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.
“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.
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