sail and came aft with the sheet. Then he shifted the
rudder, lit a pipe, leaned luxuriously back and gave the bellying sail
to the gentle breeze.

It was part of his profession, part of his nature, that, steering,
maybe, straight towards death by starvation and thirst, he was as
unconcerned as if he were taking the children for a summer's sail. His
imagination dealt little with the future; almost entirely influenced by
his immediate surroundings, it could conjure up no fears from the scene
now before it. The children were the same.

Never was there a happier starting, more joy in a little boat. During
breakfast the seaman had given his charges to understand that if Dick
did not meet his father and Emmeline her uncle in a "while or two," it
was because he had gone on board a ship, and he'd be along presently.
The terror of their position was as deeply veiled from them as eternity
is veiled from you or me.

The Pacific was still bound by one of those glacial calms that can only
occur when the sea has been free from storms for a vast extent of its
surface, for a hurricane down by the Horn will send its swell and
disturbance beyond the Marquesas. De Bois in his table of amplitudes
points out that more than half the sea disturbances at any given space
are caused, not by the wind, but by storms at a great distance.

But the sleep of the Pacific is only apparent. This placid lake, over
which the dinghy was pursuing the running ripple, was heaving to an
imperceptible swell and breaking on the shores of the Low Archipelago,
and the Marquesas in foam and thunder.

Emmeline's rag-doll was a shocking affair from a hygienic or artistic
standpoint. Its face was just inked on, it had no features, no arms;
yet not for all the dolls in the world would she have exchanged this
filthy and nearly formless thing. It was a fetish.

She sat nursing it on one side of the helmsman, whilst Dick, on the
other side, hung his nose over the water, on the look-out for fish.

"Why do you smoke, Mr Button?" asked Emmeline, who had been watching
her friend for some time in silence.

"To aise me thrubbles," replied Paddy.

He was leaning back with one eye shut and the other fixed on the luff
of the sail. He was in his element: nothing to do but steer and smoke,
warmed by the sun and cooled by the breeze. A landsman would have been
half demented in his condition, many a sailor would have been taciturn
and surly, on the look-out for sails, and