“Oh, whisht, will you?” replied Paddy, taking his seat on the sand, and wiping his brow. “They’re aff me now.”
The children stood by, disappointed of their game. Good acting appeals to children just as much as to grown-up people. They stood waiting for another access of humour to take the comedian, and they had not to wait long.
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 was running in a wide circle, his broad red face slewed over his left shoulder. “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 Dick beating 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 on the sand. “But, bedad, if I’m chased by any more things like them it’s into 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. Here he 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 for six hours on end; it was the first real sleep he had had for several days. When he awoke he was well, but very shaky.
XIX
Starlight on the Foam
Mr. Button saw no more rats, much to Dick’s disappointment. He was off the drink. At dawn next day he got up, refreshed by a second sleep, and wandered down to the edge of the lagoon. The opening in the reef faced the east, and the light of the dawn came rippling in with the flooding tide.
“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 and betrayed.
He stood for a while, cursing the drink, “and them that sells it.” Then he determined to put himself out of the way of temptation. Pull the bung out of the barrel, and let the contents escape?
Such a thought never even occurred to him—or, if it did, was instantly dismissed; for, though an old sailor-man may curse the drink, good rum is to him a sacred thing; and to empty half a little barrel of it into the sea, would be an act almost equivalent to child-murder. He put the cask into the dinghy, and rowed it over to the reef. There he placed it in the shelter of a great lump of coral, and rowed back.
Paddy had been trained all his life to rhythmical drunkenness. Four months or so had generally elapsed between his bouts—sometimes six; it all depended on the length of the voyage. Six months now elapsed before he felt even an inclination to look at the rum cask, that tiny dark spot away on the reef. And it was just as well, for during those six months another whale-ship arrived, watered and was avoided.
“Blisther it!” said he; “the say here seems to breed whale-ships, and nothin’ but whale-ships. It’s like bugs in a bed: you kill wan, and then another comes. Howsomever, we’re shut of thim for a while.”
He walked down to the lagoon edge, looked at the little dark spot and whistled. Then he walked back to prepare dinner. That little dark spot began 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 and perfect health, they enjoyed happiness as far as mortals can enjoy it. Emmeline’s highly-strung nervous system, it is true, developed a headache when she had been too long in the glare of the sun, but they were few and far between.
The spirit in the little cask had been whispering across the lagoon for some weeks; at last it began to shout. Mr. Button, metaphorically speaking, stopped his ears. He busied himself with the children as much as possible. He made another garment for Emmeline, and cut Dick’s hair with the scissors (a job which was generally performed once in a couple of months).
One night, to keep the rum from troubling his head, he told them the story of Jack Dogherty and the Merrow, which is well known on the western coast.
The Merrow takes Jack to dinner at the bottom of the sea, and shows him the lobster pots wherein he keeps the souls of old sailor-men, and then they have dinner, and the Merrow produces a big bottle of rum.
It was a fatal story for him to remember and recount; for, after his companions were asleep, the vision of the Merrow and Jack hobnobbing, and the idea of the jollity of it, rose before him, and excited a thirst for joviality not to be resisted.
There were some green coconuts that he had plucked that day lying in a little heap under a tree—half a dozen or so. He took several of these and a shell, found the dinghy where it was moored to the aoa tree, unmoored her, and pushed off into the lagoon.
The lagoon and sky were full of stars. In the dark depths of the water might have been seen phosphorescent gleams of passing fish, and the thunder 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 landed on the reef, and with a shellful of rum and coconut
