Now, though Emmeline honoured Mr Button as a minor deity, Dick had no illusions at all upon the matter. He admired Paddy because he could knot, and splice, and climb a cocoanut tree, and exercise his sailor craft in other admirable ways, but he felt the old man's limitations.
They ought to have had potatoes now, but they had eaten both potatoes and the possibility of potatoes when they consumed the contents of that half sack. Young as he was, Dick felt the absolute thriftlessness of this proceeding. Emmeline did not; she never thought of potatoes, though she could have told you the colour of all the birds on the island.
Then, again, the house wanted rebuilding, and Mr Button said every day he would set about seeing after it to-morrow, and on the morrow it would be to-morrow. The necessities of the life they led were a stimulus to the daring and active mind of the boy; but he was always being checked by the go-as-you-please methods of his elder. Dick came of the people who make sewing machines and typewriters. Mr Button came of a people notable for ballads, tender hearts, and potheen. That was the main difference.
"Paddy!" again cried the boy, when he had eaten as much as he wanted.
"Hullo! where are you?"
They listened, but no answer came. A bright-hued bird flew across the sand space, a lizard scuttled across the glistening sand, the reef spoke, and the wind in the tree-tops; but Mr Button made no reply.
"Wait," said Dick.
He ran through the grove towards the aoa where the dinghy was moored; then he returned.
"The dinghy is all right," he said. "Where on earth can he be?"
"I don't know," said Emmeline, upon whose heart a feeling of loneliness had fallen.
"Let's go up the hill," said Dick; "perhaps we'll find him there."
They went uphill through the wood, past the water-course. Every now and then Dick would call out, and echoes would answer--there were quaint, moist-voiced echoes amidst the trees or a bevy of birds would take flight. The little waterfall gurgled and whispered, and the great banana leaves spread their shade.
"Come on," said Dick, when he had called again without receiving a reply.
They found the hill-top, and the great boulder stood casting its shadow in the sun. The morning breeze was blowing, the sea sparkling, the reef flashing, the foliage of the island waving in the wind like the flames of a green-flamed torch. A deep swell was spreading itself across the bosom of the Pacific. Some hurricane away beyond the Navigators or Gilberts had sent this message and was finding its echo here, a thousand miles away, in the deeper thunder of the reef.