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

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“I didn’t know that.”

“Well, you know it now.”

“Yes, I know it now.”

“Well, then, come to windward of the fire. Why didn’t you ask the meaning of it before?”

“I did,” said Emmeline; “I asked Mr Button one day, and he told me a lot about it. He said if he was to spit to windward and a person was to stand to loo’ard of him, he’d be a fool; and he said if a ship went too much to loo’ard she went on the rocks, but I didn’t understand what he meant. Dicky, I wonder where he is?”

“Paddy!” cried Dick, pausing in the act of splitting open a breadfruit. Echoes came from amidst the cocoa-nut trees, but nothing more.

“Come on,” said Dick; “I’m not going to wait for him. He may have gone to fetch up the night lines”—they sometimes put down night lines in the lagoon—“and fallen asleep over them.”

Now, though Emmeline honoured Mr Button as a minor deity, Dick had no illusions at all upon the matter. He admired Paddy because he could knot, and splice, and climb a cocoa-nut tree, and exercise his sailor craft in other admirable ways, but he felt the old man’s limitations. They ought to have had potatoes now, but they had eaten both potatoes and the possibility of potatoes when they consumed the contents of that half sack. Young as he was, Dick felt the absolute thriftlessness of this proceeding. Emmeline did not; she never thought of potatoes, though she could have told you the colour of all the birds on the island.