"And here, out of my reach, is the water I want to drink," said the Old Sailor, growing more parched.
"Now, then," said Dan, "you can't get at the water with your beak--I mean your mouth--and you can't reach it with your claws--I mean your hands. Now what do you do?"
"Ah what do I do?" repeated the Old Sailor, not seeing his way out of the difficulty.
"Why," exclaimed Dan enthusiastically, "you get a rope--or, if you haven't got one, you make one out of some strong grass, or out of strips of your clothes; and you get a bucket--or you make one out of a cocoanut," in his enthusiasm Dan took the cocoanut for granted; and the Old Sailor accepted its existence on the rock with most implicit faith--"and you attach the cocoanut to the rope, and you lower it into the water, and draw it up full. Here you are, doing it."
And, obedient to Dan's signal, the bullfinches lowered their tiny bucket into the well, and drew it up full, and dipped their beaks into the water, as if they were shipwrecked bullfinches, and were nearly dead with raging thirst.
A thoughtful expression stole into the Old Sailor's face.
"They are wise little creatures," he said. "I have seen a might of strange things and pretty things; but this is as pretty as any thing I have seen."
"You can learn them any thing almost, sir," said Dan, who was bent upon making the Old Sailor love the birds.
"In a week they could. If I had a little ship, with two or three sails and a rope-ladder, I could teach them to climb the ladder and set the sails."
This was one of the questions Dan had made up his mind to ask the Old Sailor directly they grew familiar.
"Yes," answered the Old Sailor. "I wasn't very near her; and I was laughed at for saying I had seen her. But I saw her, for all that."
"In the South Pacific, where there are the ugliest images of men and women, and the most wonderful birds and flowers and trees, in the world. I have walked for miles through forests of wild flowers and strange trees, while thousands of parrots were flying about, with their feathers all blue and gold and scarlet and silver."
"Oh, how beautiful!" exclaimed Dan, twining his fingers together. "And they're there now, sir?"
"Surely. Your land-lubbers don't know any thing of the world."