"What did the shark say, Mr Button?" asked Emmeline.

"He said: `Take a bar'l full, an' welcome, Mister Button; an' it's
wishful I am I had a drop of the crathur to offer you this fine
marnin'.' Thin he popped his head under his fin and went aslape
agin; leastwise, I heard him snore."

Emmeline nearly always "Mr Buttoned" her friend; sometimes she
called him "Mr Paddy." As for Dick, it was always "Paddy," pure
and simple. Children have etiquettes of their own.

It must often strike landsmen and landswomen that the most
terrible experience when cast away at sea in an open boat is the
total absence of privacy. It seems an outrage on decency on the
part of Providence to herd people together so. But, whoever has
gone through the experience will bear me out that the human mind
enlarges, and things that would shock us ashore are as nothing out
there, face to face with eternity.

If so with grown-up people, how much more so with this old
shell-back and his two charges?

And indeed Mr Button was a person who called a spade a spade,
had no more conventions than a walrus, and looked after his two
charges just as a nursemaid might look after her charges, or a
walrus after its young.

There was a large bag of biscuits in the boat, and some tinned
stuff--mostly sardines.