"Say-gulls," replied the prevaricator; then to himself: "Not a sight or a sound of them! Musha! musha! 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.

Aist it is; I'll make a soldier's wind of it, and thrust to chance."

He set the sail and came aft with the sheet. Then he shifted the rudder, lit a pipe, leaned luxuriously back and gave the bellying 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 was as unconcerned as if he were taking the children for a summer's sail. His imagination dealt little with the future; almost entirely influenced by his immediate surroundings, it could conjure up no fears from the scene now before it. 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 d.i.c.k 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 veiled from them as eternity is veiled from you or me.

The Pacific was still bound by one of those glacial calms that can only occur when the sea has been free from storms for a vast extent of its surface, for a hurricane down by the Horn will send its swell and disturbance beyond the Marquesas. De Bois in his table of amplitudes points out that more than half the sea disturbances at any given s.p.a.ce are caused, not by the wind, but by storms at a great distance.

But the sleep of the Pacific is only apparent. This placid lake, over which the dinghy was pursuing the running ripple, was heaving to an imperceptible swell and breaking on the sh.o.r.es of the Low Archipelago, and the Marquesas in foam and thunder.

Emmeline's rag-doll was a shocking affair 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 filthy and nearly formless thing. It was a fetish.

She sat nursing it on one side of the helmsman, whilst d.i.c.k, on the other side, hung his nose over the water, on the look-out for fish.

"Why do you smoke, Mr b.u.t.ton?" asked Emmeline, who had been watching her friend for some time in silence.

"To aise me thrubbles," replied Paddy.

He was leaning back with one eye shut and the other fixed on the luff of the sail. He was in his element: nothing to do but steer and smoke, warmed by the sun and cooled by the breeze. A landsman would have been half demented in his condition, many a sailor would have been taciturn and surly, on the look-out for sails, and alternately d.a.m.ning his soul and praying to his G.o.d. Paddy smoked.

"Whoop!" cried d.i.c.k. "Look, Paddy!"

An albicore a few cables-lengths to port had taken a flying leap from the flashing sea, turned a complete somersault and vanished.

"It's an albicore takin' a buck lep. Hundreds I've seen before this; he's bein' chased."

"What's chasing him, Paddy?"

"What's chasin' him? why, what else but the gibly-gobly ums!"

Before d.i.c.k could enquire as to the personal appearance and habits of the latter, a shoal of silver arrow heads pa.s.sed the boat and flittered into the water with a hissing sound.

"Thim's flyin' fish. What are you sayin'?--fish can't fly! Where's the eyes in your head?"

"Are the gibblyums chasing them too?" asked Emmeline fearfully.

"No; 'tis the Billy balloos that's afther thim. 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 done up in a little shawl; it was under the boat seat, and every now and then she would stoop down to see if it were safe.

CHAPTER VII

STORY OF THE PIG AND THE BILLY-GOAT

Every hour or so Mr b.u.t.ton would shake his lethargy off, and rise and look round for "seagulls," but the prospect was sail-less as the prehistoric sea, wingless, voiceless. When d.i.c.k would fret now and then, the old sailor would always devise some means of amusing him. He made him fishing tackle out of a bent pin and some small twine that happened to be in the boat, and told him to fish for "pinkeens"; and d.i.c.k, with the pathetic faith of childhood, fished.

Then he told them things. He had spent a year at Deal long ago, where a cousin of his was married to a boatman.

Mr b.u.t.ton had put in a year as a longsh.o.r.eman at Deal, and he had got a great lot to tell of his cousin and her husband, and more especially of one, Hannah; Hannah was his cousin's baby--a most marvellous child, who was born with its "buck" teeth fully developed, and whose first unnatural act on entering the world was to make a snap at the "docther." "Hung on to his fist like a bull-dog, and him bawlin'

'Murther!'"

"Mrs James," said Emmeline, referring to a Boston acquaintance, "had a little baby, and it was pink."

"Ay, ay," said Paddy; "they're mostly pink to start with, but they fade whin they're washed."

"It'd no teeth," said Emmeline, "for I put my finger in to see."

"The doctor brought it in a bag," put in d.i.c.k, who was still steadily fishing--"dug it out of a cabbage patch; an' I got a trow'l and dug all our cabbage patch up, but there weren't any babies but there were no end of worms."

"I wish I had a baby," said Emmeline, "and I wouldn't send it back to the cabbage patch.

"The doctor," explained d.i.c.k, "took it back and planted it again; and Mrs James cried when I asked her, and daddy said it was put back to grow and turn into an angel."

"Angels have wings," said Emmeline dreamily.

"And," pursued d.i.c.k, "I told cook, and she said to Jane [that] daddy was always stuffing children up with--something or 'nother. And I asked daddy to let me see him stuffing up a child--and daddy said cook'd have to go away for saying that, and she went away next day."

"She had three big trunks and a box for her bonnet," said Emmeline, with a far-away look as she recalled the incident.

"And the cabman asked her hadn't she any more trunks to put on his cab, and hadn't she forgot the parrot cage," said d.i.c.k.

"I wish _I_ had a parrot in a cage," murmured Emmeline, moving slightly so as to get more in the shadow of the sail.

"And what in the world would you be doin' with a par't in a cage?"

asked Mr b.u.t.ton.

"I'd let it out," replied Emmeline.

"Spakin' about lettin' par'ts out of cages, I remimber me grandfather had an ould pig," said Paddy (they were all talking seriously together like equals). "I was a spalpeen no bigger than the height of me knee, and I'd go to the sty door, and he'd come to the door, and grunt an'

blow wid his nose undher it; an' I'd grunt back to vex him, an' hammer wid me fist on it, an' shout 'Halloo there! halloo there!' and 'Halloo to you!' he'd say, spakin' the pigs' language. 'Let me out,' he'd say, 'and I'll give yiz a silver shilling.'

"'Pa.s.s it under the door,' I'd answer him. Thin he'd stick the snout of him undher the door an' I'd hit it a clip with a stick, and he'd yell murther Irish. An' me mother'd come out an' baste me, an' well I desarved it.

"Well, wan day I opened the sty door, an' out he boulted and away and beyant, over hill and hollo he goes till he gets to the edge of the cliff overlookin' the say, and there he meets a billy-goat, and he and the billy-goat has a division of opinion.

"'Away wid yiz!' says the billy-goat.

"'Away wid yourself!' says he.

"'Whose you talkin' to?' says t'other.

"'Yourself,' says him.