refully, holding the shell as if it contained something
precious that he was afraid would escape.

"Paddy, I turned over the old barrel and it had a cork thing in it, and
I pulled it out, and the barrel is full of awfully funny-smelling
stuff--I've brought some for you to see."

He gave the shell into the old sailor's hands. There was about half a
gill of yellow liquid in the shell. Paddy smelt it, tasted, and gave a
shout.

"Rum, begorra!"

"What is it, Paddy?" asked Emmeline.

"WHERE did you say you got it--in the ould bar'l, did you say?" asked
Mr Button, who seemed dazed and stunned as if by a blow.

"Yes; I pulled the cork thing out--"

"DID YIZ PUT IT BACK?"

"Yes."

"Oh, glory be to God! Here have I been, time out of mind, sittin' on an
ould empty bar'l, with me tongue hangin' down to me heels for the want
of a drink, and it full of rum all the while!"

He took a sip of the stuff, tossed the lot off, closed his lips tight
to keep in the fumes, and shut one eye.

Emmeline laughed.

Mr Button scrambled to his feet. They followed him through the
chapparel till they reached the water source. There lay the little
green barrel; turned over by the restless Dick, it lay with its bung
pointing to the leaves above. You could see the hollow it had made in
the soft soil during the years. So green was it, and so like an object
of nature, a bit of old tree-bole, or a lichen-stained boulder, that
though the whalemen had actually watered from the source, its real
nature had not been discovered.

Mr Button tapped on it with the butt-end of the shell: it was nearly
full. Why it had been left there, by whom, or how, there was no one to
tell. The old lichen-covered skulls might have told, could they have
spoken.

"We'll rowl it down to the beach," said Paddy, when he had taken
another taste of it.

He gave Dick a sip. The boy spat it out, and made a face, then, pushing
the barrel before them, they began to roll it downhill to the beach,
Emmeline running before them crowned with flowers.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE RAT HUNT

They had dinner at noon. Paddy knew how to cook fish, island fashion,
wrapping them in leaves, and baking them in a hole in the ground in
which a fire had previously been lit. They had fish and taro root
baked, and green cocoa-nuts; and after dinner Mr Button filled a big
shell with rum, and lit his pipe.

The rum had been good originally, and age had improved it. Used as he
was to the a