Читать книгу The Blue Lagoon & The Garden of God (Sequel) онлайн

134 страница из 147

“It’s a baste I’ve been,” said the repentant one—“a brute baste.”

He was quite wrong; as a matter of fact, he was only a man beset and betrayed.

He stood for a while, cursing the drink, “and them that sells it.” Then he determined to put himself out of the way of temptation. Pull the bung out of the barrel, and let the contents escape?

Such a thought never even occurred to him—or, if it did, was instantly dismissed; for, though an old sailor-man may curse the drink, good rum is to him a sacred thing; and to empty half a little barrel of it into the sea, would be an act almost equivalent to child-murder. He put the cask into the dinghy, and rowed it over to the reef. There he placed it in the shelter of a great lump of coral, and rowed back.

Paddy had been trained all his life to rhythmical drunkenness. Four months or so had generally elapsed between his bouts—sometimes six; it all depended on the length of the voyage. Six months now elapsed before he felt even an inclination to look at the rum cask, that tiny dark spot away on the reef. And it was just as well, for during those six months another whale-ship arrived, watered and was avoided.