The Blue Lagoon / Голубая лагуна

Chapter I

Where the Slush Lamp[1] Burns

Mr Button was seated on a sea-chest with a fiddle under his left ear. He was playing the “Shan van vaught,[2]” and accompanying the tune with blows of his left heel on the deck.

He was dressed in a striped shirt, rough trousers and a jacket—green from the influence of sun and salt. A typical old shell-back, round-shouldered, hook-fingered like a crab.

His face was like a moon, red through tropical mists; and as he played it wore an expression of attention as though the fiddle were telling him marvellous tales.

“Left-handed Pat,” was his nickname; not because he was left-handed, but simply because everything he did he did wrong—or nearly so.

He was a Celt[3], and all the salt seas that had flowed between him and Connaught[4] these forty years and more had not washed the Celtic element from his blood, nor the belief in fairies from his soul. The Celtic nature is a fast dye[5], and Mr Button’s nature was such that though he had got drunk in most ports of the world, though he had sailed with Yankee captains and been man-handled by Yankee mates, he still carried his fairies about with him.

Nearly over the musician’s head swung a hammock from which hung a leg. The swinging kerosene lamp cast its light forward, lighting here a naked foot hanging over the side of a bunk, here a face from which stuck a pipe, here a breast covered with dark hair, here an arm tattooed.

It was in the days when the cockpit of the Northumberland [6] had a full company: a crowd of men who were farm labourers and grazed pigs in Ohio[7] three months back, old seasoned sailors like Paddy Button—a mixture of the best and the worst of the earth, such as you find nowhere else in so small a space as in a ship’s cockpit.

The Northumberland had experienced a terrible rounding of the Horn[8]. Bound from New Orleans to ’Frisco[9] she had spent thirty days battling with headwinds and storms, and just now, at the moment of this story, she was locked in a calm, south of the line.

Mr Button finished his tune and drew his right coat sleeve across his forehead[10]. Then he took out a sooty pipe, filled it with tobacco, and lit it.

“Pawthrick,” drawled a voice from the hammock above, from which hung down the leg, “what vas you singing ter night ’bout a lip?”

“A which lip?” asked Mr Button, cocking his eye up at the bottom of the hammock while he held the match to his pipe.

“It vas about a green thing,” came a sleepy Dutch voice from a bunk.

“Oh, a Leprachaun[11] you mean. Sure, me mother’s sister had one down in Connaught.”

“Vat vas it like?” asked the dreamy Dutch voice.

“Like? Sure, it was like a Leprachaun; and what else would it be like?”

“What like vas that?” persisted the voice.

“It was like a little man no bigger than a big forked raddish, an’ as green as a cabbidge. Me a’nt had one in her house down in Connaught in the ould days. O, the ould days, the ould days! Now, you may b’lave me or b’lave me not, but you could have put him in your pocket, and the grass-green head of him wouldn’t more than’v stuck out. She kept him in a cupboard, and out of the cupboard he’d pop if it was a crack open, an’ into the milk pans he’d be, or under the beds, or pullin’ the stool from under you. He’d chase the pig till it’d be all ribs like an ould umbrilla with the fright; he’d spoil the eggs so the chickens comin’ out wid two heads on them, an’ twinty-seven legs. And you’d start to chase him, an’ then away he’d go, you behint him, till you’d landed in a ditch, an’ he’d be back in the cupboard.”

“He was a Troll,” murmured the Dutch voice.

“I’m tellin’ you he was a Leprachaun, and there’s no knowin’ what he’d be up to[12]. He’d pull the cabbidge, maybe, out of the pot boilin’ on the fire and hit you in the face with it; and thin, maybe, you’d hold out your fist to him, and he’d put a goulden soverin in it.”

“Wisht he was here!” murmured a voice from a bunk near Pat.

“Pawthrick,” drawled the voice from the hammock above, “what’d you do first if you found y’self with twenty pound in your pocket?”

“What’s the use of askin’ me?” replied Mr Button. “What’s the use of twenty pound to a sayman at say[13], where the grog’s all wather an’ the beef’s all horse? Gimme it ashore, an’ you’d see what I’d do wid it!”

“I guess the nearest grog-shop keeper wouldn’t see you comin’ for dust[14],” said a voice from Ohio.

“He would not,” said Mr Button; “nor you afther me. Be damned[15] to the grog and thim that sells it!”

“It’s all darned easy to talk,[16]” said Ohio. “You curse the grog at sea when you can’t get it; set you ashore, and you’re bung full[17].”

“I likes me dhrunk,” said Mr Button, “I’m free to admit; an’ I’m the divil when it’s in me, and it’ll be the end of me yet, or me ould mother was a liar. ‘Pat,’ she says, ‘storms you may escape, an’ wimmen you may escape, but the potheen ’ill have you[18].’ Forty year ago—forty year ago!”

“Well,” said Ohio, “it hasn’t had you yet.”

“No,” replied Mr Button, “but it will.”

Chapter II

Under the Stars

It was a wonderful night up on deck, filled with all the beauty of starlight and a tropic calm.

The Pacific slept; a ripple lifted the Northumberland on its little waves; while overhead, near the arch of the Milky Way[19], hung the Southern Cross[20].

Stars in the sky, stars in the sea, stars by the million and the million; so many burning lamps filled the mind with the idea of a big and populous city—yet from all that living beauty not a sound.

Down in the cabin—or saloon, as it was called—were seated the three passengers of the ship; one reading at the table, two playing on the floor.

The man at the table, Arthur Lestrange, was seated with his large, deep-sunken eyes fixed on a book. He was most evidently in consumption[21], and a long sea voyage was, indeed, his last remedy.

Emmeline Lestrange, his little niece—eight years of age, with thoughts of her own,—sat in a corner nursing something in her arms, and rocking herself to the tune of her own thoughts.

Dick, Lestrange’s little son, eight and a bit, was somewhere under the table. They were Bostonians, bound for San Francisco, or rather for the sun and beauty of Los Angeles, where Lestrange had bought a small estate, hoping there to enjoy the life renewed by the long sea voyage.

As he sat reading, the cabin door opened, and appeared a female form. This was Mrs Stannard, the stewardess, and Mrs Stannard meant bedtime.

“Dicky,” said Mr Lestrange, closing his book, and raising the table-cloth a few inches, “bedtime.”

“Oh, not yet, daddy!” came a sleepy voice from under the table; “I ain’t ready. I dunno want to go to bed!”

Mrs Stannard, who knew her work, had stooped under the table, seized him by the foot, and pulled him out kicking and fighting all at the same time.

As for Emmeline, she, having glanced up and recognised the inevitable, rose to her feet, and, holding the ugly rag-doll she had been nursing, stood waiting till Dicky, after a few last screams, suddenly dried his eyes and held up a tear-wet face for his father to kiss. Then she presented her brow to her uncle, received a kiss and went, led by the hand into a cabin on the port side[22] of the saloon.

Mr Lestrange returned to his book, but he had not read for long when the cabin door was opened, and Emmeline, in her nightdress, reappeared, holding a brown paper parcel in her hand, a parcel of about the same size as the book you are reading.

“My box,” said she; and as she spoke, the little plain face changed to the face of an angel.

She had smiled. When Emmeline Lestrange smiled it was absolutely as if the light of Paradise had suddenly flashed upon her face. Then she vanished with her box, and Mr Lestrange renewed reading his book.

This box of Emmeline’s, I may say, had given more trouble aboard ship than all of the rest of the passengers’ luggage put together.

It had been presented to her on her departure from Boston by a lady friend, and what it contained was a dark secret to all on board, save its owner and her uncle; she was a woman, or, the beginning of a woman, yet she kept this secret to herself—a fact which you will please note.

The trouble of the thing was that it was frequently lost. Seeing herself maybe living in a world filled with robbers, she would carry it about with her for safety, sit down behind a coil of rope[23] and fall into dreams—and then suddenly find she had lost her box.

Then she would absolutely disturb the ship. Wide-eyed and distressed, she would wander hither and thither[24], peeping into the caboose, peeping down the deck, never saying a word, searching like a ghost, but silent.

She seemed ashamed to tell of her loss, ashamed to let any one know of it; but every one knew of it directly when they saw her, and every one hunted for it.

Strangely enough it was Paddy Button who usually found it. He who was always doing the wrong thing in the eyes of men, generally did the right thing in the eyes of children. Children, in fact, when they could get at Mr Button, went for him[25] con amore[26].

Mr Lestrange after a while closed the book he was reading, looked around him and sighed.

The cabin of the Northumberland was a cheerful enough place, decorated with mirrors let into the white pine panelling. Lestrange was staring at the reflection of his own face in one of these mirrors fixed just opposite to where he sat.

His thinness was terrible, and it was just perhaps at this moment that he first recognised the fact that he must not only die, but die soon.

He turned from the mirror and sat for a while with his chin resting upon his hand, and his eyes fixed on an ink spot[27]upon the table-cloth; then he arose, and crossing the cabin climbed up to the deck.

As he leaned against the rail to recover his breath, the beauty of the Southern night struck him to the heart with a pain. He took his seat on a deck chair and gazed up at the Milky Way, that great triumphal arch built of suns that the dawn would sweep away like a dream.

Then he became aware of a figure promenading the deck. It was the “Old Man.”

A sea captain is always the “old man,” be his age what it may[28]. Captain Le Farges’ age might have been forty-five. He was a sailor of French origin, but a naturalised American.

“I don’t know where the wind’s gone,” said the captain as he drew near the man in the deck chair. “I guess it’s blown a hole in the sky, and escaped somewhere to the back of beyond[29].”

“It’s been a long voyage,” said Lestrange; “and I’m thinking, Captain, it will be a very long voyage for me. My port’s not ’Frisco; I feel it.”

“Don’t you be thinking that sort of thing,” said the other, taking his seat in a chair close by. “Now we’re in warm latitoods[30], and you’ll be as right and spry[31] as any one of us, before we fetch the Golden Gates[32].”

“I’m thinking about the children,” said Lestrange, seeming not to hear the captain’s words. “Should anything happen to me before we reach port, I should like you to do something for me. It’s only this: dispose of my body without—without the children knowing. It has been in my mind to ask you this for some days. Captain, those children know nothing of death.”

Le Farge moved uneasily in his chair.

“Little Emmeline’s mother died when she was two. Her father—my brother—died before she was born. Dicky never knew a mother; she died giving him birth. My God, Captain, death has laid a heavy hand on my family; can you wonder that I have hid his very name from those two creatures that I love![33]”

“Ay, ay,” said Le Farge, “it’s sad! it’s sad!”

“When I was quite a child,” went on Lestrange, “a child no older than Dicky, my nurse used to terrify me with tales about dead people. I was told I’d go to hell when I died if I wasn’t a good child. I cannot tell you how much that has ruined my life, for the thoughts we think in childhood, Captain, are the fathers of the thoughts we think when we are grown up. And can a sick father—have healthy children?”

“I guess not.”

“So I just said, when these two tiny creatures came into my care, that I would do all in my power to protect them from the terrors of life—or rather, I should say, from the terror of death. I don’t know whether I have done right, but I have done it for the best. They had a cat, and one day Dicky came in to me and said: ‘Father, pussy’s in the garden asleep, and I can’t wake her.’ So I just took him out for a walk; there was a circus in the town, and I took him to it. It so filled his mind that he quite forgot the cat. Next day he asked for her. I did not tell him she was buried in the garden, I just said she must have run away. In a week he had forgotten all about her—children soon forget.”

“Ay, that’s true,” said the sea captain. “But I think they must learn some time they’ve got to die.”

“Should I die before we reach land, and be thrown into that great, vast sea: just tell them I’ve gone on board another ship. You will take them back to Boston; I have here, in a letter, the name of a lady who will care for them. Dicky will be well off[34], as far as property is concerned, and so will Emmeline. Just tell them I’ve gone on board another ship—children soon forget.”

“I’ll do what you ask,” said the seaman.

The moon was over the horizon now, and the Northumberland lay adrift[35] in a river of silver.

As the two men sat without speaking, thinking their own thoughts, a little white figure appeared from the saloon hatch. It was Emmeline. She was a sleepwalker.

She had dreamed that she had lost her precious box, and now she was hunting for it on the decks of the Northumberland.

Mr Lestrange put his finger to his lips, took off his shoes and silently followed her. She searched behind a coil of rope, she tried to open the caboose door; hither and thither she wandered, wide-eyed and troubled of face, till at last, in the shadow of the hencoop, she found her treasure. Then back she came, holding up her little nightdress with one hand, and vanished down the saloon companion[36]very hurriedly; her uncle close behind, with one hand outstretched so as to catch her in case she stumbled.

Chapter III

The Shadow and the Fire

It was the fourth day of the long calm. An awning had been made on the stern for the passengers, and under it sat Lestrange, trying to read, and the children trying to play.

“Daddy!” suddenly cried Dick, who was looking over the rail.

“What?”

“Fish!”

Lestrange rose to his feet, came up and looked over the rail.

Down in the green water something moved, something pale and long—an ugly form. It vanished; and yet another came, neared the surface, and displayed itself more fully. Lestrange saw its eyes, he saw the dark fin, and the whole huge length of the creature; a shudder ran through him as he clasped Dicky.

“Ain’t he fine?” said the child. “I guess, daddy, I’d pull him aboard if I had a hook. Why haven’t I a hook, daddy?—why haven’t I a hook, daddy?—Ow, you’re squeezin’ me!”

Emmeline also wanted to look. He lifted her up in his arms; but there was nothing to see: the creature had vanished.

“What’s they called, daddy?” persisted Dick, as his father took him down from the rail, and led him back to the chair.

“Sharks,” said Lestrange, whose face was covered with sweat.

He picked up the book he had been reading and sat with it on his knees staring at the white sunlit main-deck.

He glanced at the book upon his knees, and contrasted the beautiful things in it with the terrible things he had just seen, the things that were waiting for their food under the ship.

It was three bells—half-past three in the afternoon—and the ship’s bell had just rung out. The stewardess appeared to take the children below; and as they vanished down the saloon companion-way[37], Captain Le Farge came up to the stern, and stood for a moment looking over the sea on the port side, where fog had suddenly appeared.

“The sun has dimmed a bit,” said he; “I can a’most look at it. There’s a fog coming up—ever seen a Pacific fog?”

“No, never.”

“Well, you won’t want to see another,” replied the mariner, shading his eyes and fixing them upon the sea-line. The sea-line had lost its distinctness.

The captain suddenly turned from his viewing the sea and sky, raised his head and sniffed.

“Something is burning somewhere—smell it? Seems to me like an old mat or somewhat. It’s that steward, maybe; if he isn’t breaking glass, he’s upsetting lamps and burning holes in the carpet. Bless my soul, I’d sooner have a dozen women an’ their dustpans round the place than one tomfool steward like Jenkins.” He went to the saloon hatch. “Below there[38]!”

“Ay, ay, sir.”

“What are you burning?”

“I an’t burnin’ northen, sir.”

“Tell you, I smell it!”

“There’s northen burnin’ here, sir.”

“Neither is there, it’s all on deck. Something in the caboose, maybe—rags, most likely.”

“Captain!” said Lestrange.

“Ay, ay.”

“Come here, please.”

Le Farge climbed on to the stern.

“I don’t know whether it’s my weakness that’s affecting my eyes, but there seems to me something strange about the mainmast[39].”

The main-mast seemed in motion—a spiral movement most strange to watch.

This apparent movement was caused by a spiral smoke so vague that one could only see it from the slight tremor of the mast.

“My God!” cried Le Farge, as he sprang from the stern and rushed forward.

Lestrange followed him slowly, stopping every moment to clasp the rail and pant for breath. He heard the shrill bird-like notes of the bosun’s pipe[40]. He saw the hands rushing from the cockpit, like bees out of a hive; he watched them surrounding the main-hatch. He watched the tarpaulin and locking-bars removed. He saw the hatch opened, and a burst of black smoke rise to the sky.

Lestrange was a man of a highly nervous temperament, and it is just this sort of man who keeps his head in an emergency. His first thought was of the children, his second of the boats.

Going around Cape Horn the Northumberland lost several of her boats. There were left the long-boat, a quarter-boat, and the dinghy[41]. He heard Le Farge’s voice ordering the hatch to be closed and the pumps manned, so as to flood the hold[42]; and, knowing that he could do nothing on deck, he made as fast as he could for the saloon companion-way[43].

Mrs Stannard was just coming out of the children’s cabin.

“Are the children lying down, Mrs Stannard?” asked Lestrange, almost breathless from the excitement of the last few minutes.

The woman glanced at him with frightened eyes.

“For if they are, and you have undressed them, then you must put their clothes on again. The ship is on fire, Mrs Stannard.”

“Good God, sir!”

“Listen!” said Lestrange.

From a distance came the noise of the pumps.

Chapter IV

And Like a Dream Dissolved

Before the woman had time to speak a heavy step was heard on the stairs, and Le Farge broke into the saloon. There was blood on his face, and the veins stood on his temples like twisted cords[44].

“Get those children ready!” he shouted, as he rushed into his own cabin. “Get all you need—boats are getting ready. Hell! where are those papers?”

They heard him furiously searching and collecting things in his cabin—the ship’s papers, accounts; and as he searched, and found, and packed, he kept shouting orders for the children to be got on deck. Half mad he seemed, and half mad he was with the knowledge of the terrible thing that was packed among the cargo.

Up on deck the crew, under the direction of the first mate, were working in an orderly manner, utterly unconscious of the terrible thing being on fire there, under their feet. The covers had been stripped from the boats, kegs of water and bags of biscuit placed in them. The dinghy, smallest of the boats, was hanging at the port side; and Paddy Button was in the act of putting a keg of water in her, when Le Farge broke on to the deck, followed by the stewardess carrying Emmeline, and Mr Lestrange leading Dick. The dinghy was rather a larger boat than the ordinary ships’ dinghy, and possessed a small mast and long sail.

“Into the dinghy with you[45],” the captain cried to Paddy Button, “and row these children and the passenger out a mile from the ship—two miles—three miles.”

“Sure, Captain dear, I’ve left me fiddle in the—”

Le Farge dropped the bundle of things he was holding under his left arm, seized the old sailor and pushed him against the side of the ship, as if he meant to fling him into the sea through it.

Next moment Mr Button was in the boat. Emmeline was handed to him, pale of face and wide-eyed, and clasping something wrapped in a little shawl; then Dick, and then Mr Lestrange was helped over.

“No room for more!” cried Le Farge. “Your place will be in the long-boat, Mrs Stannard, if we have to leave the ship. Lower away[46], lower away!”

The boat sank towards the smooth blue sea, kissed it and was afloat.

Now Mr Button, before joining the ship at Boston, had spent a long time hanging around the quay, having no money to enjoy himself in a tavern. He had seen something of the lading of the Northumberland, and heard more from a stevedore. No sooner had he seized the oars[47], than his knowledge awoke in his mind. He gave a shout: “Bullies!”

“Run for your lives—I’ve just rimimbered—there’s two bar’ls of blastin’ powther in the hould[48]!”

Then he bent to his oars, as no man ever bent before.

Lestrange, sitting in the stern clasping Emmeline and Dick, saw nothing for a moment after hearing these words. The children, who knew nothing of blasting powder or its effects, though half frightened by all the bustle and excitement, were still amused and pleased at finding themselves in the little boat so close to the blue pretty sea.

Dick put his finger over the side, so that it made a ripple in the water (the most delightful experience of childhood). Emmeline, with one hand clasped in her uncle’s, watched Mr Button rowing the dinghy.

The long-boat and the quarter-boat were floating by the side of the Northumberland.

From the ship men were jumping overboard like water-rats, swimming in the water like ducks, getting on board the boats anyhow.

From the half-opened main-hatch the black smoke, mixed now with sparks, rose steadily and swiftly, as if through the half-closed teeth of a dragon.

A mile away from the Northumberland stood the fog bank[49]. It looked solid, like a vast country that had suddenly and strangely built itself on the sea—a country where no birds sang and no trees grew.

“I’m spint[50]!” suddenly gasped the oarsman, putting the oar handles under his knees, and bending down. “I’m spint—don’t ax me, I’m spint!”

Mr Lestrange, white as a ghost, gave him time to recover himself and turned to look at the ship. She seemed a great distance off, and the boats, well away from her, were making at a furious pace towards the dinghy. Dick was still playing with the water, but Emmeline’s eyes were entirely occupied with Paddy Button. She had seen him washing the decks, dancing a jig, going round the main deck on all fours[51] with Dick on his back, but she had never seen him going on like this before.

She saw he was in trouble about something, and, putting her hand in the pocket of her dress, she searched for something that she knew was there. She produced a Tangerine orange[52], and leaning forward she touched his head with it.

Mr Button raised his head, stared for a second, saw the orange, and at the sight of it the thought of “the childer” and their innocence, himself and the blasting powder, cleared his tired mind, and he took to the oars again.