Emmeline laughed.
Mr. Button scrambled to his feet. They followed him through the chapparel till they reached the water source. There lay the little green barrel; turned over by the restless Dick, it lay with its bung pointing to the leaves above. You could see the hollow it had made in the soft soil during the years. So green was it, and so like an object of nature, a bit of old tree-bole, or a lichen-stained boulder, that though the whalemen had actually watered from the source, its real nature had not been discovered.
Mr. Button tapped on it with the butt end of the shell: it was nearly full. Why it had been left there, by whom, or how, there was no one to tell. The old lichen-covered skulls might have told, could they have spoken.
“We’ll rowl it down to the beach,” said Paddy, when he had taken another taste of it.
He gave Dick a sip. The boy spat it out, and made a face, then, pushing the barrel before them, they began to roll it downhill to the beach, Emmeline running before them crowned with flowers.
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 in which a fire had previously been lit. They had fish and taro root baked, and green coconuts; and after dinner Mr. Button filled a big shell with rum, and lit his pipe.
The rum had been good originally, and age had improved it. Used as he was 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 that some happy influence had fallen upon their friend. Usually after dinner he was drowsy and “wishful to be quiet.” Today he told them stories of the 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 time to 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 time to blow the man down!” echoed Dick and Emmeline.
Up above, in the trees, the bright-eyed birds were watching them—such a happy party. They had all the appearance of picnickers, and the song echoed amongst the coconut trees, and the wind carried it over the lagoon to where the seagulls were wheeling and screaming, and the foam was thundering on the reef.
That evening, Mr. Button feeling inclined for joviality, and not wishing the children to see him under the influence, rolled the barrel through the coconut grove to a little clearing by the edge of the water. There, when the children were in bed and asleep, he repaired with some green coconuts and a shell. He was generally musical when amusing himself in this fashion, and Emmeline, waking up during the night, heard his voice borne through the moonlit coconut 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 of a headache, or any bad feeling, but he made Dick do the cooking; and he lay in the shade of the coconut trees, with his head on a “pilla” made out of an old coat rolled up, twiddling his thumbs, smoking his pipe, and discoursing about the “ould” days, half to himself and half to his companions.
That night he had another musical evening all to himself, and so it went on for a week. Then he began to lose his appetite and sleep; and one morning Dick found him sitting on the sand looking very queer indeed—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 right hand 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 to see what he had caught.
“What is it, Paddy?”
“The Cluricaune,” replied Mr. Button. “All dressed in green he was—musha! musha! but it’s only pretindin’ I am.”
The complaint from which he was suffering has this strange thing about it, that, though the patient sees rats, or snakes, or whatnot, as real-looking as the real things, and though they possess his mind for a moment, almost immediately he recognises that he is suffering from a delusion.
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 at all—it’s whin I dhrink rum it puts it into me head to play games like that. 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 coconut trees, looking over his shoulder with a bewildered expression on his face. 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 vicious grab at an imaginary rodent’s tail. “Ran dan the bastes!—now they’re gone. Musha, but it’s a fool I’m makin’ of meself.”
“Go on, Paddy,” said Dick; “don’t stop—Look there—there’s more
