“I don’t want soldiers,” replied Emmeline, in a voice of perfect contentment.
She unfolded a piece of tissue paper, and took from it a sugar-tongs and 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 carefully repacking them.
Mr. Button finished his pipe, tapped the ashes out, and placed it in his pocket.
“I’ll be afther riggin’ up a bit of a tint,” said he, as he rose to his feet, “to shelter us from the jew tonight; but I’ll first have a look at the woods to see if I can find wather. Lave your box with the other things, Emmeline; there’s no one here to take it.”
Emmeline left her box on the heap of things that Paddy had placed in the shadow of the coconut trees, took his hand, and the three entered the grove on the right.
It was like entering a pine forest; the tall symmetrical stems of the trees seemed set by mathematical law, each at a given distance from the other. Whichever way you entered a twilight alley set with tree boles lay before you. Looking up you saw at an immense distance above a pale green roof patined with sparkling and flashing points of light, where the 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 to come down again, when we want to get back—ware nuts!” A green nut detached from up above came down rattling and tumbling and hopped on the 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 Jaffa orange), “and we’ll have it for tay.”
“That’s not a coconut,” said Dick; “coconuts are brown. I had five cents once an’ I bought one, and scraped it out and y’et it.”
“When Dr. Sims made Dicky sick,” said Emmeline, “he said the wonder t’im was how Dicky held it all.”
“Come on,” said Mr. Button, “an’ don’t be talkin’, or it’s the Cluricaunes will be after us.”
“What’s cluricaunes?” demanded Dick.
“Little men no bigger than your thumb that make the brogues for the Good People.”
“Who’s they?”
“Whisht, and don’t be talkin’. Mind your head, Em’leen, or the branches’ll be hittin’ you in the face.”
They had left the coconut grove, and entered the chapparel. Here was a deeper twilight, and all sorts of trees lent their foliage to make the shade. The artu with its delicately diamonded trunk, the great breadfruit tall as a beech, and shadowy as a cave, the aoa, and the eternal coconut palm all grew here like brothers. Great ropes of wild vine twined like the snake of the laocoon from tree to tree, and all sorts of wonderful flowers, from the orchid shaped like a butterfly to the 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 of wood insects and the faint, far song of the reef—came a tinkling, rippling sound: it was water. He listened to make sure of the bearing of the sound, then he made for it.
Next moment they found themselves in a little grass-grown glade. From the hilly ground above, over a rock black and polished like ebony, fell a tiny cascade not much broader than one’s hand; ferns grew around and from a tree above where a great rope of wild convolvulus flowers blew their trumpets in the enchanted twilight.
The children cried out at the prettiness of it, and Emmeline ran and dabbled her hands in the water. Just above the little waterfall sprang a banana tree laden with fruit; it had immense leaves six feet long and more, and broad as a dinner-table. One could see the golden glint of the ripe fruit through the foliage.
In a moment Mr. Button had kicked off his shoes and was going up the rock like a cat, absolutely, for it seemed to give him nothing to climb by.
“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 bunch of yellow-jacketed bananas. Dick shouted with delight, but Emmeline showed no excitement: she had discovered something.
XIII
Death Veiled with Lichen
“Mr. Button,” said she, when the latter had descended, “there’s a little barrel”; she pointed to something green and lichen-covered that lay between the trunks of two trees—something that eyes less sharp than the eyes of a child might have mistaken for a boulder.
“Sure, an’ faith it’s an’ ould empty bar’l,” said Mr. Button, wiping the sweat from his brow and staring at the thing. “Some ship must have been wathering here an’ forgot it. It’ll do for a sate whilst we have dinner.”
He sat down upon it and distributed the bananas to the children, who sat down on the grass.
The barrel looked such a deserted and neglected thing that his imagination assumed it to be empty. Empty or full, however, it made an excellent seat, for it was quarter sunk in the green soft earth, and immovable.
“If ships has been here, ships will come again,” said he, as he munched his bananas.
“Will daddy’s ship come here?” asked Dick.
“Ay, to be sure it will,” replied the other, taking out his pipe. “Now run 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 look round us.
“Come ’long, Em!” cried Dick; and the children started off amongst the trees, Dick pulling at the hanging vine tendrils, and Emmeline plucking what blossoms she could find within her small reach.
When he had finished his pipe he hallooed, and small voices answered him from the wood. Then the children
