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

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“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 breadfruit 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.

Suddenly Mr Button stopped.

“Whisht!” said he.

Through the silence—a silence filled with the hum and the murmur of wood insects and the faint, far song of the reef—came a tinkling, rippling sound: it was water. He listened to make sure of the bearing of the sound, then he made for it.