Dick began to yowl.
“I don’t want to go to bed; I aint tired, Paddy—les’s stay a little longer.”
“Not a minit,” said the other, with all the decision of a nurse; “not a minit 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 of death-rattle speaking of almost immediate extinction.
“Mr. Button!” said Emmeline. She was holding her nose in the air and sniffing; seated to windward of the smoker, and out of the pigtail-poisoned air, her delicate sense of smell perceived something lost 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. “I don’t smell anything.”
Emmeline sniffed again to make sure.
“Flowers,” said she.
The breeze, which had shifted several points since midday, was bearing with it a faint, faint odour: a perfume of vanilla and spice so faint as to be imperceptible to all but the most acute olfactory sense.
“Flowers!” said the old sailor, tapping the ashes out of his pipe against the heel of his boot. “And where’d you get flowers in middle of the 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 down from the timber baulks, and then assisting Emmeline, “in two ticks if you 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 pin that was still lying on the deck, seized it, and hit the bell a mighty bang. It was the last pleasure to be snatched before sleep, and he snatched 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 get the musty smell away, and placed the mattresses from the captain and mate’s cabins on the floor.
When the children were in bed and asleep, he went to the starboard rail, and, leaning on it, looked over the moonlit sea. He was thinking of ships as his wandering eye roved over the sea spaces, little dreaming of the message that the perfumed breeze was bearing him. The message that had been received and dimly understood by Emmeline. Then he leaned with his back to the rail and his hands in his pockets. He was not thinking now, he was ruminating.
The basis of the Irish character as exemplified by Paddy Button is a profound laziness mixed with a profound melancholy. Yet Paddy, in his left-handed way, was as hard a worker as any man on board ship; and as for melancholy, he was the life and soul of the fo’cs’le. Yet there they were, the laziness and the melancholy, only waiting to be tapped.
As he stood with his hands thrust deep in his pockets, longshore fashion, counting the dowels in the planking of the deck by the moonlight, he was reviewing the “old days.” The tale of Buck M’Cann had recalled them, and across all the salt seas he could see the moonlight on the Connemara mountains, and hear the seagulls crying on the thunderous beach where each wave has behind it three thousand miles of sea.
Suddenly Mr. Button came back from the mountains of Connemara to find himself on the deck of the Shenandoah; and he instantly became possessed by fears. Beyond the white deserted deck, barred by the shadows 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 form go in?
He turned to the deck-house, where the children were sound asleep, and where, in a few minutes, he, too, was sound asleep beside them, whilst all night long the brig rocked to the gentle swell of the Pacific, and the breeze blew, bringing with it the perfume of flowers.
X
The Tragedy of the Boats
When the fog lifted after midnight the people in the longboat saw the quarter-boat half a mile to starboard of them.
“Can you see the dinghy?” asked Lestrange of the captain, who was standing up searching the horizon.
“Not a speck,” answered Le Farge. “Damn that Irishman! but for him I’d have got the boats away properly victualled and all; as it is I don’t know what we’ve got aboard. You, Jenkins, what have you got forward there?”
“Two bags of bread and a breaker of water,” answered the steward.
“A breaker of water be sugared!” came another voice; “a breaker half full, you mean.”
Then the steward’s voice: “So it is; there’s not more than a couple of gallons in her.”
“My God!” said Le Farge. “Damn that 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 for her.”
“She’s pulling for us,” said the stroke oar.
“Captain,” asked Lestrange, “are you sure there’s no sight of the dinghy?”
“None,” replied Le Farge.
The unfortunate man’s head sank on his breast. He had little time to brood over his troubles, however, for a tragedy was beginning to unfold around him, the most shocking, perhaps, in the annals of the sea—a tragedy to be hinted at rather than spoken of.
When the boats were within hailing distance, a man in the bow of the longboat rose up.
“Quarter-boat ahoy!”
“Ahoy!”
“How much water have you?”
“None!”
The word came floating over the placid moonlit water. At it the fellows in the longboat ceased rowing, and you could see the water-drops dripping 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 giving directions—”
“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’s crew were in the longboat—veritable “scowbankers,” scum; and how
