The Blue Lagoon: A Romance
Before them the clear water washed the sands of a white beach, the
cocoa-palms waved and whispered in the breeze; and as the oarsman lay
on his oars to look a flock of bluebirds rose, as if suddenly freed
from the tree-tops, wheeled, and passed soundless, like a wreath of
smoke, over the tree-tops of the higher land beyond.
“Look!” shouted Dick, who had his nose over the gunwale of the boat.
“Look at the _fish_!”
“Mr Button,” cried Emmeline, “where are we?”
“Bedad, I dunno; but we might be in a worse place, I’m thinkin’,”
replied the old man, sweeping his eyes over the blue and tranquil
lagoon, from the barrier reef to the happy shore.
On either side of the broad beach before them the cocoa-nut trees came
down like two regiments, and bending gazed at their own reflections in
the lagoon. Beyond lay waving chapparel, where cocoa-palms and
breadfruit trees intermixed with the mammee apple and the tendrils of
the wild vine. On one of the piers of coral at the break of the reef
stood a single cocoa-palm; bending with a slight curve, it, too, seemed
seeking its reflection in the waving water.
But the soul of it all, the indescribable thing about this picture of
mirrored palm trees, blue lagoon, coral reef and sky, was the light.
Away at sea the light was blinding, dazzling, cruel. Away at sea it had
nothing to focus itself upon, nothing to exhibit but infinite spaces of
blue water and desolation.
Here it made the air a crystal, through which the gazer saw the
loveliness of the land and reef, the green of palm, the white of coral,
the wheeling gulls, the blue lagoon, all sharply outlined—burning,
coloured, arrogant, yet tender—heart-breakingly beautiful, for the
spirit of eternal morning was here, eternal happiness, eternal youth.
As the oarsman pulled the tiny craft towards the beach, neither he nor
the children saw away behind the boat, on the water near the bending
palm tree at the break in the reef, something that for a moment
insulted the day, and was gone. Something like a small triangle of dark
canvas, that rippled through the water and sank from sight; something
that appeared and vanished like an evil thought.
It did not take long to beach the boat. Mr Button tumbled over the side
up to his knees in water, whilst Dick crawled over the bow.
“Catch hould of her the same as I do,” cried Paddy, laying hold of the
starboard gunwale; whilst Dick, imitative as a monkey, seized the
gunwale to port. Now then:
“‘Yeo ho, Chilliman,
Up wid her, up wid her,
Heave O, Chilliman.’
“Lave her be now; she’s high enough.”
He took Emmeline in his arms and carried her up on the sand. It was
from just here on the sand that you could see the true beauty of the
lagoon. That lake of sea water forever protected from storm and trouble
by the barrier reef of coral.
Right from where the little clear ripples ran up the strand, it led the
eye to the break in the coral reef where the palm gazed at its own
reflection in the water, and there, beyond the break, one caught a
vision of the great heaving, sparkling sea.
The lagoon, just here, was perhaps more than a third of a mile broad. I
have never measured it, but I know that, standing by the palm tree on
the reef, flinging up one’s arm and shouting to a person on the beach,
the sound took a perceptible time to cross the water: I should say,
perhaps, an almost perceptible time. The distant signal and the distant
call were almost coincident, yet not quite.
Dick, mad with delight at the place in which he found himself, was
running about like a dog just out of the water. Mr Button was
discharging the cargo of the dinghy on the dry, white sand. Emmeline
seated herself with her precious bundle on the sand, and was watching
the operations of her friend, looking at the things around her and
feeling very strange.
For all she knew all this was the ordinary accompaniment of a sea
voyage. Paddy’s manner throughout had been set to the one idea, not to
frighten the “childer”; the weather had backed him up. But down in the
heart of her lay the knowledge that all was not as it should be. The
hurried departure from the ship, the fog in which her uncle had
vanished, those things, and others as well, she felt instinctively were
not right. But she said nothing.
She had not long for meditation, however, for Dick was running towards
her with a live crab which he had picked up, calling out that he was
going to make it bite her.
“Take it away!” cried Emmeline, holding both hands with fingers
widespread in front of her face. “Mr Button! Mr Button! Mr Button!”
“Lave her be, you little divil!” roared Pat, who was depositing the
last of the cargo on the sand. “Lave her be, or it’s a cow-hidin’ I’ll
be givin’ you!”
“What’s a ‘divil,’ Paddy?” asked Dick, panting from his exertions.
“Paddy, what’s a ‘divil’?”
“You’re wan. Ax no questions now, for it’s tired I am, an’ I want to
rest me bones.”
He flung himself under the shade of a palm tree, took out his tinder
box, tobacco and pipe, cut some tobacco up, filled his pipe and lit it.
Emmeline crawled up, and sat near him, and Dick flung himself down on
the sand near Emmeline.
Mr Button took off his coat and made a pillow of it against a cocoa-nut
tree stem. He had found the El Dorado of the weary. With his knowledge
of the South Seas a glance at the vegetation to be seen told him that
food for a regiment might be had for the taking; water, too.
Right down the middle of the strand was a depression which in the rainy
season would be the bed of a rushing rivulet. The water just now was
not strong enough to come all the way to the lagoon, but away up there
“beyant” in the woods lay the source, and he’d find it in due time.
There was enough in the breaker for a week, and green “cuca-nuts” were
to be had for the climbing.
Emmeline contemplated Paddy for a while as he smoked and rested his
bones, then a great thought occurred to her. She took the little shawl
from around the parcel she was holding and exposed the mysterious box.
“Oh, begorra, the box!” said Paddy, leaning on his elbow interestedly;
“I might a’ known you wouldn’t a’ forgot it.”
“Mrs James,” said Emmeline, “made me promise not to open it till I got
on shore, for the things in it might get lost.”
“Well, you’re ashore now,” said Dick; “open it.”
“I’m going to,” said Emmeline.
She carefully undid the string, refusing the assistance of Paddy’s
knife. Then the brown paper came off, disclosing a common cardboard
box. She raised the lid half an inch, peeped in, and shut it again.
“_Open_ it!” cried Dick, mad with curiosity.
“What’s in it, honey?” asked the old sailor, who was as interested as
Dick.
“Things,” replied Emmeline.
Then all at once she took the lid off and disclosed a tiny tea service
of china, packed in shavings; there was a teapot with a lid, a cream
jug, cups and saucers, and six microscopic plates, each painted with a
pansy.
“Sure, it’s a tay-set!” said Paddy, in an interested voice. “Glory be
to God! will you look at the little plates wid the flowers on thim?”
“Heugh!” said Dick in disgust; “I thought it might a’ been soldiers.”
“_I_ don’t want soldiers,” replied Emmeline, in a voice of perfect
contentment.
She unfolded a piece of tissue paper, and took from it a sugar-tongs
and six spoons. Then she arrayed the whole lot on the sand.
“Well, if that don’t beat all!” said Paddy.
“And whin are you goin’ to ax me to tay with you?”
“Some time,” replied Emmeline, collecting the things, and carefully
repacking them.
Mr Button finished his pipe, tapped the ashes out, and placed it in his
pocket.
“I’ll be afther riggin’ up a bit of a tint,” said he, as he rose to his
feet, “to shelter us from the jew to-night; but I’ll first have a look
at the woods to see if I can find wather. Lave your box with the other
things, Emmeline; there’s no one here to take it.”
Emmeline left her box on the heap of things that Paddy had placed in
the shadow of the cocoa-nut trees, took his hand, and the three entered
the grove on the right.
It was like entering a pine forest; the tall symmetrical stems of the
trees seemed set by mathematical law, each at a given distance from the
other. Whichever way you entered a twilight alley set with tree boles
lay before you. Looking up you saw at an immense distance above a pale
green roof patined with sparkling and flashing points of light, where
the breeze was busy playing with the green fronds of the trees.
“Mr Button,” murmured Emmeline, “we won’t get lost, will we?”
“Lost! No, faith; sure we’re goin’ uphill, an’ all we have to do is to
come down again, when we want to get back—ware nuts!” A green nut
detached from up above came down rattling and tumbling and hopped on
the ground. Paddy picked it up. “It’s a green cucanut,” said he,
putting it in his pocket (it was not very much bigger than a Jaffa
orange), “and we’ll have it for tay.”
“That’s not a cocoa-nut,” said Dick; “cocoa-nuts are brown. I had five
cents once an’ I bought one, and scraped it out and y’et it.”
“When Dr Sims made Dicky sick,” said Emmeline, “he said the wonder
t’im was how Dicky held it all.”
“Come on,” said Mr Button, “an’ don’t be talkin’, or it’s the
Cluricaunes will be after us.”
“What’s cluricaunes?” demanded Dick.
“Little men no bigger than your thumb that make the brogues for the
Good People.”
“Who’s they?”
“Whisht, and don’t be talkin’. Mind your head, Em’leen, or the
branches’ll be hittin’ you in the face.”
They had left the cocoa-nut grove, and entered the chapparel. Here was
a deeper twilight, and all sorts of trees lent their foliage to make
the shade. The artu with its delicately diamonded trunk, the great
breadfruit tall as a beech, and shadowy as a cave, the aoa, and the
eternal cocoa-nut palm all grew here like brothers. Great ropes of wild
vine twined like the snake of the laocoon from tree to tree, and all
sorts of wonderful flowers, from the orchid shaped like a butterfly to
the scarlet hibiscus, made beautiful the gloom.
Suddenly Mr Button stopped.
“Whisht!” said he.
Through the silence—a silence filled with the hum and the murmur of
wood insects and the faint, far song of the reef—came a tinkling,
rippling sound: it was water. He listened to make sure of the bearing
of the sound, then he made for it.
Next moment they found themselves in a little grass-grown glade. From
the hilly ground above, over a rock black and polished like ebony, fell
a tiny cascade not much broader than one’s hand; ferns grew around and
from a tree above where a great rope of wild convolvulus flowers blew
their trumpets in the enchanted twilight.
The children cried out at the prettiness of it, and Emmeline ran and
dabbled her hands in the water. Just above the little waterfall sprang
a banana tree laden with fruit; it had immense leaves six feet long and
more, and broad as a dinner-table. One could see the golden glint of
the ripe fruit through the foliage.
In a moment Mr Button had kicked off his shoes and was going up the
rock like a cat, absolutely, for it seemed to give him nothing to climb
by.
“Hurroo!” cried Dick in admiration. “Look at Paddy!”
Emmeline looked, and saw nothing but swaying leaves.
“Stand from under!” he shouted, and next moment down came a huge bunch
of yellow-jacketed bananas. Dick shouted with delight, but Emmeline
showed no excitement: she had discovered something.
CHAPTER XIII
DEATH VEILED WITH LICHEN
“Mr Button,” said she, when the latter had descended, “there’s a little
barrel”; she pointed to something green and lichen-covered that lay
between the trunks of two trees—something that eyes less sharp than
the eyes of a child might have mistaken for a boulder.