The Blue Lagoon - A Romance - Book I

Mr Lestrange, white as a ghost, but recovered somewhat from his first horror, gave the Spent One time to recover himself and turned to look at the ship. She seemed a great distance off, and the boats, well away from her, were making at a furious pace towards the dinghy. Dick was still playing with the water, but Emmeline's eyes were entirely occupied with Paddy Button. New things were always of vast interest to her contemplative mind, and these evolutions of her old friend were eminently new.

She had seen him swilling the decks, she had seen him dancing a jig, she had seen him going round the main deck on all fours with Dick on his back, but she had never seen him going on like this before.

She perceived now that he was exhausted, and in trouble about something, and, putting her hand in the pocket of her dress, she searched for something that she knew was there. She produced a Tangerine orange, and leaning forward she touched the Spent One's head with it.

Mr Button raised his head, stared vacantly for a second, saw the proffered orange, and at the sight of it the thought of "the childer"

and their innocence, himself and the blasting powder, cleared his dazzled wits, and he took to the sculls again.

"Daddy," said Dick, who had been looking astern, "there's clouds near the ship."

In an incredibly short space of time the solid cliffs of fog had broken. The faint wind that had banked it had pierced it, and was now making pictures and devices of it, most wonderful and weird to see.

Horsemen of the mist rode on the water, and were dissolved; billows rolled on the sea, yet were not of the sea; blankets and spirals of vapour ascended to high heaven. And all with a terrible languor of movement. Vast and lazy and sinister, yet steadfast of purpose as Fate or Death, the fog advanced, taking the world for its own.

Against this grey and indescribably sombre background stood the smouldering ship with the breeze already shivering in her sails, and the smoke from her main-hatch blowing and beckoning as if to the retreating boats.

"Why's the ship smoking like that?" asked Dick. "And look at those boats coming--when are we going back, daddy?"

"Uncle," said Emmeline, putting her hand in his, as she gazed towards the ship and beyond it, "I'm 'fraid."

"What frightens you, Emmy?" he asked, drawing her to him.

"Shapes," replied Emmeline, nestling up to his side.

"Oh, Glory be to God!" gasped the old sailor, suddenly resting on his oars. "Will yiz look at the fog that's comin'--"