The Blue Lagoon / Голубая лагуна

Chapter V

Voices Heard in the Mist

The sun became dim, and vanished. Though the air round the dinghy seemed quite clear, the on-coming boats were hazy and dim.

The long-boat was leading by a good way[53]. When she was within hearing distance the captain’s voice came.

“Dinghy ahoy[54]!”

“Ahoy!”

“Fetch alongside here[55]!”

The long-boat ceased rowing to wait for the quarter-boat that was slowly moving up. She was a heavy boat to pull, and now she was overloaded.

The wrath of Captain Le Farge with Paddy Button for the way he had panicked the crew was deep, but he had not time to show it.

“Here, get aboard us, Mr Lestrange!” said he, when the dinghy was alongside; “we have room for one. Mrs Stannard is in the quarter-boat, and it’s overcrowded; she’s better aboard the dinghy, for she can look after the kids. Come, hurry up! Ahoy!”—to the quarter-boat—“hurry up, hurry up!”

The quarter-boat had suddenly vanished.

Mr Lestrange climbed into the long-boat. Paddy pushed the dinghy a few yards away with the tip of an oar, and then lay on his oars[56] waiting.

“Ahoy! ahoy!” cried Le Farge.

“Ahoy!” came from the fog bank.

Next moment the long-boat and the dinghy vanished from each other’s sight: the great fog bank had taken them.

Now a couple of strokes of the left oar would have brought Mr Button alongside the long-boat, so close was he; but the quarter-boat was in his mind, so he took three powerful strokes in the direction in which he fancied the quarter-boat to be.

The rest was voices.

“Dinghy ahoy!”

“Ahoy!”

“Ahoy!”

“Don’t be shoutin’ together, or I’ll not know which way to pull. Quarter-boat ahoy! where are yiz?”

“Port your helm[57]!”

“Ay, ay!”—putting his helm, so to speak, to starboard[58]– “I’ll be wid yiz in wan minute—two or three minutes’ hard pulling.”

“Ahoy!”—much more faint.

“What d’ye mane rowin’ away from me?”—a dozen strokes.

“Ahoy!”—fainter still.

Mr Button rested on his oars.

“Divil mend them—I believe that was the long-boat shoutin’.”

He took to his oars again and pulled vigorously.

“Paddy,” came Dick’s small voice, apparently from nowhere, “where are we now?”

“Sure, we’re in a fog; where else would we be? Don’t you be affeared.”

“I ain’t affeared, but Em’s shivering.”

“Give her me coat,” said the oarsman, resting on his oars and taking it of.f “Wrap it round her; and when it’s round her we’ll all let one big halloo together. There’s an ould shawl som’er in the boat, but I can’t be after lookin’ for it now.”

He held out the coat and an almost invisible hand took it; at the same moment a terrible blow shook the sea and sky.

“There she goes,” said Mr Button; “an’ me old fiddle an’ all. Don’t be frightened, childer. Now we’ll all halloo togither—are yiz ready?”

“Ay, ay,” said Dick, who was a picker-up of sea terms[59].

“Halloo!” yelled Pat.

“Halloo! Halloo!” joined Dick and Emmeline.

A faint reply came, but from where, it was difficult to say. The old man rowed a few strokes and then paused on his oars. The surface of the sea was absolutely still, and silence closed round them like a ring.

The sun, could they have seen it, was now leaving the horizon.

They called again. Then they waited, but there was no response.

“There’s no use yellin’ like bulls to chaps that’s deaf as adders[60],” said the old sailor, shipping his oars; then he gave another shout, with the same result.

“Mr Button!” came Emmeline’s voice.

“What is it, honey?”

“I’m—m—’fraid.”

“You wait wan minit till I find the shawl—here it is!—an’ I’ll wrap you up in it.”

He got cautiously to the stern and took Emmeline in his arms.

“Don’t want the shawl,” said Emmeline; “I’m not so much afraid in your coat.” The rough, tobacco-smelling old coat gave her courage somehow.

“Well, then, keep it on. Dicky, are you cowld?”

“I’ve got into daddy’s great-coat; he left it behind him.”

“Well, then, I’ll put the shawl round me own shoulders, for it’s cowld I am. Are y’ hungry, childer?”

“No,” said Dick, “but I’m drefful—yow–”

“Sleepy, is it? Well, down you get in the bottom of the boat, and here’s the shawl for a pillow. I’ll be rowin’ again in a minit to keep meself warm.”

He buttoned the top button of the coat.

“I’m a’right,” murmured Emmeline in a dreamy voice.

“Shut your eyes tight,” replied Mr Button.

“She’s off[61],” murmured Mr Button to himself. Then he laid her gently down beside Dick. He shifted forward, moving like a crab. Then he put his hand to his pocket for his pipe and tobacco box. They were in his coat pocket, but Emmeline was in his coat. To search for them would be to awaken her.

The darkness of night was now adding itself to the blindness of the fog. The oarsman could not see even the thole pins[62]. For a moment he thought of awakening the children to keep him company, but he was ashamed. Then he took to the oars again, and rowed “by the feel of the water.” The creak of the oars was like a companion’s voice, the exercise calmed his fears. Now and again, forgetful of the sleeping children, he gave a halloo, and paused to listen. But no answer came.

Then he continued rowing, long, steady, laborious strokes, each taking him further and further from the boats that he was never to see again.

Chapter VI

Dawn on a Wide, Wide Sea

“Is it aslape I’ve been?” said Mr Button, suddenly awaking with a start.

He must have slept for hours, for now a warm, gentle wind was blowing, the moon was shining, and the fog was gone.

“Is it dhraming I’ve been?” continued the awakened one. “Where am I at all, at all? I dreamt I’d gone aslape on the main-hatch and the ship was blown up with powther, and it’s all come true.”

“Mr Button!” came a small voice from the stern (Emmeline’s).

“What is it, honey?”

“Where are we now?”

“Sure, we’re afloat on the say; where else would we be?”

“Where’s uncle?”

“He’s beyant there in the long-boat—he’ll be afther us in a minit.”

“I want a drink.”

He filled a tin cup, and gave her a drink. Then he took his pipe and tobacco from his coat pocket.

She almost immediately fell asleep again beside Dick, who had not stirred or moved; and the old sailor, standing up and steadying himself, cast his eyes round the horizon. Not a sign of sail or boat was there on all the moonlit sea. It was possible that the boats might be near enough to show up at daybreak.

But nothing is more mysterious than the currents of the sea. The ocean is an ocean of rivers, some fast flowing, some slow, and a league[63] from where you are drifting at the rate of a mile an hour another boat may be drifting two.

A slight warm breeze was frosting the water, blending moonshine and star shimmer; the ocean lay like a lake, yet the nearest mainland was perhaps a thousand miles away.

The thoughts of youth may be long, but not longer than the thoughts of this old sailor man smoking his pipe under the stars. Thoughts as long as the world is round.

I doubt if Paddy Button could have told you the name of the first ship he ever sailed in. If you had asked him, he would probably have replied: “I disremimber; it was to the Baltic, and cruel cowld weather, and I was say-sick—till I near brought me boots up[64].”

So he sat smoking his pipe, and calling to mind wild drunken scenes and palm-shadowed harbours, and the men and the women he had known—such men and such women! Then he fell asleep again, and when he awoke the moon had gone.

Presently, and almost at a stroke, a pencil of fire ruled a line along the eastern horizon, and the eastern sky became more beautiful than a rose leaf in May. The line of fire contracted into one spot—it was the rising sun.

As the light increased the sky above became of a blue impossible to imagine unless seen. The light was music to the soul. It was day.

“Daddy!” suddenly cried Dick, sitting up in the sunlight and rubbing his eyes with his open palms. “Where are we?”

“All right, Dicky, me son!” cried the old sailor, who had been standing up looking around for the boats. “Your daddy’s safe; he’ll be wid us in a minit, an’ bring another ship along with him. So you’re awake, are you, Em’line?”

Emmeline, sitting up in the old pilot coat, nodded in reply without speaking.

Did she guess that things were different from what Mr Button was making them out to be? Who can tell?

She was wearing an old cap of Dick’s, which Mrs Stannard in the hurry and confusion had put on her head. It was pushed to one side, and she made a funny enough little figure as she sat up in the early morning brightness, dressed in the old salt-stained coat beside Dick, whose straw hat[65] was somewhere in the bottom of the boat, and whose auburn locks were blowing in the faint breeze.

“Hurroo!” cried Dick, looking around at the blue and sparkling water. “I’m goin’ to be a sailor, aren’t I, Paddy? You’ll let me sail the boat, won’t you, Paddy, an’ show me how to row?”

“Aisy does it[66],” said Paddy, taking hold of the child. “I haven’t a sponge or towel, but I’ll just wash your face in salt wather and lave you to dry in the sun.”

He filled the tin with sea water.

“I don’t want to wash!” shouted Dick.

“Stick your face into the water in the tin,” commanded Paddy. “You wouldn’t be going about the place with your face like a soot-bag, would you?”

“Stick yours in!” commanded the other.

Mr Button did so, and made a noise in the water; then he lifted a wet and streaming face, and flung the contents of the tin overboard.

“Now you’ve lost your chance,” said Paddy, “all the water’s gone.”

“There’s more in the sea.”

“There’s no more to wash with, not till to-morrowthe fishes don’t allow it.”

“I want to wash,” grumbled Dick. “I want to stick my face in the tin, same’s you did; ’sides, Em hasn’t washed.”

“I don’t mind,” murmured Emmeline.

“Well, thin,” said Mr Button, as if making a sudden resolve, “I’ll ax the sharks.” He leaned over the boat’s side, his face close to the surface of the water. “Halloo there!” he shouted, and then bent his head sideways to listen; the children also looked over the side, deeply interested.

“Halloo there! Are y’aslape—Oh, there y’are! Here’s a spalpeen with a dhirty face, an’s wishful to wash it; may I take a tin of—Oh, thank your ’arner[67], thank your ’arner—good day to you, and my respects.”

“What did the shark say, Mr Button?” asked Emmeline.

“He said: ‘Take a bar’l[68] full, an’ welcome, Mister Button.’ Thin he put his head under his fin and went aslape agin; at least, I heard him snore.”

Emmeline nearly always “Mr Buttoned” her friend; sometimes she called him “Mr Paddy.” As for Dick, it was always “Paddy,” pure and simple. Children have etiquettes of their own.

For landsmen and landswomen, the most terrible experience when cast away at sea in an open boat is the total absence of privacy. But, whoever has gone through the experience will believe me that in great moments of life like this things that would shock us ashore are as nothing out there, face to face with eternity.

If so with grown-up people, how much more so with this old shell-back and his two charges?

And indeed Mr Button was a person who called a spade a spade[69], and looked after his two charges just as a nursemaid might look after her charges.

There was a large bag of biscuits in the boat, and some tinned stuf—f mostly sardines.

Paddy had a jack-knife, however, and in a marvellously short time a box of sardines was opened, and placed in the stern beside some biscuits.

These, with some water and Emmeline’s Tangerine orange, which she produced and added to the common store, formed the feast, and they fell to it.

When they had finished, the remains were put carefully away, and they began to step the tiny mast[70].

The sailor, when the mast was in its place, stood for a moment resting his hand on it, and gazing around him over the vast and voiceless blue.

The Pacific has three blues: the blue of morning, the blue of midday, and the blue of evening. But the blue of morning is the happiest: the happiest thing in colour—sparkling, vague, newborn—the blue of heaven and youth.

“What are you looking for, Paddy?” asked Dick.

“Sea-gulls,” replied the cunning man; then to himself: “Not a sight or a sound of them! Which way will I steer—north, south, aist, or west? It’s all wan, for if I steer to the aist, they may be in the west; and if I steer to the west, they may be in the aist; and I can’t steer to the west, for I’d be steering right in the wind’s eye[71]. I’ll make a soldier’s wind of it, and trust to chance[72].”

He set the sail[73], then shifted the rudder[74], lit a pipe, leaned back and gave the sail to the gentle breeze.

It was part of his profession, part of his nature, that, steering, maybe, straight towards death by starvation and thirst, he stayed calm as if he were taking the children for a summer’s sail. His imagination dealt little with the future, and the children were the same.

Never was there a happier starting, more joy in a little boat. During breakfast the seaman had given his charges to understand that if Dick did not meet his father and Emmeline her uncle in a “while or two,” it was because he had gone on board a ship, and he’d be along presently. The terror of their position was as deeply hidden from them as eternity is hidden from you or me.

Emmeline’s rag-doll[75] was a shocking thing from a hygienic or artistic standpoint. Its face was just inked on, it had no features, no arms; yet not for all the dolls in the world would she have exchanged this dirty and nearly formless thing. It was a fetish. She sat nursing it on one side of Paddy, while Dick, on the other side, hung his nose over the water, on the look-out for fish.

“Why do you smoke, Mr Button?” asked Emmeline, who had been watching her friend for some time in silence.

“To aise me thrubbles[76],” replied Paddy.

He was leaning back with one eye shut and the other fixed on the sail. He was in his element[77]: nothing to do but steer and smoke, warmed by the sun and cooled by the breeze. Paddy smoked.

“Whoop!” cried Dick. “Look, Paddy!”

An albicore[78] had taken a flying leap from the flashing sea, turned a complete somersault and vanished.

“It’s an albicore; he’s bein’ chased.”

“What’s chasing him, Paddy?”

“What’s chasin’ him?—why, what else but the gibly-gobly-ums[79]!”

Before Dick could ask about the personal appearance and habits of the latter, a shoal of silver heads passed the boat and sank into the water with a hissing sound.

“What are you sayin’—fish can’t fly! Where’s the eyes in your head?”

“Are the gibblyums chasing them too?” asked Emmeline fearfully.

“Don’t be axin’ me any more questions now, or I’ll be tellin’ you lies in a minit.”

Emmeline, it will be remembered, had brought a small parcel with her wrapped up in a little shawl; it was under the boat seat, and every now and then[80] she would stoop down to see if it were safe.

Chapter VII

“S-H-E-N-A-N-D-O-A-H”

Every hour or so Mr Button would shake his lethargy off, and rise and look round for “sea-gulls”. When Dick would fret now and then, the old sailor would always think up some means of amusing him. He made him fishing-tackle out of a bent pin and some small string that happened to be in the boat; and Dick, with the enthusiasm of childhood, fished.

Then he told them things, which he had learned quite a few[81] in his long, shell-back life[82].

They dined somewhere about eleven o’clock, and at noon Paddy unstepped the mast and made a sort of little tent in the bow of the boat to protect the children from the rays of the sun.

Then he took his place in the bottom of the boat, in the stern, put Dick’s straw hat over his face to preserve it from the sun, and fell asleep.

He had slept an hour and more when he was awakened by a thin and prolonged shriek. It was Emmeline in a nightmare, or more properly a day-mare. When she was shaken and comforted, the mast was restepped.

As Mr Button stood looking round him, an object struck his eye some three miles ahead. Objects rather, for they were the masts of a small ship rising from the water.

He stared at this sight for twenty or thirty seconds without speaking, then he gave a wild “Hurroo!”

“What is it, Paddy?” asked Dick.

“Hurroo!” replied Mr Button. “Ship ahoy! ship ahoy! Are they aslape or dhramin’? The wind’ll take us up to her quicker than we’ll row.”

He took the rudder; the breeze took the sail, and the boat moved ahead.

“Is it daddy’s ship?” asked Dick, who was almost as excited as his friend.

“I dinno; we’ll see when we fetch her.”

“Shall we go on her, Mr Button?” asked Emmeline.

“Ay will we, honey.”

Emmeline bent down, and fetching her parcel from under the seat, held it in her lap.

As they drew nearer, the outlines of the ship became more apparent. She was a small brig, with topmasts. It was apparent soon to the old sailor’s eye what was wrong with her.

“She’s abandoned!” he muttered; “abandoned and done for[83]—just me luck!”

“I can’t see any people on the ship,” cried Dick, who had crept forward to the bow. “Daddy’s not there.”

When they were within twenty cable lengths[84] or so he unstepped the mast and took to the oars.

The little brig floated very low on the water, and presented a mournful enough appearance. It was easy enough to see that she was a timber ship, and that she had flooded herself and been abandoned.

Paddy lay on his oars within a few strokes of her. She was floating as quietly as though she were in the harbour of San Francisco. A few strokes brought them under the stern. The name of the ship was there in faded letters, also the port to which she belonged. “Shenandoah[85]. Martha’s Vineyard.”

“There’s letters on her,” said Mr Button. “But I can’t make thim out. I’ve no larnin’.”

“I can read them,” said Dick.

“So c’n I,” murmured Emmeline.

“S-H-E-N-A-N-D-O-A-H,” spelt Dick.

“What’s that?” enquired Paddy.

“I don’t know,” replied Dick, rather sadly.

“There you are[86]!” cried the oarsman, pulling the boat round to the starboard side of the brig. “They pretend to teach letters to children in schools, picking their eyes out with book-reading[87], and here’s letters as big as my face and they can’t make head or tail of them[88]—be dashed to book-reading[89]!”

The brig floated so low in the water that they were scarcely a foot above the level of the dinghy.

Mr Button secured the boat[90], then, with Emmeline and her parcel in his arms or rather in one arm, he climbed the board and passed her over the rail on to the deck. Then it was Dick’s turn, and the children stood waiting while the old sailor brought the water, the biscuit, and the tinned stuff on board.

It was a place to delight the heart of a boy, the deck of the Shenandoah. The place had a delightful smell of sea-beach, decaying wood, tar, and mystery. A bell was hung just forward of the foremast. In half a moment Dick was forward hammering at the bell with a pin he had picked from the deck.

Mr Button shouted to him to stop; the sound of the bell got on his nerves.

Dick dropped the pin and ran forward. He took Paddy’s hand, and the three went to the door of the deck-house[91]. The door was open, and they peeped in.

The place had three windows on the starboard side, and through the windows the sun was shining. There was a table in the middle of the place. A seat was pushed away from the table as if some one had risen in a hurry. On the table lay the remains of a meal, a teapot, two teacups, two plates. On one of the plates rested a fork with a bit of bacon. Near the teapot stood an open tin of condensed milk. Some old salt[92] had just been in the act of putting milk in his tea when something had happened. Never did a lot of dead things speak so clearly as these things spoke.

One could imagine it all up. The skipper, most likely, had finished his tea, and the mate was hard at work at his, when the leak had been discovered, or whatever had happened.

One thing was evident, that since the abandonment of the brig she had experienced fine weather, or else the things would not have been left standing on the table.

Mr Button and Dick entered the place, but Emmeline remained at the door. The charm of the old brig appealed to her almost as much as to Dick, but she was afraid to enter the gloomy deck-house, and afraid to remain alone outside; so she sat down on the deck. Then she placed the small bundle beside her, and hurriedly took the rag-doll from her pocket, propped it up against the door, and told it not to be afraid.

There was not much to be found in the deck-house, but there were two small cabins, once inhabited by the skipper and his mate. Here there were great findings in the way of rubbish. Old clothes, old boots, an old top-hat, a telescope without a lens, a nautical almanac, a box of fish hooks. And in one corner – a coil of what seemed to be ten yards or so of black rope.

“My God!” shouted Pat, seizing upon his treasure. It was pigtail[93]. A pipe full of it would make a hippopotamus vomit, yet old sailors chew it and smoke it with pleasure.

“We’ll bring all the lot of the things out on deck, and see what’s worth keepin’ an’ what’s worth leavin’,” said Mr Button.

“Em,” shouted Dick, as he appeared in the doorway, “see what I’ve got!”

He put the top-head on his head. It went right down to his shoulders.

Emmeline gave a shriek.

“It smells funny[94],” said Dick, taking it off and applying his nose to the inside of it—“smells like an old hair brush. Here, you try it on.”

Emmeline ran away as far as she could, till she reached the starboard side, where she sat, breathless and speechless and wide-eyed. She was always dumb when frightened, and this hat suddenly scared her. Besides, it was a black thing, and she hated black things—black cats, black horses; worst of all, black dogs.

Meanwhile Mr Button was putting armful after armful of stuff on deck. When the heap was complete, he sat down beside it, and lit his pipe.

He had searched neither for food or water as yet; happy with the treasure God had given him. And, indeed, if he had searched he would have found only half a sack of potatoes.

They all sat round the pile.

“Thim pair of brogues,” said the old man, holding a pair of old boots up for inspection like an auctioneer, “would cost half a dollar in any sayport in the world. Put them beside you, Dick, and stritch this pair of britches.”