CHAPTER XIII
DEATH VEILED WITH LICHEN
“Mr Button,” said she, when the latter had descended, “there’s a littlebarrel”; she pointed to something green and lichen-covered that laybetween the trunks of two trees—something that eyes less sharp thanthe eyes of a child might have mistaken for a boulder.
“Sure, an’ faith it’s an’ ould empty bar’l,” said Mr Button, wiping thesweat from his brow and staring at the thing. “Some ship must have beenwathering here an’ forgot it. It’ll do for a sate whilst we havedinner.”
He sat down upon it and distributed the bananas to the children, whosat down on the grass.
The barrel looked such a deserted and neglected thing that hisimagination assumed it to be empty. Empty or full, however, it made anexcellent seat, for it was quarter sunk in the green soft earth, andimmovable.
“If ships has been here, ships will come again,” said he, as he munchedhis bananas.
“Will daddy’s ship come here?” asked Dick.
“Ay, to be sure it will,” replied the other, taking out his pipe. “Nowrun about and play with the flowers an’ lave me alone to smoke a pipe,and then we’ll all go to the top of the hill beyant, and have a lookround us.
“Come ’long, Em!” cried Dick; and the children started off amongst thetrees, Dick pulling at the hanging vine tendrils, and Emmeline pluckingwhat blossoms she could find within her small reach.
When he had finished his pipe he hallooed, and small voices answeredhim from the wood. Then the children came running back, Emmelinelaughing and showing her small white teeth, a large bunch of blossomsin her hand; Dick flowerless, but carrying what seemed a large greenstone.
“Look at what a funny thing I’ve found!” he cried; “it’s got holes init.”
“Dhrap it!” shouted Mr Button, springing from the barrel as if some onehad stuck an awl into him. “Where’d you find it? What d’you mane bytouchin’ it? Give it here.”
He took it gingerly in his hands; it was a lichen-covered skull, with agreat dent in the back of it where it had been cloven by an axe or somesharp instrument. He hove it as far as he could away amidst the trees.
“What is it, Paddy?” asked Dick, half astonished, half frightened atthe old man’s manner.
“It’s nothin’ good,” replied Mr Button.
“There were two others, and I wanted to fetch them,” grumbled Dick.
“You lave them alone. Musha! musha! but there’s been black doin’s herein days gone by. What is it, Emmeline?”
Emmeline was holding out her bunch of flowers for admiration. He took agreat gaudy blossom—if flowers can ever be called gaudy—and stuck itsstalk in the pocket of his coat. Then he led the way uphill, mutteringas he went.
The higher they got the less dense became the trees and the fewer thecocoa-nut palms. The cocoa-nut palm loves the sea, and the few they hadhere all had their heads bent in the direction of the lagoon, as ifyearning after it.
They passed a cane-brake where canes twenty feet high whisperedtogether like bulrushes. Then a sunlit sward, destitute of tree orshrub, led them sharply upward for a hundred feet or so to where agreat rock, the highest point of the island, stood, casting its shadowin the sunshine. The rock was about twenty feet high, and easy toclimb. Its top was almost flat, and as spacious as an ordinarydinner-table. From it one could obtain a complete view of the islandand the sea.
Looking down, one’s eye travelled over the trembling and wavingtree-tops, to the lagoon beyond the lagoon to the reef, beyond thereef to the infinite space of the Pacific. The reef encircled the wholeisland, here further from the land, here closer; the song of the surfon it came as a whisper, just like the whisper you hear in a shell;but, a strange thing, though the sound heard on the beach wascontinuous, up here one could distinguish an intermittency as breakerafter breaker dashed itself to death on the coral strand below.
You have seen a field of green barley ruffled over by the wind, just sofrom the hill-top you could see the wind in its passage over the sunlitfoliage beneath.
It was breezing up from the south-west, and banyan and cocoa-palm, artuand breadfruit tree, swayed and rocked in the merry wind. So bright andmoving was the picture of the breeze-swept sea, the blue lagoon, thefoam-dashed reef, and the rocking trees that one felt one had surprisedsome mysterious gala day, some festival of Nature more than ordinarilyglad.
As if to strengthen the idea, now and then above the trees would burstwhat seemed a rocket of coloured stars. The stars would drift away in aflock on the wind and be lost. They were flights of birds. All-colouredbirds peopled the trees below—blue, scarlet, dove-coloured, bright ofeye, but voiceless. From the reef you could see occasionally thesea-gulls rising here and there in clouds like small puffs of smoke.
The lagoon, here deep, here shallow, presented, according to its depthor shallowness, the colours of ultra-marine or sky. The broadest partswere the palest, because the most shallow; and here and there, in theshallows, you might see a faint tracery of coral ribs almost reachingthe surface. The island at its broadest might have been three milesacross. There was not a sign of house or habitation to be seen, and nota sail on the whole of the wide Pacific.
It was a strange place to be, up here. To find oneself surrounded bygrass and flowers and trees, and all the kindliness of nature, to feelthe breeze blow, to smoke one’s pipe, and to remember that one was in aplace uninhabited and unknown. A place to which no messages were evercarried except by the wind or the sea-gulls.
In this solitude the beetle was as carefully painted and the flower ascarefully tended as though all the peoples of the civilised world werestanding by to criticise or approve.
Nowhere in the world, perhaps, so well as here, could you appreciateNature’s splendid indifference to the great affairs of Man.
The old sailor was thinking nothing of this sort. His eyes were fixedon a small and almost imperceptible stain on the horizon to thesou’-sou’-west. It was no doubt another island almost hull-down on thehorizon. Save for this blemish the whole wheel of the sea was empty andserene.
Emmeline had not followed them up to the rock. She had gone botanisingwhere some bushes displayed great bunches of the crimson arita berriesas if to show to the sun what Earth could do in the way ofmanufacturing poison. She plucked two great bunches of them, and withthis treasure came to the base of the rock.
“Lave thim berries down!” cried Mr Button, when she had attracted hisattention. “Don’t put thim in your mouth; thim’s the never-wake-upberries.”
He came down off the rock, hand over fist, flung the poisonous thingsaway, and looked into Emmeline’s small mouth, which at his command sheopened wide. There was only a little pink tongue in it, however, curledup like a rose-leaf; no sign of berries or poison. So, giving her alittle shake, just as a nursemaid would have done in likecircumstances, he took Dick off the rock, and led the way back to thebeach.