CHAPTER XVII

THE DEVIL'S CASK


One morning, about a week after the day on which the old sailor,
to use his own expression, had bent a skirt on Emmeline, Dick
came through the woods and across the sands running. He had been
on the hill-top.

"Paddy," he cried to the old man, who was fixing a hook on a
fishing-line, "there's a ship!"

It did not take Mr Button long to reach the hill-top, and there she
was, beating up for the island. Bluff-bowed and squab, the figure
of an old Dutch woman, and telling of her trade a league off. It
was just after the rains, the sky was not yet quite clear of
clouds; you could see showers away at sea, and the sea was green
and foam-capped.

There was the trying-out gear; there were the boats, the crow's
nest, and all complete, and labelling her a whaler. She was a ship,
no doubt, but Paddy Button would as soon have gone on board a
ship manned by devils, and captained by Lucifer, as on board a
South Sea whaleman. He had been there before, and he knew.

He hid the children under a large banyan, and told them not to stir
or breathe till he came back, for the ship was "the devil's own
ship"; and if the men on board caught them they'd skin them alive