CHAPTER XVI

THE POETRY OF LEARNING

To forget the passage of time you must live in the open air, in a warm

climate, with as few clothes as possible upon you. You must collect and

cook your own food. Then, after a while, if you have no special ties to

bind you to civilisation, Nature will begin to do for you what she does

for the savage. You will recognise that it is possible to be happy

without books or newspapers, letters or bills. You will recognise the

part sleep plays in Nature.

After a month on the island you might have seen Dick at one moment full

of life and activity, helping Mr Button to dig up a taro root or

what not, the next curled up to sleep like a dog. Emmeline the same.

Profound and prolonged lapses into sleep; sudden awakenings into a

world of pure air and dazzling light, the gaiety of colour all round.

Nature had indeed opened her doors to these children.

One might have fancied her in an experimental mood, saying: “Let me put

these buds of civilisation back into my nursery and see what they will

become—how they will blossom, and what will be the end of it all.”

Just as Emmeline had brought away her treasured box from the

_Northumberland_, Dick had conveyed with him a small linen bag that

chinked when shaken. It contained marbles. Small olive-green marbles

and middle-sized ones of various colours; glass marbles with splendid

coloured cores; and one large old grandfather marble too big to be

played with, but none the less to be worshipped—a god marble.

Of course one cannot play at marbles on board ship, but one can play

_with_ them. They had been a great comfort to Dick on the voyage. He knew

them each personally, and he would roll them out on the mattress of his

bunk and review them nearly every day, whilst Emmeline looked on.

One day Mr Button, noticing Dick and the girl kneeling opposite each

other on a flat, hard piece of sand near the water’s edge, strolled up

to see what they were doing. They were playing marbles. He stood with

his hands in his pockets and his pipe in his mouth watching and

criticising the game, pleased that the “childer” were amused. Then he

began to be amused himself, and in a few minutes more he was down on

his knees taking a hand; Emmeline, a poor player and an unenthusiastic

one, withdrawing in his favour.

After that it was a common thing to see them playing together, the old

sailor on his knees, one eye shut, and a marble against the nail of his

horny thumb taking aim; Dick and Emmeline on the watch to make sure he

was playing fair, their shrill voices echoing amidst the cocoa-nut

trees with cries of “Knuckle down, Paddy, knuckle down!” He entered

into all their amusements just as one of themselves. On high and rare

occasions Emmeline would open her precious box, spread its contents and

give a tea-party, Mr Button acting as guest or president as the case

might be.

“Is your tay to your likin’, ma’am?” he would enquire; and Emmeline,

sipping at her tiny cup, would invariably make answer: “Another lump of

sugar, if you please, Mr Button;” to which would come the stereotyped

reply: “Take a dozen, and welcome; and another cup for the good of your

make.”

Then Emmeline would wash the things in imaginary water, replace them in

the box, and every one would lose their company manners and become

quite natural again.

“Have you ever seen your name, Paddy?” asked Dick one morning.

“Seen me which?”

“Your name?”

“Arrah, don’t be axin’ me questions,” replied the other. “How the divil

could I see me name?”

“Wait and I’ll show you,” replied Dick.

He ran and fetched a piece of cane, and a minute later on the

salt-white sand in face of orthography and the sun appeared these

portentous letters:

B U T T E N

“Faith, an’ it’s a cliver boy y’are,” said Mr Button admiringly, as he

leaned luxuriously against a cocoa-nut tree, and contemplated Dick’s

handiwork. “And that’s me name, is it? What’s the letters in it?”

Dick enumerated them.

“I’ll teach you to do it, too,” he said. “I’ll teach you to write your

name, Paddy—would you like to write your name, Paddy?”

“No,” replied the other, who only wanted to be let smoke his pipe in

peace; “me name’s no use to me.”

But Dick, with the terrible gadfly tirelessness of childhood, was not

to be put off, and the unfortunate Mr Button had to go to school

despite himself. In a few days he could achieve the act of drawing upon

the sand characters somewhat like the above, but not without prompting,

Dick and Emmeline on each side of him, breathless for fear of a mistake.

“Which next?” would ask the sweating scribe, the perspiration pouring

from his forehead—“which next? an’ be quick, for it’s moithered I am.”

“N. N.—that’s right—Ow, you’re making it crooked!—_that’s_

right—there! it’s all there now—Hurroo!”

“Hurroo!” would answer the scholar, waving his old hat over his own

name, and “Hurroo!” would answer the cocoa-nut grove echoes; whilst the

far, faint “Hi hi!” of the wheeling gulls on the reef would come over

the blue lagoon as if in acknowledgment of the deed, and encouragement.

The appetite comes with teaching. The pleasantest mental exercise of

childhood is the instruction of one’s elders. Even Emmeline felt this.

She took the geography class one day in a timid manner, putting her

little hand first in the great horny fist of her friend.

“Mr Button!”

“Well, honey?”

“I know g’ography.”

“And what’s that?” asked Mr Button.

This stumped Emmeline for a moment.

“It’s where places are,” she said at last.

“Which places?” enquired he.

“All sorts of places,” replied Emmeline. “Mr Button!”

“What is it, darlin’?”

“Would you like to learn g’ography?”

“I’m not wishful for larnin’,” said the other hurriedly. “It makes me

head buzz to hear them things they rade out of books.”

“Paddy,” said Dick, who was strong on drawing that afternoon, “look

here.” He drew the following on the sand:

[Illustration: A bad drawing of an elephant]

“That’s an elephant,” he said in a dubious voice.

Mr Button grunted, and the sound was by no means filled with

enthusiastic assent. A chill fell on the proceedings.

Dick wiped the elephant slowly and regretfully out, whilst Emmeline

felt disheartened. Then her face suddenly cleared; the seraphic smile

came into it for a moment—a bright idea had struck her.

“Dicky,” she said, “draw Henry the Eight.”

Dick’s face brightened. He cleared the sand and drew the following

figure:

l l

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“_That’s_ not Henry the Eight,” he explained, “but he will be in a

minute. Daddy showed me how to draw him; he’s nothing till he gets his

hat on.”

“Put his hat on, put his hat on!” implored Emmeline, gazing alternately

from the figure on the sand to Mr Button’s face, watching for the

delighted smile with which she was sure the old man would greet the

great king when he appeared in all his glory.

Then Dick with a single stroke of the cane put Henry’s hat on.

=== l

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Now, no portrait could be liker to his monk-hunting majesty than the

above, created with one stroke of a cane (so to speak), yet Mr Button

remained unmoved.

“I did it for Mrs Sims,” said Dick regretfully, “and _she_ said it was

the image of him.”

“Maybe the hat’s not big enough,” said Emmeline, turning her head from

side to side as she gazed at the picture. It looked right, but she felt

there must be something wrong, as Mr Button did not applaud. Has not

every true artist felt the same before the silence of some critic?

Mr Button tapped the ashes out of his pipe and rose to stretch himself,

and the class rose and trooped down to the lagoon edge, leaving Henry

and his hat a figure on the sand to be obliterated by the wind.

After a while, as time went on, Mr Button took to his lessons as a

matter of course, the small inventions of the children assisting their

utterly untrustworthy knowledge. Knowledge, perhaps, as useful as any

other there amidst the lovely poetry of the palm trees and the sky.

Days slipped into weeks, and weeks into months, without the appearance

of a ship—a fact which gave Mr Button very little trouble; and even

less to his charges, who were far too busy and amused to bother about

ships.

The rainy season came on them with a rush, and at the words “rainy

season” do not conjure up in your mind the vision of a rainy day in

Manchester.

The rainy season here was quite a lively time. Torrential showers

followed by bursts of sunshine, rainbows, and rain-dogs in the sky, and

the delicious perfume of all manner of growing things on the earth.

After the rains the old sailor said he’d be after making a house of

bamboos before the next rains came on them; but, maybe, before that

they’d be off the island.

“However,” said he, “I’ll dra’ you a picture of what it’ll be like when

it’s up;” and on the sand he drew a figure like this:

X

Having thus drawn the plans of the building, he leaned back against a

cocoa-palm and lit his pipe. But he had reckoned without Dick.

The boy had not the least wish to live in a house, but he had a keen

desire to see one built, and help to build one. The ingenuity which is

part of the multiform basis of the American nature was aroused.

“How’re you going to keep them from slipping, if you tie them together

like that?” he asked, when Paddy had more fully explained his method.

“Which from slippin’?”

“The canes—one from the other?”

“After you’ve fixed thim, one cross t’other, you drive a nail through

the cross-piece and a rope over all.”

“Have you any nails, Paddy?”

“No,” said Mr Button, “I haven’t.”

“Then how’re you goin’ to build the house?”

“Ax me no questions now; I want to smoke me pipe.”

But he had raised a devil difficult to lay. Morning, noon, and night it

was “Paddy, when are you going to begin the house?” or, “Paddy, I guess

I’ve got a way to make the canes stick together without nailing.” Till

Mr Button, in despair, like a beaver, began to build.

There was great cane-cutting in the cane-brake above, and, when

sufficient had been procured, Mr Button struck work for three days. He

would have struck altogether, but he had found a taskmaster.

The tireless Dick, young and active, with no original laziness in his

composition, no old bones to rest, or pipe to smoke, kept after him

like a bluebottle fly. It was in vain that he tried to stave him off

with stories about fairies and Cluricaunes. Dick wanted to build a

house.

Mr Button didn’t. He wanted to rest. He did not mind fishing or

climbing a cocoa-nut tree, which he did to admiration by passing a rope

round himself and the tree, knotting it, and using it as a support

during the climb; but house-building was monotonous work.

He said he had no nails. Dick countered by showing how the canes could

be held together by notching them.

“And, faith, but it’s a cliver boy you are,” said the weary one

admiringly, when the other had explained his method.

“Then come along, Paddy, and stick ’em up.”

Mr Button said he had no rope, that he’d have to think about it, that

to-morrow or next day he’d be after getting some notion how to do it

without rope. But Dick pointed out that the brown cloth which Nature

has wrapped round the cocoa-palm stalks would do instead of rope if cut

in strips. Then the badgered one gave in.

They laboured for a fortnight at the thing, and at the end of that time

had produced a rough sort of wigwam on the borders of the chapparel.

Out on the reef, to which they often rowed in the dinghy, when the tide

was low, deep pools would be left, and in the pools fish. Paddy said

if they had a spear they might be able to spear some of these fish, as

he had seen the natives do away “beyant” in Tahiti.

Dick enquired as to the nature of a spear, and next day produced a

ten-foot cane sharpened at the end after the fashion of a quill pen.

“Sure, what’s the use of that?” said Mr Button. “You might job it into

a fish, but he’d be aff it in two ticks; it’s the barb that holds them.”

Next day the indefatigable one produced the cane amended; he had

whittled it down about three feet from the end and on one side, and

carved a fairly efficient barb. It was good enough, at all events, to

spear a “groper” with, that evening, in the sunset-lit pools of the

reef at low tide.

“There aren’t any potatoes here,” said Dick one day, after the second

rains.

“We’ve et ’em all months ago,” replied Paddy.

“How do potatoes grow?” enquired Dick.

“Grow, is it? Why, they grow in the ground; and where else would they

grow?” He explained the process of potato-planting: cutting them into

pieces so that there was an eye in each piece, and so forth. “Having

done this,” said Mr Button, “you just chuck the pieces in the ground;

their eyes grow, green leaves ‘pop up,’ and then, if you dug the roots

up maybe, six months after, you’d find bushels of potatoes in the

ground, ones as big as your head, and weeny ones. It’s like a family of

childer—some’s big and some’s little. But there they are in the

ground, and all you have to do is to take a fark and dig a potful of

them with a turn of your wrist, as many a time I’ve done it in the ould

days.”

“Why didn’t we do that?” asked Dick.

“Do what?” asked Mr Button.

“Plant some of the potatoes.”

“And where’d we have found the spade to plant them with?”

“I guess we could have fixed up a spade,” replied the boy. “I made a

spade at home, out of a piece of old board, once—daddy helped.”

“Well, skelp off with you, and make a spade now,” replied the other,

who wanted to be quiet and think, “and you and Em’line can dig in the

sand.”

Emmeline was sitting near by, stringing together some gorgeous blossoms

on a tendril of liana. Months of sun and ozone had made a considerable

difference in the child. She was as brown as a gipsy and freckled, not

very much taller, but twice as plump. Her eyes had lost considerably

that look as though she were contemplating futurity and immensity—not

as abstractions, but as concrete images, and she had lost the habit of

sleep-walking.

The shock of the tent coming down on the first night she was tethered

to the scull had broken her of it, helped by the new healthful

conditions of life, the sea-bathing, and the eternal open air. There is

no narcotic to excel fresh air.

Months of semi-savagery had made also a good deal of difference in

Dick’s appearance. He was two inches taller than on the day they

landed. Freckled and tanned, he had the appearance of a boy of twelve.

He was the promise of a fine man. He was not a good-looking child, but

he was healthy-looking, with a jolly laugh, and a daring, almost

impudent expression of face.

The question of the children’s clothes was beginning to vex the mind of

the old sailor. The climate was a suit of clothes in itself. One was

much happier with almost nothing on. Of course there were changes of

temperature, but they were slight. Eternal summer, broken by torrential

rains, and occasionally a storm, that was the climate of the island;

still, the “childer” couldn’t go about with nothing on.

He took some of the striped flannel and made Emmeline a kilt. It was

funny to see him sitting on the sand, Emmeline standing before him with

her garment round her waist, being tried on; he, with a mouthful of

pins, and the housewife with the scissors, needles, and thread by his

side.

“Turn to the lift a bit more,” he’d say, “aisy does it. Stidy

so—musha! musha! where’s thim scissors? Dick, be holdin’ the end of

this bit of string till I get the stitches in behint. Does that hang

comfortable?—well, an’ you’re the trouble an’ all. How’s _that_? That’s

aisier, is it? Lift your fut till I see if it comes to your knees. Now

off with it, and lave me alone till I stitch the tags to it.”

It was the mixture of a skirt and the idea of a sail, for it had two

rows of reef points; a most ingenious idea, as it could be reefed if

the child wanted to go paddling, or in windy weather.