The Blue Lagoon: A Romance | Page 9

sort of thing," said the other, taking his seat in a chair close
by. "There's no manner of use forecastin' the weather a month ahead. Now we're in warm
latitoods, your glass will rise steady, and you'll be as right and spry as any one of us,
before we fetch the Golden Gates."
"I'm thinking about the children," said Lestrange, seeming not to hear the captain's words.
"Should anything happen to me before we reach port, I should like you to do something
for me. It's only this: dispose of my body without--without the children knowing. It has
been in my mind to ask you this for some days. Captain, those children know nothing of
death."
Le Farge moved uneasily in his chair.
"Little Emmeline's mother died when she was two. Her father-- my brother--died before
she was born. Dicky never knew a mother; she died giving him birth. My God, Captain,
death has laid a heavy hand on my family; can you wonder that I have hid his very name
from those two creatures that I love!"
"Ay, ay," said Le Farge, "it's sad! it's sad! "
"When I was quite a child," went on Lestrange, "a child no older than Dicky, my nurse
used to terrify me with tales about dead people. I was told I'd go to hell when I died if I
wasn't a good child. I cannot tell you how much that has poisoned my life, for the
thoughts we think in childhood, Captain, are the fathers of the thoughts we think when
we are grown up. And can a diseased father have healthy children?"
"I guess not."
"So I just said, when these two tiny creatures came into my care, that I would do all in my
power to protect them from the terrors of life--or rather, I should say, from the terror of

death. I don't know whether I have done right, but I have done it for the best. They had a
cat, and one day Dicky came in to me and said: `Father, pussy's in the garden asleep, and
I can't wake her.' So I just took him out for a walk; there was a circus in the town, and I
took him to it. It so filled his mind that he quite forgot the cat. Next day he asked for her.
I did not tell him she was buried in the garden, I just said she must have run away. In a
week he had forgotten all about her--children soon forget."
"Ay, that's true," said the sea captain. "But 'pears to me they must learn some time they've
got to die."
"Should I pay the penalty before we reach land, and be cast into that great, vast sea, I
would not wish the children's dreams to be haunted by the thought: just tell them I've
gone on board another ship. You will take them back to Boston; I have here, in a letter,
the name of a lady who will care for them. Dicky will be well off, as far as worldly goods
are concerned, and so will Emmeline. Just tell them I've gone on board another ship--
children soon forget."
"I'll do what you ask," said the seaman.
The moon was over the horizon now, and the Northumberland lay adrift in a river of
silver. Every spar was distinct, every reef point on the great sails, and the decks lay like
spaces of frost cut by shadows black as ebony.
As the two men sat without speaking, thinking their own thoughts, a little white figure
emerged from the saloon hatch. It was Emmeline. She was a professed sleepwalker--a
past mistress of the art.
Scarcely had she stepped into dreamland than she had lost her precious box, and now she
was hunting for it on the decks of the Northumberland.
Mr Lestrange put his finger to his lips, took off his shoes and silently followed her. She
searched behind a coil of rope, she tried to open the galley door; hither and thither she
wandered, wide-eyed and troubled of face, till at last, in the shadow of the hencoop, she
found her visionary treasure. Then back she came, holding up her little nightdress with
one hand, so as not to trip, and vanished down the saloon companion very hurriedly, as if
anxious to get back to bed, her uncle close behind, with one hand outstretched so as to
catch her in case she stumbled.


CHAPTER III
THE SHADOW AND THE FIRE
It was the fourth day of the long calm. An awning had been rigged up on the poop for the
passengers, and under it sat Lestrange, trying to read, and the children trying to play. The

heat and monotony had reduced even Dicky to just a surly mass, languid