dy weather.

CHAPTER XVII

THE DEVIL'S CASK

One morning, about a week after the day on which the old sailor, to use
his own expression, had bent a skirt on Emmeline, Dick came through the
woods and across the sands running. He had been on the hill-top.

"Paddy," he cried to the old man, who was fixing a hook on a
fishing-line, "there's a ship!"

It did not take Mr Button long to reach the hill-top, and there she
was, beating up for the island. Bluff-bowed and squab, the figure of an
old Dutch woman, and telling of her trade a league off. It was just
after the rains, the sky was not yet quite clear of clouds; you could
see showers away at sea, and the sea was green and foam-capped.

There was the trying-out gear; there were the boats, the crow's nest,
and all complete, and labelling her a whaler. She was a ship, no doubt,
but Paddy Button would as soon have gone on board a ship manned by
devils, and captained by Lucifer, as on board a South Sea whaleman. He
had been there before, and he knew.

He hid the children under a large banyan, and told them not to stir or
breathe till he came back, for the ship was "the devil's own ship"; and
if the men on board caught them they'd skin them alive and all.

Then he made for the beach; he collected all the things out of the
wigwam, and all the old truck in the shape of boots and old clothes,
and stowed them away in the dinghy. He would have destroyed the house,
if he could, but he hadn't time. Then he rowed the dinghy a hundred
yards down the lagoon to the left, and moored her under the shade of an
aoa, whose branches grew right over the water. Then he came back
through the cocoa-nut grove on foot, and peered through the trees over
the lagoon to see what was to be seen.

The wind was blowing dead on for the opening in the reef, and the old
whaleman came along breasting the swell with her bluff bows, and
entered the lagoon. There was no leadsman in her chains. She just came
in as if she knew all the soundings by heart--as probably she did--for
these whalemen know every hole and corner in the Pacific.

The anchor fell with a splash, and she swung to it, making a strange
enough picture as she floated on the blue mirror, backed by the
graceful palm tree on the reef. Then Mr Button, without waiting to see
the boats lowered, made back to his charges, and the three camped in
the woods that night.

Next morning the whaleman was off and away, leaving as a token of her
v