The Blue Lagoon - A Romance - Book I

"_I_ don't want soldiers," replied Emmeline, in a voice of perfect contentment.

She unfolded a piece of tissue paper, and took from it a sugar-tongs and six spoons. Then she arrayed the whole lot on the sand.

"Well, if that don't beat all!" said Paddy.

"And whin are you goin' to ax me to tay with you?"

"Some time," replied Emmeline, collecting the things, and carefully repacking them.

Mr Button finished his pipe, tapped the ashes out, and placed it in his pocket.

"I'll be afther riggin' up a bit of a tint," said he, as he rose to his feet, "to shelter us from the jew to-night; but I'll first have a look at the woods to see if I can find wather. Lave your box with the other things, Emmeline; there's no one here to take it."

Emmeline left her box on the heap of things that Paddy had placed in the shadow of the cocoa-nut trees, took his hand, and the three entered the grove on the right.

It was like entering a pine forest; the tall symmetrical stems of the trees seemed set by mathematical law, each at a given distance from the other. Whichever way you entered a twilight alley set with tree boles lay before you. Looking up you saw at an immense distance above a pale green roof patined with sparkling and flashing points of light, where the breeze was busy playing with the green fronds of the trees.

"Mr Button," murmured Emmeline, "we won't get lost, will we?"

"Lost! No, faith; sure we're goin' uphill, an' all we have to do is to come down again, when we want to get back--'ware nuts!" A green nut detached from up above came down rattling and tumbling and hopped on the ground. Paddy picked it up. "It's a green cucanut," said he, putting it in his pocket (it was not very much bigger than a Jaffa orange), "and we'll have it for tay."

"That's not a cocoa-nut," said Dick; "coco-anuts are brown. I had five cents once an' I bought one, and scraped it out and y'et it."

"When Dr. Sims made Dicky sick," said Emmeline, "he said the wonder t'im was how Dicky held it all."

"Come on," said Mr Button, "an' don't be talkin', or it's the Cluricaunes will be after us."

"What's cluricaunes?" demanded Dick.

"Little men no bigger than your thumb that make the brogues for the Good People."

"Who's they?"

"Whisht, and don't be talkin'. Mind your head, Em'leen, or the branches'll be hittin' you in the face."

They had left the cocoa-nut grove, and entered the chapparel. Here was a deeper twilight, and all sorts of trees lent their foliage to make the shade. The artu with its delicately diamonded trunk, the great bread-fruit tall as a beech, and shadowy as a cave, the aoa, and the eternal cocoa-nut palm all grew here like brothers. Great ropes of wild vine twined like the snake of the laocoon from tree to tree, and all sorts of wonderful flowers, from the orchid shaped like a butterfly to the scarlet hibiscus, made beautiful the gloom.