The moon, argent and splendid, was breaking from the water. She was full, and her light was powerful almost as the light of day. The shadows of the children and the queer shadow of Mr Button were cast on the wall of the caboose hard and black as silhouettes.
"Look at our shadows!" cried Dick, taking off his broad-brimmed straw hat and waving it.
Emmeline held up her doll to see ITS shadow, and Mr Button held up his pipe.
"Come now," said he, putting the pipe back in his mouth, and making to rise, "and shadda off to bed; it's time you were aslape, the both of you."
Dick began to yowl.
"_I_ don't want to go to bed; I aint tired, Paddy--les's stay a little longer."
"Not a minit," said the other, with all the decision of a nurse; "not a minit afther me pipe's out!"
"Fill it again," said Dick.
Mr Button made no reply. The pipe gurgled as he puffed at it--a kind of death-rattle speaking of almost immediate extinction.
"Mr Button!" said Emmeline. She was holding her nose in the air and sniffing; seated to windward of the smoker, and out of the pigtail-poisoned air, her delicate sense of smell perceived something lost to the others.
"What is it, acushla?"
"I smell something."
"What d'ye say you smell?"
"Something nice."
"What's it like?" asked Dick, sniffing hard. "_I_ don't smell anything."
Emmeline sniffed again to make sure.
"Flowers," said she.
The breeze, which had shifted several points since midday, was bearing with it a faint, faint odour: a perfume of vanilla and spice so faint as to be imperceptible to all but the most acute olfactory sense.
"Flowers!" said the old sailor, tapping the ashes cut of his pipe against the heel of his boot. "And where'd you get flowers in middle of the say? It's dhramin' you are. Come now--to bed wid yiz!"
"Fill it again," wailed Dick, referring to the pipe.
"It's a spankin' I'll give you," replied his guardian, lifting him down from the timber baulks, and then assisting Emmeline, "in two ticks if you don't behave. Come along, Em'line."
He started aft, a small hand in each of his, Dick bellowing.
As they passed the ship's bell, Dick stretched towards the belaying pin that was still lying on the deck, seized it, and hit the bell a mighty bang. It was the last pleasure to be snatched before sleep, and he snatched it.
Paddy had made up beds for himself and his charges in the deck-house; he had cleared the stuff off the table, broken open the windows to get the musty smell away, and placed the mattresses from the captain and mate's cabins on the floor.