculiarity, that it grows withthe sinking of the sun and the approach of darkness.

The sun, could they have seen it, was now leaving the horizon.

They called again. Then they waited, but there was no response.

“There’s no use bawlin’ like bulls to chaps that’s deaf as adders,”said the old sailor, shipping his oars; immediately upon whichdeclaration he gave another shout, with the same result as far aseliciting a reply.

“Mr Button!” came Emmeline’s voice.

“What is it, honey?”

“I’m—m—’fraid.”

“You wait wan minit till I find the shawl—here it is, by the sametoken!—an’ I’ll wrap you up in it.”

He crept cautiously aft to the stern-sheets and took Emmeline in hisarms.

“Don’t want the shawl,” said Emmeline; “I’m not so much afraid in yourcoat.” The rough, tobacco-smelling old coat gave her courage somehow.

“Well, thin, keep it on. Dicky, are you cowld?”

“I’ve got into daddy’s great-coat; he left it behind him.”

“Well, thin, I’ll put the shawl round me own shoulders, for it’s cowldI am. Are y’ hungry, childer?”

“No,” said Dick, “but I’m drefful—Hi—yow——”

“Slapy, is it? Well, down you get in the bottom of the boat, and here’sthe shawl for a pilla. I’ll be rowin’ again in a minit to keep meselfwarm.”

He buttoned the top button of the coat.

“I’m a’right,” murmured Emmeline in a dreamy voice.

“Shut your eyes tight,” replied Mr Button, “or Billy Winker will bedridgin’ sand in them.

“‘Shoheen, shoheen, shoheen, shoheen,
Sho—hu—lo, sho—hu—lo.
Shoheen, shoheen, shoheen, shoheen,
Hush a by the babby O.’”

It was the tag of an old nursery folk-song they sing in the hovels ofthe Achill coast fixed in his memory, along with the rain and the windand the smell of the burning turf, and the grunting of the pig and theknickety-knock of a rocking cradle.

“She’s off,” murmured Mr Button to himself, as the form in his armsrelaxed. Then he laid her gently down beside Dick. He shifted forward,moving like a crab. Then he put his hand to his pocket for his pipe andtobacco and tinder box. They were in his coat pocket, but Emmeline wasin his coat. To search for them would be to awaken her.

The darkness of night was now adding itself to the blindness of thefog. The oarsman could not see even the thole pins. He sat adrift mindand body. He was, to use his own expression, “moithered.” Haunted bythe mist, tormented by “shapes.”

It was just in a fog like this that the Merrows could be hearddisporting in Dunbeg bay, and off the Achill coast. Sporting andlaughing, and hallooing through the mist, to lead unfortunate fishermenastray.

Merrows are not altogether evil, but they have green hair and teeth,fishes’ tails and fins for arms; and to hear them walloping in thewater around you like salmon, and you alone in a small boat, with thedread of one coming floundering on board, is enough to turn a man’shair grey.

For a moment he thought of awakening the children to keep him company,but he was ashamed. Then he took to the sculls again, and rowed “by thefeel of the water.” The creak of the oars was like a companion’s voice,the exercise lulled his fears. Now and again, forgetful of the sleepingchildren, he gave a halloo, and paused to listen. But no answer came.

Then he continued rowing, long, steady, laborious strokes, each takinghim further and further from the boats that he was never destined tosight again.

CHAPTER VI

DAWN ON A WIDE, WIDE SEA

“Is it aslape I’ve been?” said Mr Button, suddenly awaking with a start.

He had shipped his oars just for a minute’s rest. He must have sleptfor hours, for now, behold! a warm, gentle wind was blowing, the moonwas shining, and the fog was gone.

“Is it dhraming I’ve been?” continued the awakened one.“Where am I at all, at all? O musha! sure, here I am. O wirra! wirra! Idreamt I’d gone aslape on the main-hatch and the ship was blown up withpowther, and it’s all come true.”

“Mr Button!” came a small voice from the stern-sheets (Emmeline’s).

“What is it, honey?”

“Where are we now?”

“Sure, we’re afloat on the say, acushla; where else would we be?”

“Where’s uncle?”

“He’s beyant there in the long-boat—he’ll be afther us in a minit.”

“I want a drink.”

He filled a tin pannikin that was by the beaker of water, and gave hera drink. Then he took his pipe and tobacco from his coat pocket.

She almost immediately fell asleep again beside Dick, who had notstirred or moved; and the old sailor, standing up and steadyinghimself, cast his eyes round the horizon. Not a sign of sail or boatwas there on all the moonlit sea.

From the low elevation of an open boat one has a very small horizon,and in the vague world of moonlight somewhere round about it waspossible that the boats might be near enough to show up at daybreak.

But open boats a few miles apart may be separated by long leagues inthe course of a few hours. Nothing is more mysterious than the currentsof the sea.

The ocean is an ocean of rivers, some swiftly flowing, some slow, and aleague from where you are drifting at the rate of a mile an houranother boat may be drifting two.

A slight warm breeze was frosting the water, blending moonshine andstar shimmer; the ocean lay like a lake, yet the nearest mainland wasperhaps a thousand miles away.

The thoughts of youth may be long, long thoughts, but not longer thanthe thoughts of this old sailor man smoking his pipe under the stars.Thoughts as long as the world is round. Blazing bar rooms inCallao—harbours over whose oily surfaces the sampans slipped likewater-beetles—the lights of Macao—the docks of London. Scarcely evera sea picture, pure and simple, for why should an old seaman care tothink about the sea, where life is all into the fo’cs’le and out again,where one voyage blends and jumbles with another, where afterforty-five years of reefing topsails you can’t well remember off whichship it was Jack Rafferty fell overboard, or who it was killed who inthe fo’cs’le of what, though you can still see, as in a mirror darkly,the fight, and the bloody face over which a man is holding a kerosenelamp.

I doubt if Paddy Button could have told you the name of the first shiphe ever sailed in. If you had asked him, he would probably havereplied: “I disremimber; it was to the Baltic, and cruel cowld weather,and I was say-sick—till I near brought me boots up; and it was ‘O forould Ireland!’ I was cryin’ all the time, an’ the captin dhrummin meback with a rope’s end to the tune uv it—but the name of the hooker—Idisremimber—bad luck to her, whoever she was!”

So he sat smoking his pipe, whilst the candles of heaven burned abovehim, and calling to mind roaring drunken scenes and palm-shadowedharbours, and the men and the women he had known—such men and suchwomen! The derelicts of the earth and the ocean. Then he nodded off tosleep again, and when he awoke the moon had gone.

Now in the eastern sky might have been seen a pale fan of light, vagueas the wing of an ephemera. It vanished and changed back to darkness.

Presently, and almost at a stroke, a pencil of fire ruled a line alongthe eastern horizon, and the eastern sky became more beautiful than arose leaf plucked in May. The line of fire contracted into oneincreasing spot, the rim of the rising sun.

As the light increased the sky above became of a blue impossible toimagine unless seen, a wan blue, yet living and sparkling as if born ofthe impalpable dust of sapphires. Then the whole sea flashed like theharp of Apollo touched by the fingers of the god. The light was musicto the soul. It was day.

“Daddy!” suddenly cried Dick, sitting up in the sunlight and rubbinghis eyes with his open palms. “Where are we?”

“All right, Dicky, me son!” cried the old sailor, who had been standingup casting his eyes round in a vain endeavour to sight the boats. “Yourdaddy’s as safe as if he was in hivin; he’ll be wid us in a minit, an’bring another ship along with him. So you’re awake, are you, Em’line?”

Emmeline, sitting up in the old pilot coat, nodded in reply withoutspeaking. Another child might have supplemented Dick’s enquiries as toher uncle by questions of her own, but she did not.

Did she guess that there was some subterfuge in Mr Button’s answer, andthat things were different from what he was making them out to be? Whocan tell?

She was wearing an old cap of Dick’s, which Mrs Stannard in the hurryand confusion had popped on her head. It was pushed to one side, andshe made a quaint enough little figure as she sat up in the earlymorning brightness, dressed in the old salt-stained coat beside Dick,whose straw hat was somewhere in the bottom of the boat, and whoseauburn locks were blowing in the faint breeze.

“Hurroo!” cried Dick, looking around at the blue and sparkling water,and banging with a stretcher on the bottom of the boat. “I’m goin’ tobe a sailor, aren’t I, Paddy? You’ll let me sail the boat, won’t you,Paddy, an’ show me how to row?”

“Aisy does it,” said Paddy, taking hold of the child. “I haven’t asponge or towel, but I’ll just wash your face in salt wather and laveyou to dry in the sun.”

He filled the bailing tin with sea water.

“I don’t want to wash!” shouted Dick.

“Stick your face into the water in the tin,” commanded Paddy. “Youwouldn’t be going about the place with your face like a sut-bag, wouldyou?”

“Stick yours in!” commanded the other.

Mr Button did so, and made a hub-bubbling noise in the water; then helifted a wet and streaming face, and flung the contents of the bailingtin overboard.

“Now you’ve lost your chance,” said this arch nursery-strategist, “allthe water’s gone.”

“There’s more in the sea.”

“There’s no more to wash with, not till to-morrow—the fishes don’tallow it.”

“I want to wash,” grumbled Dick. “I want to stick my face in the tin,same’s you did; ’sides, Em hasn’t washed.”

“Idon’t mind,” murmured Emmeline.

“Well, thin,” said Mr Button, as if making a sudden resolve, “I’ll axthe sharks.” He leaned over the boat’s side, his face close to thesurface of the water. “Halloo there!” he shouted, and then bent hishead sideways to listen; the children also looked over the side, deeplyinterested.

“Halloo there! Are y’aslape— Oh, there y’are! Here’s a spalpeen with adhirty face, an’s wishful to wash it; may I take a bailin’ tin of— Oh,thank your ’arner, thank your ’arner—good day to you, and my respects.”

“What did the shark say, Mr Button?” asked Emmeline.

“He said: ‘Take a bar’l full, an’ welcome, Mister Button; an’ it’swishful I am I had a drop of the crathur to offer you this finemarnin’.’ Thin he popped his head under his fin and went aslape agin;leastwise, I heard him snore.”

Emmeline nearly always “Mr Buttoned” her friend; sometimes she calledhim “Mr Paddy.” As for Dick, it was always “Paddy,” pure and simple.Children have etiquettes of their own.

It must often strike landsmen and landswomen that the most terribleexperience when cast away at sea in an open boat is the total absenceof privacy. It seems an outrage on decency on the part of Providence toherd people together so. But, whoever has gone through the experiencewill bear me out that in great moments of life like thisthe human mind enlarges, and things that wouldshock us ashore are as nothing out there, face to face with eternity.

If so with grown-up people, how much more so with this old shell-backand his two charges?

And indeed Mr Button was a person who called a spade a spade, had nomore conventions than a walrus, and looked after his two charges justas a nursemaid might look after her charges, or a walrus after itsyoung.

There was a large bag of biscuits in the boat, and some tinnedstuff—mostly sardines.

I have known a sailor to open a box of sardines with a tin-tack. He wasin prison, the sardines had been smuggled into him, and he had nocan-opener. Only his genius and a tin-tack.

Paddy had a jack-knife, however, and in a marvellously short time a boxof sardines was opened, and placed on the stern-sheets beside somebiscuits.

These, with some water and Emmeline’s Tangerine orange, which sheproduced and added to the common store, formed the feast, and they fellto.

When they had finished, the remains were put carefully away, andthey proceeded to step the tiny mast.

The sailor, when the mast was in its place, stood for a moment restinghis hand on it, and gazing around him over the vast and voiceless blue.

The Pacific has three blues: the blue of morning, the blue of midday,and the blue of evening. But the blue of morning is the happiest: thehappiest thing in colour—sparkling, vague, newborn—the blue of heavenand youth.

“What are you looking for, Paddy?” asked Dick.

“Say-gulls,” replied the prevaricator; then to himself: “Not a sight ora sound of them! Musha! musha! which way will I steer—north, south,aist, or west? It’s all wan, for if I steer to the aist, they may be inthe west; and if I steer to the west, they may be in the aist; and Ican’t steer to the west, for I’d be steering right in the wind’s eye.Aist it is; I’ll make a soldier’s wind of it, and thrust to chance.”

He set the sail and came aft with the sheet. Then he shifted therudder, lit a pipe, leaned luxuriously back and gave the bellying sailto the gentle breeze.

It was part of his profession, part of his nature, that, steering,maybe, straight towards death by starvation and thirst, he was asunconcerned as if he were taking the children for a summer’s sail. Hisimagination dealt little with the future; almost entirely influenced byhis immediate surroundings, it could conjure up no fears from the scenenow before it. The children were the same.

Never was there a happier starting, more joy in a little boat. Duringbreakfast the seaman had given his charges to understand that if Dickdid not meet his father and Emmeline her uncle in a “while or two,” itwas because he had gone on board a ship, and he’d be along presently.The terror of their position was as deeply veiled from them as eternityis veiled from you or me.

The Pacific was still bound by one of those glacial calms that can onlyoccur when the sea has been free from storms for a vast extent of itssurface, for a hurricane down by the Horn will send its swell anddisturbance beyond the Marquesas. De Bois in his table of amplitudespoints out that more than half the sea disturbances at any given spaceare caused, not by the wind, but by storms at a great distance.

But the sleep of the Pacific is only apparent. This placid lake, overwhich the dinghy was pursuing the running ripple, was heaving to animperceptible swell and breaking on the shores of the Low Archipelago,and the Marquesas in foam and thunder.

Emmeline’s rag-doll was a shocking affair from a hygienic or artisticstandpoint. Its face was just inked on, it had no features, no arms;yet not for all the dolls in the world would she have exchanged thisfilthy and nearly formless thing. It was a fetish.

She sat nursing it on one side of the helmsman, whilst Dick, on theother side, hung his nose over the water, on the look-out for fish.

“Why do you smoke, Mr Button?” asked Emmeline, who had been watchingher friend for some time in silence.

“To aise me thrubbles,” replied Paddy.

He was leaning back with one eye shut and the other fixed on the luffof the sail. He was in his element: nothing to do but steer and smoke,warmed by the sun and cooled by the breeze. A landsman would have beenhalf demented in his condition, many a sailor would have been taciturnand surly, on the look-out for sails, and alternately damning his souland praying to his God. Paddy smoked.

“Whoop!” cried Dick. “Look, Paddy!”

An albicore a few cables lengths to port had taken a flying leap fromthe flashing sea, turned a complete somersault and vanished.

“It’s an albicore takin’ a buck lep. Hundreds I’ve seen before this;he’s bein’ chased.”

“What’s chasing him, Paddy?”

“What’s chasin’ him?—why, what else but the gibly-gobly-ums!”

Before Dick could enquire as to the personal appearance and habits ofthe latter, a shoal of silver arrow heads passed the boat and flitteredinto the water with a hissing sound.

“Thim’s flyin’ fish. What are you sayin’—fish can’t fly! Where’s theeyes in your head?”

“Are the gibblyums chasing them too?” asked Emmeline fearfully.

“No; ’tis the Billy balloos that’s afther thim. Don’t be axin’ me anymore questions now, or I’ll be tellin’ you lies in a minit.”

Emmeline, it will be remembered, had brought a small parcel with herdone up in a little shawl; it was under the boat seat, and every nowand then she would stoop down to see if it were safe.

CHAPTER VII

STORY OF THE PIG AND THE BILLY-GOAT

Every hour or so Mr Button would shake his lethargy off, and rise andlook round for “sea-gulls,” but the prospect was sail-less as theprehistoric sea, wingless, voiceless. When Dick would fret now andthen, the old sailor would always devise some means of amusing him. Hemade him fishing-tackle out of a bent pin and some small twine thathappened to be in the boat, and told him to fish for “pinkeens”; andDick, with the pathetic faith of childhood, fished.

Then he told them things. He had spent a year at Deal long ago, where acousin of his was married to a boatman.

Mr Button had put in a year as a longshoreman at Deal, and he had got agreat lot to tell of his cousin and her husband, and more especially ofone, Hannah; Hannah was his cousin’s baby—a most marvellous child, whowas born with its “buck” teeth fully developed, and whose firstunnatural act on entering the world was to make a snap at the“docther.” “Hung on to his fist like a bull-dog, and him bawlin’‘Murther!’”

“Mrs James,” said Emmeline, referring to a Boston acquaintance, “had alittle baby, and it was pink.”

“Ay, ay,” said Paddy; “they’re mostly pink to start with, but they fadewhin they’re washed.”

“It’d no teeth,” said Emmeline, “for I put my finger in to see.”

“The doctor brought it in a bag,” put in Dick, who was still steadilyfishing—“dug it out of a cabbage patch; an’ I got a trow’l and dug allour cabbage patch up, but there weren’t any babies—but there were noend of worms.”

“I wish I had a baby,” said Emmeline, “and Iwouldn’t send it back tothe cabbage patch.”

“The doctor,” explained Dick, “took it back and planted it again; andMrs James cried when I asked her, and daddy said it was put back togrow and turn into an angel.”

“Angels have wings,” said Emmeline dreamily.

“And,” pursued Dick, “I told cook, and she said to Jane, daddywas always stuffing children up with—something or ’nother. And I askeddaddy to let me see him stuffing up a child—and daddy said cook’d haveto go away for saying that, and she went away next day.”

“She had three big trunks and a box for her bonnet,” said Emmeline,with a far-away look as she recalled the incident.

“And the cabman asked her hadn’t she any more trunks to put on his cab,and hadn’t she forgot the parrot cage,” said Dick.

“I wish Ihad a parrot in a cage,” murmured Emmeline, moving slightlyso as to get more in the shadow of the sail.

“And what in the world would you be doin’ with a par’t in a cage?”asked Mr Button.

“I’d let it out,” replied Emmeline.

“Spakin’ about lettin’ par’ts out of cages, I remimber me grandfatherhad an ould pig,” said Paddy (they were all talking seriously togetherlike equals). “I was a spalpeen no bigger than the height of me knee,and I’d go to the sty door, and he’d come to the door, and grunt an’blow wid his nose undher it; an’ I’d grunt back to vex him, an’ hammerwid me fist on it, an’ shout ‘Halloo there! halloo there!’ and ‘Hallooto you!’ he’d say, spakin’ the pigs’ language. ‘Let me out,’ he’d say,‘and I’ll give yiz a silver shilling.’

“‘Pass it under the door,’ I’d answer him. Thin he’d stick the snout ofhim undher the door an’ I’d hit it a clip with a stick, and he’d yellmurther Irish. An’ me mother’d come out an’ baste me, an’ well Idesarved it.

“Well, wan day I opened the sty door, an’ out he boulted and away andbeyant, over hill and hollo he goes till he gets to the edge of thecliff overlookin’ the say, and there he meets a billy-goat, and he andthe billy-goat has a division of opinion.

“‘Away wid yiz!’ says the billy-goat.

“‘Away wid yourself!’ says he.

“‘Whose you talkin’ to?’ says t’other.

“‘Yourself,’ says him.

“‘Who stole the eggs?’ says the billy-goat.

“‘Ax your ould grandmother!’ says the pig.

“‘Ax me ould whichmother?’ says the billy-goat.

“‘Oh, ax me——’ And before he could complete the sintence ram, blam,the ould billy-goat butts him in the chist, and away goes the both ofthim whirtlin’ into the say below.

“Thin me ould grandfather comes out, and collars me by the scruff, and‘Into the sty with you!’ says he; and into the sty I wint, and therethey kep’ me for a fortni’t on bran mash and skim milk—and well Idesarved it.”

They dined somewhere about eleven o’clock, and at noon Paddy unsteppedthe mast and made a sort of little tent or awning with the sail in thebow of the boat to protect the children from the rays of the verticalsun.

Then he took his place in the bottom of the boat, in the stern, stuckDick’s straw hat over his face to preserve it from the sun, kickedabout a bit to get a comfortable position, and fell asleep.

CHAPTER VIII

“S-H-E-N-A-N-D-O-A-H”

He had slept an hour and more when he was brought to his senses by athin and prolonged shriek. It was Emmeline in a nightmare, or moreproperly a day-mare, brought on by a meal of sardines and the hauntingmemory of the gibbly-gobbly-ums. When she was shaken (it always took aconsiderable time to bring her to, from these seizures) and comforted,the mast was restepped.

As Mr Button stood with his hand on the spar looking round him beforegoing aft with the sheet, an object struck his eye some three milesahead. Objects rather, for they were the masts and spars of a smallship rising from the water. Not a vestige of sail, just the nakedspars. It might have been a couple of old skeleton trees jutting out ofthe water for all a landsman could have told.

He stared at this sight for twenty or thirty seconds without speaking,his head projected like the head of a tortoise. Then he gave a wild“Hurroo!”

“What is it, Paddy?” asked Dick.

“Hurroo!” replied Mr Button. “Ship ahoy! ship ahoy! Lie to till I beafther boardin’ you. Sure, they are lyin’ to—divil a rag of canvas onher—are they aslape or dhramin’? Here, Dick, let me get aft wid thesheet; the wind’ll take us up to her quicker than we’ll row.”

He crawled aft and took the tiller; the breeze took the sail, and theboat forged ahead.

“Is it daddy’s ship?” asked Dick, who was almost as excited as hisfriend.

“I dinno; we’ll see when we fetch her.”

“Shall we go on her, Mr Button?” asked Emmeline.

“Ay will we, honey.”

Emmeline bent down, and fetching her parcel from under the seat, heldit in her lap.

As they drew nearer, the outlines of the ship became more apparent. Shewas a small brig, with stump topmasts, from the spars a few rags ofcanvas fluttered. It was apparent soon to the old sailor’s eye what wasamiss with her.

“She’s derelick, bad cess to her!” he muttered; “derelick and donefor—just me luck!”

“I can’t see any people on the ship,” cried Dick, who had creptforward to the bow. “Daddy’s not there.”

The old sailor let the boat off a point or two, so as to get a view ofthe brig more fully; when they were within twenty cable lengths or sohe unstepped the mast and took to the sculls.

The little brig floated very low on the water, and presented a mournfulenough appearance; her running rigging all slack, shreds of canvasflapping at the yards, and no boats hanging at her davits. It was easyenough to see that she was a timber ship, and that she had started abutt, flooded herself and been abandoned.

Paddy lay on his oars within a few strokes of her. She was floating asplacidly as though she were in the harbour of San Francisco; the greenwater showed in her shadow, and in the green water waved the tropicweeds that were growing from her copper. Her paint was blistered andburnt absolutely as though a hot iron had been passed over it, and overher taffrail hung a large rope whose end was lost to sight in the water.

A few strokes brought them under the stern. The name of the ship wasthere in faded letters, also the port to which she belonged.“Shenandoah. Martha’s Vineyard.”

“There’s letters on her,” said Mr Button. “But I can’t make thim out.I’ve no larnin’.”

“I can read them,” said Dick.

“So c’n I,” murmured Emmeline.

“S-H-E-N-A-N-D-O-A-H,” spelt Dick.

“What’s that?” enquired Paddy.

“I don’t know,” replied Dick, rather downcastedly.

“There you are!” cried the oarsman in a disgusted manner, pulling theboat round to the starboard side of the brig. “They pritind to tacheletters to childer in schools, pickin’ their eyes out wid book-readin’,and here’s letters as big as me face an’ they can’t make hid or tail ofthem—be dashed to book-readin’!”

The brig had old-fashioned wide channels, regular platforms; and shefloated so low in the water that they were scarcely a foot above thelevel of the dinghy.

Mr Button secured the boat by passing the painter through a channelplate, then, with Emmeline and her parcel in his arms or rather in onearm, he clambered over the channel and passed her over the rail on tothe deck. Then it was Dick’s turn, and the children stood waitingwhilst the old sailor brought the beaker of water, the biscuit, and thetinned stuff on board.

It was a place to delight the heart of a boy, the deck of theShenandoah; forward right from the main hatchway it was laden withtimber. Running rigging lay loose on the deck in coils, and nearly thewhole of the quarter-deck was occupied by a deck-house. The place had adelightful smell of sea-beach, decaying wood, tar, and mystery. Bightsof buntline and other ropes were dangling from above, only waiting tobe swung from. A bell was hung just forward of the foremast. In half amoment Dick was forward hammering at the bell with a belaying pin hehad picked from the deck.

Mr Button shouted to him to desist; the sound of the bell jarred on hisnerves. It sounded like a summons, and a summons on that deserted craftwas quite out of place. Who knew what mightn’t answer it in the way ofthe supernatural?

Dick dropped the belaying pin and ran forward. He took the disengagedhand, and the three went aft to the door of the deck-house. The doorwas open, and they peeped in.

The place had three windows on the starboard side, and through thewindows the sun was shining in a mournful manner. There was a table inthe middle of the place. A seat was pushed away from the table as ifsome one had risen in a hurry. On the table lay the remains of a meal, ateapot, two teacups, two plates. On one of the plates rested a forkwith a bit of putrifying bacon upon it that some one had evidently beenconveying to his mouth when—something had happened. Near the teapotstood a tin of condensed milk, haggled open. Some old salt had justbeen in the act of putting milk in his tea when the mysterioussomething had occurred. Never did a lot of dead things speak soeloquently as these things spoke.

One could conjure it all up. The skipper, most likely, had finished histea, and the mate was hard at work at his, when the leak had beendiscovered, or some derelict had been run into, or whatever it was hadhappened—happened.

One thing was evident, that since the abandonment of the brig she hadexperienced fine weather, else the things would not have been leftstanding so trimly on the table.

Mr Button and Dick entered the place to prosecute enquiries, butEmmeline remained at the door. The charm of the old brig appealed toher almost as much as to Dick, but she had a feeling about it quiteunknown to him. A ship where no one was had about it suggestions of“other things.”

She was afraid to enter the gloomy deck-house, and afraid to remainalone outside; she compromised matters by sitting down on the deck.Then she placed the small bundle beside her, and hurriedly took therag-doll from her pocket, into which it was stuffed head down, pulledits calico skirt from over its head, propped it up against the coamingof the door, and told it not to be afraid.

There was not much to be found in the deck-house, but aft of it weretwo small cabins like rabbit hutches, once inhabited by the skipper andhis mate. Here there were great findings in the way of rubbish. Oldclothes, old boots, an old top-hat of that extraordinary pattern youmay see in the streets of Pernambuco, immensely tall, and narrowingtowards the brim. A telescope without a lens, a volume of Hoyt, anautical almanac, a great bolt of striped flannel shirting, a box offish hooks. And in one corner—glorious find!—a coil of what seemed tobe ten yards or so of black rope.

“Baccy, begorra!” shouted Pat, seizing upon his treasure. It waspigtail. You may see coils of it in the tobacconists’ windows ofseaport towns. A pipe full of it would make a hippopotamus vomit, yetold sailors chew it and smoke it and revel in it.

“We’ll bring all the lot of the things out on deck, and see what’sworth keepin’ an’ what’s worth leavin’,” said Mr Button, taking animmense armful of the old truck; whilst Dick, carrying the top-hat,upon which he had instantly seized as his own special booty, led theway.

“Em,” shouted Dick, as he emerged from the doorway, “see what I’ve got!”

He popped the awful-looking structure over his head. It went right downto his shoulders.

Emmeline gave a shriek.

“It smells funny,” said Dick, taking it off and applying his nose tothe inside of it—“smells like an old hair brush. Here, you try it on.”

Emmeline scrambled away as far as she could, till she reached thestarboard bulwarks, where she sat in the scupper, breathless andspeechless and wide-eyed. She was always dumb when frightened (unlessit were a nightmare or a very sudden shock), and this hat suddenly seenhalf covering Dick frightened her out of her wits. Besides, it was ablack thing, and she hated black things—black cats, black horses;worst of all, black dogs.

She had once seen a hearse in the streets of Boston, an old-time hearsewith black plumes, trappings and all complete. The sight had nearlygiven her a fit, though she did not know in the least the meaning of it.

Meanwhile Mr Button was conveying armful after armful of stuff on deck.When the heap was complete, he sat down beside it in the gloriousafternoon sunshine, and lit his pipe.

He had searched neither for food or water as yet; content with thetreasure God had given him, for the moment the material things of lifewere forgotten. And, indeed, if he had searched he would have foundonly half a sack of potatoes in the caboose, for the lazarette wasawash, and the water in the scuttle-butt was stinking.

Emmeline, seeing what was in progress, crept up, Dick promising not toput the hat on her, and they all sat round the pile.

“Thim pair of brogues,” said the old man, holding a pair of old bootsup for inspection like an auctioneer, “would fetch half a dollar anyday in the wake in any sayport in the world. Put them beside you, Dick,and lay hold of this pair of britches by the ends of em’—stritch them.”

The trousers were stretched out, examined and approved of, and laidbeside the boots.

“Here’s a tiliscope wid wan eye shut,” said Mr Button, examining thebroken telescope and pulling it in and out like a concertina. “Stickit beside the brogues; it may come in handy for somethin’. Here’s abook”—tossing the nautical almanac to the boy. “Tell me what it says.”

Dick examined the pages of figures hopelessly.

“I can’t read ’em,” said Dick; “it’s numbers.”

“Buzz it overboard,” said Mr Button.

Dick did what he was told joyfully, and the proceedings resumed.

He tried on the tall hat, and the children laughed. On her old friend’shead the thing ceased to have terror for Emmeline.

She had two methods of laughing. The angelic smile before mentioned—arare thing—and, almost as rare, a laugh in which she showed her littlewhite teeth, whilst she pressed her hands together, the left one tightshut, and the right clasped over it.

He put the hat on one side, and continued the sorting, searching allthe pockets of the clothes and finding nothing. When he had arrangedwhat to keep, they flung the rest overboard, and the valuables wereconveyed to the captain’s cabin, there to remain till wanted.

Then the idea that food might turn up useful as well as old clothes intheir present condition struck the imaginative mind of Mr Button, andhe proceeded to search.

The lazarette was simply a cistern full of sea water; what else itmight contain, not being a diver, he could not say. In the copper ofthe caboose lay a great lump of putrifying pork or meat of some sort.The harness cask contained nothing except huge crystals of salt. Allthe meat had been taken away. Still, the provisions and water broughton board from the dinghy would be sufficient to last them some ten daysor so, and in the course of ten days a lot of things might happen.

Mr Button leaned over the side. The dinghy was nestling beside the briglike a duckling beside a duck; the broad channel might have beenlikened to the duck’s wing half extended. He got on the channel to seeif the painter was safely attached. Having made all secure, he climbedslowly up to the main-yard arm, and looked round upon the sea.

CHAPTER IX

SHADOWS IN THE MOONLIGHT

“Daddy’s a long time coming,” said Dick all of a sudden.

They were seated on the baulks of timber that cumbered the deck of thebrig on either side of the caboose. An ideal perch. The sun was settingover Australia way, in a sea that seemed like a sea of boiling gold.Some mystery of mirage caused the water to heave and tremble as iftroubled by fervent heat.

“Ay, is he,” said Mr Button; “but it’s better late than never. Nowdon’t be thinkin’ of him, for that won’t bring him. Look at the sungoin’ into the wather, and don’t be spakin’ a word, now, but listen andyou’ll hear it hiss.”

The children gazed and listened, Paddy also. All three were mute as thegreat blazing shield touched the water that leapt to meet it.

You couldhear the water hiss—if you had imagination enough. Oncehaving touched the water, the sun went down behind it, as swiftly as aman in a hurry going down a ladder. As he vanished a ghostly and goldentwilight spread over the sea, a light exquisite but immensely forlorn.Then the sea became a violet shadow, the west darkened as if to aclosing door, and the stars rushed over the sky.

“Mr Button,” said Emmeline, nodding towards the sun as he vanished,“where’s over there?”

“The west,” replied he, staring at the sunset. “Chainy and Injee andall away beyant.”

“Where’s the sun gone to now, Paddy?” asked Dick.

“He’s gone chasin’ the moon, an’ she’s skedadlin’ wid her dress brailedup for all she’s worth; she’ll be along up in a minit. He’s alwaysafther her, but he’s never caught her yet.”

“What would he do to her if he caught her?” asked Emmeline.

“Faith, an’ maybe he’d fetch her a skelp—an’ well she’d desarve it.”

“Why’d she deserve it?” asked Dick, who was in one of his questioningmoods.

“Because she’s always delutherin’ people an’ leadin’ thim asthray.Girls or men, she moidhers thim all once she gets the comeither onthem; same as she did Buck M’Cann.”

“Who’s he?”

“Buck M’Cann? Faith, he was the village ijit where I used to live inthe ould days.”

“What’s that?”

“Hould your whisht, an’ don’t be axin’ questions. He was always wantin’the moon, though he was twinty an’ six feet four. He’d a gob on himthat hung open like a rat-trap with a broken spring, and he was as thinas a barber’s pole, you could a’ tied a reef knot in the middle of ’um;and whin the moon was full there was no houldin’ him.” Mr Button gazedat the reflection of the sunset on the water for a moment as ifrecalling some form from the past, and then proceeded. “He’d sit on thegrass starin’ at her, an’ thin he’d start to chase her over the hills,and they’d find him at last, maybe a day or two later, lost in themountains, grazin’ on berries, an’ as green as a cabbidge from thehunger an’ the cowld, till it got so bad at long last they had tohobble him.”

“I’ve seen a donkey hobbled,” cried Dick.

“Thin you’ve seen the twin brother of Buck M’Cann. Well, one night meelder brother Tim was sittin’ over the fire, smokin’ his dudeen an’thinkin’ of his sins, when in comes Buck with the hobbles on him.

“‘Tim,’ says he, ‘I’ve got her at last!’

“‘Got who?’ says Tim.

“‘The moon,’ says he.

“‘Got her where?’ says Tim.

“‘In a bucket down by the pond,’ says t’other, ‘safe an’ sound an’ nota scratch on her; you come and look,’ says he. So Tim follows him, hehobblin’, and they goes to the pond side, and there, sure enough, stooda tin bucket full of wather, an’ on the wather the refliction of themoon.

“‘I dridged her out of the pond,’ whispers Buck. ‘Aisy now,’ says he,‘an’ I’ll dribble the water out gently,’ says he, ‘an’ we’ll catch heralive at the bottom of it like a trout.’ So he drains the wather outgently of the bucket till it was near all gone, an’ then he looks intothe bucket expectin’ to find the moon flounderin’ in the bottom of itlike a flat fish.

“‘She’s gone, bad ’cess to her!’ says he.

“‘Try again,’ says me brother, and Buck fills the bucket again, andthere was the moon sure enough when the water came to stand still.

“‘Go on,’ says me brother. ‘Drain out the wather, but go gentle, orshe’ll give yiz the slip again.’

“‘Wan minit,’ says Buck, ‘I’ve got an idea,’ says he; ‘she won’t giveme the slip this time,’ says he. ‘You wait for me,’ says he; and off hehobbles to his old mother’s cabin a stone’s-throw away, and back hecomes with a sieve.

“‘You hold the sieve,’ says Buck, ‘and I’ll drain the water into it; ifshe ’scapes from the bucket we’ll have her in the sieve.’ And he poursthe wather out of the bucket as gentle as if it was crame out of a jug.When all the wather was out he turns the bucket bottom up, and shook it.

“‘Ran dan the thing!’ he cries, ‘she’s gone again;’ an’ wid that heflings the bucket into the pond, and the sieve afther the bucket, whenup comes his old mother hobbling on her stick.

“‘Where’s me bucket?’ says she.

“‘In the pond,’ say Buck.

“‘And me sieve?’ says she.

“‘Gone afther the bucket.’

“‘I’ll give yiz a bucketin’!’ says she; and she up with the stick andlanded him a skelp, an’ driv him roarin’ and hobblin’ before her, andlocked him up in the cabin, an’ kep’ him on bread an’ wather for a waketo get the moon out of his head; but she might have saved her thruble,for that day month in it was agin—— There she comes!”

The moon, argent and splendid, was breaking from the water. She wasfull, and her light was powerful almost as the light of day. Theshadows of the children and the queer shadow of Mr Button were cast onthe wall of the caboose hard and black as silhouettes.

“Look at our shadows!” cried Dick, taking off his broad-brimmed strawhat and waving it.

Emmeline held up her doll to see itsshadow, and Mr Button held up hispipe.

“Come now,” said he, putting the pipe back in his mouth, and making torise, “and shadda off to bed; it’s time you were aslape, the both ofyou.”

Dick began to yowl.

“Idon’t want to go to bed; I aint tired, Paddy—les’s stay a littlelonger.”

“Not a minit,” said the other, with all the decision of a nurse; “not aminit afther me pipe’s out!”

“Fill it again,” said Dick.

Mr Button made no reply. The pipe gurgled as he puffed at it—a kind ofdeath-rattle speaking of almost immediate extinction.

“Mr Button!” said Emmeline. She was holding her nose in the air andsniffing; seated to windward of the smoker, and out of thepigtail-poisoned air, her delicate sense of smell perceived somethinglost to the others.

“What is it, acushla?”

“I smell something.”

“What d’ye say you smell?”

“Something nice.”

“What’s it like?” asked Dick, sniffing hard. “Idon’t smell anything.”

Emmeline sniffed again to make sure.

“Flowers,” said she.

The breeze, which had shifted several points since midday, was bearingwith it a faint, faint odour: a perfume of vanilla and spice so faintas to be imperceptible to all but the most acute olfactory sense.

“Flowers!” said the old sailor, tapping the ashes out of his pipeagainst the heel of his boot. “And where’d you get flowers in middle ofthe say? It’s dhramin’ you are. Come now—to bed wid yiz!”

“Fill it again,” wailed Dick, referring to the pipe.

“It’s a spankin’ I’ll give you,” replied his guardian, lifting him downfrom the timber baulks, and then assisting Emmeline, “in two ticks ifyou don’t behave. Come along, Em’line.”

He started aft, a small hand in each of his, Dick bellowing.

As they passed the ship’s bell, Dick stretched towards the belaying pinthat was still lying on the deck, seized it, and hit the bell a mightybang. It was the last pleasure to be snatched before sleep, and hesnatched it.

Paddy had made up beds for himself and his charges in the deck-house;he had cleared the stuff off the table, broken open the windows to getthe musty smell away, and placed the mattresses from the captain andmate’s cabins on the floor.

When the children were in bed and asleep, he went to the starboardrail, and, leaning on it, looked over the moonlit sea. He was thinkingof ships as his wandering eye roved over the sea spaces, littledreaming of the message that the perfumed breeze was bearing him. Themessage that had been received and dimly understood by Emmeline. Thenhe leaned with his back to the rail and his hands in his pockets. Hewas not thinking now, he was ruminating.

The basis of the Irish character as exemplified by Paddy Button is aprofound laziness mixed with a profound melancholy. Yet Paddy, in hisleft-handed way, was as hard a worker as any man on board ship; and asfor melancholy, he was the life and soul of the fo’cs’le. Yet therethey were, the laziness and the melancholy, only waiting to be tapped.

As he stood with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, longshorefashion, counting the dowels in the planking of the deck by themoonlight, he was reviewing the “old days.” The tale of Buck M’Cann hadrecalled them, and across all the salt seas he could see the moonlighton the Connemara mountains, and hear the sea-gulls crying on thethunderous beach where each wave has behind it three thousand miles ofsea.

Suddenly Mr Button came back from the mountains of Connemara to findhimself on the deck of the Shenandoah; and he instantly becamepossessed by fears. Beyond the white deserted deck, barred by theshadows of the standing rigging, he could see the door of the caboose.Suppose he should suddenly see a head pop out—or, worse, a shadowy formgo in?

He turned to the deck-house, where the children were sound asleep, andwhere, in a few minutes, he, too, was sound asleep beside them, whilstall night long the brig rocked to the gentle swell of the Pacific, andthe breeze blew, bringing with it the perfume of flowers.

CHAPTER X

THE TRAGEDY OF THE BOATS

When the fog lifted after midnight the people in the long-boat saw thequarter-boat half a mile to starboard of them.

“Can you see the dinghy?” asked Lestrange of the captain, who wasstanding up searching the horizon.

“Not a speck,” answered Le Farge. “Damn that Irishman! but for him I’dhave got the boats away properly victualled and all; as it is I don’tknow what we’ve got aboard. You, Jenkins, what have you got forwardthere?”

“Two bags of bread and a breaker of water,” answered the steward.

“A breaker of water be sugared!” came another voice; “a breaker halffull, you mean.”

Then the steward’s voice: “So it is; there’s not more than a couple ofgallons in her.”

“My God!” said Le Farge. “Damnthat Irishman!”

“There’s not more than’ll give us two half pannikins apiece all round,”said the steward.

“Maybe,” said Le Farge, “the quarter-boat’s better stocked; pull forher.”

“She’s pulling for us,” said the stroke oar.

“Captain,” asked Lestrange, “are you sure there’s no sight of thedinghy?”

“None,” replied Le Farge.

The unfortunate man’s head sank on his breast. He had little time tobrood over his troubles, however, for a tragedy was beginning to unfoldaround him, the most shocking, perhaps, in the annals of the sea—atragedy to be hinted at rather than spoken of.

When the boats were within hailing distance, a man in the bow of thelong-boat rose up.

“Quarter-boat ahoy!”

“Ahoy!”

“How much water have you?”

“None!”

The word came floating over the placid moonlit water. At it the fellowsin the long-boat ceased rowing, and you could see the water-dropsdripping off their oars like diamonds in the moonlight.

“Quarter-boat ahoy!” shouted the fellow in the bow. “Lay on your oars.”

“Here, you scowbanker!” cried Le Farge, “who are you to be givingdirections—”

“Scowbanker yourself!” replied the fellow. “Bullies, put her about!”

The starboard oars backed water, and the boat came round.

By chance the worst lot of the Northumberland’screw were in thelong-boat—veritable “scowbankers,” scum; and how scum clings to lifeyou will never know, until you have been amongst it in an open boat atsea. Le Farge had no more command over this lot than you have who arereading this book.

“Heave to!” came from the quarter-boat, as she laboured behind.

“Lay on your oars, bullies!” cried the ruffian at the bow, who wasstill standing up like an evil genius who had taken momentary commandover events. “Lay on your oars, bullies; they’d better have it now.”

The quarter-boat in her turn ceased rowing, and lay a cable’s lengthaway.

“How much water have you?” came the mate’s voice.

“Not enough to go round.”

Le Farge made to rise, and the stroke oar struck at him, catching himin the wind and doubling him up in the bottom of the boat.

“Give us some, for God’s sake!” came the mate’s voice; “we’re parchedwith rowing, and there’s a woman on board.”

The fellow in the bow of the long-boat, as if some one had suddenlystruck him, broke into a tornado of blasphemy.

“Give us some,” came the mate’s voice, “or, by God, we’ll lay youaboard!”

Before the words were well spoken the men in the quarter-boat carriedthe threat into action. The conflict was brief: the quarter-boat wastoo crowded for fighting. The starboard men in the long-boat foughtwith their oars, whilst the fellows to port steadied the boat.

The fight did not last long, and presently the quarter-boat sheeredoff, half of the men in her cut about the head and bleeding—two ofthem senseless.

It was sundown on the following day. The long-boat lay adrift. The lastdrop of water had been served out eight hours before.

The quarter-boat, like a horrible phantom, had been haunting andpursuing her all day, begging for water when there was none. It waslike the prayers one might expect to hear in hell.

The men in the long-boat, gloomy and morose, weighed down with a senseof crime, tortured by thirst, and tormented by the voices imploring forwater, lay on their oars when the other boat tried to approach.

Now and then, suddenly, and as if moved by a common impulse, they wouldall shout out together: “We have none.” But the quarter-boat would notbelieve. It was in vain to hold the breaker with the bung out to proveits dryness, the half-delirious creatures had it fixed in their mindsthat their comrades were withholding from them the water that was not.

Just as the sun touched the sea, Lestrange, rousing himself from atorpor into which he had sunk, raised himself and looked over thegunwale. He saw the quarter-boat drifting a cable’s length away, lit bythe full light of sunset, and the spectres in it, seeing him, held outin mute appeal their blackened tongues.

Of the night that followed it is almost impossible to speak. Thirstwas nothing to what the scowbankers suffered from the torture of thewhimpering appeal for water that came to them at intervals during thenight.

When at last the Arago, a French whale ship, sighted them, the crew ofthe long-boat were still alive, but three of them were raving madmen.Of the crew of the quarter-boat was saved—not one.

PART II

CHAPTER XI

THE ISLAND

“Childer!” shouted Paddy. He was at the cross-trees in the full dawn,whilst the children standing beneath on deck were craning their facesup to him. “There’s an island forenint us.”

“Hurrah!” cried Dick. He was not quite sure what an island might belike in the concrete, but it was something fresh, and Paddy’s voice wasjubilant.

“Land ho! it is,” said he, coming down to the deck. “Come for’ard tothe bows, and I’ll show it you.”

He stood on the timber in the bows and lifted Emmeline up in his arms;and even at that humble elevation from the water she could seesomething of an undecided colour—green for choice—on the horizon.

It was not directly ahead, but on the starboard bow—or, as she wouldhave expressed it, to the right. When Dick had looked and expressed hisdisappointment at there being so little to see, Paddy began to makepreparations for leaving the ship.

It was only just now, with land in sight, that he recognised in somefashion the horror of the position from which they were about to escape.

He fed the children hurriedly with some biscuits and tinned meat, andthen, with a biscuit in his hand, eating as he went, he trotted aboutthe decks, collecting things and stowing them in the dinghy. The boltof striped flannel, all the old clothes, a housewife full of needlesand thread, such as seamen sometimes carry, the half-sack of potatoes,a saw which he found in the caboose, the precious coil of tobacco, anda lot of other odds and ends he transhipped, sinking the little dinghyseveral strakes in the process. Also, of course, he took the breaker ofwater, and the remains of the biscuit and tinned stuff they had broughton board. These being stowed, and the dinghy ready, he went forwardwith the children to the bow, to see how the island was bearing.

It had loomed up nearer during the hour or so in which he had beencollecting and storing the things—nearer, and more to the right, whichmeant that the brig was being borne by a fairly swift current, and thatshe would pass it, leaving it two or three miles to starboard. It waswell they had command of the dinghy.

“The sea’s all round it,” said Emmeline, who was seated on Paddy’sshoulder, holding on tight to him, and gazing upon the island, thegreen of whose trees was now visible, an oasis of verdure in thesparkling and seraphic blue.

“Are we going there, Paddy?” asked Dick, holding on to a stay, andstraining his eyes towards the land.

“Ay, are we,” said Mr Button. “Hot foot—five knots, if we’re makin’wan; and it’s ashore we’ll be by noon, and maybe sooner.”

The breeze had freshened up, and was blowing dead from the island, asthough the island were making a weak attempt to blow them away from it.

Oh, what a fresh and perfumed breeze it was! All sorts of tropicalgrowing things had joined their scent in one bouquet.

“Smell it,” said Emmeline, expanding her small nostrils. “That’s what Ismelt last night, only it’s stronger now.”

The last reckoning taken on board the Northumberlandhad proved theship to be south by east of the Marquesas; this was evidently one ofthose small, lost islands that lie here and there south by east of theMarquesas. Islands the most lonely and beautiful in the world.

As they gazed it grew before them, and shifted still more to the right.It was hilly and green now, though the trees could not be clearly madeout; here, the green was lighter in colour, and there, darker. A rim ofpure white marble seemed to surround its base. It was foam breaking onthe barrier reef.

In another hour the feathery foliage of the cocoa-nut palms could bemade out, and the old sailor judged it time to take to the boat.

He lifted Emmeline, who was clasping her luggage, over the rail on tothe channel, and deposited her in the stern-sheets; then Dick.

In a moment the boat was adrift, the mast stepped, and the Shenandoahleft to pursue her mysterious voyage at the will of the currents of thesea.

“You’re not going to the island, Paddy,” cried Dick, as the old man putthe boat on the port tack.

“You be aisy,” replied the other, “and don’t be larnin’ yourgran’mother. How the divil d’ye think I’d fetch the land sailin’ deadin the wind’s eye?”

“Has the wind eyes?”

Mr Button did not answer the question. He was troubled in his mind.What if the island were inhabited? He had spent several years in theSouth Seas. He knew the people of the Marquesas and Samoa, and likedthem. But here he was out of his bearings.

However, all the troubling in the world was of no use. It was a case ofthe island or the deep sea, and, putting the boat on the starboardtack, he lit his pipe and leaned back with the tiller in the crook ofhis arm. His keen eyes had made out from the deck of the brig anopening in the reef, and he was making to run the dinghy abreast of theopening, and then take to the sculls and row her through.

Now, as they drew nearer a sound came on the breeze, a sound faint andsonorous and dreamy. It was the sound of the breakers on the reef. Thesea just here was heaving to a deeper swell, as if vexed in its sleepat the resistance to it of the land.

Emmeline, sitting with her bundle in her lap, stared without speakingat the sight before her. Even in the bright, glorious sunshine, anddespite the greenery that showed beyond, it was a desolate sight seenfrom her place in the dinghy. A white, forlorn beach, over which thebreakers raced and tumbled, sea-gulls wheeling and screaming, and overall the thunder of the surf.

Suddenly the break became visible, and a glimpse of smooth, blue waterbeyond. Mr Button unshipped the tiller, unstepped the mast, and took tothe sculls.

As they drew nearer, the sea became more active, savage, and alive; thethunder of the surf became louder, the breakers more fierce andthreatening, the opening broader.

One could see the water swirling round the coral piers, for the tidewas flooding into the lagoon; it had seized the little dinghy and wasbearing it along far swifter than the sculls could have driven it.Sea-gulls screamed around them, the boat rocked and swayed. Dickshouted with excitement, and Emmeline shut her eyes tight.

Then, as though a door had been swiftly and silently closed, the soundof the surf became suddenly less. The boat floated on an even keel; sheopened her eyes and found herself in Wonderland.

CHAPTER XII

THE LAKE OF AZURE

On either side lay a great sweep of waving blue water. Calm, almost asa lake, sapphire here, and here with the tints of the aqua marine. Waterso clear that fathoms away below you could see the branching coral, theschools of passing fish, and the shadows of the fish upon the spaces ofsand.

Before them the clear water washed the sands of a white beach, thecocoa-palms waved and whispered in the breeze; and as the oarsman layon his oars to look a flock of bluebirds rose, as if suddenly freedfrom the tree-tops, wheeled, and passed soundless, like a wreath ofsmoke, over the tree-tops of the higher land beyond.

“Look!” shouted Dick, who had his nose over the gunwale of the boat. “Look atthe fish!”

“Mr Button,” cried Emmeline, “where are we?”

“Bedad, I dunno; but we might be in a worse place, I’m thinkin’,”replied the old man, sweeping his eyes over the blue and tranquillagoon, from the barrier reef to the happy shore.

On either side of the broad beach before them the cocoa-nut trees camedown like two regiments, and bending gazed at their own reflections inthe lagoon. Beyond lay waving chapparel, where cocoa-palms andbreadfruit trees intermixed with the mammee apple and the tendrils ofthe wild vine. On one of the piers of coral at the break of the reefstood a single cocoa-palm; bending with a slight curve, it, too, seemedseeking its reflection in the waving water.

But the soul of it all, the indescribable thing about this picture ofmirrored palm trees, blue lagoon, coral reef and sky, was the light.

Away at sea the light was blinding, dazzling, cruel. Away at sea it hadnothing to focus itself upon, nothing to exhibit but infinite spaces ofblue water and desolation.

Here it made the air a crystal, through which the gazer saw theloveliness of the land and reef, the green of palm, the white of coral,the wheeling gulls, the blue lagoon, all sharply outlined—burning,coloured, arrogant, yet tender—heart-breakingly beautiful, for thespirit of eternal morning was here, eternal happiness, eternal youth.

As the oarsman pulled the tiny craft towards the beach, neither he northe children saw away behind the boat, on the water near the bendingpalm tree at the break in the reef, something that for a momentinsulted the day, and was gone. Something like a small triangle of darkcanvas, that rippled through the water and sank from sight; somethingthat appeared and vanished like an evil thought.

It did not take long to beach the boat. Mr Button tumbled over the sideup to his knees in water, whilst Dick crawled over the bow.

“Catch hould of her the same as I do,” cried Paddy, laying hold of thestarboard gunwale; whilst Dick, imitative as a monkey, seized thegunwale to port. Now then:

“‘Yeo ho, Chilliman,
Up wid her, up wid her,
Heave O, Chilliman.’

“Lave her be now; she’s high enough.”

He took Emmeline in his arms and carried her up on the sand. It wasfrom just here on the sand that you could see the true beauty of thelagoon. That lake of sea water forever protected from storm and troubleby the barrier reef of coral.

Right from where the little clear ripples ran up the strand, it led theeye to the break in the coral reef where the palm gazed at its ownreflection in the water, and there, beyond the break, one caught avision of the great heaving, sparkling sea.

The lagoon, just here, was perhaps more than a third of a mile broad. Ihave never measured it, but I know that, standing by the palm tree onthe reef, flinging up one’s arm and shouting to a person on the beach,the sound took a perceptible time to cross the water: I should say,perhaps, an almost perceptible time. The distant signal and the distantcall were almost coincident, yet not quite.

Dick, mad with delight at the place in which he found himself, wasrunning about like a dog just out of the water. Mr Button wasdischarging the cargo of the dinghy on the dry, white sand. Emmelineseated herself with her precious bundle on the sand, and was watchingthe operations of her friend, looking at the things around her andfeeling very strange.

For all she knew all this was the ordinary accompaniment of a seavoyage. Paddy’s manner throughout had been set to the one idea, not tofrighten the “childer”; the weather had backed him up. But down in theheart of her lay the knowledge that all was not as it should be. Thehurried departure from the ship, the fog in which her uncle hadvanished, those things, and others as well, she felt instinctively werenot right. But she said nothing.

She had not long for meditation, however, for Dick was running towardsher with a live crab which he had picked up, calling out that he wasgoing to make it bite her.

“Take it away!” cried Emmeline, holding both hands with fingerswidespread in front of her face. “Mr Button! Mr Button! Mr Button!”

“Lave her be, you little divil!” roared Pat, who was depositing thelast of the cargo on the sand. “Lave her be, or it’s a cow-hidin’ I’llbe givin’ you!”

“What’s a ‘divil,’ Paddy?” asked Dick, panting from his exertions.“Paddy, what’s a ‘divil’?”

“You’re wan. Ax no questions now, for it’s tired I am, an’ I want torest me bones.”

He flung himself under the shade of a palm tree, took out his tinderbox, tobacco and pipe, cut some tobacco up, filled his pipe and lit it.Emmeline crawled up, and sat near him, and Dick flung himself down onthe sand near Emmeline.

Mr Button took off his coat and made a pillow of it against a cocoa-nuttree stem. He had found the El Dorado of the weary. With his knowledgeof the South Seas a glance at the vegetation to be seen told him thatfood for a regiment might be had for the taking; water, too.

Right down the middle of the strand was a depression which in the rainyseason would be the bed of a rushing rivulet. The water just now wasnot strong enough to come all the way to the lagoon, but away up there“beyant” in the woods lay the source, and he’d find it in due time.There was enough in the breaker for a week, and green “cuca-nuts” wereto be had for the climbing.

Emmeline contemplated Paddy for a while as he smoked and rested hisbones, then a great thought occurred to her. She took the little shawlfrom around the parcel she was holding and exposed the mysterious box.

“Oh, begorra, the box!” said Paddy, leaning on his elbow interestedly;“I might a’ known you wouldn’t a’ forgot it.”

“Mrs James,” said Emmeline, “made me promise not to open it till I goton shore, for the things in it might get lost.”

“Well, you’re ashore now,” said Dick; “open it.”

“I’m going to,” said Emmeline.

She carefully undid the string, refusing the assistance of Paddy’sknife. Then the brown paper came off, disclosing a common cardboardbox. She raised the lid half an inch, peeped in, and shut it again.

“Openit!” cried Dick, mad with curiosity.

“What’s in it, honey?” asked the old sailor, who was as interested asDick.

“Things,” replied Emmeline.

Then all at once she took the lid off and disclosed a tiny tea serviceof china, packed in shavings; there was a teapot with a lid, a creamjug, cups and saucers, and six microscopic plates, each painted with apansy.

“Sure, it’s a tay-set!” said Paddy, in an interested voice. “Glory beto God! will you look at the little plates wid the flowers on thim?”

“Heugh!” said Dick in disgust; “I thought it might a’ been soldiers.”

“Idon’t want soldiers,” replied Emmeline, in a voice of perfectcontentment.

She unfolded a piece of tissue paper, and took from it a sugar-tongsand six spoons. Then she arrayed the whole lot on the sand.

“Well, if that don’t beat all!” said Paddy.

“And whin are you goin’ to ax me to tay with you?”

“Some time,” replied Emmeline, collecting the things, and carefullyrepacking them.

Mr Button finished his pipe, tapped the ashes out, and placed it in hispocket.

“I’ll be afther riggin’ up a bit of a tint,” said he, as he rose to hisfeet, “to shelter us from the jew to-night; but I’ll first have a lookat the woods to see if I can find wather. Lave your box with the otherthings, Emmeline; there’s no one here to take it.”

Emmeline left her box on the heap of things that Paddy had placed inthe shadow of the cocoa-nut trees, took his hand, and the three enteredthe grove on the right.

It was like entering a pine forest; the tall symmetrical stems of thetrees seemed set by mathematical law, each at a given distance from theother. Whichever way you entered a twilight alley set with tree boleslay before you. Looking up you saw at an immense distance above a palegreen roof patined with sparkling and flashing points of light, wherethe breeze was busy playing with the green fronds of the trees.

“Mr Button,” murmured Emmeline, “we won’t get lost, will we?”

“Lost! No, faith; sure we’re goin’ uphill, an’ all we have to do is tocome down again, when we want to get back—ware nuts!” A green nutdetached from up above came down rattling and tumbling and hopped onthe ground. Paddy picked it up. “It’s a green cucanut,” said he,putting it in his pocket (it was not very much bigger than a Jaffaorange), “and we’ll have it for tay.”

“That’s not a cocoa-nut,” said Dick; “cocoa-nuts are brown. I had fivecents once an’ I bought one, and scraped it out and y’et it.”

“When Dr Sims made Dicky sick,” said Emmeline, “he said the wondert’im was how Dicky held it all.”

“Come on,” said Mr Button, “an’ don’t be talkin’, or it’s theCluricaunes will be after us.”

“What’s cluricaunes?” demanded Dick.

“Little men no bigger than your thumb that make the brogues for theGood People.”

“Who’s they?”

“Whisht, and don’t be talkin’. Mind your head, Em’leen, or thebranches’ll be hittin’ you in the face.”

They had left the cocoa-nut grove, and entered the chapparel. Here wasa deeper twilight, and all sorts of trees lent their foliage to makethe shade. The artu with its delicately diamonded trunk, the greatbreadfruit tall as a beech, and shadowy as a cave, the aoa, and theeternal cocoa-nut palm all grew here like brothers. Great ropes of wildvine twined like the snake of the laocoon from tree to tree, and allsorts of wonderful flowers, from the orchid shaped like a butterfly tothe scarlet hibiscus, made beautiful the gloom.

Suddenly Mr Button stopped.

“Whisht!” said he.

Through the silence—a silence filled with the hum and the murmur ofwood insects and the faint, far song of the reef—came a tinkling,rippling sound: it was water. He listened to make sure of the bearingof the sound, then he made for it.

Next moment they found themselves in a little grass-grown glade. Fromthe hilly ground above, over a rock black and polished like ebony, fella tiny cascade not much broader than one’s hand; ferns grew around andfrom a tree above where a great rope of wild convolvulus flowers blew theirtrumpets in the enchanted twilight.

The children cried out at the prettiness of it, and Emmeline ran anddabbled her hands in the water. Just above the little waterfall spranga banana tree laden with fruit; it had immense leaves six feet long andmore, and broad as a dinner-table. One could see the golden glint ofthe ripe fruit through the foliage.

In a moment Mr Button had kicked off his shoes and was going up therock like a cat, absolutely, for it seemed to give him nothing to climbby.

“Hurroo!” cried Dick in admiration. “Look at Paddy!”

Emmeline looked, and saw nothing but swaying leaves.

“Stand from under!” he shouted, and next moment down came a huge bunchof yellow-jacketed bananas. Dick shouted with delight, but Emmelineshowed no excitement: she had discovered something.

CHAPTER XIII

DEATH VEILED WITH LICHEN

“Mr Button,” said she, when the latter had descended, “there’s a littlebarrel”; she pointed to something green and lichen-covered that laybetween the trunks of two trees—something that eyes less sharp thanthe eyes of a child might have mistaken for a boulder.

“Sure, an’ faith it’s an’ ould empty bar’l,” said Mr Button, wiping thesweat from his brow and staring at the thing. “Some ship must have beenwathering here an’ forgot it. It’ll do for a sate whilst we havedinner.”

He sat down upon it and distributed the bananas to the children, whosat down on the grass.

The barrel looked such a deserted and neglected thing that hisimagination assumed it to be empty. Empty or full, however, it made anexcellent seat, for it was quarter sunk in the green soft earth, andimmovable.

“If ships has been here, ships will come again,” said he, as he munchedhis bananas.

“Will daddy’s ship come here?” asked Dick.

“Ay, to be sure it will,” replied the other, taking out his pipe. “Nowrun about and play with the flowers an’ lave me alone to smoke a pipe,and then we’ll all go to the top of the hill beyant, and have a lookround us.

“Come ’long, Em!” cried Dick; and the children started off amongst thetrees, Dick pulling at the hanging vine tendrils, and Emmeline pluckingwhat blossoms she could find within her small reach.

When he had finished his pipe he hallooed, and small voices answeredhim from the wood. Then the children came running back, Emmelinelaughing and showing her small white teeth, a large bunch of blossomsin her hand; Dick flowerless, but carrying what seemed a large greenstone.

“Look at what a funny thing I’ve found!” he cried; “it’s got holes init.”

“Dhrap it!” shouted Mr Button, springing from the barrel as if some onehad stuck an awl into him. “Where’d you find it? What d’you mane bytouchin’ it? Give it here.”

He took it gingerly in his hands; it was a lichen-covered skull, with agreat dent in the back of it where it had been cloven by an axe or somesharp instrument. He hove it as far as he could away amidst the trees.

“What is it, Paddy?” asked Dick, half astonished, half frightened atthe old man’s manner.

“It’s nothin’ good,” replied Mr Button.

“There were two others, and I wanted to fetch them,” grumbled Dick.

“You lave them alone. Musha! musha! but there’s been black doin’s herein days gone by. What is it, Emmeline?”

Emmeline was holding out her bunch of flowers for admiration. He took agreat gaudy blossom—if flowers can ever be called gaudy—and stuck itsstalk in the pocket of his coat. Then he led the way uphill, mutteringas he went.

The higher they got the less dense became the trees and the fewer thecocoa-nut palms. The cocoa-nut palm loves the sea, and the few they hadhere all had their heads bent in the direction of the lagoon, as ifyearning after it.

They passed a cane-brake where canes twenty feet high whisperedtogether like bulrushes. Then a sunlit sward, destitute of tree orshrub, led them sharply upward for a hundred feet or so to where agreat rock, the highest point of the island, stood, casting its shadowin the sunshine. The rock was about twenty feet high, and easy toclimb. Its top was almost flat, and as spacious as an ordinarydinner-table. From it one could obtain a complete view of the islandand the sea.

Looking down, one’s eye travelled over the trembling and wavingtree-tops, to the lagoon; beyond the lagoon to the reef, beyond thereef to the infinite space of the Pacific. The reef encircled the wholeisland, here further from the land, here closer; the song of the surfon it came as a whisper, just like the whisper you hear in a shell;but, a strange thing, though the sound heard on the beach wascontinuous, up here one could distinguish an intermittency as breakerafter breaker dashed itself to death on the coral strand below.

You have seen a field of green barley ruffled over by the wind, just sofrom the hill-top you could see the wind in its passage over the sunlitfoliage beneath.

It was breezing up from the south-west, and banyan and cocoa-palm, artuand breadfruit tree, swayed and rocked in the merry wind.So bright and moving was the picture of the breeze-swept sea, the bluelagoon, the foam-dashed reef, and the rocking trees that one felt onehad surprised some mysterious gala day, some festival of Nature morethan ordinarily glad.

As if to strengthen the idea, now and then above the trees would burstwhat seemed a rocket of coloured stars. The stars would drift away in aflock on the wind and be lost. They were flights of birds. All-colouredbirds peopled the trees below—blue, scarlet, dove-coloured, bright ofeye, but voiceless. From the reef you could see occasionally thesea-gulls rising here and there in clouds like small puffs of smoke.

The lagoon, here deep, here shallow, presented, according to its depthor shallowness, the colours of ultra-marine or sky. The broadest partswere the palest, because the most shallow; and here and there, in theshallows, you might see a faint tracery of coral ribs almost reachingthe surface. The island at its broadest might have been three milesacross. There was not a sign of house or habitation to be seen, and nota sail on the whole of the wide Pacific.

It was a strange place to be, up here. To find oneself surrounded bygrass and flowers and trees, and all the kindliness of nature, to feelthe breeze blow, to smoke one’s pipe, and to remember that one was in aplace uninhabited and unknown. A place to which no messages were evercarried except by the wind or the sea-gulls.

In this solitude the beetle was as carefully painted and the flower ascarefully tended as though all the peoples of the civilised world werestanding by to criticise or approve.

Nowhere in the world, perhaps, so well as here, could you appreciateNature’s splendid indifference to the great affairs of Man.

The old sailor was thinking nothing of this sort. His eyes were fixedon a small and almost imperceptible stain on the horizon to thesou’-sou’-west. It was no doubt another island almost hull-down on thehorizon. Save for this blemish the whole wheel of the sea was empty andserene.

Emmeline had not followed them up to the rock. She had gone botanisingwhere some bushes displayed great bunches of the crimson arita berriesas if to show to the sun what Earth could do in the way ofmanufacturing poison. She plucked two great bunches of them, and withthis treasure came to the base of the rock.

“Lave thim berries down!” cried Mr Button, when she had attracted hisattention. “Don’t put thim in your mouth; thim’s the never-wake-upberries.”

He came down off the rock, hand over fist, flung the poisonous thingsaway, and looked into Emmeline’s small mouth, which at his command sheopened wide. There was only a little pink tongue in it, however, curledup like a rose-leaf; no sign of berries or poison. So, giving her alittle shake, just as a nursemaid would have done in likecircumstances, he took Dick off the rock, and led the way back to thebeach.

CHAPTER XIV

ECHOES OF FAIRY-LAND

“Mr Button,” said Emmeline that night, as they sat on the sand nearthe tent he had improvised, “Mr Button—cats go to sleep.”

They had been questioning him about the “never-wake-up” berries.

“Who said they didn’t?” asked Mr Button.

“I mean,” said Emmeline, “they go to sleep and never wake up again.Ours did. It had stripes on it, and a white chest, and rings all downits tail. It went asleep in the garden, all stretched out, and showingits teeth; an’ I told Jane, and Dicky ran in an’ told uncle. I went toMrs Sims, the doctor’s wife, to tea; and when I came back I asked Janewhere pussy was—and she said it was deadn’ berried, but I wasn’t totell uncle.”

“I remember,” said Dick. “It was the day I went to the circus, and youtold me not to tell daddy the cat was deadn’ berried. But I told MrsJames’s man when he came to do the garden; and I asked him where catswent when they were deadn’ berried, and he said he guessed they went tohell—at least he hoped they did, for they were always scratchin’ upthe flowers. Then he told me not to tell any one he’d said that, for itwas a swear word, and he oughtn’t to have said it. I asked him whathe’d give me if I didn’t tell, an’ he gave me five cents. That was theday I bought the cocoa-nut.”

The tent, a makeshift affair, consisting of two sculls and a treebranch, which Mr Button had sawed off from a dwarf aoa, and thestay-sail he had brought from the brig, was pitched in the centre of thebeach, so as to be out of the way of falling cocoa-nuts, should thebreeze strengthen during the night. The sun had set, but the moon hadnot yet risen as they sat in the starlight on the sand near thetemporary abode.

“What’s the things you said made the boots for the people, Paddy?”asked Dick, after a pause.

“Which things?”

“You said in the wood I wasn’t to talk, else—”

“Oh, the Cluricaunes—the little men that cobbles the Good People’sbrogues. Is it them you mane?”

“Yes,” said Dick, not knowing quite whether it was them or not that hemeant, but anxious for information that he felt would be curious. “Andwhat are the good people?”

“Sure, where were you born and bred that you don’t know the Good Peopleis the other name for the fairies—savin’ their presence?”

“There aren’t any,” replied Dick. “Mrs Sims said there weren’t.”

“Mrs James,” put in Emmeline, “said there were. She said she liked tosee children b’lieve in fairies. She was talking to another lady, who’dgot a red feather in her bonnet, and a fur muff. They were having tea,and I was sitting on the hearthrug. She said the world was gettingtoo—something or another, an’ then the other lady said it was, andasked Mrs James did she see Mrs Someone in the awful hat she woreThanksgiving Day. They didn’t say anything more about fairies, but MrsJames——”

“Whether you b’lave in them or not,” said Paddy, “there they are. An’maybe they’re poppin’ out of the wood behint us now, an’ listenin’ tous talkin’; though I’m doubtful if there’s any in these parts, thoughdown in Connaught they were as thick as blackberries in the ould days.O musha! musha! the ould days, the ould days! when will I be seein’thim again? Now, you may b’lave me or b’lave me not, but me own ouldfather—God rest his sowl!—was comin’ over Croagh Patrick one nightbefore Christmas with a bottle of whisky in one hand of him, and agoose, plucked an’ claned an’ all, in the other, which same he’d won ina lottery, when, hearin’ a tchune no louder than the buzzin’ of a bee,over a furze-bush he peeps, and there, round a big white stone, theGood People were dancing in a ring hand in hand, an’ kickin’ theirheels, an’ the eyes of them glowin’ like the eyes of moths; and a chapon the stone, no bigger than the joint of your thumb, playin’ to thimon a bagpipes. Wid that he let wan yell an’ drops the goose an’ makesfor home, over hedge an’ ditch, boundin’ like a buck kangaroo, an’ theface on him as white as flour when he burst in through the door, wherewe was all sittin’ round the fire burnin’ chestnuts to see who’d bemarried the first.

“‘An’ what in the name of the saints is the mather wid yiz?’ says memother.

“‘I’ve sane the Good People,’ says he, ‘up on the field beyant,’ sayshe; ‘and they’ve got the goose,’ says he, ‘but, begorra, I’ve saved thebottle,’ he says. ‘Dhraw the cork and give me a taste of it, for meheart’s in me throat, and me tongue’s like a brick-kil.’

“An’ whin we come to prize the cork out of the bottle, there wasnothin’ in it; an’ whin we went next marnin’ to look for the goose, itwas gone. But there was the stone, sure enough, and the marks on it ofthe little brogues of the chap that’d played the bagpipes—and who’d bedoubtin’ there were fairies after that?”

The children said nothing for a while, and then Dick said:

“Tell us about Cluricaunes, and how they make the boots.”

“Whin I’m tellin’ you about Cluricaunes,” said Mr Button, “it’s thetruth I’m tellin’ you, an’ out of me own knowlidge, for I’ve spoken to aman that’s held wan in his hand; he was me own mother’s brother, ConCogan—rest his sowl! Con was six fut two, wid a long, white face; he’dhad his head bashed in, years before I was barn, in some ruction orother, an’ the docthers had japanned him with a five-shillin’ piecebeat flat.”

Dick interposed with a question as to the process, aim, and object ofjapanning, but Mr Button passed the question by.

“He’d been bad enough for seein’ fairies before they japanned him, butafther it, begorra, he was twiced as bad. I was a slip of a lad at thetime, but me hair near turned grey wid the tales he’d tell of the GoodPeople and their doin’s. One night they’d turn him into a harse an’ride him half over the county, wan chap on his back an’ another runnin’behind, shovin’ furze prickles under his tail to make him buck-lep.Another night it’s a dunkey he’d be, harnessed to a little cart, an’bein’ kicked in the belly and made to draw stones. Thin it’s a goosehe’d be, runnin’ over the common wid his neck stritched out squawkin’,an’ an old fairy woman afther him wid a knife, till it fair drove himto the dhrink; though, by the same token, he didn’t want much dhrivin’.

“And what does he do when his money was gone, but tear thefive-shillin’ piece they’d japanned him wid aff the top of his hed, andswaps it for a bottle of whisky, and that was the end of him.”

Mr Button paused to relight his pipe, which had gone out, and there wassilence for a moment.

The moon had risen, and the song of the surf on the reef filled thewhole night with its lullaby. The broad lagoon lay waving and ripplingin the moonlight to the incoming tide. Twice as broad it always lookedseen by moonlight or starlight than when seen by day. Occasionally thesplash of a great fish would cross the silence, and the ripple of itwould pass a moment later across the placid water.

Big things happened in the lagoon at night, unseen by eyes from theshore. You would have found the wood behind them, had you walkedthrough it, full of light. A tropic forest under a tropic moon is greenas a sea cave. You can see the vine tendrils and the flowers, theorchids and tree boles all lit as by the light of an emerald-tinted day.

Mr Button took a long piece of string from his pocket.

“It’s bedtime,” said he; “and I’m going to tether Em’leen, for fearshe’d be walkin’ in her slape, and wandherin’ away an’ bein’ lost inthe woods.”

“I don’t want to be tethered,” said Emmeline.

“It’s for your own good I’m doin’ it,” replied Mr Button, fixing thestring round her waist. “Now come ’long.”

He led her like a dog in a leash to the tent, and tied the other end ofthe string to the scull, which was the tent’s main prop and support.

“Now,” said he, “if you be gettin’ up and walkin’ about in the night,it’s down the tint will be on top of us all.”

And, sure enough, in the small hours of the morning, it was.

CHAPTER XV

FAIR PICTURES IN THE BLUE

“I don’t want my old britches on! I don’t want my old britches on!”

Dick was darting about naked on the sand, Mr Button after him with apair of small trousers in his hand. A crab might just as well haveattempted to chase an antelope.

They had been on the island a fortnight, and Dick had discovered thekeenest joy in life—to be naked. To be naked and wallow in the shallowsof the lagoon, to be naked and sit drying in the sun. To be free fromthe curse of clothes, to shed civilisation on the beach in the form ofbreeches, boots, coat, and hat, and to be one with the wind and the sunand the sea.

The very first command Mr Button had given on the second morning oftheir arrival was, “Strip and into the water wid you.”

Dick had resisted at first, and Emmeline (who rarely wept) had stoodweeping in her little chemise. But Mr Button was obdurate. Thedifficulty at first was to get them in; the difficulty now was to keepthem out.

Emmeline was sitting as nude as the day star, drying in the morning sunafter her dip, and watching Dick’s evolutions on the sand.

The lagoon had for the children far more attraction than the land.Woods where you might knock ripe bananas off the trees with a big cane,sands where golden lizards would scuttle about so tame that you mightwith a little caution seize them by the tail, a hill-top from whenceyou might see, to use Paddy’s expression, “to the back of beyond”; allthese were fine enough in their way, but they were nothing to thelagoon.

Deep down where the coral branches were you might watch, whilst Paddyfished, all sorts of things disporting on the sand patches and betweenthe coral tufts. Hermit crabs that had evicted whelks, wearing theevicted ones’ shells—an obvious misfit; sea anemones as big as roses.Flowers that closed up in an irritable manner if you lowered the hookgently down and touched them; extraordinary shells that walked about onfeelers, elbowing the crabs out of the way and terrorising the whelks.The overlords of the sand patches, these; yet touch one on the backwith a stone tied to a bit of string, and down he would go flat,motionless and feigning death. There was a lot of human nature lurkingin the depths of the lagoon, comedy and tragedy.

An English rock-pool has its marvels. You can fancy the marvels of thisvast rock-pool, nine miles round and varying from a third to half amile broad, swarming with tropic life and flights of painted fishes;where the glittering albicore passed beneath the boat like a fire and ashadow; where the boat’s reflection lay as clear on the bottom asthough the water were air; where the sea, pacified by the reef, told,like a little child, its dreams.

It suited the lazy humour of Mr Button that he never pursued the lagoonmore than half a mile or so on either side of the beach. He would bringthe fish he caught ashore, and with the aid of his tinder box and deadsticks make a blazing fire on the sand; cook fish and breadfruit andtaro roots, helped and hindered by the children. They fixed the tentamidst the trees at the edge of the chapparel, and made it larger andmore abiding with the aid of the dinghy’s sail.

Amidst these occupations, wonders, and pleasures, the children lost allcount of the flight of time. They rarely asked about Mr Lestrange;after a while they did not ask about him at all. Children soon forget.

PART III

CHAPTER XVI

THE POETRY OF LEARNING

To forget the passage of time you must live in the open air, in a warmclimate, with as few clothes as possible upon you. You must collect andcook your own food. Then, after a while, if you have no special ties tobind you to civilisation, Nature will begin to do for you what she doesfor the savage. You will recognise that it is possible to be happywithout books or newspapers, letters or bills. You will recognise thepart sleep plays in Nature.

After a month on the island you might have seen Dick at one moment fullof life and activity, helping Mr Button to dig up a taro root orwhat not, the next curled up to sleep like a dog. Emmeline the same.Profound and prolonged lapses into sleep; sudden awakenings into aworld of pure air and dazzling light, the gaiety of colour all round.Nature had indeed opened her doors to these children.

One might have fancied her in an experimental mood, saying: “Let me putthese buds of civilisation back into my nursery and see what they willbecome—how they will blossom, and what will be the end of it all.”

Just as Emmeline had brought away her treasured box from theNorthumberland, Dick had conveyed with him a small linen bag thatchinked when shaken. It contained marbles. Small olive-green marblesand middle-sized ones of various colours; glass marbles with splendidcoloured cores; and one large old grandfather marble too big to beplayed with, but none the less to be worshipped—a god marble.

Of course one cannot play at marbles on board ship, but one can playwiththem. They had been a great comfort to Dick on the voyage. He knewthem each personally, and he would roll them out on the mattress of hisbunk and review them nearly every day, whilst Emmeline looked on.

One day Mr Button, noticing Dick and the girl kneeling opposite eachother on a flat, hard piece of sand near the water’s edge, strolled upto see what they were doing. They were playing marbles. He stood withhis hands in his pockets and his pipe in his mouth watching andcriticising the game, pleased that the “childer” were amused. Then hebegan to be amused himself, and in a few minutes more he was down onhis knees taking a hand; Emmeline, a poor player and an unenthusiasticone, withdrawing in his favour.

After that it was a common thing to see them playing together, the oldsailor on his knees, one eye shut, and a marble against the nail of hishorny thumb taking aim; Dick and Emmeline on the watch to make sure hewas playing fair, their shrill voices echoing amidst the cocoa-nuttrees with cries of “Knuckle down, Paddy, knuckle down!” He enteredinto all their amusements just as one of themselves. On high and rareoccasions Emmeline would open her precious box, spread its contents andgive a tea-party, Mr Button acting as guest or president as the casemight be.

“Is your tay to your likin’, ma’am?” he would enquire; and Emmeline,sipping at her tiny cup, would invariably make answer: “Another lump ofsugar, if you please, Mr Button;” to which would come the stereotypedreply: “Take a dozen, and welcome; and another cup for the good of yourmake.”

Then Emmeline would wash the things in imaginary water, replace them inthe box, and every one would lose their company manners and becomequite natural again.

“Have you ever seen your name, Paddy?” asked Dick one morning.

“Seen me which?”

“Your name?”

“Arrah, don’t be axin’ me questions,” replied the other. “How the divilcould I see me name?”

“Wait and I’ll show you,” replied Dick.

He ran and fetched a piece of cane, and a minute later on thesalt-white sand in face of orthography and the sun appeared theseportentous letters:

B U T T E N

“Faith, an’ it’s a cliver boy y’are,” said Mr Button admiringly, as heleaned luxuriously against a cocoa-nut tree, and contemplated Dick’shandiwork. “And that’s me name, is it? What’s the letters in it?”

Dick enumerated them.

“I’ll teach you to do it, too,” he said. “I’ll teach you to write yourname, Paddy—would you like to write your name, Paddy?”

“No,” replied the other, who only wanted to be let smoke his pipe inpeace; “me name’s no use to me.”

But Dick, with the terrible gadfly tirelessness of childhood, was notto be put off, and the unfortunate Mr Button had to go to schooldespite himself. In a few days he could achieve the act of drawing uponthe sand characters somewhat like the above, but not without prompting,Dick and Emmeline on each side of him, breathless for fear of a mistake.

“Which next?” would ask the sweating scribe, the perspiration pouringfrom his forehead—“which next? an’ be quick, for it’s moithered I am.”

“N. N.—that’s right—Ow, you’re making it crooked!—that’sright—there! it’s all there now—Hurroo!”

“Hurroo!” would answer the scholar, waving his old hat over his ownname, and “Hurroo!” would answer the cocoa-nut grove echoes; whilst thefar, faint “Hi hi!” of the wheeling gulls on the reef would come overthe blue lagoon as if in acknowledgment of the deed, and encouragement.

The appetite comes with teaching. The pleasantest mental exercise ofchildhood is the instruction of one’s elders. Even Emmeline felt this.She took the geography class one day in a timid manner, putting herlittle hand first in the great horny fist of her friend.

“Mr Button!”

“Well, honey?”

“I know g’ography.”

“And what’s that?” asked Mr Button.

This stumped Emmeline for a moment.

“It’s where places are,” she said at last.

“Which places?” enquired he.

“All sorts of places,” replied Emmeline. “Mr Button!”

“What is it, darlin’?”

“Would you like to learn g’ography?”

“I’m not wishful for larnin’,” said the other hurriedly. “It makes mehead buzz to hear them things they rade out of books.”

“Paddy,” said Dick, who was strong on drawing that afternoon, “lookhere.” He drew the following on the sand:

[Illustration: A bad drawing of an elephant]

“That’s an elephant,” he said in a dubious voice.

Mr Button grunted, and the sound was by no means filled withenthusiastic assent. A chill fell on the proceedings.

Dick wiped the elephant slowly and regretfully out, whilst Emmelinefelt disheartened. Then her face suddenly cleared; the seraphic smilecame into it for a moment—a bright idea had struck her.

“Dicky,” she said, “draw Henry the Eight.”

Dick’s face brightened. He cleared the sand and drew the followingfigure:

l   l    <[     ]>      /   \

“That’snot Henry the Eight,” he explained, “but he will be in aminute. Daddy showed me how to draw him; he’s nothing till he gets hishat on.”

“Put his hat on, put his hat on!” implored Emmeline, gazing alternatelyfrom the figure on the sand to Mr Button’s face, watching for thedelighted smile with which she was sure the old man would greet thegreat king when he appeared in all his glory.

Then Dick with a single stroke of the cane put Henry’s hat on.

=== l       l   l     <[     ]>       /   \

Now, no portrait could be liker to his monk-hunting majesty than theabove, created with one stroke of a cane (so to speak), yet Mr Buttonremained unmoved.

“I did it for Mrs Sims,” said Dick regretfully, “and shesaid it wasthe image of him.”

“Maybe the hat’s not big enough,” said Emmeline, turning her head fromside to side as she gazed at the picture. It looked right, but she feltthere must be something wrong, as Mr Button did not applaud. Has notevery true artist felt the same before the silence of some critic?

Mr Button tapped the ashes out of his pipe and rose to stretch himself,and the class rose and trooped down to the lagoon edge, leaving Henryand his hat a figure on the sand to be obliterated by the wind.

After a while, as time went on, Mr Button took to his lessons as amatter of course, the small inventions of the children assisting theirutterly untrustworthy knowledge. Knowledge, perhaps, as useful as anyother there amidst the lovely poetry of the palm trees and the sky.

Days slipped into weeks, and weeks into months, without the appearanceof a ship—a fact which gave Mr Button very little trouble; and evenless to his charges, who were far too busy and amused to bother aboutships.

The rainy season came on them with a rush, and at the words “rainyseason” do not conjure up in your mind the vision of a rainy day inManchester.

The rainy season here was quite a lively time. Torrential showersfollowed by bursts of sunshine, rainbows, and rain-dogs in the sky, andthe delicious perfume of all manner of growing things on the earth.

After the rains the old sailor said he’d be after making a house ofbamboos before the next rains came on them; but, maybe, before thatthey’d be off the island.

“However,” said he, “I’ll dra’ you a picture of what it’ll be like whenit’s up;” and on the sand he drew a figure like this:

X

Having thus drawn the plans of the building, he leaned back against acocoa-palm and lit his pipe. But he had reckoned without Dick.

The boy had not the least wish to live in a house, but he had a keendesire to see one built, and help to build one. The ingenuity which ispart of the multiform basis of the American nature was aroused.

“How’re you going to keep them from slipping, if you tie them togetherlike that?” he asked, when Paddy had more fully explained his method.

“Which from slippin’?”

“The canes—one from the other?”

“After you’ve fixed thim, one cross t’other, you drive a nail throughthe cross-piece and a rope over all.”

“Have you any nails, Paddy?”

“No,” said Mr Button, “I haven’t.”

“Then how’re you goin’ to build the house?”

“Ax me no questions now; I want to smoke me pipe.”

But he had raised a devil difficult to lay. Morning, noon, and night itwas “Paddy, when are you going to begin the house?” or, “Paddy, I guessI’ve got a way to make the canes stick together without nailing.” TillMr Button, in despair, like a beaver, began to build.

There was great cane-cutting in the cane-brake above, and, whensufficient had been procured, Mr Button struck work for three days. Hewould have struck altogether, but he had found a taskmaster.

The tireless Dick, young and active, with no original laziness in hiscomposition, no old bones to rest, or pipe to smoke, kept after himlike a bluebottle fly. It was in vain that he tried to stave him offwith stories about fairies and Cluricaunes. Dick wanted to build ahouse.

Mr Button didn’t. He wanted to rest. He did not mind fishing orclimbing a cocoa-nut tree, which he did to admiration by passing a roperound himself and the tree, knotting it, and using it as a supportduring the climb; but house-building was monotonous work.

He said he had no nails. Dick countered by showing how the canes couldbe held together by notching them.

“And, faith, but it’s a cliver boy you are,” said the weary oneadmiringly, when the other had explained his method.

“Then come along, Paddy, and stick ’em up.”

Mr Button said he had no rope, that he’d have to think about it, thatto-morrow or next day he’d be after getting some notion how to do itwithout rope. But Dick pointed out that the brown cloth which Naturehas wrapped round the cocoa-palm stalks would do instead of rope if cutin strips. Then the badgered one gave in.

They laboured for a fortnight at the thing, and at the end of that timehad produced a rough sort of wigwam on the borders of the chapparel.

Out on the reef, to which they often rowed in the dinghy, when the tidewas low, deep pools would be left, and in the pools fish. Paddy saidif they had a spear they might be able to spear some of these fish, ashe had seen the natives do away “beyant” in Tahiti.

Dick enquired as to the nature of a spear, and next day produced aten-foot cane sharpened at the end after the fashion of a quill pen.

“Sure, what’s the use of that?” said Mr Button. “You might job it intoa fish, but he’d be aff it in two ticks; it’s the barb that holds them.”

Next day the indefatigable one produced the cane amended; he hadwhittled it down about three feet from the end and on one side, andcarved a fairly efficient barb. It was good enough, at all events, tospear a “groper” with, that evening, in the sunset-lit pools of thereef at low tide.

“There aren’t any potatoes here,” said Dick one day, after the secondrains.

“We’ve et ’em all months ago,” replied Paddy.

“How do potatoes grow?” enquired Dick.

“Grow, is it? Why, they grow in the ground; and where else would theygrow?” He explained the process of potato-planting: cutting them intopieces so that there was an eye in each piece, and so forth. “Havingdone this,” said Mr Button, “you just chuck the pieces in the ground;their eyes grow, green leaves ‘pop up,’ and then, if you dug the rootsup maybe, six months after, you’d find bushels of potatoes in theground, ones as big as your head, and weeny ones. It’s like a family ofchilder—some’s big and some’s little. But there they are in theground, and all you have to do is to take a fark and dig a potful ofthem with a turn of your wrist, as many a time I’ve done it in the oulddays.”

“Why didn’t we do that?” asked Dick.

“Do what?” asked Mr Button.

“Plant some of the potatoes.”

“And where’d we have found the spade to plant them with?”

“I guess we could have fixed up a spade,” replied the boy. “I made aspade at home, out of a piece of old board, once—daddy helped.”

“Well, skelp off with you, and make a spade now,” replied the other,who wanted to be quiet and think, “and you and Em’line can dig in thesand.”

Emmeline was sitting near by, stringing together some gorgeous blossomson a tendril of liana. Months of sun and ozone had made a considerabledifference in the child. She was as brown as a gipsy and freckled, notvery much taller, but twice as plump. Her eyes had lost considerablythat look as though she were contemplating futurity and immensity—notas abstractions, but as concrete images, and she had lost the habit ofsleep-walking.

The shock of the tent coming down on the first night she was tetheredto the scull had broken her of it, helped by the new healthfulconditions of life, the sea-bathing, and the eternal open air. There isno narcotic to excel fresh air.

Months of semi-savagery had made also a good deal of difference inDick’s appearance. He was two inches taller than on the day theylanded. Freckled and tanned, he had the appearance of a boy of twelve.He was the promise of a fine man. He was not a good-looking child, buthe was healthy-looking, with a jolly laugh, and a daring, almostimpudent expression of face.

The question of the children’s clothes was beginning to vex the mind ofthe old sailor. The climate was a suit of clothes in itself. One wasmuch happier with almost nothing on. Of course there were changes oftemperature, but they were slight. Eternal summer, broken by torrentialrains, and occasionally a storm, that was the climate of the island;still, the “childer” couldn’t go about with nothing on.

He took some of the striped flannel and made Emmeline a kilt. It wasfunny to see him sitting on the sand, Emmeline standing before him withher garment round her waist, being tried on; he, with a mouthful ofpins, and the housewife with the scissors, needles, and thread by hisside.

“Turn to the lift a bit more,” he’d say, “aisy does it. Stidyso—musha! musha! where’s thim scissors? Dick, be holdin’ the end ofthis bit of string till I get the stitches in behint. Does that hangcomfortable?—well, an’ you’re the trouble an’ all. How’s that? That’saisier, is it? Lift your fut till I see if it comes to your knees. Nowoff with it, and lave me alone till I stitch the tags to it.”

It was the mixture of a skirt and the idea of a sail, for it had tworows of reef points; a most ingenious idea, as it could be reefed ifthe child wanted to go paddling, or in windy weather.

CHAPTER XVII

THE DEVIL’S CASK

One morning, about a week after the day on which the old sailor, to usehis own expression, had bent a skirt on Emmeline, Dick came through thewoods and across the sands running. He had been on the hill-top.

“Paddy,” he cried to the old man, who was fixing a hook on afishing-line, “there’s a ship!”

It did not take Mr Button long to reach the hill-top, and there shewas, beating up for the island. Bluff-bowed and squab, the figure of anold Dutch woman, and telling of her trade a league off. It was justafter the rains, the sky was not yet quite clear of clouds; you couldsee showers away at sea, and the sea was green and foam-capped.

There was the trying-out gear; there were the boats, the crow’s nest,and all complete, and labelling her a whaler. She was a ship, no doubt,but Paddy Button would as soon have gone on board a ship manned bydevils, and captained by Lucifer, as on board a South Sea whaleman. Hehad been there before, and he knew.

He hid the children under a large banyan, and told them not to stir orbreathe till he came back, for the ship was “the devil’s own ship”; andif the men on board caught them they’d skin them alive and all.

Then he made for the beach; he collected all the things out of thewigwam, and all the old truck in the shape of boots and old clothes,and stowed them away in the dinghy. He would have destroyed the house,if he could, but he hadn’t time. Then he rowed the dinghy a hundredyards down the lagoon to the left, and moored her under the shade of anaoa, whose branches grew right over the water. Then he came backthrough the cocoa-nut grove on foot, and peered through the trees overthe lagoon to see what was to be seen.

The wind was blowing dead on for the opening in the reef, and the oldwhaleman came along breasting the swell with her bluff bows, andentered the lagoon. There was no leadsman in her chains. She just camein as if she knew all the soundings by heart—as probably she did—forthese whalemen know every hole and corner in the Pacific.

The anchor fell with a splash, and she swung to it, making a strangeenough picture as she floated on the blue mirror, backed by thegraceful palm tree on the reef. Then Mr Button, without waiting to seethe boats lowered, made back to his charges, and the three camped inthe woods that night.

Next morning the whaleman was off and away, leaving as a token of hervisit the white sand all trampled, an empty bottle, half an oldnewspaper, and the wigwam torn to pieces.

The old sailor cursed her and her crew, for the incident had brought anew exercise into his lazy life. Every day now at noon he had to climbthe hill, on the look-out for whalemen. Whalemen haunted his dreams,though I doubt if he would willingly have gone on board even a RoyalMail steamer. He was quite happy where he was. After long years of thefo’cs’le the island was a change indeed. He had tobacco enough to lasthim for an indefinite time, the children for companions, and food athis elbow. He would have been entirely happy if the island had onlybeen supplied by Nature with a public-house.

The spirit of hilarity and good fellowship, however, who suddenlydiscovered this error on the part of Nature, rectified it, as will bepresently seen.

The most disastrous result of the whaleman’s visit was not thedestruction of the “house,” but the disappearance of Emmeline’s box.Hunt high or hunt low, it could not be found. Mr Button in his hurrymust have forgotten it when he removed the things to the dinghy—at allevents, it was gone. Probably one of the crew of the whalemen had foundit and carried it off with him; no one could say. It was gone, andthere was the end of the matter, and the beginning of greattribulation, that lasted Emmeline for a week.

She was intensely fond of coloured things, coloured flowers especially;and she had the prettiest way of making them into a wreath for her ownor some one else’s head. It was the hat-making instinct that was at workin her, perhaps; at all events, it was a feminine instinct, for Dickmade no wreaths.

One morning, as she was sitting by the old sailor engaged in stringingshells, Dick came running along the edge of the grove. He had just comeout of the wood, and he seemed to be looking for something. Then hefound what he was in search of—a big shell—and with it in his handmade back to the wood.

Item.—His dress was a piece of cocoa-nut cloth tied round his middle.Why he wore it at all, goodness knows, for he would as often as not berunning about stark naked.

“I’ve found something, Paddy!” he cried, as he disappeared among thetrees.

“What have you found?” piped Emmeline, who was always interested in newthings.

“Something funny!” came back from amidst the trees.

Presently he returned; but he was not running now. He was walkingslowly and carefully, holding the shell as if it contained somethingprecious that he was afraid would escape.

“Paddy, I turned over the old barrel and it had a cork thing in it, andI pulled it out, and the barrel is full of awfully funny-smellingstuff—I’ve brought some for you to see.”

He gave the shell into the old sailor’s hands. There was about half agill of yellow liquid in the shell. Paddy smelt it, tasted, and gave ashout.

“Rum, begorra!”

“What is it, Paddy?” asked Emmeline.

“Wheredid you say you got it—in the ould bar’l, did you say?” askedMr Button, who seemed dazed and stunned as if by a blow.

“Yes; I pulled the cork thing out—”

“Did yiz put it back?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, glory be to God! Here have I been, time out of mind, sittin’ on anould empty bar’l, with me tongue hangin’ down to me heels for the wantof a drink, and it full of rum all the while!”

He took a sip of the stuff, tossed the lot off, closed his lips tightto keep in the fumes, and shut one eye.

Emmeline laughed.

Mr Button scrambled to his feet. They followed him through thechapparel till they reached the water source. There lay the littlegreen barrel; turned over by the restless Dick, it lay with its bungpointing to the leaves above. You could see the hollow it had made inthe soft soil during the years. So green was it, and so like an objectof nature, a bit of old tree-bole, or a lichen-stained boulder, thatthough the whalemen had actually watered from the source, its realnature had not been discovered.

Mr Button tapped on it with the butt end of the shell: it was nearlyfull. Why it had been left there, by whom, or how, there was no one totell. The old lichen-covered skulls might have told, could they havespoken.

“We’ll rowl it down to the beach,” said Paddy, when he had takenanother taste of it.

He gave Dick a sip. The boy spat it out, and made a face, then, pushingthe barrel before them, they began to roll it downhill to the beach,Emmeline running before them crowned with flowers.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE RAT HUNT

They had dinner at noon. Paddy knew how to cook fish, island fashion,wrapping them in leaves, and baking them in a hole in the ground inwhich a fire had previously been lit. They had fish and taro rootbaked, and green cocoa-nuts; and after dinner Mr Button filled a bigshell with rum, and lit his pipe.

The rum had been good originally, and age had improved it. Used as hewas to the appalling balloon juice sold in the drinking dens of the“Barbary coast” at San Francisco, or the public-houses of the docks,this stuff was nectar.

Joviality radiated from him: it was infectious. The children felt thatsome happy influence had fallen upon their friend. Usually after dinnerhe was drowsy and “wishful to be quiet.” To-day he told them stories ofthe sea, and sang them songs—chantys:

“I’m a flyin’ fish sailor come back from Hong Kong,
Yeo ho! blow the man down.
Blow the man down, bullies, blow the man down,
Oh, give us timeto blow the man down.
You’re a dhirty black-baller come back from New York,
Yeo ho! blow the man down,
Blow the man down, bullies, blow the man down.
Oh, give us time to blow the man down.”

“Oh, give us timeto blow the man down!” echoed Dick and Emmeline.

Up above, in the trees, the bright-eyed birds were watching them—sucha happy party. They had all the appearance of picnickers, and the songechoed amongst the cocoa-nut trees, and the wind carried it over thelagoon to where the sea-gulls were wheeling and screaming, and the foamwas thundering on the reef.

That evening, Mr Button feeling inclined for joviality, and not wishingthe children to see him under the influence, rolled the barrel throughthe cocoa-nut grove to a little clearing by the edge of the water.There, when the children were in bed and asleep, he repaired with somegreen cocoa-nuts and a shell. He was generally musical when amusinghimself in this fashion, and Emmeline, waking up during the night,heard his voice borne through the moonlit cocoa-nut grove by the wind:

“There were five or six old drunken sailors
Standin’ before the bar,
And Larry, he was servin’ them
From a big five-gallon jar.

“Chorus.—
Hoist up the flag, long may it wave!
Long may it lade us to glory or the grave.
Stidy, boys, stidy—sound the jubilee,
For Babylon has fallen, and the niggers are all set free.”

Next morning the musician awoke beside the cask. He had not a trace ofa headache, or any bad feeling, but he made Dick do the cooking; and helay in the shade of the cocoa-nut trees, with his head on a “pilla”made out of an old coat rolled up, twiddling his thumbs, smoking hispipe, and discoursing about the “ould” days, half to himself and halfto his companions.

That night he had another musical evening all to himself, and so itwent on for a week. Then he began to lose his appetite and sleep; andone morning Dick found him sitting on the sand looking very queerindeed—as well he might, for he had been “seeing things” since dawn.

“What is it, Paddy?” said the boy, running up, followed by Emmeline.

Mr Button was staring at a point on the sand close by. He had his righthand raised after the manner of a person who is trying to catch a fly.Suddenly he made a grab at the sand, and then opened his hand wide tosee what he had caught.

“What is it, Paddy?”

“The Cluricaune,” replied Mr Button. “All dressed in green hewas—musha! musha! but it’s only pretindin’ I am.”

The complaint from which he was suffering has this strange thing aboutit, that, though the patient sees rats, or snakes, or what not, asreal-looking as the real things, and though they possess his mind for amoment, almost immediately he recognises that he is suffering from adelusion.

The children laughed, and Mr Button laughed in a stupid sort of way.

“Sure, it was only a game I was playin’—there was no Cluricaune atall—it’s whin I dhrink rum it puts it into me head to play games likethat. Oh, be the Holy Poker, there’s red rats comin’ out of the sand!”

He got on his hands and knees and scuttled off towards the cocoa-nuttrees, looking over his shoulder with a bewildered expression on hisface. He would have risen to fly, only he dared not stand up.

The children laughed and danced round him as he crawled.

“Look at the rats, Paddy! look at the rats!” cried Dick.

“They’re in front of me!” cried the afflicted one, making a viciousgrab at an imaginary rodent’s tail. “Ran dan the bastes!—now they’regone. Musha, but it’s a fool I’m makin’ of meself.”

“Go on, Paddy,” said Dick; “don’t stop— Look there—there’s more ratscoming after you!”

“Oh, whisht, will you?” replied Paddy, taking his seat on the sand, andwiping his brow. “They’re aff me now.”

The children stood by, disappointed of their game. Good acting appealsto children just as much as to grown-up people. They stood waiting foranother access of humour to take the comedian, and they had not to waitlong.

A thing like a flayed horse came out of the lagoon and up the beach,and this time Mr Button did not crawl away. He got on his feet and ran.

“It’s a harse that’s afther me—it’s a harse that’s afther me! Dick!Dick! hit him a skelp. Dick! Dick! dhrive him away.”

“Hurroo! Hurroo!” cried Dick, chasing the afflicted one, who wasrunning in a wide circle, his broad red face slewed over his leftshoulder. “Go it, Paddy! go it, Paddy!”

“Kape off me, you baste!” shouted Paddy. “Holy Mary, Mother of God!I’ll land you a kick wid me fut if yiz come nigh me. Em’leen! Em’leen!come betune us!”

He tripped, and over he went on the sand, the indefatigable Dickbeating him with a little switch he had picked up to make him continue.

“I’m better now, but I’m near wore out,” said Mr Button, sitting up onthe sand. “But, bedad, if I’m chased by any more things like them it’sinto the say I’ll be dashin’. Dick, lend me your arum.”

He took Dick’s arm and wandered over to the shade of the trees. Herehe threw himself down, and told the children to leave him to sleep.They recognised that the game was over and left him. And he slept forsix hours on end; it was the first real sleep he had had for severaldays. When he awoke he was well, but very shaky.

CHAPTER XIX

STARLIGHT ON THE FOAM

Mr Button saw no more rats, much to Dick’s disappointment. He was offthe drink. At dawn next day he got up, refreshed by a second sleep, andwandered down to the edge of the lagoon. The opening in the reef facedthe east, and the light of the dawn came rippling in with the floodingtide.

“It’s a baste I’ve been,” said the repentant one—“a brute baste.”

He was quite wrong; as a matter of fact, he was only a man beset andbetrayed.

He stood for a while, cursing the drink, “and them that sells it.” Thenhe determined to put himself out of the way of temptation. Pull thebung out of the barrel, and let the contents escape?

Such a thought never even occurred to him—or, if it did, was instantlydismissed; for, though an old sailor-man may curse the drink, good rumis to him a sacred thing; and to empty half a little barrel of it intothe sea, would be an act almost equivalent to child-murder. He put thecask into the dinghy, and rowed it over to the reef. There he placed itin the shelter of a great lump of coral, and rowed back.

Paddy had been trained all his life to rhythmical drunkenness. Fourmonths or so had generally elapsed between his bouts—sometimes six; itall depended on the length of the voyage. Six months now elapsed beforehe felt even an inclination to look at the rum cask, that tiny darkspot away on the reef. And it was just as well, for during those sixmonths another whale-ship arrived, watered and was avoided.

“Blisther it!” said he; “the say here seems to breed whale-ships, andnothin’ but whale-ships. It’s like bugs in a bed: you kill wan, and thenanother comes. Howsomever, we’re shut of thim for a while.”

He walked down to the lagoon edge, looked at the little dark spot andwhistled. Then he walked back to prepare dinner. That little dark spotbegan to trouble him after a while; not it, but the spirit it contained.

Days grew long and weary, the days that had been so short and pleasant.To the children there was no such thing as time. Having absolute andperfect health, they enjoyed happiness as far as mortals can enjoy it.Emmeline’s highly-strung nervous system, it is true, developed aheadache when she had been too long in the glare of the sun, but theywere few and far between.

The spirit in the little cask had been whispering across the lagoon forsome weeks; at last it began to shout. Mr Button, metaphoricallyspeaking, stopped his ears. He busied himself with the children as muchas possible. He made another garment for Emmeline, and cut Dick’s hairwith the scissors (a job which was generally performed once in a coupleof months).

One night, to keep the rum from troubling his head, he told them thestory of Jack Dogherty and the Merrow, which is well known on thewestern coast.

The Merrow takes Jack to dinner at the bottom of the sea, and shows himthe lobster pots wherein he keeps the souls of old sailor-men, and thenthey have dinner, and the Merrow produces a big bottle of rum.

It was a fatal story for him to remember and recount; for, after hiscompanions were asleep, the vision of the Merrow and Jack hobnobbing,and the idea of the jollity of it, rose before him, and excited athirst for joviality not to be resisted.

There were some green cocoa-nuts that he had plucked that day lying ina little heap under a tree—half a dozen or so. He took several ofthese and a shell, found the dinghy where it was moored to the aoatree, unmoored her, and pushed off into the lagoon.

The lagoon and sky were full of stars. In the dark depths of the watermight have been seen phosphorescent gleams of passing fish, and thethunder of the surf on the reef filled the night with its song.

He fixed the boat’s painter carefully round a spike of coral and landedon the reef, and with a shellful of rum and cocoa-nut lemonade mixedhalf and half, he took his perch on a high ledge of coral from whence aview of the sea and the coral strand could be obtained.

On a moonlight night it was fine to sit here and watch the greatbreakers coming in, all marbled and clouded and rainbowed withspindrift and sheets of spray. But the snow and the song of them underthe diffused light of the stars produced a more indescribably beautifuland strange effect.

The tide was going out now, and Mr Button, as he sat smoking his pipeand drinking his grog, could see bright mirrors here and there wherethe water lay in rock-pools. When he had contemplated these sights fora considerable time in complete contentment, he returned to the lagoonside of the reef and sat down beside the little barrel. Then, after awhile, if you had been standing on the strand opposite, you would haveheard scraps of song borne across the quivering water of the lagoon.

“Sailing down, sailing down,
On the coast of Barbaree.”

Whether the coast of Barbary in question is that at San Francisco, orthe true and proper coast, does not matter. It is an old-time song; andwhen you hear it, whether on a reef of coral or a granite quay, you mayfeel assured that an old-time sailor-man is singing it, and that theold-time sailor-man is bemused.

Presently the dinghy put off from the reef, the sculls broke thestarlit waters and great shaking circles of light made rhythmicalanswer to the slow and steady creak of the thole pins against theleather. He tied up to the aoa, saw that the sculls were safelyshipped; then, breathing heavily, he cast off his boots for fear ofwaking the “childer.” As the children were sleeping more than twohundred yards away, this was a needless precaution—especially as theintervening distance was mostly soft sand.

Green cocoa-nut juice and rum mixed together are pleasant enough todrink, but they are better drunk separately; combined, not even thebrain of an old sailor can make anything of them but mist andmuddlement; that is to say, in the way of thought—in the way of actionthey can make him do a lot. They made Paddy Button swim the lagoon.

The recollection came to him all at once, as he was walking up thestrand towards the wigwam, that he had left the dinghy tied to thereef. The dinghy was, as a matter of fact, safe and sound tied to theaoa; but Mr Button’s memory told him it was tied to the reef. How hehad crossed the lagoon was of no importance at all to him; the factthat he had crossed without the boat, yet without getting wet, did notappear to him strange. He had no time to deal with trifles like these.The dinghy had to be fetched across the lagoon, and there was only oneway of fetching it. So he came back down the beach to the water’s edge,cast down his boots, cast off his coat, and plunged in. The lagoon waswide, but in his present state of mind he would have swum theHellespont. His figure gone from the beach, the night resumed itsmajesty and aspect of meditation.

So lit was the lagoon by starshine that the head of the swimmer couldbe distinguished away out in the midst of circles of light; also, asthe head neared the reef, a dark triangle that came shearing throughthe water past the palm tree at the pier. It was the night patrol of thelagoon, who had heard in some mysterious manner that a drunkensailor-man was making trouble in his waters.

Looking, one listened, hand on heart, for the scream of the arrestedone, yet it did not come. The swimmer, scrambling on to the reef in anexhausted manner, forgetful evidently of the object for which he hadreturned, made for the rum cask, and fell down beside it as thoughsleep had touched him instead of death.

CHAPTER XX

THE DREAMER ON THE REEF

“I wonder where Paddy is?” cried Dick next morning. He was coming outof the chapparel pulling a dead branch after him. “He’s left his coaton the sand, and the tinder box in it, so I’ll make the fire. There’sno use waiting. I want my breakfast. Bother——”

He trod the dead stick with his naked feet, breaking it into pieces.

Emmeline sat on the sand and watched him.

Emmeline had two gods of a sort: Paddy Button and Dick. Paddy wasalmost an esoteric god wrapped in the fumes of tobacco and mystery. Thegod of rolling ships and creaking masts—the masts and vast sail spacesof the Northumberlandwere an enduring vision in her mind—the deitywho had lifted her from a little boat into this marvellous place, wherethe birds were coloured and the fish were painted, where life was neverdull, and the skies scarcely ever grey.

Dick, the other deity, was a much more understandable personage, but noless admirable, as a companion and protector. In the two years and fivemonths of island life he had grown nearly three inches. He was asstrong as a boy of twelve, and could scull the boat almost as well asPaddy himself, and light a fire. Indeed, during the last few months MrButton, engaged in resting his bones, and contemplating rum as anabstract idea, had left the cooking and fishing and general gatheringof food as much as possible to Dick.

“It amuses the craythur to pritind he’s doing things,” he would say, ashe watched Dick delving in the earth to make a littleoven—island-fashion—for the cooking of fish or what not.

“Come along, Em,” said Dick, piling the broken wood on top of somerotten hibiscus sticks; “give me the tinder box.”

He got a spark on to a bit of punk, and then he blew at it, looking notunlike Æolus as represented on those old Dutch charts that smell ofschiedam and snuff, and give one mermaids and angels instead ofsoundings.

The fire was soon sparkling and crackling, and he heaped on sticks inprofusion, for there was plenty of fuel, and he wanted to cookbreadfruit.

The breadfruit varies in size, according to age, and in colouraccording to season. These that Dick was preparing to cook were aslarge as small melons. Two would be more than enough for three people’sbreakfast. They were green and knobbly on the outside, and theysuggested to the mind unripe lemons, rather than bread.

He put them in the embers, just as you put potatoes to roast, andpresently they sizzled and spat little venomous jets of steam, thenthey cracked, and the white inner substance became visible. He cutthem open and took the core out—the core is not fit to eat—and theywere ready.

Meanwhile, Emmeline, under his directions, had not been idle.

There were in the lagoon—there are in several other tropical lagoons Iknow of—a fish which I can only describe as a golden herring. A bronzeherring it looks when landed, but when swimming away down against thebackground of coral brains and white sand patches, it has the sheen ofburnished gold. It is as good to eat as to look at, and Emmeline wascarefully toasting several of them on a piece of cane.

The juice of the fish kept the cane from charring, though there wereaccidents at times, when a whole fish would go into the fire, amidstshouts of derision from Dick.

She made a pretty enough picture as she knelt, the “skirt” round thewaist looking not unlike a striped bath-towel, her small face intent,and filled with the seriousness of the job on hand, and her lipspuckered out at the heat of the fire.

“It’s so hot!” she cried in self-defence, after the first of theaccidents.

“Of course it’s hot,” said Dick, “if you stick to looward of the fire.How often has Paddy told you to keep to windward of it!”

“I don’t know which is which,” confessed the unfortunate Emmeline, whowas an absolute failure at everything practical: who could neither rownor fish, nor throw a stone, and who, though they had now been on theisland twenty-eight months or so, could not even swim.

“You mean to say,” said Dick, “that you don’t know where the wind comesfrom?”

“Yes, I know that.”

“Well, that’s to windward.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Well, you know it now.”

“Yes, I know it now.”

“Well, then, come to windward of the fire. Why didn’t you ask themeaning of it before?”

“I did,” said Emmeline; “I asked Mr Button one day, and he told me alot about it. He said if he was to spit to windward and a person was tostand to loo’ard of him, he’d be a fool; and he said if a ship went toomuch to loo’ard she went on the rocks, but I didn’t understand what hemeant. Dicky, I wonder where he is?”

“Paddy!” cried Dick, pausing in the act of splitting open a breadfruit.Echoes came from amidst the cocoa-nut trees, but nothing more.

“Come on,” said Dick; “I’m not going to wait for him. He may have goneto fetch up the night lines”—they sometimes put down night lines inthe lagoon—“and fallen asleep over them.”

Now, though Emmeline honoured Mr Button as a minor deity, Dick had noillusions at all upon the matter. He admired Paddy because he couldknot, and splice, and climb a cocoa-nut tree, and exercise his sailorcraft in other admirable ways, but he felt the old man’s limitations.They ought to have had potatoes now, but they had eaten both potatoesand the possibility of potatoes when they consumed the contents of thathalf sack. Young as he was, Dick felt the absolute thriftlessness ofthis proceeding. Emmeline did not; she never thought of potatoes,though she could have told you the colour of all the birds on theisland.

Then, again, the house wanted rebuilding, and Mr Button said every dayhe would set about seeing after it to-morrow, and on the morrow itwould be to-morrow. The necessities of the life they led were astimulus to the daring and active mind of the boy; but he was alwaysbeing checked by the go-as-you-please methods of his elder. Dick cameof the people who make sewing machines and typewriters. Mr Button cameof a people notable for ballads, tender hearts, and potheen. That wasthe main difference.

“Paddy!” again cried the boy, when he had eaten as much as he wanted.“Hullo! where are you?”

They listened, but no answer came. A bright-hued bird flew across thesand space, a lizard scuttled across the glistening sand, the reefspoke, and the wind in the tree-tops; but Mr Button made no reply.

“Wait,” said Dick.

He ran through the grove towards the aoa where the dinghy was moored;then he returned.

“The dinghy is all right,” he said. “Where on earth can he be?”

“I don’t know,” said Emmeline, upon whose heart a feeling of lonelinesshad fallen.

“Let’s go up the hill,” said Dick; “perhaps we’ll find him there.”

They went uphill through the wood, past the water-course. Every now andthen Dick would call out, and echoes would answer—there were quaint,moist-voiced echoes amidst the trees—or a bevy of birds would takeflight. The little waterfall gurgled and whispered, and the greatbanana leaves spread their shade.

“Come on,” said Dick, when he had called again without receiving areply.

They found the hill-top, and the great boulder stood casting its shadowin the sun. The morning breeze was blowing, the sea sparkling, the reefflashing, the foliage of the island waving in the wind like the flamesof a green-flamed torch. A deep swell was spreading itself across thebosom of the Pacific. Some hurricane away beyond the Navigators orGilberts had sent this message and was finding its echo here, athousand miles away, in the deeper thunder of the reef.

Nowhere else in the world could you get such a picture, such acombination of splendour and summer, such a vision of freshness andstrength, and the delight of morning. It was the smallness of theisland, perhaps, that closed the charm and made it perfect. Just abunch of foliage and flowers set in the midst of the blowing wind andsparkling blue.

Suddenly Dick, standing beside Emmeline on the rock, pointed with hisfinger to the reef near the opening.

“There he is!” cried he.

CHAPTER XXI

THE GARLAND OF FLOWERS

You could just make the figure out lying on the reef near the littlecask, and comfortably sheltered from the sun by an upstanding lump ofcoral.

“He’s asleep,” said Dick.

He had not thought to look towards the reef from the beach, or he mighthave seen the figure before.

“Dicky!” said Emmeline.

“Well?”

“How did he get over, if you said the dinghy was tied to the tree?”

“I don’t know,” said Dick, who had not thought of this; “there he is,anyhow. I’ll tell you what, Em, we’ll row across and wake him. I’ll boointo his ear and make him jump.”

They got down from the rock, and came back down through the wood. Asthey came Emmeline picked flowers and began making them up into one ofher wreaths. Some scarlet hibiscus, some bluebells, a couple of palepoppies with furry stalks and bitter perfume.

“What are you making that for?” asked Dick, who always viewedEmmeline’s wreath-making with a mixture of compassion and vague disgust.

“I’m going to put it on Mr Button’s head,” said Emmeline; “so’s whenyou say boo into his ear he’ll jump up with it on.”

Dick chuckled with pleasure at the idea of the practical joke, andalmost admitted in his own mind for a moment, that after all theremight be a use for such futilities as wreaths.

The dinghy was moored under the spreading shade of the aoa, the paintertied to one of the branches that projected over the water. These dwarfaoas branch in an extraordinary way close to the ground, throwing outlimbs like rails. The tree had made a good protection for the littleboat, protecting it from marauding hands and from the sun; besides theprotection of the tree Paddy had now and then scuttled the boat inshallow water. It was a new boat to start with, and with precautionslike these might be expected to last many years.

“Get in,” said Dick, pulling on the painter so that the bow of thedinghy came close to the beach.

Emmeline got carefully in, and went aft. Then Dick got in, pushed off,and took to the sculls. Next moment they were out on the sparklingwater.

Dick rowed cautiously, fearing to wake the sleeper. He fastened thepainter to the coral spike that seemed set there by nature for thepurpose. He scrambled on to the reef, and lying down on his stomachdrew the boat’s gunwale close up so that Emmeline might land. He had noboots on; the soles of his feet, from constant exposure, had becomeinsensitive as leather.

Emmeline also was without boots. The soles of her feet, as is alwaysthe case with highly nervous people, were sensitive, and she walkeddelicately, avoiding the worst places, holding her wreath in her righthand.

It was full tide, and the thunder of the waves outside shook the reef.It was like being in a church when the deep bass of the organ is turnedfull on, shaking the ground and the air, the walls and the roof. Dashesof spray came over with the wind, and the melancholy “Hi, hi!” of thewheeling gulls came like the voices of ghostly sailor-men hauling atthe halyards.

Paddy was lying on his right side steeped in profound oblivion. Hisface was buried in the crook of his right arm, and his brown tattooedleft hand lay on his left thigh, palm upwards. He had no hat, and thebreeze stirred his grizzled hair.

Dick and Emmeline stole up to him till they got right beside him. ThenEmmeline, flashing out a laugh, flung the little wreath of flowers onthe old man’s head, and Dick, popping down on his knees, shouted intohis ear. But the dreamer did not stir or move a finger.

“Paddy,” cried Dick, “wake up! wake up!”

He pulled at the shoulder till the figure from its sideways posturefell over on its back. The eyes were wide open and staring. The mouthhung open, and from the mouth darted a little crab; it scuttled overthe chin and dropped on the coral.

Emmeline screamed, and screamed, and would have fallen, but the boycaught her in his arms—one side of the face had been destroyed by thelarvæ of the rocks.

He held her to him as he stared at the terrible figure lying upon itsback, hands outspread. Then, wild with terror, he dragged her towardsthe little boat. She was struggling, and panting and gasping, like aperson drowning in ice-cold water.

His one instinct was to escape, to fly—anywhere, no matter where. Hedragged the girl to the coral edge, and pulled the boat up close. Hadthe reef suddenly become enveloped in flames he could not have exertedhimself more to escape from it and save his companion. A moment laterthey were afloat, and he was pulling wildly for the shore.

He did not know what had happened, nor did he pause to think: he wasfleeing from horror—nameless horror; whilst the child at his feet,with her head resting against the gunwale, stared up open-eyed andspeechless at the great blue sky, as if at some terror visible there.The boat grounded on the white sand, and the wash of the incoming tidedrove it up sideways.

Emmeline had fallen forward; she had lost consciousness.

CHAPTER XXII

ALONE

The idea of spiritual life must be innate in the heart of man, for allthat terrible night, when the children lay huddled together in thelittle hut in the chapparel, the fear that filled them was that theirold friend might suddenly darken the entrance and seek to lie downbeside them.

They did not speak about him. Something had been done to him; somethinghad happened. Something terrible had happened to the world they knew.But they dared not speak of it or question each other.

Dick had carried his companion to the hut when he left the boat, andhidden with her there; the evening had come on, and the night, and nowin the darkness, without having tasted food all day, he was telling hernot to be afraid, that he would take care of her. But not a word ofthe thing that had happened.

The thing, for them, had no precedent, and no vocabulary. They had comeacross death raw and real, uncooked by religion, undeodorised by thesayings of sages and poets.

They knew nothing of the philosophy that tells us that death is thecommon lot, and the natural sequence to birth, or the religion thatteaches us that Death is the door to Life.

A dead old sailor-man lying like a festering carcass on a coral ledge,eyes staring and glazed and fixed, a wide-open mouth that once hadspoken comforting words, and now spoke living crabs.

That was the vision before them. They did not philosophise about it;and though they were filled with terror, I do not think it was terrorthat held them from speaking about it, but a vague feeling that whatthey had beheld was obscene, unspeakable, and a thing to avoid.

Lestrange had brought them up in his own way. He had told them therewas a good God who looked after the world; determined as far as hecould to exclude demonology and sin and death from their knowledge, hehad rested content with the bald statement that there was a good Godwho looked after the world, without explaining fully that the same Godwould torture them for ever and ever, should they fail to believe inHim or keep His commandments.

This knowledge of the Almighty, therefore, was but a half knowledge,the vaguest abstraction. Had they been brought up, however, in the moststrictly Calvinistic school, this knowledge of Him would have been nocomfort now. Belief in God is no comfort to a frightened child. Teachhim as many parrot-like prayers as you please, and in distress or thedark of what use are they to him? His cry is for his nurse, or hismother.

During that dreadful night these two children had no comfort to seekanywhere in the whole wide universe but in each other. She, in a senseof his protection, he, in a sense of being her protector. Themanliness in him greater and more beautiful than physical strength,developed in those dark hours just as a plant under extraordinarycircumstances is hurried into bloom.

Towards dawn Emmeline fell asleep. Dick stole out of the hut when hehad assured himself from her regular breathing that she was asleep,and, pushing the tendrils and the branches of the mammee apples aside,found the beach. The dawn was just breaking, and the morning breeze wascoming in from the sea.

When he had beached the dinghy the day before, the tide was just at theflood, and it had left her stranded. The tide was coming in now, and ina short time it would be far enough up to push her off.

Emmeline in the night had implored him to take her away. Take her awaysomewhere from there, and he had promised, without knowing in the leasthow he was to perform his promise. As he stood looking at the beach, sodesolate and strangely different now from what it was the day before,an idea of how he could fulfil his promise came to him. He ran down towhere the little boat lay on the shelving sand, with the ripples of theincoming tide just washing the rudder, which was still shipped. Heunshipped the rudder and came back.

Under a tree, covered with the stay-sail they had brought from theShenandoah, lay most of their treasures: old clothes and boots, and allthe other odds and ends. The precious tobacco stitched up in a piece ofcanvas was there, and the housewife with the needles and threads. Ahole had been dug in the sand as a sort of cache for them, and thestay-sail put over them to protect them from the dew.

The sun was now looking over the sea-line, and the tall cocoa-nut treeswere singing and whispering together under the strengthening breeze.

CHAPTER XXIII

THEY MOVE AWAY

He began to collect the things, and carry them to the dinghy. He tookthe stay-sail and everything that might be useful; and when he hadstowed them in the boat, he took the breaker and filled it with waterat the water source in the wood; he collected some bananas andbreadfruit, and stowed them in the dinghy with the breaker. Then hefound the remains of yesterday’s breakfast, which he had hidden betweentwo palmetto leaves, and placed it also in the boat.

The water was now so high that a strong push would float her. He turnedback to the hut for Emmeline. She was still asleep: so soundly asleep,that when he lifted her up in his arms she made no movement. He placedher carefully in the stern-sheets with her head on the sail rolled up,and then standing in the bow pushed off with a scull. Then, taking thesculls, he turned the boat’s head up the lagoon to the left. He keptclose to the shore, but for the life of him he could not help liftinghis eyes and looking towards the reef.

Round a certain spot on the distant white coral there was a greatcommotion of birds. Huge birds some of them seemed, and the “Hi! hi!hi!” of them came across the lagoon on the breeze as they quarrelledtogether and beat the air with their wings. He turned his head awaytill a bend of the shore hid the spot from sight.

Here, sheltered more completely than opposite the break in the reef,the artu trees came in places right down to the water’s edge; the breadfruittrees cast the shadow of their great scalloped leaves upon the water;glades, thick with fern, wildernesses of the mammee apple, and bushesof the scarlet “wild cocoa-nut” all slipped by, as the dinghy, huggingthe shore, crept up the lagoon.

Gazing at the shore edge one might have imagined it the edge of a lake,but for the thunder of the Pacific upon the distant reef; and even thatdid not destroy the impression, but only lent a strangeness to it.

A lake in the midst of the ocean, that is what the lagoon really was.

Here and there cocoa-nut trees slanted over the water, mirroring theirdelicate stems, and tracing their clear-cut shadows on the sandy bottoma fathom deep below.

He kept close in-shore for the sake of the shelter of the trees. Hisobject was to find some place where they might stop permanently, andput up a tent. He was seeking a new home, in fact. But, pretty as werethe glades they passed, they were not attractive places to live in.There were too many trees, or the ferns were too deep. He was seekingair and space, and suddenly he found it. Rounding a little cape, allblazing with the scarlet of the wild cocoa-nut, the dinghy broke into anew world.

Before her lay a great sweep of the palest blue wind-swept water, downto which came a broad green sward of park-like land set on either sidewith deep groves, and leading up and away to higher land, where, abovethe massive and motionless green of the great breadfruit trees, thepalm trees swayed and fluttered their pale green feathers in thebreeze. The pale colour of the water was due to the extreme shallownessof the lagoon just here. So shallow was it that one could see brownspaces indicating beds of dead and rotten coral, and splashes ofdarkest sapphire where the deep pools lay. The reef lay more than halfa mile from the shore: a great way out, it seemed, so far out that itscramping influence was removed, and one had the impression of wide andunbroken sea.

Dick rested on his oars, and let the dinghy float whilst he lookedaround him. He had come some four miles and a half, and this was rightat the back of the island. As the boat drifting shoreward touched thebank, Emmeline awakened from her sleep, sat up, and looked around her.

BOOK II

PART I

CHAPTER I

UNDER THE ARTU TREE

On the edge of the green sward, between a diamond-chequered artu trunkand the massive bole of a breadfruit, a house had come into being. Itwas not much larger than a big hen-house, but quite sufficient for theneeds of two people in a climate of eternal summer. It was built ofbamboos, and thatched with a double thatch of palmetto leaves, soneatly built, and so well thatched, that one might have fancied it theproduction of several skilled workmen.

The breadfruit tree was barren of fruit, as these trees sometimes are,whole groves of them ceasing to bear for some mysterious reason onlyknown to Nature. It was green now, but when suffering its yearly changethe great scalloped leaves would take all imaginable tinges of gold andbronze and amber. Beyond the artu was a little clearing, where thechapparel had been carefully removed and taro roots planted.

Stepping from the house doorway on to the sward you might have fanciedyourself, except for the tropical nature of the foliage, in someEnglish park.

Looking to the right, the eye became lost in the woods, where all tintsof green were tinging the foliage, and the bushes of the wild cocoa-nutburned scarlet as haw-berries.

The house had a doorway, but no door. It might have been said to have adouble roof, for the breadfruit foliage above gave good shelter duringthe rains. Inside it was bare enough. Dried, sweet-smelling fernscovered the floor. Two sails, rolled up, lay on either side of thedoorway. There was a rude shelf attached to one of the walls, and onthe shelf some bowls made of cocoa-nut shell. The people to whom theplace belonged evidently did not trouble it much with their presence,using it only at night, and as a refuge from the dew.

Sitting on the grass by the doorway, sheltered by the breadfruit shade,yet with the hot rays of the afternoon sun just touching her nakedfeet, was a girl. A girl of fifteen or sixteen, naked, except for akilt of gaily-striped material reaching from her waist to her knees.Her long black hair was drawn back from the forehead, and tied behindwith a loop of the elastic vine. A scarlet blossom was stuck behind herright ear, after the fashion of a clerk’s pen. Her face was beautiful,powdered with tiny freckles; especially under the eyes, which were of adeep, tranquil blue-grey. She half sat, half lay on her left side;whilst before her, quite close, strutted up and down on the grass, abird, with blue plumage, coral-red beak, and bright, watchful eyes.

The girl was Emmeline Lestrange. Just by her elbow stood a little bowlmade from half a cocoa-nut, and filled with some white substance withwhich she was feeding the bird. Dick had found it in the woods twoyears ago, quite small, deserted by its mother, and starving. They hadfed it and tamed it, and it was now one of the family; roosting on theroof at night, and appearing regularly at meal times.

All at once she held out her hand; the bird flew into the air, lit onher forefinger and balanced itself, sinking its head between itsshoulders, and uttering the sound which formed its entire vocabularyand one means of vocal expression—a sound from which it had derivedits name.

“Koko,” said Emmeline, “where is Dick?”

The bird turned his head about, as if he were searching for his master;and the girl lay back lazily on the grass, laughing, and holding him uppoised on her finger, as if he were some enamelled jewel she wished toadmire at a little distance. They made a pretty picture under thecave-like shadow of the breadfruit leaves; and it was difficult tounderstand how this young girl, so perfectly formed, so fullydeveloped, and so beautiful, had evolved from plain little EmmelineLestrange. And the whole thing, as far as the beauty of her wasconcerned, had happened during the last six months.

CHAPTER II

HALF CHILD—HALF SAVAGE

Five rainy seasons had passed and gone since the tragic occurrence onthe reef. Five long years the breakers had thundered, and the sea-gullshad cried round the figure whose spell had drawn a mysterious barrieracross the lagoon.

The children had never returned to the old place. They had keptentirely to the back of the island and the woods—the lagoon, down to acertain point, and the reef; a wide enough and beautiful enough world,but a hopeless world, as far as help from civilisation was concerned.For, of the few ships that touched at the island in the course ofyears, how many would explore the lagoon or woods? Perhaps not one.

Occasionally Dick would make an excursion in the dinghy to the oldplace, but Emmeline refused to accompany him. He went chiefly to obtainbananas; for on the whole island there was but one clump of bananatrees—that near the water source in the wood, where the old greenskulls had been discovered, and the little barrel.

She had never quite recovered from the occurrence on the reef.Something had been shown to her, the purport of which she vaguelyunderstood, and it had filled her with horror and a terror of the placewhere it had occurred. Dick was quite different. He had been frightenedenough at first; but the feeling wore away in time.

Dick had built three houses in succession during the five years. He hadlaid out a patch of taro and another of sweet potatoes. He knew everypool on the reef for two miles either way, and the forms of theirinhabitants; and though he did not know the names of the creatures tobe found there, he made a profound study of their habits.

He had seen some astonishing things during these five years—from afight between a whale and two thrashers conducted outside the reef,lasting an hour, and dyeing the breaking waves with blood, to thepoisoning of the fish in the lagoon by fresh water, due to anextraordinarily heavy rainy season.

He knew the woods of the back of the island by heart, and the forms oflife that inhabited them—butterflies, and moths, and birds, lizards, andinsects of strange shape; extraordinary orchids—some filthy-looking,the very image of corruption, some beautiful, and all strange. He foundmelons and guavas, and breadfruit, the red apple of Tahiti, and thegreat Brazilian plum, taro in plenty, and a dozen other goodthings—but there were no bananas. This made him unhappy at times, forhe was human.

Though Emmeline had asked Koko for Dick’s whereabouts, it was only aremark made by way of making conversation, for she could hear him inthe little cane-brake which lay close by amidst the trees.

In a few minutes he appeared, dragging after him two canes which he hadjust cut, and wiping the perspiration off his brow with his naked arm.He had an old pair of trousers on—part of the truck salved long agofrom the Shenandoah—nothing else, and he was well worth looking at andconsidering, both from a physical and psychological point of view.

Auburn-haired and tall, looking more like seventeen than sixteen, witha restless and daring expression, half a child, half a man, half acivilised being, half a savage, he had both progressed and retrogradedduring the five years of savage life. He sat down beside Emmeline,flung the canes beside him, tried the edge of the old butcher’s knifewith which he had cut them, then, taking one of the canes across hisknee, he began whittling at it.

“What are you making?” asked Emmeline, releasing the bird, which flewinto one of the branches of the artu and rested there, a blue pointamidst the dark green.

“Fish-spear,” replied Dick.

Without being taciturn, he rarely wasted words. Life was all businessfor him. He would talk to Emmeline, but always in short sentences; andhe had developed the habit of talking to inanimate things, to thefish-spear he was carving, or the bowl he was fashioning from acocoa-nut.

As for Emmeline, even as a child she had never been talkative. Therewas something mysterious in her personality, something secretive. Hermind seemed half submerged in twilight. Though she spoke little, andthough the subject of their conversations was almost entirely materialand relative to their everyday needs, her mind would wander intoabstract fields and the land of chimerae and dreams. What she foundthere no one knew—least of all, perhaps, herself.

As for Dick, he would sometimes talk and mutter to himself, as if in areverie; but if you caught the words, you would find that they referredto no abstraction, but to some trifle he had on hand. He seemedentirely bound up in the moment, and to have forgotten the past ascompletely as though it had never been.

Yet he had his contemplative moods. He would lie with his face over arock-pool by the hour, watching the strange forms of life to be seenthere, or sit in the woods motionless as a stone, watching the birdsand the swift-slipping lizards. The birds came so close that he couldeasily have knocked them over, but he never hurt one or interfered inany way with the wild life of the woods.

The island, the lagoon, and the reef were for him the three volumes ofa great picture book, as they were for Emmeline, though in a differentmanner. The colour and the beauty of it all fed some mysterious want inher soul. Her life was a long reverie, a beautiful vision—troubledwith shadows. Across all the blue and coloured spaces that meant monthsand years she could still see as in a glass dimly the Northumberland,smoking against the wild background of fog; her uncle’s face, Boston—avague and dark picture beyond a storm—and nearer, the tragic form onthe reef that still haunted terribly her dreams. But she never spoke ofthese things to Dick. Just as she kept the secret of what was in herbox, and the secret of her trouble whenever she lost it, she kept thesecret of her feelings about these things.

Born of these things there remained with her always a vague terror: theterror of losing Dick. Mrs Stannard, her uncle, the dim people she hadknown in Boston, all had passed away out of her life like a dream andshadows. The other one too, most horribly. What if Dick were takenfrom her as well?

This haunting trouble had been with her a long time; up to a few monthsago it had been mainly personal and selfish—the dread of being leftalone. But lately it had altered and become more acute. Dick hadchanged in her eyes, and the fear was now for him. Her own personalityhad suddenly and strangely become merged in his. The idea of lifewithout him was unthinkable, yet the trouble remained, a menace in theblue.

Some days it would be worse than others. To-day, for instance, it wasworse than yesterday, as though some danger had crept close to themduring the night. Yet the sky and sea were stainless, the sun shone ontree and flower, the west wind brought the tune of the far-away reeflike a lullaby. There was nothing to hint of danger or the need ofdistrust.

At last Dick finished his spear and rose to his feet.

“Where are you going?” asked Emmeline.

“The reef,” he replied. “The tide’s going out.”

“I’ll go with you,” said she.

He went into the house and stowed the precious knife away. Then he cameout, spear in one hand, and half a fathom of liana in the other. Theliana was for the purpose of stringing the fish on, should the catch belarge. He led the way down the grassy sward to the lagoon where thedinghy lay, close up to the bank, and moored to a post driven into thesoft soil. Emmeline got in, and, taking the sculls, he pushed off. Thetide was going out.

I have said that the reef just here lay a great way out from the shore.The lagoon was so shallow that at low tide one could have waded almostright across it, were it not for pot-holes here and there—ten-feettraps—and great beds of rotten coral, into which one would sink asinto brushwood, to say nothing of the nettle coral that stings like abed of nettles. There were also other dangers. Tropical shallows arefull of wild surprises in the way of life—and death.

Dick had long ago marked out in his memory the soundings of the lagoon,and it was fortunate that he possessed the special sense of locationwhich is the main stand-by of the hunter and the savage, for, from thedisposition of the coral in ribs, the water from the shore edge to thereef ran in lanes. Only two of these lanes gave a clear, fair way fromthe shore edge to the reef; had you followed the others, even in a boatof such shallow draught as the dinghy, you would have found yourselfstranded half-way across, unless, indeed, it were a spring tide.

Half-way across the sound of the surf on the barrier became louder, andthe everlasting and monotonous cry of the gulls came on the breeze. Itwas lonely out here, and, looking back, the shore seemed a great wayoff. It was lonelier still on the reef.

Dick tied up the boat to a projection of coral, and helped Emmeline toland. The sun was creeping down into the west, the tide was nearly halfout, and large pools of water lay glittering like burnished shields inthe sunlight. Dick, with his precious spear beside him, sat calmly downon a ledge of coral, and began to divest himself of his one and onlygarment.

Emmeline turned away her head and contemplated the distant shore, whichseemed thrice as far off as it was in reality. When she turned her headagain he was racing along the edge of the surf. He and his spearsilhouetted against the spindrift and dazzling foam formed a picturesavage enough, and well in keeping with the general desolation of thebackground. She watched him lie down and cling to a piece of coral,whilst the surf rushed round and over him, and then rise and shakehimself like a dog, and pursue his gambols, his body all glitteringwith the wet.

Sometimes a whoop would come on the breeze, mixing with the sound ofthe surf and the cry of the gulls, and she would see him plunge hisspear into a pool, and the next moment the spear would be held aloftwith something struggling and glittering at the end of it.

He was quite different out here on the reef to what he was ashore. Thesurroundings here seemed to develop all that was savage in him, in astartling way; and he would kill, and kill, just for the pleasure ofkilling, destroying more fish than they could possibly use.

CHAPTER III

THE DEMON OF THE REEF

The romance of coral has still to be written. There still exists awidespread opinion that the coral reef and the coral island are thework of an “insect.” This fabulous insect, accredited with the geniusof Brunel and the patience of Job, has been humorously enough held upbefore the children of many generations as an example of industry—athing to be admired, a model to be followed.

As a matter of fact, nothing could be more slothful or slow, more givenup to a life of ease and degeneracy, than the “reef-buildingpolypifer”—to give him his scientific name. He is the hobo of theanimal world, but, unlike the hobo, he does not even tramp for aliving. He exists as a sluggish and gelatinous worm; he attracts tohimself calcareous elements from the water to make himself ahouse—mark you, the sea does the building—he dies, and he leaves hishouse behind him—and a reputation for industry, beside which thereputation of the ant turns pale, and that of the bee becomes of littleaccount.

On a coral reef you are treading on rock that the reef-buildingpolypifers of ages have left behind them as evidences of their idle andapparently useless lives. You might fancy that the reef is formed ofdead rock, but it is not: that is where the wonder of the thing comesin—a coral reef is half alive. If it were not, it would not resist theaction of the sea ten years. The live part of the reef is just wherethe breakers come in and beyond. The gelatinous rock-buildingpolypifers die almost at once, if exposed to the sun or if leftuncovered by water.

Sometimes, at very low tide, if you have courage enough to risk beingswept away by the breakers, going as far out on the reef as you can,you may catch a glimpse of them in their living state—great mounds andmasses of what seems rock, but which is a honeycomb of coral, whosecells are filled with the living polypifers. Those in the uppermostcells are usually dead, but lower down they are living.

Always dying, always being renewed, devoured by fish, attacked by thesea—that is the life of a coral reef. It is a thing as living as acabbage or a tree. Every storm tears a piece off the reef, which theliving coral replaces; wounds occur in it which actually granulate andheal as wounds do of the human body.

There is nothing, perhaps, more mysterious in nature than this fact ofthe existence of a living land: a land that repairs itself, wheninjured, by vital processes, and resists the eternal attack of the seaby vital force, especially when we think of the extent of some of theselagoon islands or atolls, whose existences are an eternal battle withthe waves.

Unlike the island of this story (which is an island surrounded by abarrier reef of coral surrounding a space of sea—the lagoon), the reefforms the island. The reef may be grown over by trees, or it may beperfectly destitute of important vegetation, or it may be crusted withislets. Some islets may exist within the lagoon, but as often as not itis just a great empty lake floored with sand and coral, peopled withlife different to the life of the outside ocean, protected from thewaves, and reflecting the sky like a mirror.

When we remember that the atoll is a living thing, an organic whole, asfull of life, though not so highly organised, as a tortoise, themeanest imagination must be struck with the immensity of one of thestructures.

Vliegen atoll in the Low Archipelago, measured from lagoon edge tolagoon edge, is sixty miles long by twenty miles broad, at its broadestpart. In the Marshall Archipelago, Rimsky Korsacoff is fifty-four mileslong and twenty miles broad; and Rimsky Korsacoff is a living thing,secreting, excreting, and growing—more highly organised than thecocoa-nut trees that grow upon its back, or the blossoms that powderthe hotoo trees in its groves.

The story of coral is the story of a world, and the longest chapter inthat story concerns itself with coral’s infinite variety and form.

Out on the margin of the reef where Dick was spearing fish, you mighthave seen a peach-blossom-coloured lichen on the rock. This lichen wasa form of coral. Coral growing upon coral, and in the pools at the edgeof the surf branching corals also of the colour of a peach bloom.

Within a hundred yards of where Emmeline was sitting, the poolscontained corals of all colours, from lake-red to pure white, and thelagoon behind her—corals of the quaintest and strangest forms.

Dick had speared several fish, and had left them lying on the reef tobe picked up later on. Tired of killing, he was now wandering along,examining the various living things he came across.

Huge slugs inhabited the reef, slugs as big as parsnips, and somewhatof the same shape; they were a species of Bech de mer. Globe-shapedjelly-fish as big as oranges, great cuttlefish bones flat and shiningand white, shark’s teeth, spines of echini; sometimes a dead scarusfish, its stomach distended with bits of coral on which it had beenfeeding; crabs, sea urchins, sea-weeds of strange colour and shape;star-fish, some tiny and of the colour of cayenne pepper, some huge andpale. These and a thousand other things, beautiful or strange, were tobe found on the reef.

Dick had laid his spear down, and was exploring a deep bath-like pool.He had waded up to his knees, and was in the act of wading further whenhe was suddenly seized by the foot. It was just as if his ankle hadbeen suddenly caught in a clove hitch and the rope drawn tight. Hescreamed out with pain and terror, and suddenly and viciously awhip-lash shot out from the water, lassoed him round the left knee,drew itself taut, and held him.

CHAPTER IV

WHAT BEAUTY CONCEALED

Emmeline, seated on the coral rock, had almost forgotten Dick for amoment. The sun was setting, and the warm amber light of the sunsetshone on reef and rock-pool. Just at sunset and low tide the reef had apeculiar fascination for her. It had the low-tide smell of sea-weedexposed to the air, and the torment and trouble of the breakers seemedeased. Before her, and on either side, the foam-dashed coral glowed inamber and gold, and the great Pacific came glassing and glittering in,voiceless and peaceful, till it reached the strand and burst into songand spray.

Here, just as on the hill-top at the other side of the island, youcould mark the rhythm of the rollers. “Forever, and forever—forever,and forever,” they seemed to say.

The cry of the gulls came mixed with the spray on the breeze. Theyhaunted the reef like uneasy spirits, always complaining, never atrest; but at sunset their cry seemed farther away and less melancholy,perhaps because just then the whole island world seemed bathed in thespirit of peace.

She turned from the sea prospect and looked backwards over the lagoonto the island. She could make out the broad green glade beside whichtheir little house lay, and a spot of yellow, which was the thatch ofthe house, just by the artu tree, and nearly hidden by the shadow ofthe breadfruit. Over the woods the fronds of the great cocoa-nut palmsshowed above every other tree silhouetted against the dim, dark blue ofthe eastern sky.

Seen by the enchanted light of sunset, the whole picture had an unreallook, more lovely than a dream. At dawn—and Dick would often start forthe reef before dawn, if the tide served—the picture was as beautiful;more so, perhaps, for over the island, all in shadow, and against thestars, you would see the palm-tops catching fire, and then the light ofday coming through the green trees and blue sky, like a spirit, acrossthe blue lagoon, widening and strengthening as it widened, across thewhite foam, out over the sea, spreading like a fan, till, all at once,night was day, and the gulls were crying and the breakers flashing, thedawn wind blowing, and the palm trees bending, as palm trees only knowhow. Emmeline always imagined herself alone on the island with Dick,but beauty was there, too, and beauty is a great companion.

The girl was contemplating the scene before her. Nature in herfriendliest mood seemed to say, “Behold me! Men call me cruel; men havecalled me deceitful, even treacherous. I—ah well! my answer is,‘Behold me!’”

The girl was contemplating the specious beauty of it all, when on thebreeze from seaward came a shout. She turned quickly. There was Dick upto his knees in a rock-pool a hundred yards or so away, motionless, hisarms upraised, and crying out for help. She sprang to her feet.

There had once been an islet on this part of the reef, a tiny thing,consisting of a few palms and a handful of vegetation, and destroyed,perhaps, in some great storm. I mention this because the existence ofthis islet once upon a time was the means, indirectly, of saving Dick’slife; for where these islets have been or are, “flats” occur on thereef formed of coral conglomerate.

Emmeline in her bare feet could never have reached him in time overrough coral, but, fortunately, this flat and comparatively smoothsurface lay between them.

“My spear!” shouted Dick, as she approached.

He seemed at first tangled in brambles; then she thought ropes weretangling round him and tying him to something in the water—whatever itwas, it was most awful, and hideous, and like a nightmare. She ran withthe speed of Atalanta to the rock where the spear was resting, all redwith the blood of new-slain fish, a foot from the point.

As she approached Dick, spear in hand, she saw, gasping with terror,that the ropes were alive, and that they were flickering and ripplingover his back. One of them bound his left arm to his side, but hisright arm was free.

“Quick!” he shouted.

In a second the spear was in his free hand, and Emmeline had castherself down on her knees, and was staring with terrified eyes into thewater of the pool from whence the ropes issued. She was, despite herterror, quite prepared to fling herself in and do battle with thething, whatever it might be.

What she saw was only for a second. In the deep water of the pool,gazing up and forward and straight at Dick, she saw a face, lugubriousand awful. The eyes were wide as saucers, stony and steadfast; a large,heavy, parrot-like beak hung before the eyes, and worked and wobbled,and seemed to beckon. But what froze one’s heart was the expression ofthe eyes, so stony and lugubrious, so passionless, so devoid ofspeculation, yet so fixed of purpose and full of fate.

From away far down he had risen with the rising tide. He had beenfeeding on crabs, when the tide, betraying him, had gone out, leavinghim trapped in the rock-pool. He had slept, perhaps, and awakened tofind a being, naked and defenceless, invading his pool. He was quitesmall, as octopods go, and young, yet he was large and powerful enoughto have drowned an ox.

The octopod has only been described once, in stone, by a Japaneseartist. The statue is still extant, and it is the most terriblemasterpiece of sculpture ever executed by human hands. It represents aman who has been bathing on a low-tide beach, and has been caught. Theman is shouting in a delirium of terror, and threatening with his freearm the spectre that has him in its grip. The eyes of the octopod arefixed upon the man—passionless and lugubrious eyes, but steadfast andfixed.

Another whip-lash shot out of the water in a shower of spray, andseized Dick by the left thigh. At the same instant he drove the pointof the spear through the right eye of the monster, deep down througheye and soft gelatinous carcass till the spear-point dirled andsplintered against the rock. At the same moment the water of the poolbecame black as ink, the bands around him relaxed, and he was free.

Emmeline rose up and seized him, sobbing and clinging to him, andkissing him. He clasped her with his left arm round her body, as if toprotect her, but it was a mechanical action. He was not thinking ofher. Wild with rage, and uttering hoarse cries, he plunged the brokenspear again and again into the depths of the pool, seeking utterly todestroy the enemy that had so lately had him in its grip. Then slowlyhe came to himself, and wiped his forehead, and looked at the brokenspear in his hand.

“Beast!” he said. “Did you see its eyes? Did you see its eyes? I wishit had a hundred eyes, and I had a hundred spears to drive into them!”

She was clinging to him, and sobbing and laughing hysterically, andpraising him. One might have thought that he had rescued her fromdeath, not she him.

The sun had nearly vanished, and he led her back to where the dinghywas moored recapturing and putting on his trousers on the road. Hepicked up the dead fish he had speared; and as he rowed her back acrossthe lagoon, he talked and laughed, recounting the incidents of thefight, taking all the glory of the thing to himself, and seeming quiteto ignore the important part she had played in it.

This was not from any callousness or want of gratitude, but simply fromthe fact that for the last five years he had been the be-all andend-all of their tiny community—the Imperial master. And he wouldjust as soon have thought of thanking her for handing him the spear asof thanking his right hand for driving it home. She was quite content,seeking neither thanks nor praise. Everything she had came from him:she was his shadow and his slave. He was her sun.

He went over the fight again and again before they lay down to rest,telling her he had done this and that, and what he would do to the nextbeast of the sort. The reiteration was tiresome enough, or would havebeen to an outside listener, but to Emmeline it was better than Homer.People’s minds do not improve in an intellectual sense when they areisolated from the world, even though they are living the wild and happylives of savages.

Then Dick lay down in the dried ferns and covered himself with a pieceof the striped flannel which they used for blanketing, and he snored,and chattered in his sleep like a dog hunting imaginary game, andEmmeline lay beside him wakeful and thinking. A new terror had comeinto her life. She had seen death for the second time, but this timeactive and in being.

CHAPTER V

THE SOUND OF A DRUM

The next day Dick was sitting under the shade of the artu. He had thebox of fishhooks beside him, and he was bending a line on to one ofthem. There had originally been a couple of dozen hooks, large andsmall, in the box; there remained now only six—four small and twolarge ones. It was a large one he was fixing to the line, for heintended going on the morrow to the old place to fetch some bananas,and on the way to try for a fish in the deeper parts of the lagoon.

It was late afternoon, and the heat had gone out of the day. Emmeline,seated on the grass opposite to him, was holding the end of the line,whilst he got the kinks out of it, when suddenly she raised her head.

There was not a breath of wind; the hush of the far-distant surf camethrough the blue weather—the only audible sound except, now and then,a movement and flutter from the bird perched in the branches of theartu. All at once another sound mixed itself with the voice of thesurf—a faint, throbbing sound, like the beating of a distant drum.

“Listen!” said Emmeline.

Dick paused for a moment in his work. All the sounds of the island werefamiliar: this was something quite strange.

Faint and far away, now rapid, now slow; coming from where, who couldsay? Sometimes it seemed to come from the sea, sometimes, if the fancyof the listener turned that way, from the woods. As they listened, asigh came from overhead; the evening breeze had risen and was moving inthe leaves of the artu tree. Just as you might wipe a picture off aslate, the breeze banished the sound. Dick went on with his work.

Next morning early he embarked in the dinghy. He took the hook and linewith him, and some raw fish for bait. Emmeline helped him to push off,and stood on the bank waving her hand as he rounded the little capecovered with wild cocoa-nut.

These expeditions of Dick’s were one of her sorrows. To be left alonewas frightful; yet she never complained. She was living in a paradise,but something told her that behind all that sun, all that splendour ofblue sea and sky, behind the flowers and the leaves, behind all thatspecious and simpering appearance of happiness in nature, lurked afrown, and the dragon of mischance.

Dick rowed for about a mile, then he shipped his sculls, and let thedinghy float. The water here was very deep; so deep that, despite itsclearness, the bottom was invisible; the sunlight over the reef struckthrough it diagonally, filling it with sparkles.

The fisherman baited his hook with a piece from the belly of a scarusand lowered it down out of sight, then he belayed the line to a tholepin, and, sitting in the bottom of the boat, hung his head over theside and gazed deep down into the water. Sometimes there was nothing tosee but just the deep blue of the water. Then a flight of spangledarrowheads would cross the line of sight and vanish, pursued by a formlike a moving bar of gold. Then a great fish would materialise itselfand hang in the shadow of the boat motionless as a stone, save for themovement of its gills; next moment with a twist of the tail it would begone.

Suddenly the dinghy shored over, and might have capsized, only for thefact that Dick was sitting on the opposite side to the side from whichthe line hung. Then the boat righted; the line slackened, and thesurface of the lagoon, a few fathoms away, boiled as if being stirredfrom below by a great silver stick. He had hooked an albicore. He tiedthe end of the fishing-line to a scull, undid the line from the tholepin, and flung the scull overboard.

He did all this with wonderful rapidity, while the line was stillslack. Next moment the scull was rushing over the surface of thelagoon, now towards the reef, now towards the shore, now flat, now endup. Now it would be jerked under the surface entirely; vanish for amoment, and then reappear. It was a most astonishing thing to watch,for the scull seemed alive—viciously alive, and imbued with somedestructive purpose; as, in fact, it was. The most venomous of livingthings, and the most intelligent could not have fought the great fishbetter.

The albicore would make a frantic dash down the lagoon, hoping,perhaps, to find in the open sea a release from his foe. Then, halfdrowned with the pull of the scull, he would pause, dart from side toside in perplexity, and then make an equally frantic dash up thelagoon, to be checked in the same manner. Seeking the deepest depths,he would sink the scull a few fathoms; and once he sought the air,leaping into the sunlight like a crescent of silver, whilst the splashof him as he fell echoed amidst the trees bordering the lagoon. An hourpassed before the great fish showed signs of weakening.

The struggle had taken place up to this close to the shore, but now thescull swam out into the broad sheet of sunlit water, and slowly beganto describe large circles rippling up the peaceful blue into flashingwavelets. It was a melancholy sight to watch, for the great fish hadmade a good fight, and one could see him, through the eye ofimagination, beaten, half drowned, dazed, and moving as is the fashionof dazed things in a circle.

Dick, working the remaining oar at the stern of the boat, rowed out andseized the floating scull, bringing it on board. Foot by foot he hauledhis catch towards the boat till the long gleaming line of the thingcame dimly into view.

The fight had been heard for miles through the lagoon water by allsorts of swimming things. The lord of the place had got sound of it. Adark fin rippled the water; and as Dick, pulling on his line, hauledhis catch closer, a monstrous grey shadow stained the depths, and theglittering streak that was the albicore vanished as if engulfed in acloud. The line came in slack, and Dick hauled in the albicore’s head.It had been divided from the body as if with a huge pair of shears. Thegrey shadow slipped by the boat, and Dick, mad with rage, shouted andshook his fist at it; then, seizing the albicore’s head, from which hehad taken the hook, he hurled it at the monster in the water.

The great shark, with a movement of the tail that caused the water toswirl and the dinghy to rock, turned upon his back and engulfed thehead; then he slowly sank and vanished, just as if he had beendissolved. He had come off best in this their first encounter—such asit was.

CHAPTER VI

SAILS UPON THE SEA

Dick put the hook away and took to the sculls. He had a three-mile rowbefore him, and the tide was coming in, which did not make it any theeasier. As he rowed, he talked and grumbled to himself. He had been ina grumbling mood for some time past: the chief cause, Emmeline.

In the last few months she had changed; even her face had changed. Anew person had come upon the island, it seemed to him, and taken theplace of the Emmeline he had known from earliest childhood. This onelooked different. He did not know that she had grown beautiful, he justknew that she looked different; also she had developed new ways thatdispleased him—she would go off and bathe by herself, for instance.

Up to six months or so ago he had been quite contented; sleeping andeating, and hunting for food and cooking it, building and rebuildingthe house, exploring the woods and the reef. But lately a spirit ofrestlessness had come upon him; he did not know exactly what he wanted.He had a vague feeling that he wanted to go away from the place wherehe was; not from the island, but from the place where they had pitchedtheir tent, or rather built their house.

It may have been the spirit of civilisation crying out in him, tellinghim of all he was missing. Of the cities, and the streets, and thehouses, and the businesses, and the striving after gold, the strivingafter power. It may have been simply the man in him crying out forLove, and not knowing yet that Love was at his elbow.

The dinghy glided along, hugging the shore, past the little glades offern and the cathedral gloom of the breadfruit; then, rounding apromontory, she opened the view of the break in the reef. A little bitof the white strand was visible, but he was not looking that way—hewas looking towards the reef at a tiny, dark spot, not noticeableunless searched for by the eye. Always when he came on theseexpeditions, just here, he would hang on his oars and gaze over there,where the gulls were flying and the breakers thundering.

A few years ago the spot filled him with dread as well as curiosity,but from familiarity and the dullness that time casts on everything,the dread had almost vanished, but the curiosity remained: thecuriosity that makes a child look on at the slaughter of an animal eventhough his soul revolts at it. He gazed for a while, then he went onpulling, and the dinghy approached the beach.

Something had happened on the beach. The sand was all trampled, andstained red here and there; in the centre lay the remains of a greatfire still smouldering, and just where the water lapped the sand, laytwo deep grooves as if two heavy boats had been beached there. A SouthSea man would have told from the shape of the grooves, and the littlemarks of the out-riggers, that two heavy canoes had been beached there.And they had.

The day before, early in the afternoon, two canoes, possibly from thatfar-away island which cast a stain on the horizon to thesou’-sou’-west, had entered the lagoon, one in pursuit of the other.

What happened then had better be left veiled. A war drum with ashark-skin head had set the woods throbbing; the victory was celebratedall night, and at dawn the victors manned the two canoes and set sailfor the home, or the hell, they had come from. Had you examined the strandyou would have found that a line had been drawn across the beach,beyond which there were no footmarks: that meant that the rest of theisland was for some reason tabu.

Dick pulled the nose of the boat up a bit on the strand, then he lookedaround him. He picked up a broken spear that had been cast away orforgotten; it was made of some hard wood and barbed with iron. On theright-hand side of the beach something lay between the cocoa-nut trees.He approached; it was a mass of offal; the entrails of a dozen sheepseemed cast here in one mound, yet there were no sheep on the island,and sheep are not carried as a rule in war canoes.

The sand on the beach was eloquent. The foot pursuing and the footpursued; the knee of the fallen one, and then the forehead andoutspread hands; the heel of the chief who has slain his enemy, beatenthe body flat, burst a hole through it through which he has put hishead, and who stands absolutely wearing his enemy as a cloak; the headof the man dragged on his back to be butchered like a sheep—of thesethings spoke the sand.

As far as the sand traces could speak, the story of the battle wasstill being told; the screams and the shouting, the clashing of clubsand spears were gone, yet the ghost of the fight remained.

If the sand could bear such traces, and tell such tales, who shall saythat the plastic æther was destitute of the story of the fight and thebutchery?

However that may have been, Dick, looking around him, had the shiveringsense of having just escaped from danger. Whoever had been, hadgone—he could tell that by the canoe traces. Gone either out to sea,or up the right stretch of the lagoon. It was important to determinethis.

He climbed to the hill-top and swept the sea with his eyes. There, awayto the south-west, far away on the sea, he could distinguish the brownsails of two canoes. There was something indescribably mournful andlonely in their appearance; they looked like withered leaves—brownmoths blown to sea—derelicts of autumn. Then, remembering the beach,these things became freighted with the most sinister thoughts for themind of the gazer. They were hurrying away, having done their work.That they looked lonely and old and mournful, and like withered leavesblown across the sea, only heightened the horror.

Dick had never seen canoes before, but he knew that these things wereboats of some sort holding people, and that the people had left allthose traces on the beach. How much of the horror of the thing wasrevealed to his subconscious intelligence, who can say?

He had climbed the boulder, and he now sat down with his knees drawnup, and his hands clasped round them. Whenever he came round to thisside of the island, something happened of a fateful or sinister nature.The last time he had nearly lost the dinghy; he had beached the littleboat in such a way that she floated off, and the tide was just in theact of stealing her, and sweeping her from the lagoon out to sea, whenhe returned laden with his bananas, and, rushing into the water up tohis waist, saved her. Another time he had fallen out of a tree, andjust by a miracle escaped death. Another time a hurricane had broken,lashing the lagoon into snow, and sending the cocoa-nuts bounding andflying like tennis balls across the strand. This time he had justescaped something, he knew not exactly what. It was almost as ifProvidence were saying to him, “Don’t come here.”

He watched the brown sails as they dwindled in the wind-blown blue,then he came down from the hill-top and cut his bananas. He cut fourlarge bunches, which caused him to make two journeys to the boat. Whenthe bananas were stowed he pushed off.

For a long time a great curiosity had been pulling at hisheart-strings: a curiosity of which he was dimly ashamed. Fear hadgiven it birth, and Fear still clung to it. It was, perhaps, theelement of fear and the awful delight of daring the unknown that madehim give way to it.

He had rowed, perhaps, a hundred yards when he turned the boat’s headand made for the reef. It was more than five years since that day whenhe rowed across the lagoon, Emmeline sitting in the stern, with herwreath of flowers in her hand. It might have been only yesterday, foreverything seemed just the same. The thunderous surf and the flyinggulls, the blinding sunlight, and the salt, fresh smell of the sea. Thepalm tree at the entrance of the lagoon still bent gazing into thewater, and round the projection of coral to which he had last mooredthe boat still lay a fragment of the rope which he had cut in his hurryto escape.

Ships had come into the lagoon, perhaps, during the five years, but noone had noticed anything on the reef, for it was only from the hill-topthat a full view of what was there could be seen, and then only by eyesknowing where to look. From the beach there was visible just a speck.It might have been, perhaps, a bit of old wreckage flung there by awave in some big storm. A piece of old wreckage that had been tossedhither and thither for years, and had at last found a place of rest.

Dick tied the boat up, and stepped on to the reef. It was high tidejust as before; the breeze was blowing strongly, and overhead aman-of-war’s bird, black as ebony, with a blood-red bill, came sailing,the wind doming out his wings. He circled in the air, and cried outfiercely, as if resenting the presence of the intruder, then he passedaway, let himself be blown away, as it were, across the lagoon,wheeled, circled, and passed out to sea.

Dick approached the place he knew, and there lay the little old barrelall warped by the powerful sun; the staves stood apart, and the hoopingwas rusted and broken, and whatever it had contained in the way ofspirit and conviviality had long ago drained away.

Beside the barrel lay a skeleton, round which lay a few rags of cloth.The skull had fallen to one side, and the lower jaw had fallen from theskull; the bones of the hands and feet were still articulated, and theribs had not fallen in. It was all white and bleached, and the sunshone on it as indifferently as on the coral, this shell and frameworkthat had once been a man. There was nothing dreadful about it, but awhole world of wonder.

To Dick, who had not been broken into the idea of death, who had notlearned to associate it with graves and funerals, sorrow, eternity, andhell, the thing spoke as it never could have spoken to you or me.

Looking at it, things linked themselves together in his mind: theskeletons of birds he had found in the woods, the fish he had slain,even trees lying dead and rotten—even the shells of crabs.

If you had asked him what lay before him, and if he could haveexpressed the thought in his mind, he would have answered you “change.”

All the philosophy in the world could not have told him more than heknew just then about death—he, who even did not know its name.

He was held spellbound by the marvel and miracle of the thing and thethoughts that suddenly crowded his mind like a host of spectres forwhom a door has just been opened.

Just as a child by unanswerable logic knows that a fire which hasburned him once will burn him again, or will burn another person, heknew that just as the form before him was, his form would be someday—and Emmeline’s.

Then came the vague question which is born not of the brain, but theheart, and which is the basis of all religions—where shall I be then?His mind was not of an introspective nature, and the question juststrayed across it and was gone. And still the wonder of the thing heldhim. He was for the first time in his life in a reverie; the corpsethat had shocked and terrified him five years ago had cast seeds ofthought with its dead fingers upon his mind, the skeleton had broughtthem to maturity. The full fact of universal death suddenly appearedbefore him, and he recognised it.

He stood for a long time motionless, and then with a deep sigh turnedto the boat and pushed off without once looking back at the reef. Hecrossed the lagoon and rowed slowly homewards, keeping in the shelterof the tree shadows as much as possible.

Even looking at him from the shore you might have noticed a differencein him. Your savage paddles his canoe, or sculls his boat, alert,glancing about him, at touch with nature at all points; though he belazy as a cat and sleeps half the day, awake he is all ears and eyes—acreature reacting to the least external impression.

Dick, as he rowed back, did not look about him: he was thinking orretrospecting. The savage in him had received a check. As he turned thelittle cape where the wild cocoa-nut blazed, he looked over hisshoulder. A figure was standing on the sward by the edge of the water.It was Emmeline.

CHAPTER VII

THE SCHOONER

They carried the bananas up to the house, and hung them from a branchof the artu. Then Dick, on his knees, lit the fire to prepare theevening meal. When it was over he went down to where the boat wasmoored, and returned with something in his hand. It was the javelinwith the iron point—or, rather, the two pieces of it. He had saidnothing of what he had seen to the girl.

Emmeline was seated on the grass; she had a long strip of the stripedflannel stuff about her, worn like a scarf, and she had another piecein her hand which she was hemming. The bird was hopping about, peckingat a banana which they had thrown to him; a light breeze made theshadow of the artu leaves dance upon the grass, and the serrated leavesof the breadfruit to patter one on the other with the sound ofrain-drops falling upon glass.

“Where did you get it?” asked Emmeline, staring at the piece of thejavelin which Dick had flung down almost beside her whilst he went intothe house to fetch the knife.

“It was on the beach over there,” he replied, taking his seat andexamining the two fragments to see how he could splice them together.

Emmeline looked at the pieces, putting them together in her mind. Shedid not like the look of the thing: so keen and savage, and staineddark a foot and more from the point.

“People had been there,” said Dick, putting the two pieces together andexamining the fracture critically.

“Where?”

“Over there. This was lying on the sand, and the sand was all trod up.”

“Dick,” said Emmeline, “who were the people?”

“I don’t know; I went up the hill and saw their boats going away—faraway out. This was lying on the sand.”

“Dick,” said Emmeline, “do you remember the noise yesterday?”

“Yes,” said Dick.

“I heard it in the night.”

“When?”

“In the night before the moon went away.”

“That was them,” said Dick.

“Dick!”

“Yes?”

“Who were they?”

“I don’t know,” replied Dick.

“It was in the night, before the moon went away, and it went on and onbeating in the trees. I thought I was asleep, and then I knew I wasawake; you were asleep, and I pushed you to listen, but you couldn’twake, you were so asleep; then the moon went away, and the noise wenton. How did they make the noise?”

“I don’t know,” replied Dick, “but it was them; and they left this onthe sand, and the sand was all trod up, and I saw their boats from thehill, away out far.”

“I thought I heard voices,” said Emmeline, “but I was not sure.”

She fell into meditation, watching her companion at work on the savageand sinister-looking thing in his hands. He was splicing the two piecestogether with a strip of the brown cloth-like stuff which is wrappedround the stalks of the cocoa-palm fronds. The thing seemed to havebeen hurled here out of the blue by some unseen hand.

When he had spliced the pieces, doing so with marvellous dexterity, hetook the thing short down near the point, and began thrusting it intothe soft earth to clean it; then, with a bit of flannel, he polished ittill it shone. He felt a keen delight in it. It was useless as afish-spear, because it had no barb, but it was a weapon. It was uselessas a weapon, because there was no foe on the island to use it against;still, it was a weapon.

When he had finished scrubbing at it, he rose, hitched his old trousersup, tightened the belt of cocoa-cloth which Emmeline had made for him,went into the house and got his fish-spear, and stalked off to theboat, calling out to Emmeline to follow him. They crossed over to thereef, where, as usual, he divested himself of clothing.

It was strange that out here he would go about stark naked, yet on theisland he always wore some covering. But not so strange, perhaps, afterall.

The sea is a great purifier, both of the mind and the body; before thatgreat sweet spirit people do not think in the same way as they thinkfar inland. What woman would appear in a town or on a country road, oreven bathing in a river, as she appears bathing in the sea?

Some instinct made Dick cover himself up on shore, and strip naked onthe reef. In a minute he was down by the edge of the surf, javelin inone hand, fish-spear in the other.

Emmeline, by a little pool the bottom of which was covered withbranching coral, sat gazing down into its depths, lost in a reverielike that into which we fall when gazing at shapes in the fire. She hadsat some time like this when a shout from Dick aroused her. Shestarted to her feet and gazed to where he was pointing. An amazingthing was there.

To the east, just rounding the curve of the reef, and scarcely aquarter of a mile from it, was coming a big topsail schooner; abeautiful sight she was, heeling to the breeze with every sail drawing,and the white foam like a feather at her fore-foot.

Dick, with the javelin in his hand, was standing gazing at her; he haddropped his fish-spear, and he stood as motionless as though he werecarved out of stone. Emmeline ran to him and stood beside him; neitherof them spoke a word as the vessel drew closer.

Everything was visible, so close was she now, from the reef points onthe great mainsail, luminous with the sunlight, and white as the wingof a gull, to the rail of the bulwarks. A crowd of men were hangingover the port bulwarks gazing at the island and the figures on thereef. Browned by the sun and sea-breeze, Emmeline’s hair blowing on thewind, and the point of Dick’s javelin flashing in the sun, they lookedan ideal pair of savages, seen from the schooner’s deck.

“They are going away,” said Emmeline, with a long-drawn breath ofrelief.

Dick made no reply; he stared at the schooner a moment longer insilence, then, having made sure that she was standing away from theland, he began to run up and down, calling out wildly, and beckoning tothe vessel as if to call her back.

A moment later a sound came on the breeze, a faint hail; a flag was runup to the peak and dipped as in derision, and the vessel continued onher course.

As a matter of fact, she had been on the point of putting about. Hercaptain had for a moment been undecided as to whether the forms on thereef were those of castaways or savages. But the javelin in Dick’s handhad turned the scale of his opinion in favour of the theory of savages.

CHAPTER VIII

LOVE STEPS IN

Two birds were sitting in the branches of the artu tree: Koko had takena mate. They had built a nest out of fibres pulled from the wrappingsof the cocoa-nut fronds, bits of stick and wire grass—anything, infact; even fibres from the palmetto thatch of the house below. Thepilferings of birds, the building of nests, what charming incidentsthey are in the great episode of spring!

The hawthorn tree never bloomed here, the climate was that of eternalsummer, yet the spirit of May came just as she comes to the Englishcountryside or the German forest. The doings in the artu branchesgreatly interested Emmeline.

The love-making and the nest-building were conducted quite in the usualmanner, according to rules laid down by Nature and carried out by menand birds. All sorts of quaint sounds came filtering down through theleaves from the branch where the sapphire-coloured lovers sat side byside, or the fork where the nest was beginning to form: croonings andcluckings, sounds like the flirting of a fan, the sounds of a squabble,followed by the sounds that told of the squabble made up. Sometimesafter one of these squabbles a pale blue downy feather or two wouldcome floating earthwards, touch the palmetto leaves of the house-roofand cling there, or be blown on to the grass.

It was some days after the appearance of the schooner, and Dick wasmaking ready to go into the woods and pick guavas. He had all themorning been engaged in making a basket to carry them in. Incivilisation he would, judging from his mechanical talent, perhaps havebeen an engineer, building bridges and ships, instead of palmetto-leafbaskets and cane houses—who knows if he would have been happier?

The heat of midday had passed, when, with the basket hanging over hisshoulder on a piece of cane, he started for the woods, Emmelinefollowing. The place they were going to always filled her with a vaguedread; not for a great deal would she have gone there alone. Dick haddiscovered it in one of his rambles.

They entered the wood and passed a little well, a well without apparentsource or outlet and a bottom of fine white sand. How the sand hadformed there, it would be impossible to say; but there it was, andaround the margin grew ferns redoubling themselves on the surface ofthe crystal-clear water. They left this to the right and struck intothe heart of the wood. The heat of midday still lurked here; the waywas clear, for there was a sort of path between the trees, as if, invery ancient days, there had been a road.

Right across this path, half lost in shadow, half sunlit, the lianashung their ropes. The hotoo tree, with its powdering of delicateblossoms, here stood, showing its lost loveliness to the sun; in theshade the scarlet hibiscus burned like a flame. Artu and breadfruittrees and cocoa-nut bordered the way.

As they proceeded the trees grew denser and the path more obscure. Allat once, rounding a sharp turn, the path ended in a valley carpetedwith fern. This was the place that always filled Emmeline with anundefined dread. One side of it was all built up in terraces with hugeblocks of stone. Blocks of stone so enormous, that the wonder was howthe ancient builders had put them in their places.

Trees grew along the terraces, thrusting their roots between theinterstices of the blocks. At their base, slightly tilted forward as ifwith the sinkage of years, stood a great stone figure roughly carved,thirty feet high at least—mysterious-looking, the very spirit of theplace. This figure and the terraces, the valley itself, and the verytrees that grew there, inspired Emmeline with deep curiosity and vaguefear.

People had been here once; sometimes she could fancy she saw darkshadows moving amidst the trees, and the whisper of the foliage seemedto her to hide voices at times, even as its shadow concealed forms. Itwas indeed an uncanny place to be alone in even under the broad lightof day. All across the Pacific for thousands of miles you find relicsof the past, like these scattered through the islands.

These temple places are nearly all the same: great terraces of stone,massive idols, desolation overgrown with foliage. They hint at onereligion, and a time when the sea space of the Pacific was a continent,which, sinking slowly through the ages, has left only its higher landsand hill-tops visible in the form of islands. Round these places thewoods are thicker than elsewhere, hinting at the presence there, once,of sacred groves. The idols are immense, their faces are vague; thestorms and the suns and the rains of the ages have cast over them aveil. The sphinx is understandable and a toy compared to these things,some of which have a stature of fifty feet, whose creation is veiled inabsolute mystery—the gods of a people for ever and for ever lost.

The “stone man” was the name Emmeline had given the idol of the valley;and sometimes at nights, when her thoughts would stray that way, shewould picture him standing all alone in the moonlight or starlightstaring straight before him.

He seemed for ever listening; unconsciously one fell to listening too,and then the valley seemed steeped in a supernatural silence. He wasnot good to be alone with.

Emmeline sat down amidst the fears just at his base. When one was closeup to him he lost the suggestion of life, and was simply a great stonewhich cast a shadow in the sun.

Dick threw himself down also to rest. Then he rose up and went offamidst the guava bushes, plucking the fruit and filling his basket.Since he had seen the schooner, the white men on her decks, her greatmasts and sails, and general appearance of freedom and speed andunknown adventure, he had been more than ordinarily glum and restless.Perhaps he connected her in his mind with the far-away vision of theNorthumberland, and the idea of other places and lands, and theyearning for change the idea of them inspired.

He came back with his basket full of the ripe fruit, gave some to thegirl and sat down beside her. When she had finished eating them shetook the cane that he used for carrying the basket and held it in herhands. She was bending it in the form of a bow when it slipped, flewout and struck her companion a sharp blow on the side of his face.

Almost on the instant he turned and slapped her on the shoulder. Shestared at him for a moment in troubled amazement, a sob came in herthroat. Then some veil seemed lifted, some wizard’s wand stretched out,some mysterious vial broken. As she looked at him like that, hesuddenly and fiercely clasped her in his arms. He held her like thisfor a moment, dazed, stupefied, not knowing what to do with her. Thenher lips told him, for they met his in an endless kiss.

CHAPTER IX

THE SLEEP OF PARADISE

The moon rose up that evening and shot her silver arrows at the houseunder the artu tree. The house was empty. Then the moon came across thesea and across the reef.

She lit the lagoon to its dark, dim heart. She lit the coral brains andsand spaces, and the fish, casting their shadows on the sand and thecoral. The keeper of the lagoon rose to greet her, and the fin of himbroke her reflection on the mirror-like surface into a thousandglittering ripples. She saw the white staring ribs of the form on thereef. Then, peeping over the trees, she looked down into the valley,where the great idol of stone had kept its solitary vigil for fivethousand years, perhaps, or more.

At his base, in his shadow, looking as if under his protection, lay twohuman beings, naked, clasped in each other’s arms, and fast asleep. Onecould scarcely pity his vigil, had it been marked sometimes through theyears by such an incident as this. The thing had been conducted just asthe birds conduct their love affairs. An affair absolutely natural,absolutely blameless, and without sin.

It was a marriage according to Nature, without feast or guests,consummated with accidental cynicism under the shadow of a religion athousand years dead.

So happy in their ignorance were they, that they only knew thatsuddenly life had changed, that the skies and the sea were bluer, andthat they had become in some magical way one a part of the other. Thebirds on the tree above were equally as happy in their ignorance, andin their love.

PART II

CHAPTER X

AN ISLAND HONEYMOON

One day Dick climbed on to the tree above the house, and, drivingMadame Koko off the nest upon which she was sitting, peeped in. Therewere several pale green eggs in it. He did not disturb them, butclimbed down again, and the bird resumed her seat as if nothing hadhappened. Such an occurrence would have terrified a bird used to theways of men, but here the birds were so fearless and so full ofconfidence that often they would follow Emmeline in the wood, flyingfrom branch to branch, peering at her through the leaves, lightingquite close to her—once, even, on her shoulder.

The days passed. Dick had lost his restlessness: his wish to wander hadvanished. He had no reason to wander; perhaps that was the reason why.In all the broad earth he could not have found anything more desirablethan what he had.

Instead now of finding a half-naked savage followed dog-like by hismate, you would have found of an evening a pair of lovers wandering onthe reef. They had in a pathetic sort of way attempted to adorn thehouse with a blue flowering creeper taken from the wood and trainedover the entrance.

Emmeline, up to this, had mostly done the cooking, such as it was; Dickhelped her now, always. He talked to her no longer in short sentencesflung out as if to a dog; and she, almost losing the strange reservethat had clung to her from childhood, half showed him her mind. It wasa curious mind: the mind of a dreamer, almost the mind of a poet. TheCluricaunes dwelt there, and vague shapes born of things she had heardabout or dreamt of: she had thoughts about the sea and stars, theflowers and birds.

Dick would listen to her as she talked, as a man might listen to thesound of a rivulet. His practical mind could take no share in thedreams of his other half, but her conversation pleased him.

He would look at her for a long time together, absorbed in thought. Hewas admiring her.

Her hair, blue-black and glossy, tangled him in its meshes; he wouldstroke it, so to speak, with his eyes, and then pull her close to himand bury his face in it; the smell of it was intoxicating. He breathedher as one does the perfume of a rose.

Her ears were small, and like little white shells. He would take onebetween finger and thumb and play with it as if it were a toy, pullingat the lobe of it, or trying to flatten out the curved part. Herbreasts, her shoulders, her knees, her little feet, every bit of her,he would examine and play with and kiss. She would lie and let him,seeming absorbed in some far-away thought, of which he was the object,then all at once her arms would go round him. All this used to go on inthe broad light of day, under the shadow of the artu leaves, with noone to watch except the bright-eyed birds in the leaves above.

Not all their time would be spent in this fashion. Dick was just askeen after the fish. He dug up with a spade—improvised from one of theboards of the dinghy—a space of soft earth near the taro patch andplanted the seeds of melons he found in the wood; he rethatched thehouse. They were, in short, as busy as they could be in such a climate,but love-making would come on them in fits, and then everything wouldbe forgotten. Just as one revisits some spot to renew the memory of apainful or pleasant experience received there, they would return to thevalley of the idol and spend a whole afternoon in its shade. Theabsolute happiness of wandering through the woods together, discoveringnew flowers, getting lost, and finding their way again, was a thingbeyond expression.

Dick had suddenly stumbled upon Love. His courtship had lasted onlysome twenty minutes; it was being gone over again now, and extended.

One day, hearing a curious noise from the tree above the house, heclimbed it. The noise came from the nest, which had been temporarilyleft by the mother bird. It was a gasping, wheezing sound, and it camefrom four wide-open beaks, so anxious to be fed that one could almostsee into the very crops of the owners. They were Koko’s children. Inanother year each of those ugly downy things would, if permitted tolive, be a beautiful sapphire-coloured bird with a few dove-colouredtail feathers, coral beak, and bright, intelligent eyes. A few days agoeach of these things was imprisoned in a pale green egg. A month agothey were nowhere.

Something hit Dick on the cheek. It was the mother bird returned withfood for the young ones. Dick drew his head aside, and she proceededwithout more ado to fill their crops.

CHAPTER XI

THE VANISHING OF EMMELINE

Months passed away. Only one bird remained in the branches of the artu:Koko’s children and mate had vanished, but he remained. The breadfruitleaves had turned from green to pale gold and darkest amber, and nowthe new green leaves were being presented to the spring.

Dick, who had a complete chart of the lagoon in his head, and knew allthe soundings and best fishing places, the locality of the stingingcoral, and the places where you could wade right across at lowtide—Dick, one morning, was gathering his things together for afishing expedition. The place he was going to lay some two and a halfmiles away across the island, and as the road was bad he was goingalone.

Emmeline had been passing a new thread through the beads of thenecklace she sometimes wore. This necklace had a history. In theshallows not far away, Dick had found a bed of shell-fish; wading outat low tide, he had taken some of them out to examine. They wereoysters. The first one he opened, so disgusting did its appearance seemto him, might have been the last, only that under the beard of thething lay a pearl. It was about twice the size of a large pea, and solustrous that even he could not but admire its beauty, though quiteunconscious of its value.

He flung the unopened oysters down, and took the thing to Emmeline.Next day, returning by chance to the same spot, he found the oysters hehad cast down all dead and open in the sun. He examined them, andfound another pearl embedded in one of them. Then he collected nearly abushel of the oysters, and left them to die and open. The idea hadoccurred to him of making a necklace for his companion. She had onemade of shells, he intended to make her one of pearls.

It took a long time, but it was something to do. He pierced them with abig needle, and at the end of four months or so the thing was complete.Great pearls most of them were—pure white, black, pink, some perfectlyround, some tear shaped, some irregular. The thing was worth fifteen,or perhaps twenty thousand pounds, for he only used the biggest hecould find, casting away the small ones as useless.

Emmeline this morning had just finished restringing them on a doublethread. She looked pale and not at all well and had been restless allnight.

As he went off, armed with his spear and fishing tackle, she waved herhand to him without getting up. Usually she followed him a bit into thewood when he was going away like this, but this morning she just sat atthe doorway of the little house, the necklace in her lap, following himwith her eyes until he was lost amidst the trees.

He had no compass to guide him, and he needed none. He knew the woodsby heart. The mysterious line beyond which scarcely an artu tree was tobe found. The long strip of mammee apple—a regular sheet of it ahundred yards broad, and reaching from the middle of the island rightdown to the lagoon. The clearings, some almost circular where the fernsgrew knee-deep. Then he came to the bad part.

The vegetation here had burst into a riot. All sorts of great sappystalks of unknown plants barred the way and tangled the foot; and therewere boggy places into which one sank horribly. Pausing to wipe one’sbrow, the stalks and tendrils one had beaten down, or beaten aside,rose up and closed together, making one a prisoner almost as closelysurrounded as a fly in amber.

All the noontides that had ever fallen upon the island seemed to haveleft some of their heat behind them here. The air was damp and closelike the air of a laundry; and the mournful and perpetual buzz ofinsects filled the silence without destroying it.

A hundred men with scythes might make a road through the place to-day;a month or two later, searching for the road, you would find none—thevegetation would have closed in as water closes when divided.

This was the haunt of the jug orchid—a veritable jug, lid and all.Raising the lid you would find the jug half filled with water.Sometimes in the tangle up above, between two trees, you would see athing like a bird come to ruin. Orchids grew here as in a hothouse. Allthe trees—the few there were—had a spectral and miserable appearance.They were half starved by the voluptuous growth of the gigantic weeds.

If one had much imagination one felt afraid in this place, for one feltnot alone. At any moment it seemed that one might be touched on theelbow by a hand reaching out from the surrounding tangle. Even Dickfelt this, unimaginative and fearless as he was. It took him nearlythree-quarters of an hour to get through, and then, at last, came theblessed air of real day, and a glimpse of the lagoon between thetree-boles.

He would have rowed round in the dinghy, only that at low tide theshallows of the north of the island were a bar to the boat’s passage.Of course he might have rowed all the way round by way of the strandand reef entrance, but that would have meant a circuit of six miles ormore. When he came between the trees down to the lagoon edge it wasabout eleven o’clock in the morning, and the tide was nearly at thefull.

The lagoon just here was like a trough, and the reef was very near,scarcely a quarter of a mile from the shore. The water did not shelve,it went down sheer fifty fathoms or more, and one could fish from thebank just as from a pier head. He had brought some food with him, andhe placed it under a tree whilst he prepared his line, which had a lumpof coral for a sinker. He baited the hook, and whirling the sinkerround in the air sent it flying out a hundred feet from shore. Therewas a baby cocoa-nut tree growing just at the edge of the water. Hefastened the end of his line round the narrow stem, in case ofeventualities, and then, holding the line itself, he fished.

He had promised Emmeline to return before sundown.

He was a fisherman. That is to say, a creature with the enduringpatience of a cat, tireless and heedless of time as an oyster. He camehere for sport more than for fish. Large things were to be found inthis part of the lagoon. The last time he had hooked a horror in theform of a cat-fish; at least in outward appearance it was likest to aMississippi cat-fish. Unlike the cat-fish, it was coarse and useless asfood, but it gave good sport.

The tide was now going out, and it was at the going-out of the tidethat the best fishing was to be had. There was no wind, and the lagoonlay like a sheet of glass, with just a dimple here and there where theoutgoing tide made a swirl in the water.

As he fished he thought of Emmeline and the little house under thetrees. Scarcely one could call it thinking. Pictures passed before hismind’s eye—pleasant and happy pictures, sunlit, moonlit, starlit.

Three hours passed thus without a bite or symptom that the lagooncontained anything else but sea water, and disappointment; but he didnot grumble. He was a fisherman. Then he left the line tied to the treeand sat down to eat the food he had brought with him. He had scarcelyfinished his meal when the baby cocoa-nut tree shivered and becameconvulsed, and he did not require to touch the taut line to know thatit was useless to attempt to cope with the thing at the end of it. Theonly course was to let it tug and drown itself. So he sat down andwatched.

After a few minutes the line slackened, and the little cocoa-nut treeresumed its attitude of pensive meditation and repose. He pulled theline up: there was nothing at the end of it but a hook. He did notgrumble; he baited the hook again, and flung it in, for it was quitelikely that the ferocious thing in the water would bite again.

Full of this idea and heedless of time he fished and waited. The sunwas sinking into the west—he did not heed it. He had quite forgottenthat he had promised Emmeline to return before sunset; it was nearlysunset now. Suddenly, just behind him, from among the trees, he heardher voice, crying:

“Dick!”

CHAPTER XII

THE VANISHING OF EMMELINE (continued)

He dropped the line, and turned with a start. There was no one visible.He ran amongst the trees calling out her name, but only echoesanswered. Then he came back to the lagoon edge.

He felt sure that what he had heard was only fancy, but it was nearlysunset, and more than time to be off. He pulled in his line, wrapped itup, took his fish-spear and started.

It was just in the middle of the bad place that dread came to him.What if anything had happened to her? It was dusk here, and never hadthe weeds seemed so thick, dimness so dismal, the tendrils of the vinesso gin-like. Then he lost his way—he who was so sure of his wayalways! The hunter’s instinct had been crossed, and for a time he wenthither and thither helpless as a ship without a compass. At last hebroke into the real wood, but far to the right of where he ought tohave been. He felt like a beast escaped from a trap, and hurried along,led by the sound of the surf.

When he reached the clear sward that led down to the lagoon the sun hadjust vanished beyond the sea-line. A streak of red cloud floated likethe feather of a flamingo in the western sky close to the sea, andtwilight had already filled the world. He could see the house dimly,under the shadow of the trees, and he ran towards it, crossing thesward diagonally.

Always before, when he had been away, the first thing to greet his eyeson his return had been the figure of Emmeline. Either at the lagoonedge or the house door he would find her waiting for him.

She was not waiting for him to-night. When he reached the house she wasnot there, and he paused, after searching the place, a prey to the mosthorrible perplexity, and unable for the moment to think or act.

Since the shock of the occurrence on the reef she had been subject attimes to occasional attacks of headache; and when the pain was morethan she could bear, she would go off and hide. Dick would hunt for heramidst the trees, calling out her name and hallooing. A faint “halloo”would answer when she heard him, and then he would find her under atree or bush, with her unfortunate head between her hands, a picture ofmisery.

He remembered this now, and started off along the borders of the wood,calling to her, and pausing to listen. No answer came.

He searched amidst the trees as far as the little well, waking theechoes with his voice; then he came back slowly, peering about him inthe deep dusk that now was yielding to the starlight. He sat downbefore the door of the house, and, looking at him, you might havefancied him in the last stages of exhaustion. Profound grief andprofound exhaustion act on the frame very much in the same way. He satwith his chin resting on his chest, his hands helpless. He could hearher voice, still as he heard it over at the other side of the island.She had been in danger and called to him, and he had been calmlyfishing, unconscious of it all.

This thought maddened him. He sat up, stared around him and beat theground with the palms of his hands; then he sprang to his feet and madefor the dinghy. He rowed to the reef: the action of a madman, for shecould not possibly be there.

There was no moon, the starlight both lit and veiled the world, and nosound but the majestic thunder of the waves. As he stood, the nightwind blowing on his face, the white foam seething before him, andCanopus burning in the great silence overhead, the fact that he stoodin the centre of an awful and profound indifference came to hisuntutored mind with a pang.

He returned to the shore: the house was still deserted. A little bowlmade from the shell of a cocoa-nut stood on the grass near the doorway.He had last seen it in her hands, and he took it up and held it for amoment, pressing it tightly to his breast. Then he threw himself downbefore the doorway, and lay upon his face, with head resting upon hisarms in the attitude of a person who is profoundly asleep.

He must have searched through the woods again that night just as asomnambulist searches, for he found himself towards dawn in the valleybefore the idol. Then it was daybreak—the world was full of light andcolour. He was seated before the house door, worn out and exhausted,when, raising his head, he saw Emmeline’s figure coming out from amidstthe distant trees on the other side of the sward.

CHAPTER XIII

THE NEWCOMER

He could not move for a moment, then he sprang to his feet and rantowards her. She looked pale and dazed, and she held something in herarms; something wrapped up in her scarf. As he pressed her to him, thesomething in the bundle struggled against his breast and emitted asquall—just like the squall of a cat. He drew back, and Emmeline,tenderly moving her scarf a bit aside, exposed a wee face. It wasbrick-red and wrinkled; there were two bright eyes, and a tuft of darkhair over the forehead. Then the eyes closed, the face screwed itselfup, and the thing sneezed twice.

“Where did you getit?” he asked, absolutely lost in astonishment asshe covered the face again gently with the scarf.

“I found it in the woods,” replied Emmeline.

Dumb with amazement, he helped her along to the house, and she satdown, resting her head against the bamboos of the wall.

“I felt so bad,” she explained; “and then I went off to sit in thewoods, and then I remembered nothing more, and when I woke up it wasthere.”

“It’s a baby!” said Dick.

“I know,” replied Emmeline.

Mrs James’s baby, seen in the long ago, had risen up before theirmind’s eyes, a messenger from the past to explain what the new thingwas. Then she told him things—things that completely shattered the old“cabbage bed” theory, supplanting it with a truth far more wonderful,far more poetical, too, to he who can appreciate the marvel and themystery of life.

“It has something funny tied on to it,” she went on, as if she werereferring to a parcel she had just received.

“Let’s look,” said Dick.

“No,” she replied; “leave it alone.”

She sat rocking the thing gently, seeming oblivious to the whole world,and quite absorbed in it, as, indeed, was Dick. A physician would haveshuddered, but, perhaps fortunately enough, there was no physician onthe island. Only Nature, and she put everything to rights in her owntime and way.

When Dick had sat marvelling long enough, he set to and lit the fire.He had eaten nothing since the day before, and he was nearly asexhausted as the girl. He cooked some breadfruit, there was some coldfish left over from the day before; this, with some bananas, he servedup on two broad leaves, making Emmeline eat first.

Before they had finished, the creature in the bundle, as though it hadsmelt the food, began to scream. Emmeline drew the scarf aside. Itlooked hungry; its mouth would now be pinched up and now wide open, itseyes opened and closed. The girl touched it on the lips with herfinger, and it seized upon her fingertip and sucked it. Her eyes filledwith tears, she looked appealingly at Dick, who was on his knees; hetook a banana, peeled it, broke off a bit and handed it to her. Sheapproached it to the baby’s mouth. It tried to suck it, failed, blewbubbles at the sun and squalled.

“Wait a minute,” said Dick.

There were some green cocoa-nuts he had gathered the day before closeby. He took one, removed the green husk, and opened one of the eyes,making an opening also in the opposite side of the shell. Theunfortunate infant sucked ravenously at the nut, filled its stomachwith the young cocoa-nut juice, vomited violently, and wailed. Emmelinein despair clasped it to her naked breast, wherefrom, in a moment, itwas hanging like a leech. It knew more about babies than they did.

CHAPTER XIV

HANNAH

At noon, in the shallows of the reef, under the burning sun, the waterwould be quite warm. They would carry the baby down here, and Emmelinewould wash it with a bit of flannel. After a few days it scarcely everscreamed, even when she washed it. It would lie on her knees during theprocess, striking valiantly out with its arms and legs, staringstraight up at the sky. Then, when she turned it on its face, it wouldlay its head down and chuckle and blow bubbles at the coral of thereef, examining, apparently, the pattern of the coral with deep andphilosophic attention.

Dick would sit by with his knees up to his chin, watching it all. Hefelt himself to be part proprietor in the thing—as indeed he was.The mystery of the affair still hung over them both. A week ago theytwo had been alone, and suddenly from nowhere this new individual hadappeared.

It was so complete. It had hair on its head, tiny finger-nails, andhands that would grasp you. It had a whole host of little ways of itsown, and every day added to them.

In a week the extreme ugliness of the newborn child had vanished. Itsface, which had seemed carved in the imitation of a monkey’s face fromhalf a brick, became the face of a happy and healthy baby. It seemed tosee things, and sometimes it would laugh and chuckle as though it hadbeen told a good joke. Its black hair all came off and was supplantedby a sort of down. It had no teeth. It would lie on its back and kickand crow, and double its fists up and try to swallow them alternately,and cross its feet and play with its toes. In fact, it was exactly likeany of the thousand-and-one babies that are born into the world atevery tick of the clock.

“What will we call it?” said Dick one day, as he sat watching his sonand heir crawling about on the grass under the shade of the breadfruitleaves.

“Hannah,” said Emmeline promptly.

The recollection of another baby once heard about was in her mind; andit was as good a name as any other, perhaps, in that lonely place,notwithstanding the fact that Hannah was a boy.

Koko took a vast interest in the new arrival. He would hop round it andpeer at it with his head on one side; and Hannah would crawl after thebird and try to grab it by the tail. In a few months so valiant andstrong did he become that he would pursue his own father, crawlingbefore him on the grass, and you might have seen the mother and fatherand child playing all together like three children, the bird sometimeshovering overhead like a good spirit, sometimes joining in the fun.

Sometimes Emmeline would sit and brood over the child, a troubledexpression on her face and a far-away look in her eyes. The old vaguefear of mischance had returned—the dread of that viewless form herimagination half pictured behind the smile on the face of Nature. Herhappiness was so great that she dreaded to lose it.

There is nothing more wonderful than the birth of a man, and all thatgoes to bring it about. Here, on this island, in the very heart of thesea, amidst the sunshine and the wind-blown trees, under the great bluearch of the sky, in perfect purity of thought, they would discuss thequestion from beginning to end without a blush, the object of theirdiscussion crawling before them on the grass, and attempting to grabfeathers from Koko’s tail.

It was the loneliness of the place as well as their ignorance of lifethat made the old, old miracle appear so strange and fresh—asbeautiful as the miracle of death had appeared awful. In thoughts vagueand beyond expression in words, they linked this new occurrence withthat old occurrence on the reef six years before. The vanishing and thecoming of a man.

Hannah, despite his unfortunate name, was certainly a most virile andengaging baby. The black hair which had appeared and vanished like somepractical joke played by Nature, gave place to a down at first asyellow as sun-bleached wheat, but in a few months’ time tinged withauburn.

One day—he had been uneasy and biting at his thumbs for some timepast—Emmeline, looking into his mouth, saw something white and like agrain of rice protruding from his gum. It was a tooth just born. Hecould eat bananas now, and breadfruit, and they often fed him onfish—a fact which again might have caused a medical man to shudder;yet he throve on it all, and waxed stouter every day.

Emmeline, with a profound and natural wisdom, let him crawl about starknaked, dressed in ozone and sunlight. Taking him out on the reef, shewould let him paddle in the shallow pools, holding him under thearmpits whilst he splashed the diamond-bright water into spray with hisfeet, and laughed and shouted.

They were beginning now to experience a phenomenon, as wonderful as thebirth of the child’s body—the birth of his intelligence: the peepingout of a little personality with predilections of its own, likes anddislikes.

He knew Dick from Emmeline; and when Emmeline had satisfied hismaterial wants, he would hold out his arms to go to Dick if he were by.He looked upon Koko as a friend, but when a friend of Koko’s—a birdwith an inquisitive mind and three red feathers in his tail—dropped inone day to inspect the newcomer, he resented the intrusion, andscreamed.

He had a passion for flowers, or anything bright. He would laugh andshout when taken on the lagoon in the dinghy, and make as if to jumpinto the water to get at the bright-coloured corals below.

Ah me! we laugh at young mothers, and all the miraculous things theytell us about their babies. They see what we cannot see: the firstunfolding of that mysterious flower, the mind.

One day they were out on the lagoon. Dick had been rowing; he hadceased, and was letting the boat drift for a bit. Emmeline was dancingthe child on her knee, when it suddenly held out its arms to theoarsman and said:

“Dick!”

The little word, so often heard and easily repeated, was its first wordon earth.

A voice that had never spoken in the world before, had spoken; and tohear his name thus mysteriously uttered by a being he has created, isthe sweetest and perhaps the saddest thing a man can ever know.

Dick took the child on his knee, and from that moment his love for itwas more than his love for Emmeline or anything else on earth.

CHAPTER XV

THE LAGOON OF FIRE

Ever since the tragedy of six years ago there had been forming in themind of Emmeline Lestrange a something—shall I call it a deepmistrust. She had never been clever; lessons had saddened and weariedher, without making her much the wiser. Yet her mind was of that orderinto which profound truths come by short cuts. She was intuitive.

Great knowledge may lurk in the human mind without the owner of themind being aware. He or she acts in such or such a way, or thinks insuch and such a manner from intuition; in other words, as the outcomeof the profoundest reasoning.

When we have learned to call storms, storms, and death, death, andbirth, birth; when we have mastered the sailor’s horn book, and MrPiddington’s law of cyclones, Ellis’s anatomy, and Lewer’s midwifery,we have already made ourselves half blind. We have become hypnotised bywords and names. We think in words and names, not in ideas; thecommonplace has triumphed, the true intellect is half crushed.

Storms had burst over the island before this. And what Emmelineremembered of them might be expressed by an instance.

The morning would be bright and happy, never so bright the sun, or sobalmy the breeze, or so peaceful the blue lagoon; then, with a horridsuddenness, as if sick with dissimulation and mad to show itself,something would blacken the sun, and with a yell stretch out a hand andravage the island, churn the lagoon into foam, beat down the cocoa-nuttrees, and slay the birds. And one bird would be left and anothertaken, one tree destroyed, and another left standing. The fury of thething was less fearful than the blindness of it, and the indifferenceof it.

One night, when the child was asleep, just after the last star was lit,Dick appeared at the doorway of the house. He had been down to thewater’s edge and had now returned. He beckoned Emmeline to follow him,and, putting down the child, she did so.

“Come here and look,” said he.

He led the way to the water; and as they approached it, Emmeline becameaware that there was something strange about the lagoon. From adistance it looked pale and solid; it might have been a great stretchof grey marble veined with black. Then, as she drew nearer, she sawthat the dull grey appearance was a deception of the eye.

The lagoon was alight and burning.

The phosphoric fire was in its very heart and being; every coral branchwas a torch, every fish a passing lantern. The incoming tide moving thewaters made the whole glittering floor of the lagoon move and shiver,and the tiny waves to lap the bank, leaving behind them glow-wormtraces.

“Look!” said Dick.

He knelt down and plunged his forearm into the water. The immersed partburned like a smouldering torch. Emmeline could see it as plainly asthough it were lit by sunlight. Then he drew his arm out, and as far asthe water had reached, it was covered by a glowing glove.

They had seen the phosphorescence of the lagoon before; indeed, anynight you might watch the passing fish like bars of silver, when themoon was away; but this was something quite new, and it was entrancing.

Emmeline knelt down and dabbled her hands, and made herself a pair ofphosphoric gloves, and cried out with pleasure, and laughed. It was allthe pleasure of playing with fire without the danger of being burnt.Then Dick rubbed his face with the water till it glowed.

“Wait!” he cried; and, running up to the house, he fetched out Hannah.

He came running down with him to the water’s edge, gave Emmeline thechild, unmoored the boat, and started out from shore.

The sculls, as far as they were immersed, were like bars of glisteningsilver; under them passed the fish, leaving cometic tails; each coralclump was a lamp, lending its lustre till the great lagoon was luminousas a lit-up ballroom. Even the child on Emmeline’s lap crowed and criedout at the strangeness of the sight.

They landed on the reef and wandered over the flat. The sea was whiteand bright as snow, and the foam looked like a hedge of fire.

As they stood gazing on this extraordinary sight, suddenly, almost asinstantaneously as the switching off of an electric light, thephosphorescence of the sea flickered and vanished.

The moon was rising. Her crest was just breaking from the water, and asher face came slowly into view behind a belt of vapour that lay on thehorizon, it looked fierce and red, stained with smoke like the face ofEblis.

CHAPTER XVI

THE CYCLONE

When they awoke next morning the day was dark. A solid roof of cloud,lead-coloured and without a ripple on it, lay over the sky, almost tothe horizon. There was not a breath of wind, and the birds flew wildlyabout as if disturbed by some unseen enemy in the wood.

As Dick lit the fire to prepare the breakfast, Emmeline walked up anddown, holding her baby to her breast; she felt restless and uneasy.

As the morning wore on the darkness increased; a breeze rose up, andthe leaves of the breadfruit trees pattered together with the sound ofrain falling upon glass. A storm was coming, but there was somethingdifferent in its approach to the approach of the storms they hadalready known.

As the breeze increased a sound filled the air, coming from far awaybeyond the horizon. It was like the sound of a great multitude ofpeople, and yet so faint and vague was it that sudden bursts of thebreeze through the leaves above would drown it utterly. Then it ceased,and nothing could be heard but the rocking of the branches and thetossing of the leaves under the increasing wind, which was now blowingsharply and fiercely and with a steady rush dead from the west,fretting the lagoon, and sending clouds and masses of foam right overthe reef. The sky that had been so leaden and peaceful and like a solidroof was now all in a hurry, flowing eastward like a great turbulentriver in spate.

And now, again, one could hear the sound in the distance—the thunderof the captains of the storm and the shouting; but still so faint, sovague, so indeterminate and unearthly that it seemed like the sound ina dream.

Emmeline sat amidst the ferns on the floor cowed and dumb, holding thebaby to her breast. It was fast asleep. Dick stood at the doorway. Hewas disturbed in mind, but he did not show it.

The whole beautiful island world had now taken on the colour of ashesand the colour of lead. Beauty had utterly vanished, all seemed sadnessand distress.

The cocoa-palms, under the wind that had lost its steady rush and wasnow blowing in hurricane blasts, flung themselves about in all theattitudes of distress; and whoever has seen a tropical storm will knowwhat a cocoa-palm can express by its movements under the lash of thewind.

Fortunately the house was so placed that it was protected by the wholedepth of the grove between it and the lagoon; and fortunately, too, itwas sheltered by the dense foliage of the breadfruit, for suddenly,with a crash of thunder as if the hammer of Thor had been flung fromsky to earth, the clouds split and the rain came down in a greatslanting wave. It roared on the foliage above, which, bending leaf onleaf, made a slanting roof from which it rushed in a steady sheet-likecascade.

Dick had darted into the house, and was now sitting beside Emmeline,who was shivering and holding the child, which had awakened at thesound of the thunder.

For an hour they sat, the rain ceasing and coming again, the thundershaking earth and sea, and the wind passing overhead with a piercing,monotonous cry.

Then all at once the wind dropped, the rain ceased, and a pale spectrallight, like the light of dawn, fell before the doorway.

“It’s over!” cried Dick, making to get up.

“Oh, listen!” said Emmeline, clinging to him, and holding the baby tohis breast as if the touch of him would give it protection. She haddivined that there was something approaching worse than a storm.

Then, listening in the silence, away from the other side of the island,they heard a sound like the droning of a great top.

It was the centre of the cyclone approaching.

A cyclone is a circular storm: a storm in the form of a ring. This ringof hurricane travels across the ocean with inconceivable speed andfury, yet its centre is a haven of peace.

As they listened the sound increased, sharpened, and became a tang thatpierced the ear-drums: a sound that shook with hurry and speed,increasing, bringing with it the bursting and crashing of trees, andbreaking at last overhead in a yell that stunned the brain like theblow of a bludgeon. In a second the house was torn away, and they wereclinging to the roots of the breadfruit, deaf, blinded, half-lifeless.

The terror and the prolonged shock of it reduced them from thinkingbeings to the level of frightened animals whose one instinct ispreservation.

How long the horror lasted they could not tell, when, like a madman whopauses for a moment in the midst of his struggles and standsstock-still, the wind ceased blowing, and there was peace. The centreof the cyclone was passing over the island.

Looking up, one saw a marvellous sight. The air was full of birds,butterflies, insects—all hanging in the heart of the storm andtravelling with it under its protection.

Though the air was still as the air of a summer’s day, from north,south, east, and west, from every point of the compass, came the yellof the hurricane.

There was something shocking in this.

In a storm one is so beaten about by the wind that one has no time tothink: one is half stupefied. But in the dead centre of a cyclone oneis in perfect peace. The trouble is all around, but it is not here. Onehas time to examine the thing like a tiger in a cage, listen to itsvoice and shudder at its ferocity.

The girl, holding the baby to her breast, sat up gasping. The baby hadcome to no harm; it had cried at first when the thunder broke, but nowit seemed impassive, almost dazed. Dick stepped from under the tree andlooked at the prodigy in the air.

The cyclone had gathered on its way sea-birds and birds from the land;there were gulls, electric white and black man-of-war birds,butterflies, and they all seemed imprisoned under a great drifting domeof glass. As they went, travelling like things without volition and ina dream, with a hum and a roar the south-west quadrant of the cycloneburst on the island, and the whole bitter business began over again.

It lasted for hours, then towards midnight the wind fell; and when thesun rose next morning he came through a cloudless sky, without a traceof apology for the destruction caused by his children the winds. Heshowed trees uprooted and birds lying dead, three or four canesremaining of what had once been a house, the lagoon the colour of apale sapphire, and a glass-green, foam-capped sea racing in thunderagainst the reef.

CHAPTER XVII

THE STRICKEN WOODS

At first they thought they were ruined; then Dick, searching, found theold saw under a tree, and the butcher’s knife near it, as though theknife and saw had been trying to escape in company and had failed.

Bit by bit they began to recover something of their scattered property.The remains of the flannel had been taken by the cyclone and wrappedround and round a slender cocoa-nut tree, till the trunk looked like agaily-bandaged leg. The box of fishhooks had been jammed into thecentre of a cooked breadfruit, both having been picked up by thefingers of the wind and hurled against the same tree; and the stay-sailof the Shenandoahwas out on the reef, with a piece of coral carefullyplaced on it as if to keep it down. As for the lug-sail belonging tothe dinghy, it was never seen again.

There is humour sometimes in a cyclone, if you can only appreciate it;no other form of air disturbance produces such quaint effects. Besidethe great main whirlpool of wind, there are subsidiary whirlpools, eachactuated by its own special imp.

Emmeline had felt Hannah nearly snatched from her arms twice by theselittle ferocious gimlet winds; and that the whole business of the greatstorm was set about with the object of snatching Hannah from her, andblowing him out to sea, was a belief which she held, perhaps, in theinnermost recesses of her mind.

The dinghy would have been utterly destroyed, had it not heeled overand sunk in shallow water at the first onset of the wind; as it was,Dick was able to bail it out at the next low tide, when it floated asbravely as ever, not having started a single seam.

But the destruction amidst the trees was pitiful. Looking at the woodsas a mass, one noticed gaps here and there, but what had reallyhappened could not be seen till one was amongst the trees. Great,beautiful cocoa-nut palms, not dead, but just dying, lay crushed andbroken as if trampled upon by some enormous foot. You would comeacross half a dozen lianas twisted into one great cable. Wherecocoa-nut palms were, you could not move a yard without kicking againsta fallen nut; you might have picked up full-grown, half-grown, and weebaby nuts, not bigger than small apples, for on the same tree you willfind nuts of all sizes and conditions.

One never sees a perfectly straight-stemmed cocoa-palm; they all havean inclination from the perpendicular more or less; perhaps that is whya cyclone has more effect on them than on other trees.

Artus, once so pretty a picture with their diamond-chequered trunks,lay broken and ruined; and right through the belt of mammee apple,right through the bad lands, lay a broad road, as if an army, horse,foot, and artillery, had passed that way from lagoon edge to lagoonedge. This was the path left by the great fore-foot of the storm; buthad you searched the woods on either side, you would have found pathswhere the lesser winds had been at work, where the baby whirlwinds hadbeen at play.

From the bruised woods, like an incense offered to heaven, rose aperfume of blossoms gathered and scattered, of rain-wet leaves, oflianas twisted and broken and oozing their sap; the perfume ofnewly-wrecked and ruined trees—the essence and soul of the artu, thebanyan and cocoa-palm cast upon the wind.

You would have found dead butterflies in the woods, dead birds too; butin the great path of the storm you would have found dead butterflies’wings, feathers, leaves frayed as if by fingers, branches of the aoa,and sticks of the hibiscus broken into little fragments.

Powerful enough to rip a ship open, root up a tree, half ruin a city.Delicate enough to tear a butterfly wing from wing—that is a cyclone.

Emmeline, wandering about in the woods with Dick on the day after thestorm, looking at the ruin of great tree and little bird, andrecollecting the land birds she had caught a glimpse of yesterday beingcarried along safely by the storm out to sea to be drowned, felt agreat weight lifting from her heart. Mischance had come, and sparedthem and the baby. The blue had spoken, but had not called them.

She felt that something—the something which we in civilisation callFate—was for the present gorged; and, without being annihilated, herincessant hypochondriacal dread condensed itself into a point, leavingher horizon sunlit and clear.

The cyclone had indeed treated them almost, one might say, amiably. Ithad taken the house—but that was a small matter, for it had left themnearly all their small possessions. The tinder box and flint and steelwould have been a much more serious loss than a dozen houses, for,without it, they would have had absolutely no means of making a fire.

If anything, the cyclone had been almost too kind to them; had let thempay off too little of that mysterious debt they owed to the gods.

CHAPTER XVIII

A FALLEN IDOL

The next day Dick began to rebuild the house. He had fetched thestay-sail from the reef and rigged up a temporary tent.

It was a great business cutting the canes and dragging them out in theopen. Emmeline helped; whilst Hannah, seated on the grass, played withthe bird that had vanished during the storm, but reappeared the eveningafter.

The child and the bird had grown fast friends; they were friendlyenough even at first, but now the bird would sometimes let the tinyhands clasp him right round his body—at least, as far as the handswould go.

It is a rare experience for a man to hold a tame and unstruggling andunfrightened bird in his hands; next to pressing a woman in his arms,it is the pleasantest tactile sensation he will ever experience,perhaps, in life. He will feel a desire to press it to his heart, if hehas such a thing.

Hannah would press Koko to his little brown stomach, as if in artlessadmission of where his heart lay.

He was an extraordinarily bright and intelligent child. He did notpromise to be talkative, for, having achieved the word “Dick,” herested content for a long while before advancing further into thelabyrinth of language; but though he did not use his tongue, he spokein a host of other ways. With his eyes, that were as bright as Koko’s,and full of all sorts of mischief; with his hands and feet and themovements of his body. He had a way of shaking his hands before himwhen highly delighted, a way of expressing nearly all the shades ofpleasure; and though he rarely expressed anger, when he did so, heexpressed it fully.

He was just now passing over the frontier into toyland. In civilisationhe would no doubt have been the possessor of an india-rubber dog or awoolly lamb, but there were no toys here at all. Emmeline’s old dollhad been left behind when they took flight from the other side of theisland, and Dick, a year or so ago, on one of his expeditions, hadfound it lying half buried in the sand of the beach.

He had brought it back now more as a curiosity than anything else, andthey had kept it on the shelf in the house. The cyclone had impaled iton a tree-twig near by, as if in derision; and Hannah, when it waspresented to him as a plaything, flung it away from him as if indisgust. But he would play with flowers or bright shells, or bits ofcoral, making vague patterns with them on the sward.

All the toy lambs in the world would not have pleased him better thanthose things, the toys of the Troglodyte children—the children of theStone Age. To clap two oyster shells together and make a noise—what,after all, could a baby want better than that?

One afternoon, when the house was beginning to take some sort of form,they ceased work and went off into the woods; Emmeline carrying thebaby, and Dick taking turns with him. They were going to the valley ofthe idol.

Since the coming of Hannah, and even before, the stone figure standingin its awful and mysterious solitude had ceased to be an object ofdread to Emmeline, and had become a thing vaguely benevolent. Love hadcome to her under its shade; and under its shade the spirit of thechild had entered into her—from where, who knows? But certainly throughheaven.

Perhaps the thing which had been the god of some unknown people hadinspired her with the instinct of religion; if so, she was his lastworshipper on earth, for when they entered the valley they found himlying upon his face. Great blocks of stone lay around him: there hadevidently been a landslip, a catastrophe preparing for ages, anddetermined, perhaps, by the torrential rain of the cyclone.

In Ponape, Huahine, in Easter Island, you may see great idols that havebeen felled like this, temples slowly dissolving from sight, andterraces, seemingly as solid as the hills, turning softly and subtlyinto shapeless mounds of stone.

CHAPTER XIX

THE EXPEDITION

Next morning the light of day filtering through the trees awakenedEmmeline in the tent which they had improvised whilst the house wasbuilding. Dawn came later here than on the other side of the islandwhich faced east—later, and in a different manner—for there is thedifference of worlds between dawn coming over a wooded hill, and dawncoming over the sea.

Over at the other side, sitting on the sand with the break of the reefwhich faced the east before you, scarcely would the east change colourbefore the sea-line would be on fire, the sky lit up into anillimitable void of blue, and the sunlight flooding into the lagoon,the ripples of light seeming to chase the ripples of water.

On this side it was different. The sky would be dark and full of stars,and the woods, great spaces of velvety shadow. Then through the leavesof the artu would come a sigh, and the leaves of the breadfruit wouldpatter, and the sound of the reef become faint. The land breeze hadawakened, and in a while, as if it had blown them away, looking up, youwould find the stars gone, and the sky a veil of palest blue. In thisindirect approach of dawn there was something ineffably mysterious. Onecould see, but the things seen were indecisive and vague, just as theyare in the gloaming of an English summer’s day.

Scarcely had Emmeline arisen when Dick woke also, and they went out onto the sward, and then down to the water’s edge. Dick went in for aswim, and the girl, holding the baby, stood on the bank watching him.

Always after a great storm the weather of the island would become morebracing and exhilarating, and this morning the air seemed filled withthe spirit of spring. Emmeline felt it, and as she watched the swimmerdisporting in the water, she laughed, and held the child up to watchhim. She was fey. The breeze, filled with all sorts of sweet perfumesfrom the woods, blew her black hair about her shoulders, and the fulllight of morning coming over the palm fronds of the woods beyond thesward touched her and the child. Nature seemed caressing them.

Dick came ashore, and then ran about to dry himself in the wind. Thenhe went to the dinghy and examined her; for he had determined to leavethe house-building for half a day, and row round to the old place tosee how the banana trees had fared during the storm. His anxiety aboutthem was not to be wondered at. The island was his larder, and thebananas were a most valuable article of food. He had all the feelingsof a careful housekeeper about them, and he could not rest till he hadseen for himself the extent of damage, if damage there was any.

He examined the boat, and then they all went back to breakfast. Livingtheir lives, they had to use forethought. They would put away, forinstance, all the shells of the cocoa-nuts they used for fuel; and younever could imagine the blazing splendour there lives in the shell of acocoa-nut till you see it burning. Yesterday, Dick, with his usualprudence, had placed a heap of sticks, all wet with the rain of thestorm, to dry in the sun: as a consequence, they had plenty of fuel tomake a fire with this morning.

When they had finished breakfast he got the knife to cut the bananaswith—if there were any left to cut—and, taking the javelin, he wentdown to the boat, followed by Emmeline and the child.

Dick had stepped into the boat, and was on the point of unmooring her,and pushing her off, when Emmeline stopped him.

“Dick!”

“Yes?”

“I will go with you.”

“You!” said he in astonishment.

“Yes, I’m—not afraid any more.”

It was a fact; since the coming of the child she had lost that dread ofthe other side of the island—or almost lost it.

Death is a great darkness, birth is a great light—they had intermixedin her mind; the darkness was still there, but it was no longerterrible to her, for it was infused with the light. The result was atwilight sad, but beautiful, and unpeopled with forms of fear.

Years ago she had seen a mysterious door close and shut a human beingout for ever from the world. The sight had filled her with dreadunimaginable, for she had no words for the thing, no religion orphilosophy to explain it away or gloss it over. Just recently she hadseen an equally mysterious door open and admit a human being; and deepdown in her mind, in the place where the dreams were, the one greatfact had explained and justified the other. Life had vanished into thevoid, but life had come from there. There was life in the void, and itwas no longer terrible.

Perhaps all religions were born on a day when some woman, seated upon arock by the prehistoric sea, looked at her newborn child and recalledto mind her man who had been slain, thus closing the charm andimprisoning the idea of a future state.

Emmeline, with the child in her arms, stepped into the little boat andtook her seat in the stern, whilst Dick pushed off. Scarcely had he putout the sculls than a new passenger arrived. It was Koko. He wouldoften accompany them to the reef, though, strangely enough, he wouldnever go there alone of his own accord. He made a circle or two overthem, and then lit on the gunwale in the bow, and perched there, humpedup, and with his long dove-coloured tail feathers presented to thewater.

The oarsman kept close in-shore, and as they rounded the little capeall gay with wild cocoa-nut the bushes brushed the boat, and the child,excited by their colour, held out his hands to them. Emmelinestretched out her hand and broke off a branch; but it was not a branchof the wild cocoa-nut she had plucked, it was a branch of thenever-wake-up berries. The berries that will cause a man to sleep,should he eat of them—to sleep and dream, and never wake up again.

“Throw them away!” cried Dick, who remembered.

“I will in a minute,” she replied.

She was holding them up before the child, who was laughing and tryingto grasp them. Then she forgot them, and dropped them in the bottom ofthe boat, for something had struck the keel with a thud, and the waterwas boiling all round.

There was a savage fight going on below. In the breeding season greatbattles would take place sometimes in the lagoon, for fish have theirjealousies just like men—love affairs, friendships. The two greatforms could be dimly perceived, one in pursuit of the other, and theyterrified Emmeline, who implored Dick to row on.

They slipped by the pleasant shores that Emmeline had never seenbefore, having been sound asleep when they came past them those yearsago.

Just before putting off she had looked back at the beginnings of thelittle house under the artu tree, and as she looked at the strangeglades and groves, the picture of it rose before her, and seemed tocall her back.

It was a tiny possession, but it was home; and so little used to changewas she that already a sort of home-sickness was upon her; but itpassed away almost as soon as it came, and she fell to wondering at thethings around her, and pointing them out to the child.

When they came to the place where Dick had hooked the albicore, he hungon his oars and told her about it. It was the first time she had heardof it; a fact which shows into what a state of savagery he had beenlapsing. He had mentioned about the canoes, for he had to account forthe javelin; but as for telling her of the incidents of the chase, heno more thought of doing so than a red Indian would think of detailingto his squaw the incidents of a bear hunt. Contempt for women is thefirst law of savagery, and perhaps the last law of some old andprofound philosophy.

She listened, and when it came to the incident of the shark, sheshuddered.

“I wish I had a hook big enough to catch him with,” said he, staringinto the water as if in search of his enemy.

“Don’t think of him, Dick,” said Emmeline, holding the child moretightly to her heart. “Row on.”

He resumed the sculls, but you could have seen from his face that hewas recounting to himself the incident.

When they had rounded the last promontory, and the strand and the breakin the reef opened before them, Emmeline caught her breath. The placehad changed in some subtle manner; everything was there as before, yeteverything seemed different—the lagoon seemed narrower, the reefnearer, the cocoa-palms not nearly so tall. She was contrasting thereal things with the recollection of them when seen by a child. Theblack speck had vanished from the reef; the storm had swept it utterlyaway.

Dick beached the boat on the shelving sand, and left Emmeline seated inthe stern of it, whilst he went in search of the bananas; she wouldhave accompanied him, but the child had fallen asleep.

Hannah asleep was even a pleasanter picture than when awake. He lookedlike a little brown Cupid without wings, bow or arrow. He had all thegrace of a curled-up feather. Sleep was always in pursuit of him, andwould catch him up at the most unexpected moments—when he was at play,or indeed at any time. Emmeline would sometimes find him with acoloured shell or bit of coral that he had been playing with in hishand fast asleep, a happy expression on his face, as if his mind werepursuing its earthly avocations on some fortunate beach in dreamland.

Dick had plucked a huge breadfruit leaf and given it to her as ashelter from the sun, and she sat holding it over her, and gazingstraight before her, over the white, sunlit sands.

The flight of the mind in reverie is not in a direct line. To her,dreaming as she sat, came all sorts of coloured pictures, recalled bythe scene before her: the green water under the stern of a ship, andthe word Shenandoahvaguely reflected on it; their landing, and thelittle tea-set spread out on the white sand—she could still see thepansies painted on the plates, and she counted in memory the leadspoons; the great stars that burned over the reef at nights; theCluricaunes and fairies; the cask by the well where the convolvulusblossomed, and the wind-blown trees seen from the summit of thehill—all these pictures drifted before her, dissolving and replacingeach other as they went.

There was sadness in the contemplation of them, but pleasure too. Shefelt at peace with the world. All trouble seemed far behind her. It wasas if the great storm that had left them unharmed had been anambassador from the powers above to assure her of their forbearance,protection, and love.

All at once she noticed that between the boat’s bow and the sand therelay a broad, blue, sparkling line. The dinghy was afloat.

CHAPTER XX

THE KEEPER OF THE LAGOON

The woods here had been less affected by the cyclone than those uponthe other side of the island, but there had been destruction enough. Toreach the place he wanted, Dick had to climb over felled trees andfight his way through a tangle of vines that had once hung overhead.

The banana trees had not suffered at all; as if by some specialdispensation of Providence even the great bunches of fruit had beenscarcely injured, and he proceeded to climb and cut them. He cut twobunches, and with one across his shoulder came back down through thetrees.

He had got half across the sands, his head bent under the load, when adistant call came to him, and, raising his head, he saw the boat adriftin the middle of the lagoon, and the figure of the girl in the bow ofit waving to him with her arm. He saw a scull floating on the waterhalf-way between the boat and the shore, which she had no doubt lost inan attempt to paddle the boat back. He remembered that the tide wasgoing out.

He flung his load aside, and ran down the beach; in a moment he was inthe water. Emmeline, standing up in the boat, watched him.

When she found herself adrift, she had made an effort to row back, andin her hurry shipping the sculls she had lost one. With a single scullshe was quite helpless, as she had not the art of sculling a boat fromthe stern. At first she was not frightened, because she knew that Dickwould soon return to her assistance; but as the distance between boatand shore increased, a cold hand seemed laid upon her heart. Looking atthe shore it seemed very far away, and the view towards the reef wasterrific, for the opening had increased in apparent size, and the greatsea beyond seemed drawing her to it.

She saw Dick coming out of the wood with the load on his shoulder, andshe called to him. At first he did not seem to hear, then she saw himlook up, cast the bananas away, and come running down the sand to thewater’s edge. She watched him swimming, she saw him seize the scull,and her heart gave a great leap of joy.

Towing the scull and swimming with one arm, he rapidly approached theboat. He was quite close, only ten feet away, when Emmeline saw behindhim, shearing through the clear, rippling water and advancing withspeed, a dark triangle that seemed made of canvas stretched upon asword point.

Forty years ago he had floated adrift on the sea in the form andlikeness of a small shabby pine-cone, a prey to anything that mightfind him. He had escaped the jaws of the dog-fish, and the jaws of thedog-fish are a very wide door; he had escaped the albicore and squid:his life had been one long series of miraculous escapes from death. Outof a billion like him born in the same year, he and a few others onlyhad survived.

For thirty years he had kept the lagoon to himself, as a ferocioustiger keeps a jungle. He had known the palm tree on the reef when itwas a seedling, and he had known the reef even before the palm tree wasthere. The things he had devoured, flung one upon another, would havemade a mountain; yet he was as clear of enmity as a sword, as cruel, andas soulless. He was the spirit of the lagoon.

Emmeline screamed, and pointed to the thing behind the swimmer. Heturned, saw it, dropped the oar and made for the boat. She had seizedthe remaining scull and stood with it poised, then she hurled it bladeforemost at the form in the water, now fully visible, and close on itsprey.

She could not throw a stone straight, yet the scull went like an arrowto the mark, balking the pursuer and saving the pursued. In a momentmore his leg was over the gunwale, and he was saved.

But the scull was lost.

CHAPTER XXI

THE HAND OF THE SEA

There was nothing in the boat that could possibly be used as a paddle;the scull was only five or six yards away, but to attempt to swim to itwas certain death, yet they were being swept out to sea. He might havemade the attempt, only that on the starboard quarter the form of theshark, gently swimming at the same pace as they were drifting, could bemade out only half veiled by the water.

The bird perched on the gunwale seemed to divine their trouble, for herose in the air, made a circle, and resumed his perch with all hisfeathers ruffled.

Dick stood in despair, helpless, his hands clasping his head. The shorewas drawing away before him, the surf loudening behind him, yet hecould do nothing. The island was being taken away from them by thegreat hand of the sea.

Then, suddenly, the little boat entered the race formed by theconfluence of the tides, from the right and left arms of the lagoon;the sound of the surf suddenly increased as though a door had beenflung open. The breakers were falling and the sea-gulls crying oneither side of them, and for a moment the ocean seemed to hesitate asto whether they were to be taken away into her wastes, or dashed on thecoral strand. Only for a moment this seeming hesitation lasted; thenthe power of the tide prevailed over the power of the swell, and thelittle boat taken by the current drifted gently out to sea.

Dick flung himself down beside Emmeline, who was seated in the bottomof the boat holding the child to her breast. The bird, seeing the landretreat, and wise in its instinct, rose into the air. It circledthrice round the drifting boat, and then, like a beautiful butfaithless spirit, passed away to the shore.

CHAPTER XXII

TOGETHER

The island had sunk slowly from sight; at sundown it was just a trace,a stain on the south-western horizon. It was before the new moon, andthe little boat lay drifting. It drifted from the light of sunset intoa world of vague violet twilight, and now it lay drifting under thestars.

The girl, clasping the baby to her breast, leaned against hercompanion’s shoulder; neither of them spoke. All the wonders in theirshort existence had culminated in this final wonder, this passing awaytogether from the world of Time. This strange voyage they had embarkedon—to where?

Now that the first terror was over they felt neither sorrow nor fear.They were together. Come what might, nothing could divide them; evenshould they sleep and never wake up, they would sleep together. Had onebeen left and the other taken!

As though the thought had occurred to them simultaneously, they turnedone to the other, and their lips met, their souls met, mingling in onedream; whilst above in the windless heaven space answered space withflashes of siderial light, and Canopus shone and burned like thepointed sword of Azrael.

Clasped in Emmeline’s hand was the last and most mysterious gift of themysterious world they had known—the branch of crimson berries.

BOOK III

CHAPTER I

MAD LESTRANGE

They knew him upon the Pacific slope as “Mad Lestrange.” He was notmad, but he was a man with a fixed idea. He was pursued by a vision:the vision of two children and an old sailor adrift in a little boatupon a wide blue sea.

When the Arago, bound for Papetee, picked up the boats of theNorthumberland, only the people in the long-boat were alive. Le Farge,the captain, was mad, and he never recovered his reason. Lestrange wasutterly shattered; the awful experience in the boats and the loss ofthe children had left him a seemingly helpless wreck. The scowbankers,like all their class, had fared better, and in a few days were aboutthe ship and sitting in the sun. Four days after the rescue the Aragospoke the Newcastle, bound for San Francisco, and transhipped theshipwrecked men.

Had a physician seen Lestrange on board the Northumberlandas she layin that long, long calm before the fire, he would have declared thatnothing but a miracle could prolong his life. The miracle came about.

In the general hospital of San Francisco, as the clouds cleared fromhis mind, they unveiled the picture of the children and the littleboat. The picture had been there daily, seen but not trulycomprehended; the horrors gone through in the open boat, the sheerphysical exhaustion, had merged all the accidents of the great disasterinto one mournful half-comprehended fact. When his brain cleared allthe other incidents fell out of focus, and memory, with her eyes setupon the children, began to paint a picture that he was ever more tosee.

Memory cannot produce a picture that Imagination has not retouched; andher pictures, even the ones least touched by Imagination, are no merephotographs, but the work of an artist. All that is inessential shecasts away, all that is essential she retains; she idealises, and thatis why her picture of a lost mistress has had power to keep a man acelibate to the end of his days, and why she can break a human heartwith the picture of a dead child. She is a painter, but she is also apoet.

The picture before the mind of Lestrange was filled with this almostdiabolical poetry, for in it the little boat and her helpless crew wererepresented adrift on a blue and sunlit sea. A sea most beautiful tolook at, yet most terrible, bearing as it did the recollections ofthirst.

He had been dying, when, raising himself on his elbow, so to say, helooked at this picture. It recalled him to life. His willpower asserteditself, and he refused to die.

The will of a man has, if it is strong enough, the power to rejectdeath. He was not in the least conscious of the exercise of this power;he only knew that a great and absorbing interest had suddenly arisen inhim, and that a great aim stood before him—the recovery of thechildren.

The disease that was killing him ceased its ravages, or rather wasslain in its turn by the increased vitality against which it had tostrive. He left the hospital and took up his quarters at the PalaceHotel, and then, like the General of an army, he began to formulate hisplan of campaign against Fate.

When the crew of the Northumberlandhad stampeded, hurling theirofficers aside, lowering the boats with a rush, and casting themselvesinto the sea, everything had been lost in the way of ship’s papers; thecharts, the two logs—everything, in fact, that could indicate thelatitude and longitude of the disaster. The first and second officersand a midshipman had shared the fate of the quarter-boat; of theforemast hands saved, not one, of course, could give the slightesthint as to the locality of the spot.

A time reckoning from the Horn told little, for there was no record ofthe log. All that could be said was that the disaster had occurredsomewhere south of the line.

In Le Farge’s brain lay for a certainty the position, and Lestrangewent to see the captain in the “Maison de Sante,” where he was beinglooked after, and found him quite recovered from the furious mania thathe had been suffering from. Quite recovered, and playing with a ball ofcoloured worsted.

There remained the log of the Arago; in it would be found the latitudeand longitude of the boats she had picked up.

The Arago, due at Papetee, became overdue. Lestrange watched theoverdue lists from day to day, from week to week, from month to month,uselessly, for the Aragonever was heard of again. One could not affirmeven that she was wrecked; she was simply one of the ships that nevercome back from the sea.

CHAPTER II

THE SECRET OF THE AZURE

To lose a child he loves is undoubtedly the greatest catastrophe thatcan happen to a man. I do not refer to its death.

A child wanders into the street, or is left by its nurse for a moment,and vanishes. At first the thing is not realised. There is a pang andhurry at the heart which half vanishes, whilst the understandingexplains that in a civilised city, if a child gets lost, it will befound and brought back by the neighbours or the police.

But the police know nothing of the matter, or the neighbours, and thehours pass. Any minute may bring back the wanderer; but the minutespass, and the day wears into evening, and the evening to night, and thenight to dawn, and the common sounds of a new day begin.

You cannot remain at home for restlessness; you go out, only to returnhurriedly for news. You are eternally listening, and what you hearshocks you; the common sounds of life, the roll of the carts and cabsin the street, the footsteps of the passers-by, are full of anindescribable mournfulness; music increases your misery into madness,and the joy of others is monstrous as laughter heard in hell.

If some one were to bring you the dead body of the child, you mightweep, but you would bless him, for it is the uncertainty that kills.

You go mad, or go on living. Years pass by, and you are an old man.You say to yourself: “He would have been twenty years of age to-day.”

There is not in the old ferocious penal code of our forefathers apunishment adequate to the case of the man or woman who steals a child.

Lestrange was a wealthy man, and one hope remained to him, that thechildren might have been rescued by some passing ship. It was not thecase of children lost in a city, but in the broad Pacific, where shipstravel from all ports to all ports, and to advertise his lossadequately it was necessary to placard the world. Ten thousand dollarswas the reward offered for news of the lost ones, twenty thousand forthe recovery; and the advertisement appeared in every newspaper likelyto reach the eyes of a sailor, from the Liverpool Postto the Dead Bird.

The years passed without anything definite coming in answer to allthese advertisements. Once news came of two children saved from the seain the neighbourhood of the Gilberts, and it was not false news, butthey were not the children he was seeking for. This incident at oncedepressed and stimulated him, for it seemed to say, “If these childrenhave been saved, why not yours?”

The strange thing was, that in his heart he felt a certainty that theywere alive. His intellect suggested their death in twenty differentforms; but a whisper, somewhere out of that great blue ocean, told himat intervals that what he sought was there, living, and waiting for him.

He was somewhat of the same temperament as Emmeline—a dreamer, with amind tuned to receive and record the fine rays that fill this worldflowing from intellect to intellect, and even from what we callinanimate things. A coarser nature would, though feeling, perhaps, asacutely the grief, have given up in despair the search. But he kept on;and at the end of the fifth year, so far from desisting, he chartered aschooner and passed eighteen months in a fruitless search, calling atlittle-known islands, and once, unknowing, at an island only threehundred miles away from the tiny island of this story.

If you wish to feel the hopelessness of this unguided search, do notlook at a map of the Pacific, but go there. Hundreds and hundreds ofthousands of square leagues of sea, thousands of islands, reefs, atolls.

Up to a few years ago there were many small islands utterly unknown;even still there are some, though the charts of the Pacific are thegreatest triumphs of hydrography; and though the island of the storywas actually on the Admiralty charts, of what use was that fact toLestrange?

He would have continued searching, but he dared not, for the desolationof the sea had touched him.

In that eighteen months the Pacific explained itself to him in part,explained its vastness, its secrecy and inviolability. The schoonerlifted veil upon veil of distance, and veil upon veil lay beyond. Hecould only move in a right line; to search the wilderness of water withany hope, one would have to be endowed with the gift of moving in alldirections at once.

He would often lean over the bulwark rail and watch the swell slip by,as if questioning the water. Then the sunsets began to weigh upon hisheart, and the stars to speak to him in a new language, and he knewthat it was time to return, if he would return with a whole mind.

When he got back to San Francisco he called upon his agent, Wannamakerof Kearney Street, but there was still no news.

CHAPTER III

CAPTAIN FOUNTAIN

He had a suite of rooms at the Palace Hotel, and he lived the life ofany other rich man who is not addicted to pleasure. He knew some of thebest people in the city, and conducted himself so sanely in allrespects that a casual stranger would never have guessed his reputationfor madness; but when you knew him better, you would find sometimes inthe middle of a conversation that his mind was away from the subject;and were you to follow him in the street, you would hear him inconversation with himself. Once at a dinner-party he rose and left theroom, and did not return. Trifles, but sufficient to establish areputation of a sort.

One morning—to be precise, it was the second day of May, exactly eightyears and five months after the wreck of the Northumberland—Lestrangewas in his sitting-room reading, when the bell of the telephone, whichstood in the corner of the room, rang. He went to the instrument.

“Are you there?” came a high American voice. “Lestrange—right—comedown and see me—Wannamaker—I have news for you.”

Lestrange held the receiver for a moment, then he put it back in therest. He went to a chair and sat down, holding his head between hishands, then he rose and went to the telephone again; but he dared notuse it, he dare not shatter the newborn hope.

“News!” What a world lies in that word.

In Kearney Street he stood before the door of Wannamaker’s officecollecting himself and watching the crowd drifting by, then he enteredand went up the stairs. He pushed open a swing-door and entered a greatroom. The clink and rattle of a dozen typewriters filled the place, andall the hurry of business; clerks passed and came with sheaves ofcorrespondence in their hands; and Wannamaker himself, rising frombending over a message which he was correcting on one of thetypewriters’ tables, saw the newcomer and led him to the private office.

“What is it?” said Lestrange.

“Only this,” said the other, taking up a slip of paper with a name andaddress on it. “Simon J. Fountain, of 45 Rathray Street, West—that’sdown near the wharves—says he has seen your ad. in an old number of apaper, and he thinks he can tell you something. He did not specify thenature of the intelligence, but it might be worth finding out.”

“I will go there,” said Lestrange.

“Do you know Rathray Street?”

“No.”

Wannamaker went out and called a boy and gave him some directions; thenLestrange and the boy started.

Lestrange left the office without saying “Thank you,” or taking leavein any way of the advertising agent—who did not feel in the leastaffronted, for he knew his customer.

Rathray Street is, or was before the earthquake, a street of smallclean houses. It had a seafaring look that was accentuated by themarine perfumes from the wharves close by and the sound of steamwinches loading or discharging cargo—a sound that ceased not nightor day as the work went on beneath the sun or the sizzling arc lamps.

No. 45 was almost exactly like its fellows, neither better nor worse;and the door was opened by a neat, prim woman, small, and of middleage. Commonplace she was, no doubt, but not commonplace to Lestrange.

“Is Mr Fountain in?” he asked. “I have come about the advertisement.”

“Oh, have you, sir?” she replied, making way for him to enter, andshowing him into a little sitting-room on the left of the passage.“The Captain is in bed; he is a great invalid, but he was expecting,perhaps, some one would call, and he will be able to see you in aminute, if you don’t mind waiting.”

“Thanks,” said Lestrange; “I can wait.”

He had waited eight years, what mattered a few minutes now? But at notime in the eight years had he suffered such suspense, for his heartknew that now, just now in this commonplace little house, from the lipsof, perhaps, the husband of that commonplace woman, he was going tolearn either what he feared to hear, or what he hoped.

It was a depressing little room; it was so clean, and looked as thoughit were never used. A ship imprisoned in a glass bottle stood upon themantelpiece, and there were shells from far-away places, pictures ofships in sand—all the things one finds as a rule adorning an oldsailor’s home.

Lestrange, as he sat waiting, could hear movements from the nextroom—probably the invalid’s, which they were preparing for hisreception. The distant sounds of the derricks and winches came muffledthrough the tightly-shut window that looked as though it never had beenopened. A square of sunlight lit the upper part of the cheap lacecurtain on the right of the window, and repeated its pattern vaguely onthe lower part of the wall opposite. Then a bluebottle fly awokesuddenly into life and began to buzz and drum against the window pane,and Lestrange wished that they would come.

A man of his temperament must necessarily, even under the happiestcircumstances, suffer in going through the world; the fine fibre alwayssuffers when brought into contact with the coarse. These people were askindly disposed as any one else. The advertisement and the face andmanners of the visitor might have told them that it was not the timefor delay, yet they kept him waiting whilst they arranged bed-quiltsand put medicine bottles straight—as if he could see!

At last the door opened, and the woman said:

“Will you step this way, sir?”

She showed him into a bedroom opening off the passage. The room wasneat and clean, and had that indescribable appearance which marks thebedroom of the invalid.

In the bed, making a mountain under the counterpane with an enormouslydistended stomach, lay a man, black-bearded, and with his large,capable, useless hands spread out on the coverlet—hands ready andwilling, but debarred from work. Without moving his body, he turned hishead slowly and looked at the newcomer. This slow movement was notfrom weakness or disease, it was the slow, emotionless nature of theman speaking.

“This is the gentleman, Silas,” said the woman, speaking overLestrange’s shoulder. Then she withdrew and closed the door.

“Take a chair, sir,” said the sea captain, flapping one of his hands onthe counterpane as if in wearied protest against his own helplessness.“I haven’t the pleasure of your name, but the missus tells me you’recome about the advertisement I lit on yester-even.”

He took a paper, folded small, that lay beside him, and held it out tohis visitor. It was a Sidney Bulletinthree years old.

“Yes,” said Lestrange, looking at the paper; “that is my advertisement.”

“Well, it’s strange—very strange,” said Captain Fountain, “that Ishould have lit on it only yesterday. I’ve had it all three years in mychest, the way old papers get lying at the bottom with odds and ends.Mightn’t a’ seen it now, only the missus cleared the raffle out of thechest, and, ‘Give me that paper,’ I says, seeing it in her hand; and Ifell to reading it, for a man’ll read anything bar tracts lying in bedeight months, as I’ve been with the dropsy. I’ve been whaler man andboy forty year, and my last ship was the Sea-Horse. Over seven yearsago one of my men picked up something on a beach of one of them islandseast of the Marquesas—we’d put in to water—”

“Yes, yes,” said Lestrange. “What was it he found?”

“Missus!” roared the captain in a voice that shook the walls of theroom.

The door opened, and the woman appeared.

“Fetch me my keys out of my trousers pocket.”

The trousers were hanging up on the back of the door, as if onlywaiting to be put on. The woman fetched the keys, and he fumbled overthem and found one. He handed it to her, and pointed to the drawer of abureau opposite the bed.

She knew evidently what was wanted, for she opened the drawer andproduced a box, which she handed to him. It was a small cardboard boxtied round with a bit of string. He undid the string, and disclosed achild’s tea service: a teapot, cream jug, six little plates—all paintedwith a pansy.

It was the box which Emmeline had always been losing—lost again.

Lestrange buried his face in his hands. He knew the things. Emmelinehad shown them to him in a burst of confidence. Out of all that vastocean he had searched unavailingly: they had come to him like amessage, and the awe and mystery of it bowed him down and crushed him.

The captain had placed the things on the newspaper spread out by hisside, and he was unrolling the little spoons from their tissue-papercovering. He counted them as if entering up the tale of some trust, andplaced them on the newspaper.

“When did you find them?” asked Lestrange, speaking with his face stillcovered.

“A matter of over seven years ago,” replied the captain, “we’d put into water at a place south of the line—Palm Tree Island we whalemencall it, because of the tree at the break of the lagoon. One of my menbrought it aboard, found it in a shanty built of sugar-canes which themen bust up for devilment.”

“Good God!” said Lestrange. “Was there no one there—nothing but thisbox?”

“Not a sight or sound, so the men said; just the shanty abandonedseemingly. I had no time to land and hunt for castaways, I was afterwhales.”

“How big is the island?”

“Oh, a fairish middle-sized island—no natives. I’ve heard tell it’stabu; why, the Lord only knows—some crank of the Kanakas, I s’pose.Anyhow, there’s the findings—you recognise them?”

“I do.”

“Seems strange,” said the captain, “that I should pick ’em up; seemsstrange your advertisement out, and the answer to it lying amongst mygear, but that’s the way things go.”

“Strange!” said the other. “It’s more than strange.”

“Of course,” continued the captain, “they might have been on the islandhid away som’ere, there’s no saying; only appearances are against it.Of course they might be there now unbeknownst to you or me.”

“They arethere now,” answered Lestrange, who was sitting up andlooking at the playthings as though he read in them some hiddenmessage. “They arethere now. Have you the position of the island?”

“I have. Missus, hand me my private log.”

She took a bulky, greasy, black note-book from the bureau, and handedit to him. He opened it, thumbed the pages, and then read out thelatitude and longitude.

“I entered it on the day of finding—here’s the entry. ‘Adams broughtaboard child’s toy box out of deserted shanty, which men pulled down;traded it to me for a caulker of rum.’ The cruise lasted three yearsand eight months after that; we’d only been out three when it happened.I forgot all about it: three years scrubbing round the world afterwhales doesn’t brighten a man’s memory. Right round we went, and paidoff at Nantucket. Then, after a fortni’t on shore and a monthrepairin’, the old Sea-Horsewas off again, I with her. It was atHonolulu this dropsy took me, and back I come here, home. That’s theyarn. There’s not much to it, but, seein’ your advertisement, I thoughtI might answer it.”

Lestrange took Fountain’s hand and shook it.

“You see the reward I offered?” he said. “I have not my cheque bookwith me, but you shall have the cheque in an hour from now.”

“No, sir,” replied the captain; “if anything comes of it, I don’t sayI’m not open to some small acknowledgment, but ten thousand dollars fora five-cent box—that’s not my way of doing business.”

“I can’t make you take the money now—I can’t even thank you properlynow,” said Lestrange—“I am in a fever; but when all is settled, youand I will settle this business. My God!”

He buried his face in his hands again.

“I’m not wishing to be inquisitive,” said Captain Fountain, slowlyputting the things back in the box and tucking the paper shavings roundthem, “but may I ask how you propose to move in this business?”

“I will hire a ship at once and search.”

“Ay,” said the captain, wrapping up the little spoons in a meditativemanner; “perhaps that will be best.”

He felt certain in his own mind that the search would be fruitless, buthe did not say so. If he had been absolutely certain in his mindwithout being able to produce the proof, he would not have counselledLestrange to any other course, knowing that the man’s mind would neverbe settled until proof positive was produced.

“The question is,” said Lestrange, “what is my quickest way to getthere?”

“There I may be able to help you,” said Fountain, tying the string roundthe box. “A schooner with good heels to her is what you want; and, ifI’m not mistaken, there’s one discharging cargo at this present minitat O’Sullivan’s wharf. Missus!”

The woman answered the call. Lestrange felt like a person in a dream,and these people who were interesting themselves in his affairs seemedto him beneficent beyond the nature of human beings.

“Is Captain Stannistreet home, think you?”

“I don’t know,” replied the woman; “but I can go see.”

“Do.”

She went.

“He lives only a few doors down,” said Fountain, “and he’s the man foryou. Best schooner captain ever sailed out of ’Frisco. The Raratongaisthe name of the boat I have in my mind—best boat that ever worecopper. Stannistreet is captain of her, owners are M’Vitie. She’s beenmissionary, and she’s been pigs; copra was her last cargo, and she’snearly discharged it. Oh, M’Vitie would hire her out to Satan at aprice; you needn’t be afraid of their boggling at it if you can raisethe dollars. She’s had a new suit of sails only the beginning of theyear. Oh, she’ll fix you up to a T, and you take the word of S.Fountain for that. I’ll engineer the thing from this bed if you’ll letme put my oar in your trouble; I’ll victual her, and find a crew threequarter price of any of those d--d skulking agents. Oh, I’ll take acommission right enough, but I’m half paid with doing the thing—”

He ceased, for footsteps sounded in the passage outside, and CaptainStannistreet was shown in. He was a young man of not more than thirty,alert, quick of eye, and pleasant of face. Fountain introduced him toLestrange, who had taken a fancy to him at first sight.

When he heard about the business in hand, he seemed interested at once;the affair seemed to appeal to him more than if it had been a purelycommercial matter, such as copra and pigs.

“If you’ll come with me, sir, down to the wharf, I’ll show you the boatnow,” he said, when they had discussed the matter and threshed it outthoroughly.

He rose, bid good-day to his friend Fountain, and Lestrange followedhim, carrying the brown-paper box in his hand.

O’Sullivan’s Wharf was not far away. A tall Cape Horner that lookedalmost a twin sister of the ill-fated Northumberlandwas dischargingiron, and astern of her, graceful as a dream, with snow-white decks,lay the Raratongadischarging copra.

“That’s the boat,” said Stannistreet; “cargo nearly all out. How doesshe strike your fancy?”

“I’ll take her,” said Lestrange, “cost what it will.”

CHAPTER IV

DUE SOUTH

It was on the 10th of May, so quickly did things move under thesupervision of the bedridden captain, that the Raratonga, withLestrange on board, cleared the Golden Gates, and made south, heelingto a ten-knot breeze.

There is no mode of travel to be compared to your sailing-ship. In agreat ship, if you have ever made a voyage in one, the vast spaces ofcanvas, the sky-high spars, the finessewith which the wind is met andtaken advantage of, will form a memory never to be blotted out.

A schooner is the queen of all rigs; she has a bounding buoyancy deniedto the square-rigged craft, to which she stands in the samerelationship as a young girl to a dowager; and the Raratongawas notonly a schooner, but the queen, acknowledged of all the schooners inthe Pacific.

For the first few days they made good way south; then the wind becamebaffling and headed them off.

Added to Lestrange’s feverish excitement there was an anxiety, a deepand soul-fretting anxiety, as if some half-heard voice were telling himthat the children he sought were threatened by some danger.

These baffling winds blew upon the smouldering anxiety in his breast,as wind blows upon embers, causing them to glow. They lasted some days,and then, as if Fate had relented, up sprang on the starboard quarter aspanking breeze, making the rigging sing to a merry tune, and blowingthe spindrift from the forefoot, as the Raratonga, heeling to itspressure, went humming through the sea, leaving a wake spreading behindher like a fan.

It took them along five hundred miles, silently and with the speed of adream. Then it ceased.

The ocean and the air stood still. The sky above stood solid like agreat pale blue dome; just where it met the water line of the farhorizon a delicate tracery of cloud draped the entire round of the sky.

I have said that the ocean stood still as well as the air: to the eyeit was so, for the swell under-running the glitter on its surface wasso even, so equable, and so rhythmical, that the surface seemed not inmotion. Occasionally a dimple broke the surface, and strips of darksea-weed floated by, showing up the green; dim things rose to thesurface, and, guessing the presence of man, sank slowly and dissolvedfrom sight.

Two days, never to be recovered, passed, and still the calm continued.On the morning of the third day it breezed up from the nor’-nor’west,and they continued their course, a cloud of canvas, every sail drawing,and the music of the ripple under the forefoot.

Captain Stannistreet was a genius in his profession; he could get morespeed out of a schooner than any other man afloat, and carry morecanvas without losing a stick. He was also, fortunately for Lestrange,a man of refinement and education, and what was better still,understanding.

They were pacing the deck one afternoon, when Lestrange, who waswalking with his hands behind him, and his eyes counting the browndowels in the cream-white planking, broke silence.

“You don’t believe in visions and dreams?”

“How do you know that?” replied the other.

“Oh, I only put it as a question; most people say they don’t.”

“Yes, but most people do.”

“I do,” said Lestrange.

He was silent for a moment.

“You know my trouble so well that I won’t bother you going over it, butthere has come over me of late a feeling—it is like a waking dream.”

“Yes?”

“I can’t quite explain, for it is as if I saw something which myintelligence could not comprehend, or make an image of.”

“I think I know what you mean.”

“I don’t think you do. This is something quite strange. I am fifty, andin fifty years a man has experienced, as a rule, all the ordinary andmost of the extraordinary sensations that a human being can besubjected to. Well, I have never felt this sensation before; it comeson only at times. I see, as you might imagine, a young baby sees, andthings are before me that I do not comprehend. It is not through mybodily eyes that this sensation comes, but through some window of themind, from before which a curtain has been drawn.”

“That’s strange,” said Stannistreet, who did not like the conversationover-much, being simply a schooner captain and a plain man, thoughintelligent enough and sympathetic.

“This something tells me,” went on Lestrange, “that there is dangerthreatening the—” He ceased, paused a minute, and then, toStannistreet’s relief, went on. “If I talk like that you will think Iam not right in my head: let us pass the subject by, let us forgetdreams and omens and come to realities. You know how I lost thechildren; you know how I hope to find them at the place where CaptainFountain found their traces? He says the island was uninhabited, but hewas not sure.”

“No,” replied Stannistreet, “he only spoke of the beach.”

“Yes. Well, suppose there were natives at the other side of the islandwho had taken these children.”

“If so, they would grow up with the natives.”

“And become savages?”

“Yes; but the Polynesians can’t be really called savages; they are avery decent lot. I’ve knocked about amongst them a good while, and akanaka is as white as a white man—which is not saying much, but it’ssomething. Most of the islands are civilised now. Of course there are afew that aren’t, but still, suppose even that ‘savages,’ as you callthem, had come and taken the children off—”

Lestrange’s breath caught, for this was the very fear that was in hisheart, though he had never spoken it.

“Well?”

“Well, they would be well treated.”

“And brought up as savages?”

“I suppose so.”

Lestrange sighed.

“Look here,” said the captain; “it’s all very well talking, but upon myword I think that we civilised folk put on a lot of airs, and waste alot of pity on savages.”

“How so?”

“What does a man want to be but happy?”

“Yes.”

“Well, who is happier than a naked savage in a warm climate? Oh, he’shappy enough, and he’s not always holding a corroboree. He’s a gooddeal of a gentleman; he has perfect health; he lives the life a man wasborn to live face to face with Nature. He doesn’t see the sun throughan office window or the moon through the smoke of factory chimneys;happy and civilised too—but, bless you, where is he? The whites havedriven him out; in one or two small islands you may find him still—acrumb or so of him.”

“Suppose,” said Lestrange, “suppose those children had been brought upface to face with Nature—”

“Yes?”

“Living that free life—”

“Yes?”

“Waking up under the stars”—Lestrange was speaking with his eyesfixed, as if upon something very far away—“going to sleep as the sunsets, feeling the air fresh, like this which blows upon us, all aroundthem. Suppose they were like that, would it not be a cruelty to bringthem to what we call civilisation?”

“I think it would,” said Stannistreet.

Lestrange said nothing, but continued pacing the deck, his head bowedand his hands behind his back.

One evening at sunset, Stannistreet said:

“We’re two hundred and forty miles from the island, reckoning fromto-day’s reckoning at noon. We’re going all ten knots even with thisbreeze; we ought to fetch the place this time to-morrow. Before that ifit freshens.”

“I am greatly disturbed,” said Lestrange.

He went below, and the schooner captain shook his head, and, lockinghis arm round a ratlin, gave his body to the gentle roll of the craftas she stole along, skirting the sunset, splendid, and to the nauticaleye full of fine weather.

The breeze was not quite so fresh next morning, but it had been blowingfairly all the night, and the Raratongahad made good way. About elevenit began to fail. It became the lightest sailing breeze, justsufficient to keep the sails drawing, and the wake rippling andswirling behind. Suddenly Stannistreet, who had been standing talkingto Lestrange, climbed a few feet up the mizzen ratlins, and shaded hiseyes.

“What is it?” asked Lestrange.

“A boat,” he replied. “Hand me that glass you will find in the slingthere.”

He levelled the glass, and looked for a long time without speaking.

“It’s a boat adrift—a small boat, nothing in her. Stay! I seesomething white, can’t make it out. Hi there!”—to the fellow at thewheel “Keep her a point more to starboard.” He got on to the deck.“We’re going dead on for her.”

“Is there any one in her?” asked Lestrange.

“Can’t quite make out, but I’ll lower the whale-boat and fetch heralongside.”

He gave orders for the whale-boat to be slung out and manned.

As they approached nearer, it was evident that the drifting boat, whichlooked like a ship’s dinghy, contained something, but what, could notbe made out.

When he had approached near enough, Stannistreet put the helm down andbrought the schooner to, with her sails all shivering. He took hisplace in the bow of the whale-boat and Lestrange in the stern. The boatwas lowered, the falls cast off, and the oars bent to the water.

The little dinghy made a mournful picture as she floated, lookingscarcely bigger than a walnut shell. In thirty strokes the whale-boat’snose was touching her quarter. Stannistreet grasped her gunwale.

In the bottom of the dinghy lay a girl, naked all but for a strip ofcoloured striped material. One of her arms was clasped round the neckof a form that was half hidden by her body, the other clasped partly toherself, partly to her companion, the body of a baby. They werenatives, evidently, wrecked or lost by some mischance from someinter-island schooner. Their breasts rose and fell gently, and claspedin the girl’s hand was a branch of some tree, and on the branch asingle withered berry.

“Are they dead?” asked Lestrange, who divined that there were people inthe boat, and who was standing up in the stern of the whale-boat tryingto see.

“No,” said Stannistreet; “they are asleep.”

THE END

----- Transcriber’s Note #1 -----

Introduction to the Project Gutenberg text of H. de Vere Stacpoole’sThe Blue Lagoon: A Romance

by Edward A. Malone
University of Missouri-Rolla

Born on April 9, 1863, in Kingstown, Ireland, Henry de Vere Stacpoolegrew up in a household dominated by his mother and three older sisters.William C. Stacpoole, a doctor of divinity from Trinity College andheadmaster of Kingstown school, died some time before his son’s eighthbirthday, leaving the responsibility of supporting the family to hisCanadian-born wife, Charlotte Augusta Mountjoy Stacpoole. At a youngage, Charlotte had been led out of the Canadian backwoods by herwidowed mother and taken to Ireland, where their relatives lived. Thisexperience had strengthened her character and prepared her for singleparenthood.

Charlotte cared passionately for her children and was perhaps overlyprotective of her son. As a child, Henry suffered from severerespiratory problems, misdiagnosed as chronic bronchitis by hisphysician, who in the winter of 1871 advised that the boy be taken toSouthern France for his health. With her entire family in tow,Charlotte made the long journey from Kingstown to London to Paris,where signs of the Franco-Prussian War were still evident, settling atlast in Nice at the Hotel des Iles Britannique. Nice was like paradiseto Henry, who marveled at the city’s affluence and beauty as he playedin the warm sun.

After several more excursions to the continent, Stacpoole was sent toPortarlington, a bleak boarding school more than 100 miles fromKingstown. In contrast to his sisters, the Portarlington boys werenoisy and uncouth. As Stacpoole writes in his autobiograhy Men andMice, 1863-1942 (1942), the boys abused him mentally and physically,making him feel like “a little Arthur in a cage of baboons.” One night,he escaped through an adjacent girls’ school and returned to Kingstown,only to be betrayed by his family and dragged back to school by hiseldest sister.

When his family moved to London, he was taken out of Portarlington andenrolled at Malvern College, a progressive school with refined studentsand plenty of air and sunshine. Stacpoole thoroughly enjoyed his newsurroundings, which he associated with the description of Malvern Hillsin Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Aurora Leigh (1857): “Keepers of PiersPlowman’s visions / Through the sunshine and the snow.” Thisenvironment encouraged his interest in literature and writing.

The idyll ended, however, when Stacpoole began his medical training. Athis mother’s prodding, he entered the medical school at St. George’sHospital. Twice a day, he had to traverse a park frequented byperambulating nursemaids, and he became romantically involved with oneof them. When his mother discovered their affair, she insisted that hetransfer to University College, and he complied.

More interested in literature than corpses, Stacpoole began to neglecthis studies and miss classes, especially the required dissections.Finally, the dean of the medical school confronted him, and theirargument drove Stacpoole to St. Mary’s Hospital, where he completed hismedical training and qualified L. S. A. in 1891. At some point afterthis date, Stacpoole made several sea voyages into the tropics (atleast once as a doctor aboard a cable-mending ship), collectinginformation for future stories.

Stacpoole’s literary career, which he once described as being “morelike a Malay fishing prahu than an honest-to-God English literaryvessel,” began inauspiciously with the publication of The Intended(1894), a tragic novel about two look-alikes, one rich, the other poor,who switch places on a whim. Bewildered by the novel’s lack of success,Stacpoole consulted his friendly muse, Pearl Craigie, alias John OliverHobbes, who suggested a comic rather than tragic treatment. Yearslater, Stacpoole retold the story in The Man Who Lost Himself (1918), acommercially successful comic novel about a down-and-out American whoimpersonates his wealthy look-alike in England.

Set in France during the Franco-Prussian War, Stacpoole’s second novel,Pierrot (1896), recounts a French boy’s eerie relationship with apatricidal doppelganger. Like its predecessor, it was a commercialfailure, and it was at this point, perhaps, that Stacpoole began toview literary success only in terms of sales figures and numbers ofeditions.

A strange tale of reincarnation, cross dressing, and uxoricide,Stacpoole’s third novel, Death, the Knight, and the Lady (1897),purports to be the deathbed confession of Beatrice Sinclair, who isboth a reincarnated murderer (male) and a descendant of the murdervictim (female). She falls in love with Gerald Wilder, a man disguisedas a woman, who is both a reincarnated murder victim (female) and thedescendant of the murderer (male). Despite its originality, the novelwas killed by “Public Indifference” (Stacpoole’s term), which alsokilled The Rapin (1899), a novel about an art student in Paris.

Stacpoole spent the summer of 1898 in Sommerset, where he took over themedical practice of an ailing country doctor. So peaceful were his daysin this pastoral setting that he had time to write The Doctor (1899), anovel about an old-fashioned physician practicing medicine in ruralEngland. “It is the best book I have written,” Stacpoole declared morethan forty years later. He could also say, in retrospect, that thebook’s weak sales were a disguised blessing, “for I hadn’t ballast onboard in those days to stand up to the gale of success, which meansincidentally money.” He would be spared the gale of success for ninemore years, during which he published seven books, including acollection of children’s stories and two collaborative novels with hisfriend William Alexander Bryce.

In 1907, two events occurred that altered the course of Stacpoole’slife: he wrote The Blue Lagoon and he married Margaret Robson. Unableto sleep one night, he found himself thinking about and envying thecaveman, who in his primitiveness was able to marvel at suchcommonplace phenomena as sunsets and thunderstorms. Civilized,technological man had unveiled these mysteries with his telescopes andweather balloons, so that they were no longer “nameless wonders” to befeared and contemplated. As a doctor, Stacpoole had witnessed countlessbirths and deaths, and these events no longer seemed miraculous to him.He conceived the idea of two children growing up alone on an island andexperiencing storms, death, and birth in almost complete ignorance andinnocence. The next morning, he started writing The Blue Lagoon. Theexercise was therapeutic because he was able to experience the wondersof life and death vicariously through his characters.

The Blue Lagoon is the story of two cousins, Dicky and EmmelineLestrange, stranded on a remote island with a beautiful lagoon. Aschildren, they are cared for by Paddy Button, a portly sailor whodrinks himself to death after only two and a half years in paradise.Frightened and confused by the man’s gruesome corpse, the children fleeto another part of Palm Tree Island. Over a period of five years, theygrow up and eventually fall in love. Sex and birth are as mysteriousto them as death, but they manage to copulate instinctively andconceive a child. The birth is especially remarkable: fifteen-year-oldEmmeline, alone in the jungle, loses consciousness and awakes to find ababy boy on the ground near her. Naming the boy Hannah (an example ofStacpoole’s penchant for gender reversals), the Lestranges live infamilial bliss until they are unexpectedly expelled from their tropicalEden.

The parallels between The Blue Lagoon and the Biblical story of Adamand Eve are obvious and intentional, but Stacpoole was also influencedby Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865), which heinvokes in a passage describing the castaways’ approach Palm TreeIsland:

“One could see the water swirling round the coral piers, for the tidewas flooding into the lagoon; it had seized the little dinghy and wasbearing it along far swifter than the sculls could have driven it.Sea-gulls screamed about them, the boat rocked and swayed. Dick shoutedwith excitement, and Emmeline shut her eyes TIGHT.

“Then, as though a door had been swiftly and silently closed, the soundof the surf became suddenly less. The boat floated on an even keel; sheopened her eyes and found herself in Wonderland.”

This direct reference to Wonderland prepares the reader for the manyparallels that follow. When their adventures begin, both girls areabout the same age, Alice seven and a half, Emmeline exactly eight.Just as Alice joins a tea party in Wonderland, Emmeline plays with hertiny tea set on the beach after they land. Emmeline’s former pet, likethe Cheshire Cat, “had white stripes and a white chest, and rings downits tail” and died “showing its teeth.” Whereas Alice looks for apoison label on a bottle that says “Drink Me,” Emmeline innocentlytries to eat “the never-wake-up berries” and receives a stern rebukeand a lecture about poison from Paddy Button. “The Poetry of Learning”chapter echoes Alice’s dialogue with the caterpillar. Like the wilycreature smoking a hookah, Paddy smokes a pipe and shouts “Hurroo!” asthe children teach him to write his name in the sand. The childrenlose “all count of time,” just as the Mad Hatter does. Whereas Alicegrows nine feet taller, Dick sprouts “two inches taller” and Emmeline“twice as plump.” Like the baby in the “Pig and Pepper,” Hannah sneezesat the first sight of Dicky. The novel is artfully littered withreferences to wonder, curiosity, and strangeness—all evidence ofStacpoole’s conscious effort to invoke and honor his Victorianpredecessor.

Stacpoole presented The Blue Lagoon to Publisher T. Fisher Unwin inSeptember 1907 and went to Cumberland to assist another ailing doctorin his practice. Every day from Eden Vue in Langwathby, Stacpoole wroteto his fiancee, Margaret Robson (or Maggie, as he called her), andwaited anxiously for their wedding day. On December 17, 1907, thecouple were married and spent their honeymoon at Stebbing Park, afriend’s country house in Essex, about three miles from the village ofStebbing. It was there that they stumbled upon Rose Cottage, whereStacpoole lived for several years before he moved to Cliff Dene on theIsle of Wight in the 1920s.

Published in January 1908, The Blue Lagoon was an immediate success,both with reviewers and the public. “[This] tale of the discovery oflove, and innocent mating, is as fresh as the ozone that made themstrong,” declared one reviewer. Another claimed that “for once thetitle of ‘romance,’ found in so many modern stories, is reallyjustified.” The novel was reprinted more than twenty times in the nexttwelve years and remained popular in other forms for more than eightyyears. Norman MacOwen and Charlton Mann adapted the story as a play,which ran for 263 performances in London from August 28, 1920, to April16, 1921. Film versions of the novel were made in 1923, 1949, and 1980.

Stacpoole also wrote two successful sequels: The Garden of God (1923)and The Gates of Morning (1925). These three books and two others werecombined to form The Blue Lagoon Omnibus in 1933. The Garden of God wasfilmed as Return to the Blue Lagoon in 1992.

This Gutenberg etext of The Blue Lagoon: A Romance is based on the 1908first American edition published by J. B. Lippincott Company ofPhiladelphia.

----- Transcriber’s Note #2 -----

The stated edition for this etext is the 1908 first American editionpublished by J. B. Lippincott Company of Philadelphia. Stacpooledelivered his original manuscript to publisher T. Fisher Unwin (London)in September 1907. The London edition and the Lippincott (this etext)edition were both published in 1908. Four changes were made increating the Lippincott edition:

1. On page 18:

London edition: he sat with it on his knees staring atthe white sunlit main-deck barred with the black shadowsof the standing rigging.

U.S. edition: he sat with it on his knees staring atthe white sunlit main-deck barred with the white shadowsof the standing rigging.

Stacpoole originally indicated black shadows of therigging on the deck.

2. On page 19:

London edition: It was seven bells—half-past three in theafternoon—and the ship’s bell had just rung out.

U.S. edition: It was three bells—half-past three in theafternoon—and the ship’s bell had just rung out.

The London edition is correct: seven bells is 3:30 inthe afternoon. Three bells is half-past one.

3. On page 24:

London edition: The dinghy was rather a larger boat thanthe ordinary ships’ dinghy, and possessed a small mastand lug-sail.

U.S. edition: The dinghy was rather a larger boat thanthe ordinary ships’ dinghy, and possessed a small mastand long sail.

A lug-sail (modern: lugsail) is an evolved version ofthe classical square sail that is correct for the boatas described.

4. On page 309:

London edition: “This is the gentleman, Simon,” ...

U.S. edition: “This is the gentleman, Silas,” ...

Other than these four changes, both 1908 editions areessentially identical.

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