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.
“_Where_ did 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.
The Blue Lagoon: A Romance Page 17
