CHAPTER XVII

THE DEVIL’S CASK

One morning, about a week after the day on which the old sailor, to use

his own expression, had bent a skirt on Emmeline, Dick came through the

woods and across the sands running. He had been on the hill-top.

“Paddy,” he cried to the old man, who was fixing a hook on a

fishing-line, “there’s a ship!”

It did not take Mr Button long to reach the hill-top, and there she

was, beating up for the island. Bluff-bowed and squab, the figure of an

old Dutch woman, and telling of her trade a league off. It was just

after the rains, the sky was not yet quite clear of clouds; you could

see showers away at sea, and the sea was green and foam-capped.

There was the trying-out gear; there were the boats, the crow’s nest,

and all complete, and labelling her a whaler. She was a ship, no doubt,

but Paddy Button would as soon have gone on board a ship manned by

devils, and captained by Lucifer, as on board a South Sea whaleman. He

had been there before, and he knew.

He hid the children under a large banyan, and told them not to stir or

breathe till he came back, for the ship was “the devil’s own ship”; and

if the men on board caught them they’d skin them alive and all.

Then he made for the beach; he collected all the things out of the

wigwam, and all the old truck in the shape of boots and old clothes,

and stowed them away in the dinghy. He would have destroyed the house,

if he could, but he hadn’t time. Then he rowed the dinghy a hundred

yards down the lagoon to the left, and moored her under the shade of an

aoa, whose branches grew right over the water. Then he came back

through the cocoa-nut grove on foot, and peered through the trees over

the lagoon to see what was to be seen.

The wind was blowing dead on for the opening in the reef, and the old

whaleman came along breasting the swell with her bluff bows, and

entered the lagoon. There was no leadsman in her chains. She just came

in as if she knew all the soundings by heart—as probably she did—for

these whalemen know every hole and corner in the Pacific.

The anchor fell with a splash, and she swung to it, making a strange

enough picture as she floated on the blue mirror, backed by the

graceful palm tree on the reef. Then Mr Button, without waiting to see

the boats lowered, made back to his charges, and the three camped in

the woods that night.

Next morning the whaleman was off and away, leaving as a token of her

visit the white sand all trampled, an empty bottle, half an old

newspaper, and the wigwam torn to pieces.

The old sailor cursed her and her crew, for the incident had brought a

new exercise into his lazy life. Every day now at noon he had to climb

the hill, on the look-out for whalemen. Whalemen haunted his dreams,

though I doubt if he would willingly have gone on board even a Royal

Mail steamer. He was quite happy where he was. After long years of the

fo’cs’le the island was a change indeed. He had tobacco enough to last

him for an indefinite time, the children for companions, and food at

his elbow. He would have been entirely happy if the island had only

been supplied by Nature with a public-house.

The spirit of hilarity and good fellowship, however, who suddenly

discovered this error on the part of Nature, rectified it, as will be

presently seen.

The most disastrous result of the whaleman’s visit was not the

destruction of the “house,” but the disappearance of Emmeline’s box.

Hunt high or hunt low, it could not be found. Mr Button in his hurry

must have forgotten it when he removed the things to the dinghy—at all

events, it was gone. Probably one of the crew of the whalemen had found

it and carried it off with him; no one could say. It was gone, and

there was the end of the matter, and the beginning of great

tribulation, that lasted Emmeline for a week.

She was intensely fond of coloured things, coloured flowers especially;

and she had the prettiest way of making them into a wreath for her own

or some one else’s head. It was the hat-making instinct that was at work

in her, perhaps; at all events, it was a feminine instinct, for Dick

made no wreaths.

One morning, as she was sitting by the old sailor engaged in stringing

shells, Dick came running along the edge of the grove. He had just come

out of the wood, and he seemed to be looking for something. Then he

found what he was in search of—a big shell—and with it in his hand

made back to the wood.

_Item._—His dress was a piece of cocoa-nut cloth tied round his middle.

Why he wore it at all, goodness knows, for he would as often as not be

running about stark naked.

“I’ve found something, Paddy!” he cried, as he disappeared among the

trees.

“What have you found?” piped Emmeline, who was always interested in new

things.

“Something funny!” came back from amidst the trees.

Presently he returned; but he was not running now. He was walking

slowly and carefully, holding the shell as if it contained something

precious that he was afraid would escape.

“Paddy, I turned over the old barrel and it had a cork thing in it, and

I pulled it out, and the barrel is full of awfully funny-smelling

stuff—I’ve brought some for you to see.”

He gave the shell into the old sailor’s hands. There was about half a

gill of yellow liquid in the shell. Paddy smelt it, tasted, and gave a

shout.

“Rum, begorra!”

“What is it, Paddy?” asked Emmeline.

“_Where_ did you say you got it—in the ould bar’l, did you say?” asked

Mr Button, who seemed dazed and stunned as if by a blow.

“Yes; I pulled the cork thing out—”

“_Did yiz put it back?_”

“Yes.”

“Oh, glory be to God! Here have I been, time out of mind, sittin’ on an

ould empty bar’l, with me tongue hangin’ down to me heels for the want

of a drink, and it full of rum all the while!”

He took a sip of the stuff, tossed the lot off, closed his lips tight

to keep in the fumes, and shut one eye.

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.