Fair Pictures in the Blue

"I don't want my old britches on! I don't want my old britches on!"

Dick was darting about naked on the sand, Mr Button after him with a pair of small trousers in his hand. A crab might just as well have attempted to chase an antelope.

They had been on the island a fortnight, and Dick had discovered the keenest joy in life to be naked. To be naked and wallow in the shallows of the lagoon, to be naked and sit drying in the sun. To be free from the curse of clothes, to shed civilisation on the beach in the form of breeches, boots, coat, and hat, and to be one with the wind and the sun and the sea.

The very first command Mr Button had given on the second morning of their arrival was, "Strip and into the water wid you."

Dick had resisted at first, and Emmeline (who rarely wept) had stood weeping in her little chemise. But Mr Button was obdurate. The difficulty at first was to get them in; the difficulty now was to keep them out.

Emmeline was sitting as nude as the day star, drying in the morning sun after her dip, and watching Dick's evolutions on the sand.

The lagoon had for the children far more attraction than the land.

Woods where you might knock ripe bananas off the trees with a big cane, sands where golden lizards would scuttle about so tame that you might with a little caution seize them by the tail, a hill-top from whence you might see, to use Paddy's expression, "to the back of beyond"; all these were fine enough in their way, but they were nothing to the lagoon.