PART III
CHAPTER XVI
THE POETRY OF LEARNING
To forget the passage of time you must live in the open air, in a warmclimate, with as few clothes as possible upon you. You must collect andcook your own food. Then, after a while, if you have no special ties tobind you to civilisation, Nature will begin to do for you what she doesfor the savage. You will recognise that it is possible to be happywithout books or newspapers, letters or bills. You will recognise thepart sleep plays in Nature.
After a month on the island you might have seen Dick at one moment fullof life and activity, helping Mr Button to dig up a taro root orwhat not, the next curled up to sleep like a dog. Emmeline the same.Profound and prolonged lapses into sleep; sudden awakenings into aworld of pure air and dazzling light, the gaiety of colour all round.Nature had indeed opened her doors to these children.
One might have fancied her in an experimental mood, saying: “Let me putthese buds of civilisation back into my nursery and see what they willbecome—how they will blossom, and what will be the end of it all.”
Just as Emmeline had brought away her treasured box from the_Northumberland_, Dick had conveyed with him a small linen bag thatchinked when shaken. It contained marbles. Small olive-green marblesand middle-sized ones of various colours; glass marbles with splendidcoloured cores; and one large old grandfather marble too big to beplayed with, but none the less to be worshipped—a god marble.
Of course one cannot play at marbles on board ship, but one can play_with_ them. They had been a great comfort to Dick on the voyage. He knewthem each personally, and he would roll them out on the mattress of hisbunk and review them nearly every day, whilst Emmeline looked on.
One day Mr Button, noticing Dick and the girl kneeling opposite eachother on a flat, hard piece of sand near the water’s edge, strolled upto see what they were doing. They were playing marbles. He stood withhis hands in his pockets and his pipe in his mouth watching andcriticising the game, pleased that the “childer” were amused. Then hebegan to be amused himself, and in a few minutes more he was down onhis knees taking a hand; Emmeline, a poor player and an unenthusiasticone, withdrawing in his favour.
After that it was a common thing to see them playing together, the oldsailor on his knees, one eye shut, and a marble against the nail of hishorny thumb taking aim; Dick and Emmeline on the watch to make sure hewas playing fair, their shrill voices echoing amidst the cocoa-nuttrees with cries of “Knuckle down, Paddy, knuckle down!” He enteredinto all their amusements just as one of themselves. On high and rareoccasions Emmeline would open her precious box, spread its contents andgive a tea-party, Mr Button acting as guest or president as the casemight be.
“Is your tay to your likin’, ma’am?” he would enquire; and Emmeline,sipping at her tiny cup, would invariably make answer: “Another lump ofsugar, if you please, Mr Button” to which would come the stereotypedreply: “Take a dozen, and welcome; and another cup for the good of yourmake.”
Then Emmeline would wash the things in imaginary water, replace them inthe box, and every one would lose their company manners and becomequite natural again.
“Have you ever seen your name, Paddy?” asked Dick one morning.
“Seen me which?”
“Your name?”
“Arrah, don’t be axin’ me questions,” replied the other. “How the divilcould I see me name?”
“Wait and I’ll show you,” replied Dick.
He ran and fetched a piece of cane, and a minute later on thesalt-white sand in face of orthography and the sun appeared theseportentous letters:
B U T T E N
“Faith, an’ it’s a cliver boy y’are,” said Mr Button admiringly, as heleaned luxuriously against a cocoa-nut tree, and contemplated Dick’shandiwork. “And that’s me name, is it? What’s the letters in it?”
Dick enumerated them.
“I’ll teach you to do it, too,” he said. “I’ll teach you to write yourname, Paddy—would you like to write your name, Paddy?”
“No,” replied the other, who only wanted to be let smoke his pipe inpeace; “me name’s no use to me.”
But Dick, with the terrible gadfly tirelessness of childhood, was notto be put off, and the unfortunate Mr Button had to go to schooldespite himself. In a few days he could achieve the act of drawing uponthe sand characters somewhat like the above, but not without prompting,Dick and Emmeline on each side of him, breathless for fear of a mistake.
“Which next?” would ask the sweating scribe, the perspiration pouringfrom his forehead—“which next? an’ be quick, for it’s moithered I am.”
“N. N.—that’s right—Ow, you’re making it crooked!—_that’s_right—there! it’s all there now—Hurroo!”
“Hurroo!” would answer the scholar, waving his old hat over his ownname, and “Hurroo!” would answer the cocoa-nut grove echoes; whilst thefar, faint “Hi hi!” of the wheeling gulls on the reef would come overthe blue lagoon as if in acknowledgment of the deed, and encouragement.
The appetite comes with teaching. The pleasantest mental exercise ofchildhood is the instruction of one’s elders. Even Emmeline felt this.She took the geography class one day in a timid manner, putting herlittle hand first in the great horny fist of her friend.
“Mr Button!”
“Well, honey?”
“I know g’ography.”
“And what’s that?” asked Mr Button.
This stumped Emmeline for a moment.
“It’s where places are,” she said at last.
“Which places?” enquired he.
“All sorts of places,” replied Emmeline. “Mr Button!”
“What is it, darlin’?”
“Would you like to learn g’ography?”
“I’m not wishful for larnin’,” said the other hurriedly. “It makes mehead buzz to hear them things they rade out of books.”
“Paddy,” said Dick, who was strong on drawing that afternoon, “lookhere.” He drew the following on the sand:
A bad drawing of an elephant]
“That’s an elephant,” he said in a dubious voice.
Mr Button grunted, and the sound was by no means filled withenthusiastic assent. A chill fell on the proceedings.
Dick wiped the elephant slowly and regretfully out, whilst Emmelinefelt disheartened. Then her face suddenly cleared; the seraphic smilecame into it for a moment—a bright idea had struck her.
“Dicky,” she said, “draw Henry the Eight.”
Dick’s face brightened. He cleared the sand and drew the followingfigure:
l l /
“_That’s_ not Henry the Eight,” he explained, “but he will be in aminute. Daddy showed me how to draw him; he’s nothing till he gets hishat on.”
“Put his hat on, put his hat on!” implored Emmeline, gazing alternatelyfrom the figure on the sand to Mr Button’s face, watching for thedelighted smile with which she was sure the old man would greet thegreat king when he appeared in all his glory.
Then Dick with a single stroke of the cane put Henry’s hat on.
=== l l l /
Now, no portrait could be liker to his monk-hunting majesty than theabove, created with one stroke of a cane (so to speak), yet Mr Buttonremained unmoved.
“I did it for Mrs Sims,” said Dick regretfully, “and _she_ said it wasthe image of him.”
“Maybe the hat’s not big enough,” said Emmeline, turning her head fromside to side as she gazed at the picture. It looked right, but she feltthere must be something wrong, as Mr Button did not applaud. Has notevery true artist felt the same before the silence of some critic?
Mr Button tapped the ashes out of his pipe and rose to stretch himself,and the class rose and trooped down to the lagoon edge, leaving Henryand his hat a figure on the sand to be obliterated by the wind.
After a while, as time went on, Mr Button took to his lessons as amatter of course, the small inventions of the children assis
ting theirutterly untrustworthy knowledge. Knowledge, perhaps, as useful as anyother there amidst the lovely poetry of the palm trees and the sky.
Days slipped into weeks, and weeks into months, without the appearanceof a ship—a fact which gave Mr Button very little trouble; and evenless to his charges, who were far too busy and amused to bother aboutships.
The rainy season came on them with a rush, and at the words “rainyseason” do not conjure up in your mind the vision of a rainy day inManchester.
The rainy season here was quite a lively time. Torrential showersfollowed by bursts of sunshine, rainbows, and rain-dogs in the sky, andthe delicious perfume of all manner of growing things on the earth.
After the rains the old sailor said he’d be after making a house ofbamboos before the next rains came on them; but, maybe, before thatthey’d be off the island.
“However,” said he, “I’ll dra’ you a picture of what it’ll be like whenit’s up;” and on the sand he drew a figure like this:
X
Having thus drawn the plans of the building, he leaned back against acocoa-palm and lit his pipe. But he had reckoned without Dick.
The boy had not the least wish to live in a house, but he had a keendesire to see one built, and help to build one. The ingenuity which ispart of the multiform basis of the American nature was aroused.
“How’re you going to keep them from slipping, if you tie them togetherlike that?” he asked, when Paddy had more fully explained his method.
“Which from slippin’?”
“The canes—one from the other?”
“After you’ve fixed thim, one cross t’other, you drive a nail throughthe cross-piece and a rope over all.”
“Have you any nails, Paddy?”
“No,” said Mr Button, “I haven’t.”
“Then how’re you goin’ to build the house?”
“Ax me no questions now; I want to smoke me pipe.”
But he had raised a devil difficult to lay. Morning, noon, and night itwas “Paddy, when are you going to begin the house?” or, “Paddy, I guessI’ve got a way to make the canes stick together without nailing.” TillMr Button, in despair, like a beaver, began to build.
There was great cane-cutting in the cane-brake above, and, whensufficient had been procured, Mr Button struck work for three days. Hewould have struck altogether, but he had found a taskmaster.
The tireless Dick, young and active, with no original laziness in hiscomposition, no old bones to rest, or pipe to smoke, kept after himlike a bluebottle fly. It was in vain that he tried to stave him offwith stories about fairies and Cluricaunes. Dick wanted to build ahouse.
Mr Button didn’t. He wanted to rest. He did not mind fishing orclimbing a cocoa-nut tree, which he did to admiration by passing a roperound himself and the tree, knotting it, and using it as a supportduring the climb; but house-building was monotonous work.
He said he had no nails. Dick countered by showing how the canes couldbe held together by notching them.
“And, faith, but it’s a cliver boy you are,” said the weary oneadmiringly, when the other had explained his method.
“Then come along, Paddy, and stick ’em up.”
Mr Button said he had no rope, that he’d have to think about it, thatto-morrow or next day he’d be after getting some notion how to do itwithout rope. But Dick pointed out that the brown cloth which Naturehas wrapped round the cocoa-palm stalks would do instead of rope if cutin strips. Then the badgered one gave in.
They laboured for a fortnight at the thing, and at the end of that timehad produced a rough sort of wigwam on the borders of the chapparel.
Out on the reef, to which they often rowed in the dinghy, when the tidewas low, deep pools would be left, and in the pools fish. Paddy saidif they had a spear they might be able to spear some of these fish, ashe had seen the natives do away “beyant” in Tahiti.
Dick enquired as to the nature of a spear, and next day produced aten-foot cane sharpened at the end after the fashion of a quill pen.
“Sure, what’s the use of that?” said Mr Button. “You might job it intoa fish, but he’d be aff it in two ticks; it’s the barb that holds them.”
Next day the indefatigable one produced the cane amended; he hadwhittled it down about three feet from the end and on one side, andcarved a fairly efficient barb. It was good enough, at all events, tospear a “groper” with, that evening, in the sunset-lit pools of thereef at low tide.
“There aren’t any potatoes here,” said Dick one day, after the secondrains.
“We’ve et ’em all months ago,” replied Paddy.
“How do potatoes grow?” enquired Dick.
“Grow, is it? Why, they grow in the ground; and where else would theygrow?” He explained the process of potato-planting: cutting them intopieces so that there was an eye in each piece, and so forth. “Havingdone this,” said Mr Button, “you just chuck the pieces in the ground;their eyes grow, green leaves ‘pop up,’ and then, if you dug the rootsup maybe, six months after, you’d find bushels of potatoes in theground, ones as big as your head, and weeny ones. It’s like a family ofchilder—some’s big and some’s little. But there they are in theground, and all you have to do is to take a fark and dig a potful ofthem with a turn of your wrist, as many a time I’ve done it in the oulddays.”
“Why didn’t we do that?” asked Dick.
“Do what?” asked Mr Button.
“Plant some of the potatoes.”
“And where’d we have found the spade to plant them with?”
“I guess we could have fixed up a spade,” replied the boy. “I made aspade at home, out of a piece of old board, once—daddy helped.”
“Well, skelp off with you, and make a spade now,” replied the other,who wanted to be quiet and think, “and you and Em’line can dig in thesand.”
Emmeline was sitting near by, stringing together some gorgeous blossomson a tendril of liana. Months of sun and ozone had made a considerabledifference in the child. She was as brown as a gipsy and freckled, notvery much taller, but twice as plump. Her eyes had lost considerablythat look as though she were contemplating futurity and immensity—notas abstractions, but as concrete images, and she had lost the habit ofsleep-walking.
The shock of the tent coming down on the first night she was tetheredto the scull had broken her of it, helped by the new healthfulconditions of life, the sea-bathing, and the eternal open air. There isno narcotic to excel fresh air.
Months of semi-savagery had made also a good deal of difference inDick’s appearance. He was two inches taller than on the day theylanded. Freckled and tanned, he had the appearance of a boy of twelve.He was the promise of a fine man. He was not a good-looking child, buthe was healthy-looking, with a jolly laugh, and a daring, almostimpudent expression of face.
The question of the children’s clothes was beginning to vex the mind ofthe old sailor. The climate was a suit of clothes in itself. One wasmuch happier with almost nothing on. Of course there were changes oftemperature, but they were slight. Eternal summer, broken by torrentialrains, and occasionally a storm, that was the climate of the island;still, the “childer” couldn’t go about with nothing on.
He took some of the striped flannel and made Emmeline a kilt. It wasfunny to see him sitting on the sand, Emmeline standing before him withher garment round her waist, being tried on he, with a mouthful ofpins, and the housewife with the scissors, needles, and thread by hisside.
“Turn to the lift a bit more,” he’d say, “aisy does it. Stidyso—musha! musha! where’s thim scissors? Dick, be holdin’ the end ofthis bit of string till I get the stitches in behint. Does that hangcomfortable?—well, an’ you’re the trouble an’ all. How’s _that_? That’saisier, is it? Lift your fut till I see if it comes to your knees. Nowoff with it, and lave me alone till I stitch the tags to it.”
It was the mixture of a skirt and the idea of a sail, for it had tworows of reef points; a most ingenious idea, as it could be reefed ifthe child wa
nted to go paddling, or in windy weather.
The Blue Lagoon: A Romance Page 16