Mr Button saw no more rats, much to Dick's disappointment. He was off the drink. At dawn next day he got up, refreshed by a second sleep, and wandered down to the edge of the lagoon. The opening in the reef faced the east, and the light of the dawn came rippling in with the flooding tide.
"It's a baste I've been," said the repentant one, "a brute baste."
He was quite wrong; as a matter of fact, he was only a man beset and betrayed.
He stood for a while, cursing the drink, "and them that sells it." Then he determined to put himself out of the way of temptation. Pull the bung out of the barrel, and let the contents escape?
Such a thought never even occurred to him--or, if it did, was instantly dismissed; for, though an old sailor-man may curse the drink, good rum is to him a sacred thing; and to empty half a little barrel of it into the sea, would be an act almost equivalent to child-murder. He put the cask into the dinghy, and rowed it over to the reef. There he placed it in the shelter of a great lump of coral, and rowed back.
Paddy had been trained all his life to rhythmical drunkenness. Four months or so had generally elapsed between his bouts--sometimes six; it all depended on the length of the voyage. Six months now elapsed before he felt even an inclination to look at the rum cask, that tiny dark spot away on the reef. And it was just as well, for during those six months another whale-ship arrived, watered and was avoided.
"Blisther it!" said he; "the say here seems to breed whale-ships, and nothin' but whaleships. It's like bugs in a bed: you kill wan, and then another comes. Howsumever, we're shut of thim for a while."
He walked down to the lagoon edge, looked at the little dark spot and whistled. Then he walked back to prepare dinner. That little dark spot began to trouble him after a while; not it, but the spirit it contained.
Days grew long and weary, the days that had been so short and pleasant.
To the children there was no such thing as time. Having absolute and perfect health, they enjoyed happiness as far as mortals can enjoy it.
Emmeline's highly strung nervous system, it is true, developed a headache when she had been too long in the glare of the sun, but they were few and far between.
The spirit in the little cask had been whispering across the lagoon for some weeks; at last it began to shout. Mr Button, metaphorically speaking, stopped his ears. He busied himself with the children as much as possible. He made another garment for Emmeline, and cut Dick's hair with the scissors (a job which was generally performed once in a couple of months).