BOOK I

PART I

CHAPTER I

WHERE THE SLUSH LAMP BURNS


Mr Button was seated on a sea-chest with a fiddle under his left
ear. He was playing the "Shan van vaught," and accompanying the
tune, punctuating it, with blows of his left heel on the fo'cs'le
deck.

"O the Frinch are in the bay,
Says the Shan van vaught."

He was dressed in dungaree trousers, a striped shirt, and a jacket
baize--green in parts from the influence of sun and salt. A typical
old shell-back, round-shouldered, hooked of finger; a figure with
strong hints of a crab about it.

His face was like a moon, seen red through tropical mists; and as
he played it wore an expression of strained attention as though
the fiddle were telling him tales much more marvellous than the
old bald statement about Bantry Bay.

"Left-handed Pat," was his fo'cs'le name; not because he was