The Blue Lagoon: A Romance Read online

  Produced by Edward A. Malone. Corrections by Roger Frank.

  The Blue Lagoon: A Romance

  by H. de Vere Stacpoole

  CONTENTS

  BOOK I

  PART I

  I. WHERE THE SLUSH LAMP BURNS II. UNDER THE STARS III. THE SHADOW AND THE FIRE IV. AND LIKE A DREAM DISSOLVED V. VOICES HEARD IN THE MIST VI. DAWN ON A WIDE, WIDE SEA VII. STORY OF THE PIG AND THE BILLY-GOAT VIII. “S-H-E-N-A-N-D-O-A-H” IX. SHADOWS IN THE MOONLIGHT X. THE TRAGEDY OF THE BOATS

  PART II

  XI. THE ISLAND XII. THE LAKE OF AZURE XIII. DEATH VEILED WITH LICHEN XIV. ECHOES OF FAIRY-LAND XV. FAIR PICTURES IN THE BLUE

  PART III

  XVI. THE POETRY OF LEARNING XVII. THE DEVIL’S CASK XVIII. THE RAT HUNT XIX. STARLIGHT ON THE FOAM XX. THE DREAMER ON THE REEF XXI. THE GARLAND OF FLOWERS XXII. ALONE XXIII. THEY MOVE AWAY

  BOOK II

  PART I

  I. UNDER THE ARTU TREE II. HALF CHILD-HALF SAVAGE III. THE DEMON OF THE REEF IV. WHAT BEAUTY CONCEALED V. THE SOUND OF A DRUM VI. SAILS UPON THE SEA VII. THE SCHOONER VIII. LOVE STEPS IN IX. THE SLEEP OF PARADISE

  PART II

  X. AN ISLAND HONEYMOON XI. THE VANISHING OF EMMELINE XII. THE VANISHING OF EMMELINE (CONTINUED) XIII. THE NEWCOMER XIV. HANNAH XV. THE LAGOON OF FIRE XVI. THE CYCLONE XVII. THE STRICKEN WOODS XVIII. A FALLEN IDOL XIX. THE EXPEDITION XX. THE KEEPER OF THE LAGOON XXI. THE HAND OF THE SEA XXII. TOGETHER

  BOOK III

  I. MAD LESTRANGE II. THE SECRET OF THE AZURE III. CAPTAIN FOUNTAIN IV. DUE SOUTH

  THE BLUE LAGOON

  BOOK I

  PART I

  CHAPTER I

  WHERE THE SLUSH LAMP BURNS

  Mr Button was seated on a sea-chest with a fiddle under his left ear.He was playing the “Shan van vaught,” and accompanying the tune,punctuating it, with blows of his left heel on the fo’cs’le deck.

  “O the _Frinch_ are in the bay, Says the _Shan van vaught_.”

  He was dressed in dungaree trousers, a striped shirt, and a jacketbaize—green in parts from the influence of sun and salt. A typical oldshell-back, round-shouldered, hooked of finger; a figure with stronghints of a crab about it.

  His face was like a moon, seen red through tropical mists; and as heplayed it wore an expression of strained attention as though the fiddlewere telling him tales much more marvellous than the old bald statementabout Bantry Bay.

  “Left-handed Pat,” was his fo’cs’le name; not because he wasleft-handed, but simply because everything he did he did wrong—ornearly so. Reefing or furling, or handling a slush tub—if a mistakewas to be made, he made it.

  He was a Celt, and all the salt seas that had flowed between him andConnaught these forty years and more had not washed the Celtic elementfrom his blood, nor the belief in fairies from his soul. The Celticnature is a fast dye, and Mr Button’s nature was such that though hehad been shanghaied by Larry Marr in ’Frisco, though he had got drunkin most ports of the world, though he had sailed with Yankee captainsand been man-handled by Yankee mates, he still carried his fairiesabout with him—they, and a very large stock of original innocence.

  Nearly over the musician’s head swung a hammock from which hung a leg;other hammocks hanging in the semi-gloom called up suggestions oflemurs and arboreal bats. The swinging kerosene lamp cast its lightforward, past the heel of the bowsprit to the knightheads, lighting herea naked foot hanging over the side of a bunk, here a face from whichprotruded a pipe, here a breast covered with dark mossy hair, here anarm tattooed.

  It was in the days before double topsail yards had reduced ships’crews, and the fo’cs’le of the _Northumberland_ had a full company: acrowd of packet rats such as often is to be found on a Cape Horner“Dutchmen” Americans—men who were farm labourers and tendingpigs in Ohio three months back, old seasoned sailors like PaddyButton—a mixture of the best and the worst of the earth, such as youfind nowhere else in so small a space as in a ship’s fo’cs’le.

  The _Northumberland_ had experienced a terrible rounding of the Horn.Bound from New Orleans to ’Frisco she had spent thirty days battlingwith head-winds and storms—down there, where the seas are so vast thatthree waves may cover with their amplitude more than a mile of seaspace; thirty days she had passed off Cape Stiff, and just now, at themoment of this story, she was locked in a calm south of the line.

  Mr Button finished his tune with a sweep of the bow, and drew his rightcoat sleeve across his forehead. Then he took out a sooty pipe, filledit with tobacco, and lit it.

  “Pawthrick,” drawled a voice from the hammock above, from whichdepended the leg, “what was that yarn you wiz beginnin’ to spin ternight ’bout a lip me dawn?”

  “A which me dawn?” asked Mr Button, cocking his eye up at the bottom ofthe hammock while he held the match to his pipe.

  “It vas about a green thing,” came a sleepy Dutch voice from a bunk.

  “Oh, a Leprachaun you mane. Sure, me mother’s sister had one down inConnaught.”

  “Vat vas it like?” asked the dreamy Dutch voice—a voice seeminglypossessed by the calm that had made the sea like a mirror for the lastthree days, reducing the whole ship’s company meanwhile to the level ofwasters.

  “Like? Sure, it was like a Leprachaun; and what else would it be like?”

  “What like vas that?” persisted the voice.

  “It was like a little man no bigger than a big forked raddish, an’ asgreen as a cabbidge. Me a’nt had one in her house down in Connaught inthe ould days. O musha! musha! the ould days, the ould days! Now, youmay b’lave me or b’lave me not, but you could have put him in yourpocket, and the grass-green head of him wouldn’t more than’v stuck out.She kept him in a cupboard, and out of the cupboard he’d pop if it wasa crack open, an’ into the milk pans he’d be, or under the beds, orpullin’ the stool from under you, or at some other divarsion. He’dchase the pig—the crathur!—till it’d be all ribs like an ouldumbrilla with the fright, an’ as thin as a greyhound with the runnin’by the marnin; he’d addle the eggs so the cocks an’ hens wouldn’t knowwhat they wis afther wid the chickens comin’ out wid two heads on them,an’ twinty-seven legs fore and aft. And you’d start to chase him, an’then it’d be mainsail haul, and away he’d go, you behint him, tillyou’d landed tail over snout in a ditch, an’ he’d be back in thecupboard.”

  “He was a Troll,” murmured the Dutch voice.

  “I’m tellin’ you he was a Leprachaun, and there’s no knowin’ thedivilments he’d be up to. He’d pull the cabbidge, maybe, out of the potboilin’ on the fire forenint your eyes, and baste you in the face withit; and thin, maybe, you’d hold out your fist to him, and he’d put agoulden soverin in it.”

  “Wisht he was here!” murmured a voice from a bunk near the knightheads.

  “Pawthrick,” drawled the voice from the hammock above, “what’d you dofirst if you found y’self with twenty pound in your pocket?”

  “What’s the use of askin’ me?” replied Mr Button. “What’s the use oftwenty pound to a sayman at say, where the grog’s all wather an’ thebeef’s all horse? Gimme it ashore, an’ you’d see what I’d do wid it!”

  “I guess the nearest grog-shop keeper wouldn’t see you comin’ fordust,” said a voice from Ohio.

  “He would not,” said Mr Button “nor you afther me. Be damned to thegrog and thim that sells it!”

  “It’s all darned easy to talk,” said Ohio. “You curse the grog at seawhen you can’t get it; set you ashore, and you’re bung full.”

  “I likes me dhrunk,” said Mr Button, “I’m free to admit; an’ I’m thedivil when it’s in me, and
it’ll be the end of me yet, or me ouldmother was a liar. ‘Pat,’ she says, first time I come home from sayrowlin’, ‘storms you may escape, an’ wimmen you may escape, but thepotheen ’ill have you.’ Forty year ago—forty year ago!”

  “Well,” said Ohio, “it hasn’t had you yet.”

  “No,” replied Mr Button, “but it will.”