The Blue Lagoon: A Romance Page 7

  CHAPTER VII

  STORY OF THE PIG AND THE BILLY-GOAT

  Every hour or so Mr Button would shake his lethargy off, and rise andlook round for “sea-gulls,” but the prospect was sail-less as theprehistoric sea, wingless, voiceless. When Dick would fret now andthen, the old sailor would always devise some means of amusing him. Hemade him fishing-tackle out of a bent pin and some small twine thathappened to be in the boat, and told him to fish for “pinkeens”; andDick, with the pathetic faith of childhood, fished.

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

  Mr Button had put in a year as a longshoreman at Deal, and he had got agreat lot to tell of his cousin and her husband, and more especially ofone, Hannah; Hannah was his cousin’s baby—a most marvellous child, whowas born with its “buck” teeth fully developed, and whose firstunnatural 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 alittle baby, and it was pink.”

  “Ay, ay,” said Paddy; “they’re mostly pink to start with, but they fadewhin 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 Dick, who was still steadilyfishing—“dug it out of a cabbage patch; an’ I got a trow’l and dug allour cabbage patch up, but there weren’t any babies—but there were noend of worms.”

  “I wish I had a baby,” said Emmeline, “and _I_ wouldn’t send it back tothe cabbage patch.”

  “The doctor,” explained Dick, “took it back and planted it again; andMrs James cried when I asked her, and daddy said it was put back togrow and turn into an angel.”

  “Angels have wings,” said Emmeline dreamily.

  “And,” pursued Dick, “I told cook, and she said to Jane, daddywas always stuffing children up with—something or ’nother. And I askeddaddy to let me see him stuffing up a child—and daddy said cook’d haveto 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 Dick.

  “I wish _I_ had a parrot in a cage,” murmured Emmeline, moving slightlyso 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 Button.

  “I’d let it out,” replied Emmeline.

  “Spakin’ about lettin’ par’ts out of cages, I remimber me grandfatherhad an ould pig,” said Paddy (they were all talking seriously togetherlike 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’ hammerwid me fist on it, an’ shout ‘Halloo there! halloo there!’ and ‘Hallooto you!’ he’d say, spakin’ the pigs’ language. ‘Let me out,’ he’d say,‘and I’ll give yiz a silver shilling.’

  “‘Pass it under the door,’ I’d answer him. Thin he’d stick the snout ofhim undher the door an’ I’d hit it a clip with a stick, and he’d yellmurther Irish. An’ me mother’d come out an’ baste me, an’ well Idesarved it.

  “Well, wan day I opened the sty door, an’ out he boulted and away andbeyant, over hill and hollo he goes till he gets to the edge of thecliff overlookin’ the say, and there he meets a billy-goat, and he andthe 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.

  “‘Who stole the eggs?’ says the billy-goat.

  “‘Ax your ould grandmother!’ says the pig.

  “‘Ax me ould _which_ mother?’ says the billy-goat.

  “‘Oh, ax me——’ And before he could complete the sintence ram, blam,the ould billy-goat butts him in the chist, and away goes the both ofthim whirtlin’ into the say below.

  “Thin me ould grandfather comes out, and collars me by the scruff, and‘Into the sty with you!’ says he; and into the sty I wint, and therethey kep’ me for a fortni’t on bran mash and skim milk—and well Idesarved it.”

  They dined somewhere about eleven o’clock, and at noon Paddy unsteppedthe mast and made a sort of little tent or awning with the sail in thebow of the boat to protect the children from the rays of the verticalsun.

  Then he took his place in the bottom of the boat, in the stern, stuckDick’s straw hat over his face to preserve it from the sun, kickedabout a bit to get a comfortable position, and fell asleep.