The Blue Lagoon Part 12

"Childer!" shouted Paddy. He was at the cross-trees in the full dawn, whilst the children standing beneath on deck were craning their faces up to him. "There's an island forenint us."

"Hurrah!" cried d.i.c.k. He was not quite sure what an island might be like in the concrete, but it was something fresh, and Paddy's voice was jubilant.

"Land ho! it is," said he, coming down to the deck. "Come for'ard to the bows, and I'll show it you."

He stood on the timber in the bows and lifted Emmeline up in his arms; and even at that humble elevation from the water she could see something of an undecided colour--green for choice--on the horizon.

It was not directly ahead, but on the starboard bow--or, as she would have expressed it, to the right. When d.i.c.k had looked and expressed his disappointment at there being so little to see, Paddy began to make preparations for leaving the ship.

It was only just now, with land in sight, that he recognised in some fashion the horror of the position from which they were about to escape.

He fed the children hurriedly with some biscuits and tinned meat, and then, with a biscuit in his hand, eating as he went, he trotted about the decks, collecting things and stowing them in the dinghy. The bolt of striped flannel, all the old clothes, a housewife full of needles and thread, such as seamen sometimes carry, the half-sack of potatoes, a saw which he found in the caboose, the precious coil of tobacco, and a lot of other odds and ends he transhipped, sinking the little dinghy several strakes in the process. Also, of course, he took the breaker of water, and the remains of the biscuit and tinned stuff they had brought on board. These being stowed, and the dinghy ready, he went forward with the children to the bow, to see how the island was bearing.

It had loomed up nearer during the hour or so in which he had been collecting and storing the things--nearer, and more to the right, which meant that the brig was being borne by a fairly swift current, and that she would pa.s.s it, leaving it two or three miles to starboard. It was well they had command of the dinghy.

"The sea's all round it," said Emmeline, who was seated on Paddy's shoulder, holding on tight to him, and gazing upon the island, the green of whose trees was now visible, an oasis of verdure in the sparkling and seraphic blue.

"Are we going there, Paddy?" asked d.i.c.k, holding on to a stay, and straining his eyes towards the land.

"Ay, are we," said Mr b.u.t.ton. "Hot foot--five knots, if we're makin'

wan; and it's ash.o.r.e we'll be by noon, and maybe sooner."

The breeze had freshened up, and was blowing dead from the island, as though the island were making a weak attempt to blow them away from it.

Oh, what a fresh and perfumed breeze it was! All sorts of tropical growing things had joined their scent in one bouquet.

"Smell it," said Emmeline, expanding her small nostrils. "That's what I smelt last night, only it's stronger now."

The last reckoning taken on board the Northumberland had proved the ship to be south by east of the Marquesas; this was evidently one of those small, lost islands that lie here and there south by east of the Marquesas. Islands the most lonely and beautiful in the world.

As they gazed it grew before them, and shifted still more to the right.

It was hilly and green now, though the trees could not be clearly made out; here, the green was lighter in colour, and there, darker. A rim of pure white marble seemed to surround its base. It was foam breaking on the barrier reef.

In another hour the feathery foliage of the cocoanut palms could be made out, and the old sailor judged it time to take to the boat.

He lifted Emmeline, who was clasping her luggage, over the rail on to the channel, and deposited her in the sternsheets; then d.i.c.k.

In a moment the boat was adrift, the mast steeped, and the Shenandoah left to pursue her mysterious voyage at the will of the currents of the sea.

"You're not going to the island, Paddy," cried d.i.c.k, as the old man put the boat on the port tack.

"You be aisy," replied the other, "and don't be larnin' your gran'mother. How the divil d'ye think I'd fetch the land sailin' dead in the wind's eye?"

"Has the wind eyes?"

Mr b.u.t.ton did not answer the question. He was troubled in his mind.

What if the island were inhabited? He had spent several years in the South Seas. He knew the people of the Marquesas and Samoa, and liked them. But here he was out of his bearings.

However, all the troubling in the world was of no use. It was a case of the island or the deep sea, and, putting the boat on the starboard tack, he lit his pipe and leaned back with the tiller in the crook of his arm. His keen eyes had made out from the deck of the brig an opening in the reef, and he was making to run the dinghy abreast of the opening, and then take to the sculls and row her through.

Now, as they drew nearer, a sound came on the breeze--sound faint and sonorous and dreamy. It was the sound of the breakers on the reef. The sea just here was heaving to a deeper swell, as if vexed in its sleep at the resistance to it of the land.

Emmeline, sitting with her bundle in her lap, stared without speaking at the sight before her. Even in the bright, glorious sunshine, and despite the greenery that showed beyond, it was a desolate sight seen from her place in the dinghy. A white, forlorn beach, over which the breakers raced and tumbled, seagulls wheeling and screaming, and over all the thunder of the surf.

Suddenly the break became visible, and a glimpse of smooth, blue water beyond. b.u.t.ton unshipped the tiller, unstepped the mast, and took to the sculls.

As they drew nearer, the sea became more active, savage, and alive; the thunder of the surf became louder, the breakers more fierce and threatening, the opening broader.

One could see the water swirling round the coral piers, for the tide was flooding into the lagoon; it had seized the little dinghy and was bearing it along far swifter than the sculls could have driven it.

Sea-gulls screamed around them, the boat rocked and swayed. d.i.c.k shouted with excitement, and Emmeline shut her eyes TIGHT.

Then, as though a door had been swiftly and silently closed, the sound of the surf became suddenly less. The boat floated on an even keel; she opened her eyes and found herself in Wonderland.

CHAPTER XII

THE LAKE OF AZURE

On either side lay a great sweep of waving blue water. Calm, almost as a lake, sapphire here, and here with the tints of the aquamarine. Water so clear that fathoms away below you could see the branching coral, the schools of pa.s.sing fish, and the shadows of the fish upon the s.p.a.ces of sand.

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 treetops, wheeled, and pa.s.sed soundless, like a wreath of smoke, over the tree-tops of the higher land beyond.

"Look!" shouted d.i.c.k, who had his nose over the of the boat. "Look at the FISH!"

"Mr b.u.t.ton," 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 sh.o.r.e.

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 s.p.a.ces 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 b.u.t.ton tumbled over the side up to his knees in water, whilst d.i.c.k crawled over the bow.

"Catch hould of her the same as I do," cried Paddy, laying hold of the starboard gunwale; whilst d.i.c.k, 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."