"What's the things you said made the boots for the people, Paddy?"

asked d.i.c.k, after a pause.

"Which things?"

"You said in the wood I wasn't to talk, else--"

"Oh, the Cluricaunes--the little men that cobbles the Good People's brogues. Is it them you mane?"

"Yes," said d.i.c.k, not knowing quite whether it was them or not that he meant, but anxious for information that he felt would be curious. "And what are the good people?"

"Sure, where were you born and bred that you don't know the Good People is the other name for the fairies--savin' their presence?"

"There aren't any," replied d.i.c.k. "Mrs Sims said there weren't."

"Mrs James," put in Emmeline, "said there were. She said she liked to see children b'lieve in fairies. She was talking to another lady, who'd got a red feather in her bonnet, and a fur m.u.f.f. They were having tea, and I was sitting on the hearthrug. She said the world was getting too--something or another, an' then the other lady said it was, and asked Mrs James did she see Mrs Someone in the awful hat she wore Thanksgiving Day. They didn't say anything more about fairies, but Mrs James--"

"Whether you b'lave in them or not," said Paddy, "there they are. An'

maybe they're poppin' out of the wood behint us now, an' listenin' to us talkin'; though I'm doubtful if there's any in these parts, though down in Connaught they were as thick as blackberries in the ould days.

O musha! musha! The ould days, the ould days! when will I be seein'

thim again? Now, you may b'lave me or b'lave me not, but me own ould father--G.o.d rest his sowl! was comin' over Croagh Patrick one night before Christmas with a bottle of whisky in one hand of him, and a goose, plucked an' claned an' all, in the other, which same he'd won in a lottery, when, hearin' a tchune no louder than the buzzin' of a bee, over a furze-bush he peeps, and there, round a big white stone, the Good People were dancing in a ring hand in hand, an' kickin' their heels, an' the eyes of them glowin' like the eyes of moths; and a chap on the stone, no bigger than the joint of your thumb, playin' to thim on a bagpipes. Wid that he let wan yell an' drops the goose an' makes for home, over hedge an' ditch, boundin' like a buck kangaroo, an' the face on him as white as flour when he burst in through the door, where we was all sittin' round the fire burnin' chestnuts to see who'd be married the first.

"'An' what in the name of the saints is the mather wid yiz?' says me mother.

"'I've sane the Good People,' says he, 'up on the field beyant,' says he; 'and they've got the goose,' says he, 'but, begorra, I've saved the bottle,' he says. 'Dhraw the cork and give me a taste of it, for me heart's in me throat, and me tongue's like a brick-kil.'

"An' whin we come to prize the cork out of the bottle, there was nothin' in it; an' whin we went next marnin' to look for the goose, it was gone. But there was the stone, sure enough, and the marks on it of the little brogues of the chap that'd played the bagpipes and who'd be doubtin' there were fairies after that?"

The children said nothing for a while, and then d.i.c.k said:

"Tell us about Cluricaunes, and how they make the boots."

"Whin I'm tellin' you about Cluricaunes," said Mr b.u.t.ton, "it's the truth I'm tellin' you, an' out of me own knowlidge, for I've spoke to a man that's held wan in his hand; he was me own mother's brother, Con Cogan--rest his sowl! Con was six fut two, wid a long, white face; he'd had his head bashed in, years before I was barn, in some ruction or other, an' the docthers had j.a.panned him with a five-shillin' piece beat flat."

d.i.c.k interposed with a question as to the process, aim, and object of j.a.panning, but Mr b.u.t.ton pa.s.sed the question by.

"He'd been bad enough for seein' fairies before they j.a.panned him, but afther it, begorra, he was twiced as bad. I was a slip of a lad at the time, but me hair near turned grey wid the tales he'd tell of the Good People and their doin's. One night they'd turn him into a ha.r.s.e an'

ride him half over the county, wan chap on his back an' another runnin'

behind, shovin' furze p.r.i.c.kles under his tail to make him buck-lep.

Another night it's a dunkey he'd be, harnessed to a little cart, an'

bein' kicked in the belly and made to draw stones. Thin it's a goose he'd be, runnin' over the common wid his neck stritched out squawkin', an' an old fairy woman afther him wid a knife, till it fair drove him to the dhrink; though, by the same token, he didn't want much dhrivin'.

"And what does he do when his money was gone, but tear the five-shillin' piece they'd j.a.panned him wid aff the top of his hed, and swaps it for a bottle of whisky, and that was the end of him."

Mr b.u.t.ton paused to relight his pipe, which had gone out, and there was silence for a moment.

The moon had risen, and the song of the surf on the reef filled the whole night with its lullaby. The broad lagoon lay waving and rippling in the moonlight to the incoming tide. Twice as broad it always looked seen by moonlight or starlight than when seen by day. Occasionally the splash of a great fish would cross the silence, and the ripple of it would pa.s.s a moment later across the placid water.

Big things happened in the lagoon at night, unseen by eyes from the sh.o.r.e. You would have found the wood behind them, had you walked through it, full of light. A tropic forest under a tropic moon is green as a sea cave. You can see the vine tendrils and the flowers, the orchids and tree boles all lit as by the light of an emerald-tinted day.

Mr b.u.t.ton took a long piece of string from his pocket.

"It's bedtime," said he; "and I'm going to tether Em'leen, for fear she'd be walkin' in her slape, and wandherin' away an' bein' lost in the woods."

"I don't want to be tethered," said Emmeline.

"It's for your own good I'm doin' it," replied Mr b.u.t.ton, fixing the string round her waist. "Now come 'long."

He led her like a dog in a leash to the tent, and tied the other end of the string to the scull, which was the tent's main prop and support.

"Now," said he, "if you be gettin' up and walkin' about in the night, it's down the tint will be on top of us all."

And, sure enough, in the small hours of the morning, it was.

CHAPTER XV

FAIR PICTURES IN THE BLUE

"I don't want my old britches on! I don't want my old britches on!"

d.i.c.k was darting about naked on the sand, Mr b.u.t.ton after him with a pair of small trousers in his hand. A crab might just as well have attempted to chase an antelope.

They had been on the island a fortnight, and d.i.c.k had discovered the keenest joy in life to be naked. To be naked and wallow in the shallows of the lagoon, to be naked and sit drying in the sun. To be free from the curse of clothes, to shed civilisation on the beach in the form of breeches, boots, coat, and hat, and to be one with the wind and the sun and the sea.

The very first command Mr b.u.t.ton had given on the second morning of their arrival was, "Strip and into the water wid you."

d.i.c.k had resisted at first, and Emmeline (who rarely wept) had stood weeping in her little chemise. But Mr b.u.t.ton was obdurate. The difficulty at first was to get them in; the difficulty now was to keep them out.

Emmeline was sitting as nude as the day star, drying in the morning sun after her dip, and watching d.i.c.k's evolutions on the sand.

The lagoon had for the children far more attraction than the land.

Woods where you might knock ripe bananas off the trees with a big cane, sands where golden lizards would scuttle about so tame that you might with a little caution seize them by the tail, a hill-top from whence you might see, to use Paddy's expression, "to the back of beyond"; all these were fine enough in their way, but they were nothing to the lagoon.

Deep down where the coral branches were you might watch, whilst Paddy fished, all sorts of things disporting on the sand patches and between the coral tufts. Hermit crabs that had evicted whelks, wearing the evicted ones' sh.e.l.ls--an obvious misfit; sea anemones as big as roses.

Flowers that closed up in an irritable manner if you lowered the hook gently down and touched them; extraordinary sh.e.l.ls that walked about on feelers, elbowing the crabs out of the way and terrorising the whelks.

The overlords of the sand patches, these; yet touch one on the back with a stone tied to a bit of string, and down he would go flat, motionless and feigning death. There was a lot of human nature lurking in the depths of the lagoon, comedy and tragedy.

An English rock-pool has its marvels. You can fancy the marvels of this vast rock-pool, nine miles round and varying from a third to half a mile broad, swarming with tropic life and flights of painted fishes; where the glittering albicore pa.s.sed beneath the boat like a fire and a shadow; where the boat's reflection lay as clear on the bottom as though the water were air; where the sea, pacified by the reef, told, like a little child, its dreams.

It suited the lazy humour of Mr b.u.t.ton that he never pursued the lagoon more than half a mile or so on either side of the beach. He would bring the fish he caught ash.o.r.e, and with the aid of his tinder box and dead sticks make a blazing fire on the sand; cook fish and breadfruit and taro roots, helped and hindered by the children. They fixed the tent amidst the trees at the edge of the chapparel, and made it larger and more abiding with the aid of the dinghy's sail.

Amidst these occupations, wonders, and pleasures, the children lost all count of the flight of time. They rarely asked about Mr Lestrange; after a while they did'nt ask about him at all. Children soon forget.