Initial commitHEADmain

1 files changed, 7272 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/75530-0.txt b/75530-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f08c134
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75530-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,7272 @@
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75530 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+  A HIGH WIND
+  IN
+  JAMAICA
+
+
+
+
+       By Richard Hughes
+
+        _Short Stories_
+
+       A MOMENT OF TIME
+
+           _Poems_
+
+       CONFESSIO JUVENIS
+
+           _Drama_
+
+       PLAYS: IN ONE VOL.
+   _Also available separately_
+
+       Chatto & Windus
+
+               *
+
+  _Mr. Hughes has also edited a
+  selection of Skelton’s Poems,
+  published by Wm. Heinemann Ltd._
+
+
+
+
+  A HIGH WIND
+  IN JAMAICA
+
+  RICHARD HUGHES
+
+  1929
+
+  CHATTO & WINDUS
+  LONDON
+
+
+
+
+  Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. Constable Ltd.
+  at the University Press, Edinburgh
+
+  Third Impression
+
+  All rights reserved
+
+  Copyright in the U.S.A. by Richard Hughes, 1929,
+  under the title of ‘The Innocent Voyage.’
+
+
+
+
+A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter 1_
+
+
+One of the fruits of Emancipation in the West Indian islands is
+the number of the ruins, either attached to the houses that remain
+or within a stone’s throw of them: ruined slaves’ quarters, ruined
+sugar-grinding houses, ruined boiling houses; often ruined mansions
+that were too expensive to maintain. Earthquake, fire, rain, and
+deadlier vegetation, did their work quickly.
+
+One scene is very clear in my mind, in Jamaica. There was a vast
+stone-built house called Derby Hill (where the Parkers lived). It had
+been the centre of a very prosperous plantation. With Emancipation,
+like many others, that went _bung_. The sugar buildings fell down.
+Bush smothered the cane and guinea-grass. The field negroes left
+their cottages in a body, to be somewhere less disturbed by even the
+possibility of work. Then the house negroes’ quarters burned down,
+and the three remaining faithful servants occupied the mansion. The
+two heiresses of all this, the Miss Parkers, grew old; and were by
+education incapable. And the scene is this: coming to Derby Hill on
+some business or other, and wading waist-deep in bushes up to the front
+door, now lashed permanently open by a rank plant. The jalousies of
+the house had been all torn down, and then supplanted as darkeners,
+by powerful vines: and out of this crumbling half-vegetable gloom
+an old negress peered, wrapped in filthy brocade. The two old Miss
+Parkers lived in bed, for the negroes had taken away all their clothes:
+they were nearly starved. Drinking water was brought in two cracked
+Worcester cups and three coconut shells on a silver salver. Presently
+one of the heiresses persuaded her tyrants to lend her an old print
+dress, and came and pottered about in the mess half-heartedly: tried to
+wipe the old blood and feathers of slaughtered chickens from a gilt and
+marble table: tried to talk sensibly: tried to wind an ormolu clock:
+and then gave it up and mooned away back to bed. Not long after this,
+I believe, they were both starved altogether to death. Or, if that
+were hardly possible in so prolific a country, perhaps given ground
+glass--rumour varied. At any rate, they died.
+
+That is the sort of scene which makes a deep impression on the mind;
+far deeper than the ordinary, less romantic, everyday thing which shows
+the real state of an island in the statistical sense. Of course, even
+in the transition period one only found melodrama like this in rare
+patches. More truly typical was Ferndale, for instance, an estate about
+fifteen miles away from Derby Hill. Only the overseer’s house here
+remained: the Big House had altogether collapsed and been smothered
+over. It consisted of a ground floor of stone, given over to goats and
+the children, and a first floor of wood, the inhabited part, reached
+from outside by a double flight of wooden steps. When the earthquakes
+came the upper part only slid about a little, and could be jacked back
+into position with big levers. The roof was of shingles: after very dry
+weather it leaked like a sieve, and the first few days of the rainy
+season would be spent in a perpetual general-post of beds and other
+furniture to escape the drips, until the wood swelled.
+
+The people who lived there at the time I have in mind were the
+Bas-Thorntons: not natives of the Island, ‘Creoles,’ but a family from
+England. Mr. Bas-Thornton had a business of some kind in St. Anne’s,
+and used to ride there every day on a mule. He had such long legs that
+his stunted mount made him look rather ridiculous: and being quite
+as temperamental as a mule himself, a quarrel between the two was
+generally worth watching.
+
+Close to the dwelling were the ruined grinding and boiling houses.
+These two are never quite cheek by jowl: the grinding-house is set on
+higher ground, with a water-wheel to turn the immense iron vertical
+rollers. From these the cane juice runs down a wedge-shaped trough to
+the boiling house, where a negro stands and rinses a little lime-wash
+into it with a grass brush to make it granulate. Then it is emptied
+into big copper vats, over furnaces burning faggots and ‘trash,’ or
+squeezed-out cane. There a few negroes stand, skimming the poppling
+vats with long-handled copper ladles, while their friends sit round,
+eating sugar or chewing trash, in a mist of hot vapour. What they
+skim off oozes across the floor with an admixture of a good deal of
+filth--insects, even rats, and whatever sticks to negroes’ feet--into
+another basin, thence to be distilled into rum.
+
+This, at any rate, is how it used to be done. I know nothing of modern
+methods--or if there are any, never having visited the island since
+1860, which is a long time ago now.
+
+But long before that year all this was over at Ferndale: the big copper
+vats were overturned, and up in the grinding-house the three great
+rollers lay about loose. No water reached it: the stream had gone
+about its own business elsewhere. The Bas-Thornton children used to
+crawl into the cut-well through the vent, among dead leaves and the
+wreck of the wheel. There, one day, they found a wild-cat’s nest, with
+the mother away. The kittens were tiny, and Emily tried to carry them
+home in her pinafore; but they bit and scratched so fiercely, right
+through her thin frock, that she was very glad--except for pride--that
+they all escaped but one. This one, Tom, grew up: though he was never
+really tamed. Later he begat several litters on an old tame cat they
+had, Kitty Cranbrook; and the only survivor of this progeny, Tabby,
+became rather a famous cat in his way. (But Tom soon took to the jungle
+altogether.) Tabby was faithful, and a good swimmer, which he would do
+for pleasure, sculling around the bathing-pool behind the children,
+giving an occasional yowl of excitement. Also, he had mortal sport with
+snakes: would wait for a rattler or a black-snake like a mere mouse:
+drop on it from a tree or somewhere, and fight it to death. Once he
+got bitten, and they all wept bitterly, expecting to see a spectacular
+death-agony; but he just went off into the bush and probably ate
+something, for he came back in a few days quite cock-a-hoop and as
+ready to eat snakes as ever.
+
+Red-headed John’s room was full of rats: he used to catch them in big
+gins, and then let them go for Tabby to despatch. Once the cat was so
+impatient he seized trap and all and caterwauled off into the night
+banging it on the stones and sending up showers of sparks. Again he
+returned in a few days, very sleek and pleased: but John never saw his
+trap again. Another plague of his were the bats, which also infested
+his room in hundreds. Mr. Bas-Thornton could crack a stockwhip, and
+used to kill a bat on the wing with it most neatly. But the din
+this made in that little box of a room at midnight was infernal:
+earsplitting cracks, and the air already full of the tiny penetrating
+squeaks of the vermin.
+
+It was a kind of paradise for English children to come to, whatever it
+might be for their parents: especially at that time, when no one lived
+in at all a wild way at home. Here one had to be a little ahead of
+the times: or decadent, whichever you like to call it. The difference
+between boys and girls, for instance, had to be left to look after
+itself. Long hair would have made the evening search for grass-ticks
+and nits interminable: Emily and Rachel had their hair cut short, and
+were allowed to do everything the boys did--to climb trees, swim, and
+trap animals and birds: they even had two pockets in their frocks.
+
+It was round the bathing-pool their life centred, more than the
+house. Every year, when the rains were over, a dam was built across
+the stream, so that all through the dry season there was quite a
+large pool to swim in. There were trees all round: enormous fluffed
+cotton-trees, with coffee trees between their paws, and log-wood, and
+gorgeous red and green peppers: amongst them, the pool was almost
+completely shaded. Emily and John set tree-springes in them--Lame-foot
+Sam taught them how. Cut a bendy stick, and tie a string to one end.
+Then sharpen the other, so that it can impale a fruit as bait. Just at
+the base of this point flatten it a little, and bore a hole through the
+flat part. Cut a little peg that will just stick in the mouth of this
+hole. Then make a loop in the end of the string: bend the stick, as in
+stringing a bow, till the loop will thread through the little hole, and
+jam it with the peg, along which the loop should lie spread. Bait the
+point, and hang it in a tree among the twigs: the bird alights on the
+peg to peck the fruit, the peg falls out, the loop whips tight round
+its ankles: then away up out of the water like pink predatory monkeys,
+and decide by ‘Eena, deena, dina, do,’ or some such rigmarole, whether
+to twist its neck or let it go free--thus the excitement and suspense,
+both for child and bird, can be prolonged beyond the moment of capture.
+
+It was only natural that Emily should have great ideas of improving
+the negroes. They were, of course, Christians, so there was nothing to
+be done about their morals: nor were they in need of soup, or knitted
+things; but they were sadly ignorant. After a good deal of negotiation
+they consented in the end to let her teach Little Jim to read: but
+she had no success. Also she had a passion for catching house-lizards
+without their dropping their tails off, which they do when frightened:
+it needed endless patience to get them whole and unalarmed into a
+match-box. Catching green grass-lizards was also very delicate. She
+would sit and whistle, like Orpheus, till they came out of their
+crannies and showed their emotion by puffing out their pink throats:
+then, very gently, she would lasso them with a long blade of grass.
+Her room was full of these and other pets, some alive, others probably
+dead. She also had tame fairies; and a familiar, or oracle, the White
+Mouse with an Elastic Tail, who was always ready to settle any point in
+question, and whose rule was a rule of iron--especially over Rachel,
+Edward, and Laura, the little ones (or Liddlies, as they came to be
+known in the family). To Emily, his interpreter, he allowed, of course,
+certain privileges: and with John, who was older than Emily, he quite
+wisely did not interfere.
+
+_He_ was omnipresent: the fairies were more localised, living in a
+small hole in the hill guarded by two dagger-plants.
+
+The best fun at the bathing-pool was had with a big forked log. John
+would sit astride the main stem, and the others pushed him about by the
+two prongs. The little ones, of course, only splashed about the shallow
+end: but John and Emily dived. John, that is to say, dived properly,
+head-foremost: Emily only jumped in feet first, stiff as a rod; but
+she, on the other hand, would go off higher boughs than he would. Once,
+when she was eight, Mrs. Thornton had thought she was too big to bathe
+naked any more. The only bathing-dress she could rig was an old cotton
+night-gown. Emily jumped in as usual: first the balloons of air tipped
+her upside down, and then the wet cotton wrapped itself round her head
+and arms and nearly drowned her. After that, decency was let go hang
+again: it is hardly worth being drowned for--at least, it does not at
+first sight appear to be.
+
+But once a negro really was drowned in the pool. He had gorged himself
+full of stolen mangoes: and feeling guilty, thought he might as well
+also cool himself in the forbidden pond, and make one repentance cover
+two crimes. He could not swim, and had only a child (Little Jim)
+with him. The cold water and the surfeit brought on an apoplexy: Jim
+poked at him with a piece of stick a little, and then ran away in a
+fright. Whether the man died of the apoplexy or the drowning was a
+point for an inquest; and the doctor, after staying at Ferndale for
+a week, decided it was from drowning, but that he was full of green
+mangoes right up to his mouth. The great advantage of this was that
+no negro would bathe there again, for fear the dead man’s ‘duppy,’ or
+ghost, should catch him. So if any black even came near while they
+were bathing, John and Emily would pretend the duppy had grabbed at
+them, and off he would go, terribly upset. Only one of the negroes at
+Ferndale had ever actually seen a duppy: but that was quite enough.
+They cannot be mistaken for living people, because their heads are
+turned backwards on their shoulders, and they carry a chain: moreover
+one must never call them duppies to their faces, as it gives them
+power. This poor man forgot, and called out ‘_Duppy!_’ when he saw it.
+He got terrible rheumatics.
+
+Lame-foot Sam told most stories. He used to sit all day on the stone
+barbecues where the pimento was dried, digging maggots out of his toes.
+This seemed at first very horrid to the children, but he seemed quite
+contented: and when jiggers got under their own skins, and laid their
+little bags of eggs there, it was not absolutely unpleasant. John used
+to get quite a sort of thrill from rubbing the place. Sam told them
+the Anansi stories: Anansi and the Tiger, and how Anansi looked after
+the Crocodile’s nursery, and so on. Also he had a little poem which
+impressed them very much:
+
+  Quacko Sam
+  Him bery fine man:
+  Him dance all de dances dat de darkies can:
+  Him dance de schottische, him dance de Cod Reel:
+  Him dance ebery kind of dance till him foot-bottom peel.
+
+Perhaps that was how old Sam’s own affliction first came about: he was
+very sociable. He was said to have a great many children.
+
+
+ii
+
+The stream which fed the bathing-hole ran into it down a gully through
+the bush which offered an enticing vista for exploring: but somehow
+the children did not often go up it very far. Every stone had to be
+overturned in the hope of finding cray-fish: or if not, John had to
+take a sporting gun, which he bulleted with spoonfuls of water to
+shoot humming-birds on the wing, too tiny frail quarry for any solider
+projectile. For, only a few yards up, there was a Frangipani tree: a
+mass of brilliant blossom and no leaves, which was almost hidden in
+a cloud of humming-birds so vivid as much to outshine the flowers.
+Writers have often lost their way trying to explain how brilliant a
+jewel the humming-bird is: it cannot be done.
+
+They build their wee woollen nests on the tops of twigs, where no snake
+can reach them. They are devoted to their eggs, and will not move
+though you touch them. But they are so delicate the children never did
+that: they held their breath and stared and stared--and were out-stared.
+
+Somehow the celestial vividness of this barrier generally arrested
+them: it was seldom they explored further: only once, I think, on a day
+when Emily was feeling peculiarly irritated.
+
+It was her own tenth birthday. They had frittered away all the morning
+in the glass-like gloom of the bathing-hole. Now John sat naked on
+the bank making a wicker trap. In the shallows the small ones rolled
+and chuckled. Emily, for coolness, sat up to her chin in water, and
+hundreds of infant fish were tickling with their inquisitive mouths
+every inch of her body, a sort of expressionless light kissing.
+
+Anyhow she had lately come to hate being touched--but this was
+abominable. At last, when she could stand it no longer, she clambered
+out and dressed. Rachel and Laura were too small for a long walk: and
+the last thing, she felt, that she wanted was to have one of the boys
+with her: so she stole quietly past John’s back, scowling balefully
+at him for no particular reason. Soon she was out of sight among the
+bushes.
+
+She pushed on rather fast, not taking much notice of things, up the
+river bed for about three miles. She had never been so far afield
+before. Then her attention was caught by a clearing leading down
+to the water: and here was the source of the river. She caught her
+breath delightedly: it bubbled up clear and cold, through three
+distinct springs, under a clump of bamboos, just as a river should:
+the greatest possible find, and a private discovery of her own. She
+gave instantaneous inward thanks to God for thinking of such a perfect
+birthday treat, especially as things had seemed to be going all wrong:
+and then began to ferret in the limestone sources with the whole length
+of her arm, among the ferns and cresses.
+
+Hearing a splash, she looked round. Some half-dozen strange negro
+children had come down the clearing to fetch water and were staring at
+her in astonishment. Emily stared back. In sudden terror they flung
+down their calabashes and galloped away up the clearing like hares.
+Immediately, but with dignity, Emily followed them. The clearing
+narrowed to a path, and the path led in a very short time to a village.
+
+It was all ragged and unkempt, and shrill with voices. There were small
+one-storey wattle huts dotted about, completely overhung by the most
+enormous trees. There was no sort of order: they appeared anywhere:
+there were no railings, and only one or two of the most terribly
+starved, mangy cattle to keep in or out. In the middle of all was an
+indeterminate quagmire or muddy pond, where a group of half-naked
+negroes, and totally naked black children, and a few brown ones, were
+splashing with geese and ducks.
+
+Emily stared: they stared back. She made a movement towards them: they
+separated at once into the various huts, and watched her from there.
+Encouraged by the comfortable feeling of inspiring fright she advanced,
+and at last found an old creature who would talk: Dis Liberty Hill,
+dis Black Man’s Town, Old-time niggers, dey go fer run from de bushas
+(overseers), go fer live here. De piccaninnies, dey never see buckras
+(whites).... And so on. It was a refuge, built by runaway slaves, and
+still inhabited.
+
+And then, that her cup of happiness might be full, some of the bolder
+children crept out and respectfully offered her flowers--really to get
+a better look at her pallid face. Her heart bubbled up in her, she
+swelled with glory: and taking leave with the greatest condescension
+she trod all the long way home on veritable air, back to her beloved
+family, back to a birthday cake wreathed with stephanotis, lit with
+ten candles, and in which it so happened that the sixpenny piece was
+invariably found in the birthday-person’s slice.
+
+
+iii
+
+This was, fairly typically, the life of an English family in Jamaica.
+Mostly these only stayed a few years. The Creoles--families who had
+been in the West Indies for more than one generation--gradually evolved
+something a little more distinctive. They lost some of the traditional
+mental mechanism of Europe, and the outlines of a new one began to
+appear.
+
+There was one such family the Bas-Thorntons were acquainted with, who
+had a ramshackle estate to the eastward. They invited John and Emily to
+spend a couple of days with them, but Mrs. Thornton was in two minds
+about letting them go, lest they should learn bad ways. The children
+there were a wildish lot, and, in the morning at least, would often run
+about barefoot like negroes, which is a very important point in a place
+like Jamaica where the whites have to keep up appearances. They had a
+governess whose blood was possibly not pure, and who used to beat the
+children ferociously with a hair-brush. However, the climate at the
+Fernandez’s place was healthy, and also Mrs. Thornton thought it good
+for them to have some intercourse with other children outside their own
+family, however undesirable: and she let them go.
+
+It was the afternoon after that birthday, and a long buggy-ride. Both
+fat John and thin Emily were speechless and solemn with excitement:
+it was the first visit they had ever paid. Hour after hour the buggy
+laboured over the uneven road. At last the lane to Exeter, the
+Fernandez’s place, was reached. It was evening, the sun about to do
+his rapid tropical setting. He was unusually large and red, as if
+he threatened something peculiar. The lane, or drive, was gorgeous:
+for the first few hundred yards it was entirely hedged with ‘seaside
+grapes,’ clusters of fruit half-way between a gooseberry and a golden
+pippin, with here and there the red berries of coffee trees newly
+planted among the burnt stumps in a clearing, but already neglected.
+Then a massive stone gateway in a sort of Colonial-Gothic style. This
+had to be circumvented: no one had taken the trouble to heave open the
+heavy gates for years. There was no fence, nor ever had been, so the
+track simply passed it by.
+
+And beyond the gates an avenue of magnificent cabbage-palms. No tree,
+not oldest beech nor chestnut, is more spectacular in an avenue: rising
+a sheer hundred feet with no break in the line before the actual crown
+of plumes; and palm upon palm, palm upon palm, like a heavenly double
+row of pillars, leading on interminably, till even the huge house was
+dwarfed into a sort of ultimate mouse-trap.
+
+As they journeyed on between these palms the sun went suddenly down,
+darkness flooded up round them out of the ground, retorted to almost
+immediately by the moon. Presently, shimmering like a ghost, an old
+blind white donkey stood in their way. Curses did not move him: the
+driver had to climb down and push him aside. The air was full of the
+usual tropic din: mosquitoes humming, cicalas trilling, bull-frogs
+twanging like guitars. That din goes on all night and all day almost:
+is more insistent, more memorable than the heat itself, even, or the
+number of things that bite. In the valley beneath the fire-flies came
+to life: as if at a signal passed along, wave after wave after wave
+of light swept down the gorge. From a neighbouring hill the cockatoos
+began their serenade, an orchestration of drunk men laughing against
+iron girders tossed at each other and sawn up with rusty hack-saws:
+the most awful noise. But Emily and John, so far as they noticed it
+at all, found it vaguely exhilarating. Through it could presently be
+distinguished another sound: a negro praying. They soon came near him:
+where an orange tree loaded with golden fruit gleamed dark and bright
+in the moonlight, veiled in the pinpoint scintillation of a thousand
+fire-flies sat the old black saint among the branches, talking loudly,
+drunkenly, and confidentially with God.
+
+Almost unexpectedly they came on the house, and were whisked straight
+off to bed. Emily omitted to wash, since there seemed such a hurry, but
+made up for it by spending an unusually long time over her prayers. She
+pressed her eyeballs devoutly with her fingers to make sparks appear,
+in spite of the slightly sick feeling it always induced: and then,
+already sound asleep, clambered, I suppose, into bed.
+
+The next day the sun rose as he had set: large, round, and red. It
+was blindingly hot, foreboding. Emily, who woke early in a strange
+bed, stood at the window watching the negroes release the hens from
+the chicken-houses, where they were shut up at night for fear of
+John-crows. As each bird hopped sleepily out, the black passed his hand
+over its stomach to see if it meditated an egg that day: if so, it was
+confined again, or it would have gone off and laid in the bush. It was
+already as hot as an oven. Another black, with eschatological yells and
+tail-twistings and lassoings, was confining a cow in a kind of pillory,
+that it might have no opportunity of sitting down while being milked.
+The poor brute’s hooves were aching with the heat, its miserable
+tea-cup of milk fevered in its udder. Even as she stood at the shady
+window Emily felt as sweaty as if she had been running. The ground was
+fissured with drought.
+
+Margaret Fernandez, whose room Emily was sharing, slipped out of bed
+silently and stood beside her, wrinkling the short nose in her pallid
+face.
+
+‘Good morning,’ said Emily politely.
+
+‘Smells like an earthquake,’ said Margaret, and dressed. Emily
+remembered the awful story about the governess and the hair-brush:
+certainly Margaret did not use one for its ordinary purpose, though she
+had long hair: so it must be true.
+
+Margaret was ready long before Emily, and banged out of the room.
+Emily followed later, neat and nervous, to find no one. The house was
+empty. Presently she spied John under a tree, talking to a negro boy.
+By his off-hand manner Emily guessed he was telling _disproportionate_
+stories (not _lies_) about the importance of Ferndale compared with
+Exeter. She did not call him, because the house was silent and it was
+not her place, as guest, to alter anything: so she went out to him.
+Together they circumnavigated: they found a stable-yard, and negroes
+preparing ponies, and the Fernandez children, barefoot even as Rumour
+had whispered. Emily caught her breath, shocked. Even at that moment a
+chicken, scuttling across the yard, trod on a scorpion and tumbled over
+stark dead as if shot. But it was not so much the danger which upset
+Emily as the unconventionality.
+
+‘Come on,’ said Margaret: ‘it’s much too hot to stay about here. We’ll
+go down to Exeter Rocks.’
+
+The cavalcade mounted--Emily very conscious of her boots, buttoned
+respectably half-way up her calf. Somebody had food, and calabashes
+of water. The ponies evidently knew the way. The sun was still red
+and large: the sky above cloudless, and like blue glaze poured over
+baking clay: but close over the ground a dirty grey haze hovered. As
+they followed the lane towards the sea they came to a place where,
+yesterday, a fair-sized spring had bubbled up by the roadside. Now it
+was dry. But even as they passed a kind of gout of water gushed forth:
+and then it was dry again, although gurgling inwardly to itself. But
+the cavalcade were hot, far too hot to speak to one another: they sat
+their ponies as loosely as possible, longing for the sea.
+
+The morning advanced. The heated air grew quite easily hotter, as if
+from some reserve of enormous blaze on which it could draw at will.
+Bullocks only shifted their stinging feet when they could bear the
+soil no longer: even the insects were too languorous to pipe, the
+basking lizards hid themselves and panted. It was so still you could
+have heard the least buzz a mile off. Not a naked fish would willingly
+move his tail. The ponies advanced because they must. The children
+ceased even to muse.
+
+They all very nearly jumped out of their skins; for close at hand a
+crane had trumpeted once desperately. Then the broken silence closed
+down as flawless as before. They perspired twice as violently with the
+stimulus. Their pace grew slower and slower. It was no faster than a
+procession of snails that at last they reached the sea.
+
+Exeter Rocks is a famous place. A bay of the sea, almost a perfect
+semicircle, guarded by the reef: shelving white sands to span the few
+feet from the water to the under-cut turf: and then, almost at the mid
+point, a jutting-out shelf of rocks right into deep water--fathoms
+deep. And a narrow fissure in the rocks, leading the water into a small
+pool, or miniature lagoon, right inside their bastion. There it was,
+safe from sharks or drowning, that the Fernandez children meant to soak
+themselves all day, like turtles in a crawl. The water of the bay was
+as smooth and immovable as basalt, yet clear as the finest gin: albeit
+the swell muttered a mile away on the reef. The water within the pool
+itself could not reasonably be smoother. No sea-breeze thought of
+stirring. No bird trespassed on the inert air.
+
+For a while they had not energy to get into the water, but lay on their
+faces, looking down, down, down, at the sea-fans and sea-feathers,
+the scarlet-plumed barnacles and corals, the black and yellow
+schoolmistress-fish, the rainbow-fish--all that forest of ideal
+Christmas trees which is a tropical sea-bottom. Then they stood up,
+giddy and seeing black, and in a trice were floating suspended in water
+like drowned ones, only their noses above the surface, under the shadow
+of a rocky ledge.
+
+An hour or so after noon they clustered together, puffy from the warm
+water, in the insufficient shade of a Panama fern: ate such of the
+food they had brought as they had appetite for; and drank all the
+water, wishing for more. Then a very odd thing happened: for even as
+they sat there they heard the most peculiar sound: a strange, rushing
+sound that passed overhead like a gale of wind--but not a breath of
+breeze stirred, that was the odd thing: followed by a sharp hissing and
+hurtling, like a flight of rockets, or gigantic swans--very distant
+rocs, perhaps--on the wing. They all looked up: but there was nothing
+at all. The sky was empty and lucid. Long before they were back in the
+water again all was still. Except that after a while John noticed a
+sort of tapping, as if some one were gently knocking the outside of
+a bath you were in. But the bath they were in had no outside, it was
+solid world. It was funny.
+
+By sunset they were so weak from long immersion they could barely stand
+up, and as salted as bacon: but, with some common impulse, just before
+the sun went down they all left the rocks and went and stood by their
+clothes, where the ponies were tethered, under some palms. As he sank
+the sun grew even larger: and instead of red was now a sodden purple.
+Down he went, behind the western horn of the bay, which blackened till
+its water-line disappeared and substance and reflection seemed one
+sharp symmetrical pattern.
+
+Not a breath of breeze even yet ruffled the water: yet momentarily it
+trembled of its own accord, shattering the reflections: then was glassy
+again. On that the children held their breath, waiting for it to happen.
+
+A school of fish, terrified by some purely sub-marine event, thrust
+their heads right out of the water, squattering across the bay in an
+arrowy rush, dashing up sparkling ripples with the tiny heave of their
+shoulders: yet after each disturbance all was soon like hardest, dark,
+thick, glass.
+
+Once things vibrated slightly, like a chair in a concert-room: and
+again there was that mysterious winging, though there was nothing
+visible beneath the swollen iridescent stars.
+
+Then it came. The water of the bay began to ebb away, as if some one
+had pulled up the plug: a foot or so of sand and coral gleamed for a
+moment new to the air: then back the sea rushed in miniature rollers
+which splashed right up to the feet of the palms. Mouthfuls of turf
+were torn away: and on the far side of the bay a small piece of cliff
+tumbled into the water: sand and twigs showered down, dew fell from the
+trees like diamonds: birds and beasts, their tongues at last loosed,
+screamed and bellowed: the ponies, though quite unalarmed, lifted up
+their heads and yelled.
+
+That was all: a few moments. Then silence, with a rapid countermarch,
+recovered all his rebellious kingdom. Stillness again. The trees moved
+as little as the pillars of a ruin, each leaf laid sleekly in place.
+The bubbling foam subsided: the reflections of the stars came out
+among it as if from clouds. Silent, still, dark, placid, as if there
+could never have been a disturbance. The naked children too continued
+to stand motionless beside the quiet ponies, dew on their hair and
+eyelashes, shine on their infantile round paunches.
+
+But as for Emily, it was too much. The earthquake went completely to
+her head. She began to dance, hopping laboriously from one foot on to
+another. John caught the infection. He turned head over heels on the
+damp sand, over and over in an elliptical course, till before he knew
+it he was in the water, and so giddy as hardly to be able to tell up
+from down.
+
+At that, Emily knew what it was she wanted to do. She scrambled on to
+a pony and galloped him up and down the beach, trying to bark like a
+dog. The Fernandez children stared, solemn but not disapproving. John,
+shaping a course for Cuba, was swimming as if sharks were paring his
+toe-nails. Emily rode her pony into the sea, and beat and beat him till
+he swam: and so she followed John towards the reef, yapping herself
+hoarse.
+
+It must have been fully a hundred yards before they were spent. Then
+they turned for the shore, John holding on to Emily’s leg, puffing and
+gasping, both a little overdone, their emotion run down. Presently John
+gasped:
+
+‘You shouldn’t ride on your bare skin, you’ll catch ringworm.’
+
+‘I don’t care if I do,’ said Emily.
+
+‘You would if you did,’ said John.
+
+‘I don’t care!’ chanted Emily.
+
+It seemed a long way to the shore. When they reached it the others had
+dressed and were preparing to start. Soon the whole party were on
+their way home in the dark. Presently Margaret said:
+
+‘So that’s that.’
+
+No one answered.
+
+‘I could smell it was an earthquake coming when I got up. Didn’t I say
+so, Emily?’
+
+‘You and your smells!’ said Jimmie Fernandez. ‘You’re always smelling
+things!’
+
+‘She’s awfully good at smells,’ said the youngest, Harry, proudly, to
+John. ‘She can sort out people’s dirty clothes for the wash by smell:
+who they belong to.’
+
+‘She can’t really,’ said Jimmie: ‘she fakes it. As if every one smelt
+different!’
+
+‘I can!’
+
+‘Dogs can, anyway,’ said John.
+
+Emily said nothing. Of course people smelt different: it didn’t need
+arguing. She could always tell her own towel from John’s, for instance:
+or even knew if one of the others had used it. But it just showed what
+sort of people Creoles were, to _talk_ about Smell, in that open way.
+
+‘Well, anyhow I said there was going to be an earthquake and there was
+one,’ said Margaret.
+
+That was what Emily was waiting for! So it really had been an
+Earthquake (she had not liked to ask, it seemed so ignorant: but now
+Margaret had said in so many words that it was one).
+
+If ever she went back to England, she could now say to people, ‘_I have
+been in an Earthquake_.’
+
+With that certainty, her soused excitement began to revive. For there
+was nothing, no adventure from the hands of God or Man, to equal it.
+Realise that if she had suddenly found she could fly it would not
+have seemed more miraculous to her. Heaven had played its last, most
+terrible card; and small Emily had survived, where even grown men (such
+as Korah, Dathan, and Abiram) had succumbed.
+
+Life seemed suddenly a little empty: for never again could there happen
+to her anything so dangerous, so sublime.
+
+Meanwhile, Margaret and Jimmie were still arguing:
+
+‘Well, there’s one thing, there’ll be plenty of eggs to-morrow,’ said
+Jimmie. ‘There’s nothing like an earthquake for making them lay.’
+
+How funny Creoles were! They didn’t seem to realise the difference it
+made to a person’s whole after-life to have been in an Earthquake.
+
+When they got home, Martha, the black housemaid, had hard things to
+say about the sublime cataclysm. She had dusted the drawing-room china
+only the day before: and now everything was covered again in a fine
+penetrating film of dust.
+
+
+iv
+
+The next morning, Sunday, they went home. Emily was still so saturated
+in earthquake as to be dumb. She ate earthquake and slept earthquake:
+her fingers and legs were earthquake. With John it was ponies.
+The earthquake had been fun: but it was the ponies that mattered.
+But at present it did not worry Emily that she was alone in her
+sense of proportion. She was too completely possessed to be able
+to see anything, or realise that any one else pretended to even a
+self-delusive fiction of existence.
+
+Their mother met them at the door. She bubbled questions: John
+chattered ponies, but Emily was still tongue-tied. She was, in her
+mind, like a child who has eaten too much even to be able to be sick.
+
+Mrs. Thornton got a little worried about her at times. This sort of
+life was very peaceful, and might be excellent for nervy children like
+John: but a child like Emily, thought Mrs. Thornton, who is far from
+nervy, really needs some sort of stimulus and excitement, or there is
+a danger of her mind going to sleep altogether for ever. This life was
+too vegetable. Consequently Mrs. Thornton always spoke to Emily in
+her brightest manner, as if everything was of the greatest possible
+interest. She had hoped, too, the visit to Exeter might liven her up:
+but she had come back as silent and expressionless as ever. It had
+evidently made no impression on her at all.
+
+John marshalled the small ones in the cellar, and round and round
+they marched, wooden swords at the slope, singing ‘Onward, Christian
+Soldiers.’ Emily did not join them. What did it now matter, that
+earlier woe, that being a girl she could never when grown up become a
+real soldier with a real sword? She had been in an Earthquake.
+
+Nor did the others keep it up very long. (Sometimes they would go on
+for three or four hours.) For, whatever it might have done for Emily’s
+soul, the earthquake had done little to clear the air. It was as hot as
+ever. In the animal world there seemed some strange commotion, as if
+they had wind of something. The usual lizards and mosquitoes were still
+absent: but in their place the earth’s most horrid progeny, creatures
+of darkness, sought the open: land-crabs wandered about aimlessly,
+angrily twiddling their claws: and the ground seemed almost alive with
+red ants and cockroaches. Up on the roof the pigeons were gathered,
+talking to each other fearfully.
+
+The cellar (or rather, ground floor), where they were playing, had
+no communication with the wooden structure above, but had an opening
+of its own under the twin flight of steps leading to the front door;
+and there the children presently gathered in the shadow. Out in the
+compound lay one of Mr. Thornton’s best handkerchiefs. He must have
+dropped it that morning. But none of them felt the energy to go and
+retrieve it, out into the sun. Then, as they stood there, they saw
+Lame-foot Sam come limping across the yard. Seeing the prize, he was
+about to carry it off. Suddenly he remembered it was Sunday. He dropped
+it like a hot brick, and began to cover it with sand, exactly where he
+had found it.
+
+‘Please God, I thieve you to-morrow,’ he explained hopefully. ‘Please
+God, you still there?’
+
+A low mutter of thunder seemed to offer grudging assent.
+
+‘Thank you, Lord,’ said Sam, bowing to a low bank of cloud. He hobbled
+off: but then, not too sure perhaps that Heaven would keep Its promise,
+changed his mind: snatched up the handkerchief and made off for his
+cottage. The thunder muttered louder and more angrily: but Sam ignored
+the warning.
+
+It was the custom that, whenever Mr. Thornton had been to St. Anne’s,
+John and Emily should run out to meet him, and ride back with him, one
+perched on each of his stirrups.
+
+That Sunday evening they ran out as soon as they saw him coming, in
+spite of the thunderstorm that by now was clattering over their very
+heads--and not only over their heads either, for in the Tropics a
+thunderstorm is not a remote affair up in the sky, as it is in England,
+but is all round you: lightning plays ducks and drakes across the
+water, bounds from tree to tree, bounces about the ground, while the
+thunder seems to proceed from violent explosions in your own very core.
+
+‘Go back! Go back, you damned little fools!’ he yelled furiously: ‘Get
+into the house!’
+
+They stopped, aghast: and began to realise that after all it was a
+storm of more than ordinary violence. They discovered that they were
+drenched to the skin--must have been the moment they left the house.
+The lightning kept up a continuous blaze: it was playing about their
+father’s very stirrup-irons; and all of a sudden they realised that he
+was afraid. They fled to the house, shocked to the heart: and he was in
+the house almost as soon as they were. Mrs. Thornton rushed out:
+
+‘My dear, I’m so glad....’
+
+‘I’ve never seen such a storm! Why on earth did you let the children
+come out?’
+
+‘I never dreamt they would be so silly! And all the time I was
+thinking--but thank Heaven you’re back!’
+
+‘I think the worst is over now.’
+
+Perhaps it was; but all through supper the lightning shone almost
+without flickering. And John and Emily could hardly eat: the memory of
+that momentary look on their father’s face haunted them.
+
+It was an unpleasant meal altogether. Mrs. Thornton had prepared for
+her husband his ‘favourite dish’: than which no action could more annoy
+a man of whim. In the middle of it all in burst Sam, ceremony dropped:
+he flung the handkerchief angrily on the table and stumped out.
+
+‘What on earth ...’ began Mr. Thornton.
+
+But John and Emily knew: and thoroughly agreed with Sam as to the cause
+of the storm. Stealing was bad enough anyway, but on a Sunday!
+
+Meanwhile, the lightning kept up its play. The thunder made talking
+arduous, but no one was anyhow in a mood to chatter. Only thunder was
+heard, and the hammering of the rain. But suddenly, close under the
+window, there burst out the most appalling inhuman shriek of terror.
+
+‘Tabby!’ cried John, and they all rushed to the window.
+
+But Tabby had already flashed into the house: and behind him was a
+whole club of wild cats in hot pursuit. John momentarily opened the
+dining-room door and puss slipped in, dishevelled and panting. Not
+even then did the brutes desist: what insane fury led these jungle
+creatures to pursue him into the very house is unimaginable; but there
+they were, in the passage, caterwauling in concert: and as if at their
+incantation the thunder awoke anew, and the lightning nullified the
+meagre table lamp. It was such a din as you could not speak through.
+Tabby, his fur on end, pranced up and down the room, his eyes blazing,
+talking and sometimes exclaiming in a tone of voice the children
+had never heard him use before and which made their blood run cold.
+He seemed like one inspired in the presence of Death, he had gone
+utterly Delphic: and without in the passage Hell’s pandemonium reigned
+terrifically.
+
+The check could only be a short one. Outside the door stood the
+big filter, and above the door the fanlight was long since broken.
+Something black and yelling flashed through the fanlight, landing clean
+in the middle of the supper table, scattering the forks and spoons and
+upsetting the lamp. And another and another--but already Tabby was
+through the window and streaking again for the bush. The whole dozen of
+those wild cats leapt one after the other from the top of the filter
+clean through the fanlight onto the supper table, and away from there
+only too hot in his tracks: in a moment the whole devil-hunt and its
+hopeless quarry had vanished into the night.
+
+‘Oh Tabby, my darling Tabby!’ wailed John; while Emily rushed again to
+the window.
+
+They were gone. The lightning behind the creepers in the jungle lit
+them up like giant cobwebs: but of Tabby and his pursuers there was
+nothing to be seen.
+
+John burst into tears, the first time for several years, and flung
+himself on his mother: Emily stood transfixed at the window, her eyes
+glued in horror on what she could not, in fact, see: and all of a
+sudden was sick.
+
+‘God, what an evening!’ groaned Mr. Bas-Thornton, groping in the
+darkness for what might be left of their supper.
+
+Shortly after that Sam’s hut burst into flames. They saw, from the
+dining-room, the old negro stagger dramatically out into the darkness.
+He was throwing stones at the sky. In a lull they heard him cry: ‘I gib
+it back, didn’t I? I gib de nasty t’ing back?’
+
+Then there was another blinding flash, and Sam fell where he stood. Mr.
+Thornton pulled the children roughly back and said something like ‘I’ll
+go and see. Keep them from the window.’
+
+Then he closed and barred the shutters, and was gone.
+
+John and the little ones kept up a continuous sobbing. Emily wished
+some one would light a lamp, she wanted to read. Anything, so as not to
+think about poor Tabby.
+
+I suppose the wind must have begun to rise some while before this, but
+now, by the time Mr. Thornton had managed to carry old Sam’s body into
+the house, it was more than a gale. The old man, stiff in the joints as
+he might have been in life, had gone as limp as a worm. Emily and John,
+who had slipped unbeknownst into the passage, were thrilled beyond
+measure at the way he dangled: they could hardly tear themselves away,
+and be back in the dining-room, before they should be discovered.
+
+There Mrs. Thornton sat heroically in a chair, her brood all grouped
+round her, saying the Psalms, and the poems of Sir Walter Scott, over
+by heart: while Emily tried to keep her mind off Tabby by going over
+in her head all the details of her Earthquake. At times the din, the
+rocketing of the thunder and torrential shriek of the wind, became so
+loud as almost to impinge on her inner world: she wished this wretched
+thunderstorm would hurry up and get over. First she held an actual
+performance of the earthquake, went over it direct, as if it was again
+happening. Then she put it into Oratio Recta, told it as a story,
+beginning with that magic phrase, ‘Once I was in an Earthquake.’
+But before long the dramatic element reappeared--this time, the awed
+comments of her imaginary English audience. When that was done, she put
+it into the Historical--a Voice, declaring that a girl called Emily was
+once in an Earthquake. And so on, right through the whole thing a third
+time.
+
+The horrid fate of poor Tabby appeared suddenly before her eyes, caught
+her unawares: and she was all but sick again. Even her earthquake had
+failed her. Caught by the incubus, her mind struggled frantically to
+clutch at even the outside world, as an only remaining straw. She tried
+to fix her interest on every least detail of the scene around her--to
+count the slats in the shutters, any least detail that was _outward_.
+So it was that for the first time she really began to notice the
+weather.
+
+The wind by now was more than redoubled. The shutters were bulging as
+if tired elephants were leaning against them, and Father was trying
+to tie the fastening with that handkerchief. But to push against
+this wind was like pushing against rock. The handkerchief, shutters,
+everything burst: the rain poured in like the sea into a sinking
+ship, the wind occupied the room, snatching pictures from the wall,
+sweeping the table bare. Through the gaping frames the lightning-lit
+scene without was visible. The creepers, which before had looked like
+cobwebs, now streamed up into the sky like new-combed hair. Bushes were
+lying flat, laid back on the ground as close as a rabbit lays back his
+ears. Branches were leaping about loose in the sky. The negro huts
+were clean gone, and the negroes crawling on their stomachs across the
+compound to gain the shelter of the house. The bouncing rain seemed to
+cover the ground with a white smoke, a sort of sea in which the blacks
+wallowed like porpoises. One nigger-boy began to roll away: his mother,
+forgetting caution, rose to her feet: and immediately the fat old
+beldam was blown clean away, bowling along across fields and hedgerows
+like some one in a funny fairy-story, till she fetched up against a
+wall and was pinned there, unable to move. But the others managed to
+reach the house, and soon could be heard in the cellar underneath.
+
+Moreover the very floor began to ripple, as a loose carpet will ripple
+on a gusty day: in opening the cellar door the blacks had let the wind
+in, and now for some time they could not shut it again. The wind, to
+push against, was more like a solid block than a current of air.
+
+Mr. Thornton went round the house--to see what could be done, he said.
+He soon realised that the next thing to go would be the roof. So he
+returned to the Niobe-group in the dining-room. Mrs. Thornton was
+half-way through _The Lady of the Lake_, the smaller children listening
+with rapt attention. Exasperated, he told them that they would probably
+not be alive in half an hour. No one seemed particularly interested in
+his news: Mrs. Thornton continued her recitation with faultless memory.
+
+After another couple of cantos the threatened roof went. Fortunately,
+the wind taking it from inside, most of it was blown clear of the
+house: but one of the couples collapsed skew-eyed, and was hung up on
+what was left of the dining-room door--within an ace of hitting John.
+Emily, to her intense resentment, suddenly felt cold. All at once,
+she found she had had enough of the storm: it had become intolerable,
+instead of a welcome distraction.
+
+Mr. Thornton began to look for something to break through the floor.
+If only he could make a hole in it, he might get his wife and children
+down into the cellar. Fortunately he did not have to look far: one arm
+of the fallen couple had already done the work for him. Laura, Rachel,
+Emily, Edward and John, Mrs. Thornton and finally Mr. Thornton himself,
+were passed down into the darkness already thronged with negroes and
+goats.
+
+With great good sense, Mr. Thornton brought with him from the room
+above a couple of decanters of madeira, and every one had a swig, from
+Laura to the oldest negro. All the children made the most of this
+unholy chance, but somehow to Emily the bottle got passed twice, and
+each time she took a good pull. It was enough, at their age; and while
+what was left of the house was blown away over their heads, through
+the lull and the ensuing aerial return match, John, Emily, Edward,
+Rachel, and Laura, blind drunk, slept in a heap on the cellar floor: a
+sleep over which the appalling fate of Tabby, torn to pieces by those
+fiends almost under their very eyes, dominated with the easy empire of
+nightmare.
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter 2_
+
+
+All night the water poured through the house floor onto the people
+sheltering below: but (perhaps owing to the madeira) it did them no
+harm. Shortly after the second bout of blowing, however, the rain
+stopped; and when dawn came Mr. Thornton crept out to assess the damage.
+
+The country was quite unrecognisable, as if it had been swept by a
+spate. You could hardly tell, geographically speaking, where you were.
+It is vegetation which gives the character to a tropic landscape, not
+the shape of the ground: and all the vegetation, for miles, was now
+pulp. The ground itself had been ploughed up by instantaneous rivers,
+biting deep into the red earth. The only living thing in sight was a
+cow: and she had lost both her horns.
+
+The wooden part of the house was nearly all gone. After they had
+succeeded in reaching shelter, one wall after another had blown down.
+The furniture was splintered into matchwood. Even the heavy mahogany
+dining-table, which they loved, and had always kept with its legs in
+little glass baths of oil to defeat the ants, was spirited right away.
+There were some fragments which might be part of it, or they might not:
+you could not tell.
+
+Mr. Thornton returned to the cellar and helped his wife out: she was
+so cramped as hardly to be able to move. They knelt down together and
+thanked God for not having treated them any worse. Then they stood up
+and stared about them rather stupidly. It seemed not credible that
+all this had been done by a current of air. Mr. Thornton patted the
+atmosphere with his hand. When still, it was so soft, so rare: how
+could one believe that Motion, itself something impalpable, had lent it
+a hardness: that this gentle, hind-like Meteor should have last night
+seized Fat Betsy with the rapacity of a tiger and the lift of a roc,
+and flung her, as he had seen her flung, across two fair-sized fields?
+
+Mrs. Thornton understood his gesture.
+
+‘Remember who is its Prince,’ she said.
+
+The stable was damaged, though not completely destroyed: and Mr.
+Thornton’s mule was so much hurt he had to tell a negro to cut its
+throat. The buggy was smashed beyond repair. The only building
+undamaged was a stone chamber which had been the hospital of the old
+sugar-estate: so they woke the children, who were feeling ill and
+beyond words unhappy, and moved into this: where the negroes, with an
+unexpected energy and kindliness, did everything they could to make
+them comfortable. It was paved and unlighted: but solid.
+
+The children were bilious for a few days, and inclined to dislike
+each other: but they accepted the change in their lives practically
+without noticing it. It is a fact that it takes experience before
+one can realise what is a catastrophe and what is not. Children have
+little faculty of distinguishing between disaster and the ordinary
+course of their lives. If Emily had known this was a _Hurricane_, she
+would doubtless have been far more impressed, for the word was full of
+romantic terrors. But it never entered her head: and a thunderstorm,
+however severe, is after all a commonplace affair. The mere fact that
+it had done incalculable damage, while the earthquake had done none at
+all, gave it no right whatever to rival the latter in the hierarchy
+of cataclysms: an Earthquake is a thing apart. If she was silent, and
+inclined to brood over some inward terror, it was not the hurricane
+she was thinking of, it was the death of Tabby. That, at times, seemed
+a horror beyond all bearing. It was her first intimate contact with
+death--and a death of violence, too. The death of Old Sam had no such
+effect: there is, after all, a vast difference between a negro and a
+favourite cat.
+
+There was something enjoyable, too, in camping in the hospital: a sort
+of everlasting picnic in which their parents for once were taking part.
+Indeed it led them to begin for the first time to regard their parents
+as rational human beings, with understandable tastes--such as sitting
+on the floor to eat one’s dinner.
+
+It would have surprised Mrs. Thornton very much to have been told
+that hitherto she had meant practically nothing to her children.
+She took a keen interest in Psychology (the Art Babblative, Southey
+calls it). She was full of theories about their upbringing which she
+had not time to put into effect; but nevertheless she thought she
+had a deep understanding of their temperaments and was the centre of
+their passionate devotion. Actually, she was congenitally incapable
+of telling one end of a child from the other. She was a dumpy little
+woman--Cornish, I believe. When she was herself a baby she was so small
+they carried her about on a cushion for fear a clumsy human arm might
+damage her. She could read when she was two and a half. Her reading was
+always serious. Nor had she been backward in the humaner studies: her
+mistresses spoke of her Deportment as something rarely seen outside
+the older Royal Houses: in spite of a figure like a bolster, she could
+step into a coach like an angel getting onto a cloud. She was very
+quick-tempered.
+
+Mr. Bas-Thornton also had every accomplishment, except two: that of
+primogeniture, and that of making a living. Either would have provided
+for them.
+
+If it would have surprised the mother, it would undoubtedly have
+surprised the children also to be told how little their parents meant
+to them. Children seldom have any power of quantitative self-analysis:
+whatever the facts, they believe as an article of faith that they love
+Father and Mother first and equally. Actually, the Thornton children
+had loved Tabby first and foremost in all the world, some of each other
+second, and hardly noticed their mother’s existence more than once
+a week. Their father they loved a little more: partly owing to the
+ceremony of riding home on his stirrups.
+
+Jamaica remained, and blossomed anew, its womb being inexhaustible.
+Mr. and Mrs. Thornton remained, and with patience and tears tried to
+reconstruct things, in so far as they could be reconstructed. But the
+danger which their beloved little ones had been through was not a thing
+to risk again. Heaven had warned them. The children must go.
+
+Nor was the only danger physical.
+
+‘That awful night!’ said Mrs. Thornton, once, when discussing their
+plan of sending them home to school: ‘Oh my dear, what the poor little
+things must have suffered! Think how much more acute Fear is to a
+child! And they were so brave, so English.’
+
+‘I don’t believe they realised it.’ (He only said that to be
+contradictious: he could hardly expect it to be taken seriously.)
+
+‘You know, I am terribly afraid what permanent, _inward_ effect a shock
+like that may have on them. Have you noticed they never so much as
+mention it? In England they would at least be safe from dangers of that
+sort.’
+
+Meanwhile the children, accepting the new life as a matter of course,
+were thoroughly enjoying it. Most children, on a railway journey,
+prefer to change at as many stations as possible.
+
+The rebuilding of Ferndale, too, was a matter of absorbing interest.
+For there is one advantage to these match-box houses--easy gone, easy
+come: and once begun, the work proceeded apace. Mr. Thornton himself
+led the building gang, employing no end of mechanical devices of his
+own devising, and it was not long before the day came when he stood
+with his handsome head emerging through the fast dwindling hole in
+the new roof, shouting directions to the two black carpenters, who,
+lying spread-eagle in their check shirts, pinned on shingle after
+shingle--walling him in, like the victim in some horrid story. At last
+he had to draw in his head, and where it had been the last few shingles
+were clapped into place.
+
+An hour later the children had looked their last on Ferndale.
+
+When they had been told they were to go to England, they had received
+it as an isolated fact: thrilling in itself, but without any particular
+causation--for it could hardly be due to the death of the cat, and
+nothing else of importance had occurred lately.
+
+The first stage of their journey was by land, to Montego Bay, and
+the notable thing about it was that the borrowed wagonette was drawn
+not by a pair of horses or a pair of mules, but by one horse and one
+mule. Whenever the horse wanted to go fast the mule fell asleep in the
+shafts: and if the driver woke it up it set off at a gallop, which
+angered the horse. Their progress would have been slow anyhow, as all
+the roads were washed away.
+
+John was the only one who could remember England. What he remembered
+was sitting at the top of a flight of stairs, which was fenced off
+from him by a little gate, playing with a red toy milk-cart: and he
+knew, without having to look, that in the room on the left Baby Emily
+was lying in her cot. Emily _said_ she could remember something which
+sounded like a Prospect of the Backs of some Brick Houses at Richmond:
+but she might have invented it. The others had been born in the
+Island--Edward only just.
+
+They all had, nevertheless, most elaborate ideas about England, built
+up out of what their parents had told them, and from the books and
+old magazines they sometimes looked at. Needless to say it was a very
+Atlantis, a land at the back of the North Wind: and going there was
+about as exciting as it would be to die and go to Heaven.
+
+John told them all about the top of the stairs for the hundredth time
+as they drove along; the others listening attentively (as the Believing
+do to a man remembering his reincarnations).
+
+Suddenly Emily recalled sitting at a window and seeing a big bird with
+a beautiful tail. At the same time there had been a horrid screeching
+going on, or perhaps something else disagreeable--she could not quite
+remember which sense was offended. It did not occur to her that it was
+this self-same bird which had screeched: and anyhow it was all too
+vague for her to try to describe it. She switched off to wondering how
+it was possible actually to _sleep_ when walking, as the driver said
+the mule did.
+
+They put up for the first night at St. Anne’s, and there another
+notable thing occurred. Their host was a hardened Creole: and at supper
+he ate Cayenne pepper with a spoon. Not ordinary Cayenne pepper, mind,
+such as is sold in shops, which is heavily adulterated with log-wood:
+but the far fierier pure original. This indeed was an Event of the
+first water: none of them ever forgot it.
+
+The desolation through which they drove is indescribable. Tropical
+scenery is anyhow tedious, prolific, and gross: the greens more or
+less uniform: great tubular stems supporting thick leaves: no tree
+has an outline because it is crushed up against something else--no
+_room_. In Jamaica this profusion swarms over the very mountain
+ranges: and even the peaks are so numerous that on the top of one you
+are surrounded by others, and can see nothing. There are hundreds of
+flowers. Then imagine all this luxuriance smashed, as with a pestle and
+mortar--crushed, pulped, and already growing again! Mr. Thornton and
+his wife were ready to shout with relief when they caught their first
+glimpse of the sea, and at last came out in view of the whole beautiful
+sweep of Montego Bay itself.
+
+In the open sea there was a considerable swell: but within the shelter
+of the coral reef, with its pinhole entrance, all was still as a
+mirror, where three ships of different sizes lay at anchor, the whole
+of each beautiful machine repeated in the water under it. Within
+the Roads lay the Bogue Islands; and immediately to the left of the
+islands, in the low land at the base of the hills, was the mouth of a
+small river--swampy, and (Mr. Thornton informed John) infested with
+crocodiles. The children had never seen a crocodile, and hoped one
+might venture as far as the town, where they presently arrived: but
+none did. It was with considerable disappointment that they found they
+were to go on board the barque at once; for they still hoped that round
+some corner of the street a crocodile might yet appear.
+
+The _Clorinda_ had let go her anchor in six fathoms: the water so
+clear, and the light so bright, that as they drew near the reflection
+suddenly disappeared, and instead they found themselves looking right
+underneath her and out the other side. The refraction made her seem
+as flat-bellied as a turtle, as if practically all of her were above
+the surface: and the anchor on its cable seemed to stream out flatly,
+like a downwards kite, twisting and twining (owing to the undulating
+surface) in the writhing coral.
+
+This was the only impression Emily retained of going on board the ship:
+but the ship itself was a strange enough object, requiring all her
+attention. John was the only one who could remember the journey out at
+all clearly. Emily thought she could, but was really only remembering
+her visualisations of what she had been told: in fact, she found that a
+real ship was totally unlike the thing she thought she remembered.
+
+By some last whim of the captain’s the shrouds were being set
+up--tauter than seemed good to the sailors, who grumbled as they
+strained the creaking lanyards. John did not envy them, winding away at
+that handle in the hot sun: but he did envy the chap whose job it was
+to dip his hand in a great pot of aromatic Stockholm tar, and work it
+into the dead-eyes. He was tarred up to the elbows: and John itched to
+be so too.
+
+In a moment the children were scattered all over the ship, smelling
+here, miaowing, sniffing there, like cats in a new home. Mr. and Mrs.
+Thornton stood by the main companion-way, a little disconsolate at
+their children’s happy preoccupation, a little regretting the lack of
+proper emotional scene.
+
+‘I think they will be happy here, Frederic,’ said Mrs. Thornton. ‘I
+wish we could have afforded to send them by the steamboat: but children
+find amusement even in discomfort.’
+
+Mr. Thornton grunted.
+
+‘I wish schools had never been invented!’ he suddenly burst out: ‘they
+wouldn’t then be so indispensable!’
+
+There was a short pause for the logic of this to cross the footlights:
+then he went on:
+
+‘I know what will happen; they’ll come away ... _mugs_! Just ordinary
+little mugs, like any one else’s brats! I’m dashed if I don’t think a
+hundred hurricanes would be better than that.’
+
+Mrs. Thornton shuddered: but she continued bravely:
+
+‘You know, I think they were getting almost _too_ devoted to us? We
+have been such an unrivalled centre of their lives and thoughts. It
+doesn’t do for minds developing to be completely dependent on one
+person.’
+
+Captain Marpole’s grizzled head emerged from the scuttle. A sea-dog:
+clear blue eyes of a translucent trustworthiness: a merry, wrinkled,
+morocco-coloured face: a rumbling voice.
+
+‘He’s too good to be true,’ whispered Mrs. Thornton.
+
+‘Not at all! It’s a sophism to imagine people don’t conform to type!’
+barked Mr. Thornton. He felt at sixes and sevens.
+
+Captain Marpole certainly looked the ideal Children’s Captain. He
+would, Mrs. Thornton decided, be careful without being fussy--for she
+was all in favour of courageous gymnastics, though glad she would not
+have to witness them herself. Captain Marpole cast his eyes benignantly
+over the swarming imps.
+
+‘They’ll worship him,’ she whispered to her husband. (She meant, of
+course, that he would worship them.) It was an important point, this,
+of the captain: important as the personality of a headmaster.
+
+‘So that’s the nursery, eh?’ said the captain, crushing Mrs. Thornton’s
+hand. She strove to answer, but found her throat undoubtedly paralysed.
+Even Mr. Thornton’s ready tongue was at a loss. He looked hard at the
+captain, jerked his thumb towards the children, wrestled in his mind
+with an elaborate speech, and finally enunciated in a small, unlikely
+voice:
+
+‘Smack ’em.’
+
+Then the captain had to go about his duties: and for an hour the father
+and mother sat disconsolately on the main-hatch, quite deserted. Even
+when all was ready for departure it was impossible to muster the flock
+for a collective good-bye.
+
+Already the tug was fulminating in its gorge: and ashore they must go.
+Emily and John had been captured, and stood talking uneasily to their
+parents, as if to strangers, using only a quarter of their minds. With
+a rope to be climbed dangling before his very nose, John simply did
+not know how this delay was to be supported, and lapsed into complete
+silence.
+
+‘Time to go ashore, Ma’am,’ said the captain: ‘we must be off now.’
+
+Very formally the two generations kissed each other, and said farewell.
+Indeed the elders were already at the gangway before the meaning of
+it all dawned in Emily’s head. She rushed after her mother, gripped
+her ample flesh in two strong fists, and sobbed and wept, ‘Come too,
+Mother, oh, do come too!’
+
+Honestly, it had only occurred to her that very moment that this was a
+_parting_.
+
+‘But think what an adventure it will be,’ said Mrs. Thornton bravely:
+‘much more than if I come too!--You’ll have to look after the Liddlies
+just as if you were a real grown-up!’
+
+‘But I don’t want any more adventures!’ sobbed Emily: ‘I’ve _got_ an
+_Earthquake_!’
+
+Passions were running far too high for any one to be aware how the
+final separation took place. The next thing Mrs. Thornton could
+remember was how tired her arm had been, after waving and waving at
+that dwindling speck which bore away on the land breeze, hung awhile
+stationary in the intervening calm, then won the Trade and climbed up
+into the blue.
+
+Meanwhile, at the rail stood Margaret Fernandez, who, with her little
+brother Harry, was going to England by the same boat. No one had come
+to see them off: and the brown nurse who was accompanying them had
+gone below the moment she came on board, so as to be ill as quickly as
+possible. How handsome Mr. Bas-Thornton had looked, with his English
+distinction! Yet every one knew he had no money. Her set white face
+was turned towards the land, her chin quivering at intervals. Slowly
+the harbour disappeared: the disordered profligacy of the turbulent,
+intricate mass of hills sunk lower in the sky. The occasional white
+houses, and white puffs of steam and smoke from the sugar-mills,
+vanished. At last the land, all palely shimmering like the bloom on
+grapes, settled down into the mirror of emerald and blue.
+
+She wondered whether the Thornton children would prove companionable,
+or a nuisance. They were all younger than she was: which was a pity.
+
+
+ii
+
+On the journey back to Ferndale both father and mother were silent,
+actuated by that tug of jealousy against sympathy which a strong common
+emotion begets in familiar rather than passionate companions. They
+were above the ordinary sentimentalities of grass-bereavement (above
+choking over small shoes found in cupboards): but not above a rather
+strong dose of the natural instincts of parenthood, Frederic no less
+than his wife.
+
+But when they were nearly home, Mrs. Thornton began to chuckle to
+herself.
+
+‘Funny little thing, Emily! Did you notice almost the last thing she
+said? She said “I’ve got an earthquake.” She must have got it mixed up
+in her silly old head with earache.’
+
+There was a long pause: and then she remarked again:
+
+‘John is so much the most sensitive: he was absolutely too full to
+speak.’
+
+
+iii
+
+When they got home it was many days before they could bring themselves
+openly to mention the children. When some reference had to be made,
+they spoke round them, in an uncomfortable way, as if they had died.
+
+But after a few weeks they had a most welcome surprise. The _Clorinda_
+was calling at the Caymans, and taking the Leeward Passage: and while
+riding off the Grand Cayman Emily and John wrote letters, and a vessel
+bound for Kingston had taken charge of them and eventually they reached
+Ferndale. It had not even occurred to either parent that this would be
+possible.
+
+This was Emily’s:
+
+  MY DEAR PARENTS,--This ship is full of Turtles. We stopped here and
+  they came out in boats. There is turtles in the saloon under the
+  tables for you to put your feet on, and turtles in the passages and
+  on the deck, and everywhere you go. The captain says we mustn’t fall
+  overboard now because his boats are full of turtles too, with water.
+  The sailors bring the others on deck every day to have a wash and
+  when you stand them up they look just as if they had pinafores on.
+  They make such a funny sighing and groaning in the night, at first
+  I thought it was everybody being ill, but you get used to it, it is
+  just like people being ill.--Your loving daughter,
+                                                                  EMILY.
+
+And John’s:
+
+  MY DEAREST PARENTS,--The captain’s son Henry is a wonderful chap,
+  he goes up the rigging with his hands alone, he is ever so strong.
+  He can turn round under a bellying pin without touching the deck, I
+  can’t but I hang from the ratlines by my heels which the sailors say
+  is very brave, but they don’t like Emily doing it, funny. I hope you
+  are both in excellent health, one of the sailors has a monkey but its
+  tail is Sore.--Your affectionate Son,
+                                                                   JOHN.
+
+That was the last news they could expect for many months. The
+_Clorinda_ was not touching anywhere else. It gave Mrs. Thornton a cold
+feeling in the stomach to measure just _how_ long. But she argued,
+logically enough, that the time must come to an end, all time does:
+there is nothing so inexorable as a ship, plodding away, plodding
+away, all over the place, till at last it quite certainly reaches that
+small speck on the map which all the time it had intended to reach.
+Philosophically speaking, a ship in its port of departure is just as
+much in its port of arrival: two point-events differing in time and
+place, but not in degree of reality. _Ergo_, that first letter from
+England was as good as written, only not quite ... legible yet. And
+the same applied to seeing them. (But here one must stop, for the same
+argument applied to old age and death, it wouldn’t do.)
+
+Yet, a bare fortnight after the arrival of this first budget, still
+another letter arrived, from Havana. The _Clorinda_ had put in there
+unexpectedly, it appeared: the letter was from Captain Marpole.
+
+‘What a dear man he is,’ said Alice. ‘He must have known how anxious we
+would be for every scrap of news.’
+
+Captain Marpole’s letter was not so terse and vivid as the children’s
+had been: still, for the news it contained, I give it in full:
+
+                                                         HAVANA DE CUBA.
+
+  HONOURED SIR AND MADAM,--I hasten to write to you to relieve you of
+  any uncertainty!
+
+  After leaving the Caymans we stood for the Leeward Passage, and
+  sighted the Isle of Pines and False Cape on the morning of the 19th
+  and Cape S. Antonio in the evening, but were prevented from rounding
+  the same by a true Norther, the first of the season, on the 22nd,
+  however, the wind coming round sufficiently we rounded the cape in
+  a lively fashion and stood N½E. well away from the Coloradoes which
+  are a dangerous reef lying off this part of the Cuban coast. At six
+  o’clock on the morning of the 23rd there being light airs only I
+  sighted three sail in the North-East, evidently merchantmen bound on
+  the same course as ourselves, at the same time a schooner of similar
+  character was observed standing out towards us from the direction
+  of Black Key, and I pointed her out to my mate just before going
+  below, having the wind of us he was within hailing distance by ten
+  in the morning, judge then of our astonishment when he rudely opened
+  ten or twelve disguised gun-ports and unmasked a whole broadside
+  of artillery trained upon us, ordering us at the same time in the
+  most peremptory manner to heave-to or he would sink us instanter.
+  There was nothing to do but to comply although considering the
+  friendly relations at present existing between the English and all
+  other governments my mate was quite at a loss to account for his
+  action, and imagined it due to a mistake which would be speedily
+  explained, we were immediately boarded by about fifty or seventy
+  ruffians of the worst Spanish type, armed with knives and cutlasses,
+  who took possession of the ship and confined me in my cabin and my
+  mate and crew forward while they ransacked the vessel committing
+  every possible excess broaching rum-casks and breaking the necks
+  off wine-bottles and soon a great number of them were lying about
+  the deck in an intoxicated condition, their leader then informed
+  me he was aware I had a considerable sum in specie on board and
+  used _every possible threat which villainy could devise_ to make
+  me disclose its hiding-place, it was useless for me to assure him
+  that beyond the fifty or so pounds they had already discovered I
+  carried none, he grew even more insistent in his demands, declaring
+  that his information was certain, tearing down the panelling in my
+  cabin in his search. He carried off my instruments, my clothes, and
+  all my personal possessions, even taking from me the poor Locket in
+  which I was used to carry the portrait of my Wife, and no appeal to
+  his sensibility, tho’ I shed tears, would make him return this to
+  him worthless object, he also tore down and carried away the cabin
+  bell-pulls, which could be of no possible use to him and was an act
+  of the most open _piracy_, at length, seeing I was obdurate, he
+  threatened to blow up the ship _and all in it_ if I would not yield,
+  he prepared the train and would have proceeded to carry out this
+  devilish threat if I had not in this last extremity, consented.
+
+  I come now to the latter part of my tale. The children had taken
+  refuge in the deck-house and had been up to now free from harm,
+  except for a cuff or two and the Degrading Sights they must have
+  witnessed, but no sooner was the specie some five thousand pounds in
+  all mostly my private property and most of our cargo (chiefly rum
+  sugar coffee and arrowroot) removed to the schooner than her captain,
+  in sheer infamous wantonness, had them all brought out from their
+  refuge your own little ones and the two Fernandez children who were
+  also on board and murdered them, every one. That anything so wicked
+  should look like a man I should not have believed, had I been told,
+  tho’ I have lived long and seen all kinds of men, I think he is mad:
+  indeed I am sure of it; and I take Oath that he shall be brought
+  to at least that tithe of justice which is in Human hands, for two
+  days we drifted about in a helpless condition, for our rigging had
+  all been cut, and at last fell in with an American man-of-war, who
+  gave us some assistance, and would have proceeded in pursuit of the
+  miscreants himself had he not most explicit orders to elsewhere. I
+  then put in to the port of Havana, where I informed the correspondent
+  of Lloyds, the government, and the representative of the _Times_
+  newspaper, and take the opportunity of writing you this melancholy
+  letter before proceeding to England.
+
+  There is one point on which you will still feel some anxiety,
+  considering the sex of some of the poor innocents, and on which I am
+  glad to be able to set your minds at rest, the children were taken
+  onto the other vessel in the evening and I am glad to say there done
+  to death _immediately_, and their little bodies cast into the sea, as
+  I saw with great relief with my own eyes. There was no time for what
+  you might fear to have occurred, and this consolation I am glad to be
+  able to give you.--I have the honour to be,
+
+                                      Your obedient servant,
+                                                     JAS. MARPOLE,
+                                              Master, barque _Clorinda_.
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter 3_
+
+
+The passage from Montego Bay to the Caymans, where the children had
+written their letters, is only a matter of a few hours: indeed, in
+clear weather one can look right across from Jamaica to the peak of
+Turquino in Cuba.
+
+There is no harbour; and the anchorage, owing to the reefs and ledges,
+is difficult. The _Clorinda_ brought up off the Grand Cayman, the
+look-out man in the chains feeling his way to a white, sandy patch of
+bottom which affords the only safe resting-place there, and causing the
+anchor to be let go to windward of it. Luckily, the weather was fine.
+
+The island, a longish one at the western end of the group, is low,
+and covered with palms. Presently a succession of boats brought out
+a quantity of turtles, as Emily described. The natives also brought
+parrots to sell to the sailors: but failed to dispose of many.
+
+At last, however, the uncomfortable Caymans were left behind, and
+they set their course towards the Isle of Pines, a large island in a
+gulf of the Cuban coast. One of the sailors, called Curtis, had once
+been wrecked there, and was full of stories about it. It is a very
+unpleasant place; sparsely inhabited, and covered with labyrinthine
+woods. The only food available is a kind of tree. There is also a
+species of bean which looks tempting: but it is deadly poison. The
+crocodiles, Curtis said, were so fierce they chased him and his
+companions into trees: the only way to escape from them was to throw
+them your cap to worry: or if you were bold, to disable them with a
+blow of a stick on the loins. There were also a great many snakes,
+including a kind of boa.
+
+The current off the Isle of Pines sets strongly to the east: so
+the _Clorinda_ kept close inshore, to cheat it. They passed Cape
+Corrientes--looking, when first sighted, like two hummocks in the
+sea: they passed Holandes Point, known as False C. Antonio: but were
+prevented for some time, as Captain Marpole told in his letter, from
+rounding the true one. For to attempt C. Antonio in a Norther is to
+waste your labour.
+
+They lay-to in sight of that long, low, rocky, treeless promontory
+in which the great island of Cuba terminates, and waited. They were
+so close that the fisherman’s hut on its southern side was clearly
+discernible.
+
+For the children, those first few days at sea had flashed by like a
+kind of prolonged circus. There is no machine invented for sober
+purposes so well adapted also to play as the rigging of a ship: and
+the kindly captain, as Mrs. Thornton had divined, was willing to give
+them a lot of freedom. First came the climbing of a few rungs of the
+ratlines in a sailor’s charge: higher each time, till John attained a
+gingerly touching of the yard: then hugged it: then straddled it. Soon,
+running up the ratlines and prancing on the yard (as if it were a mere
+table-top) had no further thrill for John or Emily either. (To go out
+on the yard was not allowed.)
+
+But when the ratlines had palled, the most lasting joy undoubtedly
+lay in that network of foot-ropes and chains and stays which spreads
+out under and on each side of the bowsprit. Here, familiarity only
+bred content. Here, in fine weather, one could climb or be still:
+stand, sit, hang, swing, or lie: now this end up, now that: and all
+with the cream of the blue sea being whipt up for one’s own especial
+pleasure, almost within touching distance: and the big white wooden
+lady (Clorinda herself), bearing the whole vessel so lightly on her
+back, her knees in the hubble-bubble, her cracks almost filled up
+with so much painting, vaster than any living lady, as a constant and
+unannoying companion.
+
+In the midst there was a kind of spear, its haft set against the
+under-side of the bowsprit, its point perpendicularly down towards
+the water--the dolphin-striker. Here it was that the old monkey (who
+had the Sore tail) loved to hang, by the mere stub which was all a
+devouring cancer had left him, chattering to the water. He took no
+notice of the children, nor they of him: but both parties grew attached
+to each other, for all that.
+
+--How small the children all looked, on a ship, when you saw them
+beside the sailors! It was as if they were a different order of beings!
+Yet they were living creatures just the same, full of promise.
+
+_John_, with his downy, freckled face, and general round
+energeticalness.
+
+_Emily_, with her huge palm-leaf hat, and colourless cotton frock tight
+over her minute impish erect body: her thin, almost expressionless
+face: her dark grey eyes contracted to escape the blaze, yet shining
+as it were in spite of themselves: and her really beautiful lips, that
+looked almost as if they were sculptured.
+
+_Margaret Fernandez_, taller (as midgets go: she was just thirteen),
+with her square white face and tangled hair, her elaboratish clothes.
+
+Her little brother _Harry_, by some throw-back for all the world like a
+manikin Spaniard.
+
+And the smaller Thorntons: _Edward_, mouse-coloured, with a general
+mousy (but pleasing) expression: _Rachel_, with tight short gold curls
+and a fat pink face (John’s colouring watered down): and last of all
+_Laura_, a queer mite of three with heavy dark eyebrows, and blue eyes,
+a big head-top and a receding chin--as if the Procreative Spirit was
+getting a little hysterical by the time it reached her. A silver-age
+conception, Laura’s, decidedly.
+
+When the Norther blew itself out, it soon fell away almost dead calm.
+The morning they finally rounded Cape San Antonio was hot, blazing hot.
+But it is never stuffy at sea: there is only this disadvantage, that
+while on land a shady hat protects you from the sun, at sea nothing can
+protect you from that second sun which is mirrored upwards from the
+water, strikes under all defences, and burns the unseasoned skin from
+all your under-sides. Poor John! His throat and chin were a blistered
+red.
+
+From the point itself there is a whitish bank in two fathoms, bowed
+from north to north-east. The outer side is clean and steep-to, and
+in fine weather one can steer along it by eye. It ends in Black Key,
+a rock standing out of the water like a ship’s hull. Beyond that
+lies a channel, very foul and difficult to navigate: and beyond that
+again the Coloradoes Reef begins, the first of a long chain of reefs
+following the coast in a north-easterly direction as far as Honde Bay,
+two-thirds the way to Havana. Within the reefs lies the intricate Canal
+de Guaniguanico, of which this channel is the westernmost outlet, with
+its own rather dubious little ports. But ocean traffic, needless to
+say, shuns the whole box of tricks: and the _Clorinda_ advisedly stood
+well away to the northward, keeping her course at a gentle amble for
+the open Atlantic.
+
+John was sitting outside the galley with the sailor called Curtis, who
+was instructing him in the neat mystery of a Turk’s-head. Young Henry
+Marpole was steering. Emily was messing around--not talking, just being
+by him.
+
+As for the other sailors, they were all congregated in a ring, up in
+the bows, so that one saw nothing but their backs. But every now and
+then a general guffaw, and a sudden surging of the whole group, showed
+they were up to something or other.
+
+John presently tiptoed forward, to see what it might be. He thrust his
+bullet-head among their legs, and worked his way in till he had as good
+a view as the earliest comer.
+
+He found they had got the old monkey, and were filling him up with
+rum. First they gave him biscuit soaked in it: then they dipped rags
+in a pannikin of the stuff, and squeezed them into his mouth. Then
+they tried to make him drink direct: but that he would not do--it only
+wasted a lot of spirit.
+
+John felt a vague horror at all this: though of course he did not guess
+the purpose behind it.
+
+The poor brute shivered and chattered, rolled his eyes, spluttered.
+I suppose it must have been an excruciatingly funny sight. Every now
+and then he would seem altogether overcome by the spirit. Then one of
+them would lay him on the top of an old beef barrel--but hey presto, he
+would be up like lightning, trying to streak through the air over their
+heads. But he was no bird: they caught him each time, and set to work
+to dope him again.
+
+As for John, he could no more have left the scene now than Jacko the
+monkey could.
+
+It was astonishing what a lot of spirit the wizened little brute could
+absorb. He was drunk, of course: hopelessly, blindly, madly drunk. But
+he was not paralytic, not even somnolent: and it seemed as if nothing
+could overcome him. So at last they gave up the attempt. They fetched
+a wooden box, and cut a notch in the edge. Then they put him on the
+barrel-top, and clapped the box over him, and after much manœuvring his
+gangrenous tail was made to come out through the notch. Anaesthetised
+or not, the operation on him was to proceed. John stared, transfixed,
+at that obscene wriggling stump which was all one could see of the
+animal: and out of the corner of his eye he could see at the same time
+the uproarious operators, the tar-stained knife.
+
+But the moment the blade touched flesh, with an awful screech the
+mommet contrived to fling off his cage--leapt on the surgeon’s
+head--leapt from there high in the air--caught the forestay--and in a
+twinkling was away and up high in the fore-rigging.
+
+Then began the hue and cry. Sixteen men flinging about in lofty
+acrobatics, all to catch one poor old drunk monkey. For he was drunk
+as a lord, and sick as a cat. His course varied between wild and
+hair-raising leaps (a sort of inspired gymnastics), and doleful
+incompetent reelings on a taut rope which threatened at every moment to
+catapult him into the sea. But even so they could never quite catch him.
+
+No wonder that all the children, now, stood open-mouthed and open-eyed
+on the deck beneath in the sun till their necks nearly broke--_such_ a
+Free Fun Fair and Circus!
+
+And no wonder that on that passenger-schooner which Marpole, before
+going below, had sighted drifting towards them from the direction
+of the Black Key channel, the ladies had left the shade of the
+awning and were crowding at the rail, parasols twirling, lorgnettes
+and opera-glasses in action, all twittering like a cage of linnets.
+Just too far off to distinguish the tiny quarry, they might well
+have wondered what sort of a bedlam-vessel of sea-acrobats the light
+easterly air was bearing them down upon.
+
+They were so interested that presently a boat was hoisted out, and the
+ladies--and some gentlemen as well--crowded into it.
+
+Poor little Jacko missed his hold at last: fell plump on the deck
+and broke his neck. That was the end of him--and of the hunt too,
+of course. The aerial ballet was over, in its middle, with no final
+tableau. The sailors began, in twos and threes, to slide to the deck.
+
+But the visitors were already on board.
+
+That is how the _Clorinda_ really was taken. There was no display of
+artillery--but then, Captain Marpole could hardly know this, seeing he
+was below in his bunk at the time. Henry was steering by that sixth
+sense which only comes into operation when the other five are asleep.
+The mate and crew had been so intent on what they were doing that the
+Flying Dutchman himself might have laid alongside, for all they cared.
+
+
+ii
+
+Indeed, the whole manœuvre was executed so quietly that Captain Marpole
+never even woke--incredible though this will seem to a seaman. But
+then, Marpole had begun life as a successful coal-merchant.
+
+The mate and crew were bundled into the fo’c’sle (the Fox-hole, the
+children thought it was called), and confined there, the scuttle being
+secured with a couple of nails.
+
+The children themselves were shepherded, as related, into the
+deck-house, where the chairs, and perfectly useless pieces of old rope,
+and broken tools, and dried-up paint-pots were kept, without taking
+alarm. But the door was immediately shut on them. They had to wait for
+hours and hours before anything else happened--nearly all day, in fact:
+and they got very bored, and rather cross.
+
+The actual number of the men who had effected the capture cannot
+have been more than eight or nine, most of them ‘women’ at that, and
+not armed--at least with any visible weapon. But a second boatload
+soon followed them from the schooner. These, for form’s sake, were
+armed with muskets. But there was no possible resistance to fear. Two
+long nails through the scuttle can secure any number of men pretty
+effectually.
+
+With this second boatload came both the captain and the mate. The
+former was a clumsy great fellow, with a sad, silly face. He was
+bulky; yet so ill-proportioned one got no impression of power. He was
+modestly dressed in a drab shore-going suit: he was newly shaven,
+and his sparse hair was pomaded so that it lay in a few dark ribbons
+across his baldish head-top. But all this shore-decency of appearance
+only accentuated his big splodgy brown hands, stained and scarred and
+corned with his calling. Moreover, instead of boots he wore a pair of
+gigantic heel-less slippers in the Moorish manner, which he must have
+sliced with a knife out of some pair of dead sea-boots. Even his great
+spreading feet could hardly keep them on, so that he was obliged to
+walk at the slowest of shuffles, flop-flop along the deck. He stooped,
+as if always afraid of banging his head on something; and carried the
+backs of his hands forward, like an orang-outang.
+
+Meanwhile the men set to work methodically but very quietly to remove
+the wedges that held the battens of the hatches, getting ready to haul
+up the cargo.
+
+Their leader took several turns up and down the deck before he seemed
+able to make up his mind to the interview: then lowered himself into
+Marpole’s cabin, followed by his mate.
+
+This mate was a small man: very fair, and intelligent-looking beside
+his chief. He was almost dapper, in a quiet way, in his dress.
+
+They found Captain Marpole even now only half awake: and the stranger
+stood for a moment in silence, nervously twiddling his cap in his
+hands. When he spoke at last, it was with a soft German accent:
+
+‘Excuse me,’ he began, ‘but would you have the goodness to lend me a
+few stores?’
+
+Captain Marpole stared in astonishment, first at him and then at
+the much be-painted faces of the ‘ladies’ pressed against his cabin
+skylight.
+
+‘Who the devil are you?’ he contrived to ask at last.
+
+‘I hold a commission in the Columbian navy,’ the stranger explained:
+‘and I am in need of a few stores.’
+
+(Meanwhile his men had the hatches off, and were preparing to help
+themselves to everything in the ship.)
+
+Marpole looked him up and down. It was barely conceivable that even the
+Columbian navy should have such a figure of an officer. Then his eye
+wandered back to the skylight:
+
+‘If you call yourself a man-of-war, sir, who in Heaven’s name are
+_those_?’ As he pointed, the smirking faces hastily retreated.
+
+The stranger blushed.
+
+‘They are rather difficult to explain,’ he admitted ingenuously.
+
+‘If you had said _Turkish_ navy, that would have been more
+reasonable-sounding!’ said Marpole.
+
+But the stranger did not seem to take the joke. He stood, silent, in a
+characteristic attitude: rocking himself from foot to foot, and rubbing
+his cheek on his shoulder.
+
+Suddenly Marpole’s ear caught the muffled racketing forward. Almost
+at the same time a bump that shivered the whole barque told that the
+schooner had been laid alongside.
+
+‘What’s that?’ he exclaimed. ‘Is there some one in my hold?’
+
+‘Stores ...’ mumbled the stranger.
+
+Marpole up to now had lain growling in his bunk like a dog in its
+kennel. Now for the first time realising that something serious was
+afoot he flung himself out and made for the companion-way. The little
+silent fair man tripped him up, and he fell against the table.
+
+‘You had much better stay here, yes?’ said the big man. ‘My fellows
+shall keep a tally, you shall be paid in full for everything we take.’
+
+The eyes of the marine coal-merchant gleamed momentarily:
+
+‘You’ll have to pay for this outrage to a pretty tune!’ he growled.
+
+‘I will pay you,’ said the stranger, with a sudden magnificence in his
+voice, ‘at the very least five thousand pounds!’
+
+Marpole stared in astonishment.
+
+‘I will write you an order on the Columbian government for that
+amount,’ the other went on.
+
+Marpole thumped the table, almost speechless:
+
+‘D’you think I believe that cock-and-bull story?’ he thundered.
+
+Captain Jonsen made no protest.
+
+‘Do you realise that you are technically guilty of _piracy_, making a
+forced requisition on a British ship like this, even if you pay every
+farthing?’
+
+Still Jonsen made no reply: though the bored expression of his mate was
+lit up for a moment by a smile.
+
+‘You’ll pay me in _cash_!’ Marpole concluded. Then he went off on a
+fresh tack: ‘Though how the devil you got on board without being called
+beats me!--Where’s my mate?’
+
+Jonsen began in a toneless voice, as if by rote: ‘I will write you an
+order for five thousand pounds: three thousand for the stores, and two
+thousand you will give me in money.’
+
+‘We know you’ve got specie on board,’ interjected the little fair mate,
+speaking for the first time.
+
+‘Our information is certain!’ declared Jonsen.
+
+Marpole at last went white and began to sweat. It took even Fear an
+extraordinarily long time to penetrate his thick skull. But he denied
+that he had any treasure on board.
+
+‘Is that your answer?’ said Jonsen. He drew a heavy pistol from his
+side pocket. ‘If you do not tell us the truth, your life shall pay the
+forfeit.’ His voice was peculiarly gentle, and mechanical, as if he did
+not attach much meaning to what he said. ‘Do not expect mercy, for this
+is my profession, and in it I am inured to blood.’
+
+A frightful squawking from the deck above told Marpole that his
+chickens were being moved to new quarters.
+
+In an agony of feeling Marpole told him that he had a wife and
+children, who would be left destitute if his life was taken.
+
+Jonsen, with rather a perplexed look on his face, put the gun back in
+his pocket, and the two of them began to search for themselves, at the
+same time stripping the saloon and cabins of everything they contained:
+firearms, wearing apparel, the bedclothes, and even (as Marpole with a
+rare touch of accuracy mentioned in his report) the bell-pulls.
+
+Overhead there was a continuous bumping: the rolling of casks, cases,
+etc.
+
+‘Remember,’ Jonsen went on over his shoulder while he searched, ‘money
+cannot recall life, nor in the least avail you when you are dead.
+If you regard your life in the least, at once acquaint me with the
+hiding-place, and your life shall be safe.’
+
+Marpole’s only reply was again to invoke the thought of his wife
+and children (he was, as a matter of fact, a widower: and his only
+relative, a niece, would be the better off by his death to the tune of
+some ten thousand pounds).
+
+But this reiteration seemed to give the mate an idea: and he began to
+talk to his chief rapidly in a language Marpole had never even heard.
+For a moment a curious glint came into Jonsen’s eye: but soon he was
+chuckling in the sentimentalest manner, and rubbing his hands.
+
+The mate went on deck to prepare things.
+
+Marpole had no inkling of what was afoot. The mate went on deck to
+prepare his plan, whatever it was: and Jonsen busied himself with a
+last futile search for the hiding-place, in silence.
+
+Presently the mate shouted down to him, and he ordered Marpole on deck.
+
+Poor Marpole groaned. Unloading cargo is inclined to be a messy
+business anyway: but these visitors had been none too careful. There is
+no smell in the world worse than when molasses and bilge-water marry:
+now it was let loose like ten thousand devils. His heart was almost
+broken when he saw the havoc that had been made with the cargo: broken
+cases, casks, bottles, all about the deck: everything in the greatest
+confusion: tarpaulins cut to pieces: hatches broken.
+
+From the deck-house came the piercing voice of Laura:
+
+‘_I want to come out!_’
+
+The Spanish ladies seemed to have returned to the schooner. His own men
+were shut up in the fo’c’sle. It was obvious where all the children
+were, for Laura was not the only vociferator. But the only persons to
+be seen were six members of the visiting crew, who stood in a line,
+facing the deck-house, a musket apiece.
+
+It was the little mate who now took charge of the situation:
+
+‘Where is your specie hid, Captain?’
+
+The musketeers having their backs to him, ‘Go to the Devil!’ replied
+Marpole.
+
+A startling volley rang out: six neat holes were punctured in the top
+of the deck-house.
+
+‘Hi! Steady there, what are you doing?’ John cried out indignantly from
+within.
+
+‘If you refuse to tell us, next time their aim will be a foot lower.’
+
+‘You fiends!’ cried Marpole.
+
+‘Will you tell me?’
+
+‘_No!_’
+
+‘_Fire!_’
+
+The second row of holes can only have missed the taller children by a
+few inches.
+
+There was a moment’s silence: then a sudden wild shriek from within the
+deck-house. It was so terrified a sound not their own mothers could
+have told which throat it came from. One only, though.
+
+The stranger-captain had been slouching about in an agitated way: but
+at that shriek he turned on Marpole, his face purple with a sudden fury:
+
+‘_Now_ will you say?’
+
+But Marpole was now completely master of himself. He did not hesitate:
+
+‘NO!’
+
+‘Next time he gives the order it will be to shoot right through their
+little bodies!’
+
+So that was what Marpole had meant in his letter by ‘_every possible
+threat which villainy could devise_’! But even by this he was not to be
+daunted:
+
+‘No, I tell you!’
+
+Heroic obstinacy! But instead of giving the fatal order, Jonsen lifted
+a paw like a bear’s, and banged Marpole’s jaw with it. The latter fell
+to the deck, stunned.
+
+It was then they took the children out of the deck-house.
+
+They were not really much frightened; except Margaret, who did seem to
+be taking it all to heart rather. Being shot at is so unlike what one
+expects it to be that one can hardly connect the two ideas enough to
+have the appropriate emotions, the first few times. It is not half so
+startling as some one jumping out on you with a ‘_Boo!_’ in the dark,
+for instance. The boys were crying a little: the girls were hot and
+cross and hungry.
+
+‘What were you doing?’ Rachel asked brightly of one of the firing-party.
+
+But only the captain and the mate could speak English. The latter,
+ignoring Rachel’s question, explained that they were all to go on board
+the schooner--‘to have some supper,’ he said.
+
+He had all a sailor’s reassuring charm of manner. So under the charge
+of two Spanish seamen they were helped over the bulwarks onto the
+smaller vessel, which was just casting off.
+
+There the strange sailors broke open a whole case of crystallised
+fruits, on which they might turn the edge of their long appetites as
+much as they would.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When poor stunned Captain Marpole came to his senses, it was to
+find himself tied to the mainmast. Several handfuls of shavings and
+splintered wood were piled round his feet, and Jonsen was sprinkling
+them plentifully with gun-powder--though not perhaps enough, it is
+true, to ‘blow up the ship and all in it.’
+
+The small fair mate stood at hand in the gathering dusk with a lighted
+torch, ready to fire the pyre.
+
+What could a man do in such straits? At that dreadful moment the
+gallant old fellow had to admit that he was beaten at last. He told
+them where his freight-money--some £900--was hidden: and they let him
+go.
+
+Just as the darkness closed in, the last of the pirates returned to
+their ship. Not a sound was to be heard of the children: but Marpole
+guessed that they had been taken there too.
+
+Before releasing his crew he lit a lantern and began a sort of
+inventory of what was gone. It was heart-breaking enough: besides the
+cargo, all his spare sails, cordage, provisions, guns, paint, powder:
+all his wearing apparel, and that of his mate: all nautical instruments
+gone, cabin stores--the saloon in fact gutted of everything, not even a
+knife or spoon left, tea or sugar, nor a second shirt to his back left.
+Only the children’s luggage was left untouched: and the turtles. Their
+melancholy sighing was the sole sound to be heard.
+
+But it was almost as heart-breaking to see what the pirates had _left_:
+anything damaged, such worn-out and useless gear as he had been only
+waiting for some ‘storm’ to wash overboard--not one of these eyesores
+was missing.
+
+What, in Heaven’s name, was the use of an insurance policy? He began to
+collect the rubbish himself and dump it over the side.
+
+But Captain Jonsen saw him:
+
+‘Hi!’ he shouted: ‘You dirty svindler! I will write to Lloyds and
+expose you! I will write myself!’ He was horribly shocked at the
+other’s dishonesty.
+
+So Marpole had to give it up, for the time at any rate: took a
+spike and broke open the fo’c’sle: and as well as the sailors found
+Margaret’s brown nurse. She had hidden there the whole day: probably
+from motives of fright.
+
+
+iii
+
+You would have thought that supper on the schooner that night would
+have been a hilarious affair. But, somehow, it was _manqué_.
+
+A prize of such value had naturally put the crew in the best of
+humours: and a meal which consisted mainly of crystallised fruit,
+followed as an afterthought by bread and chopped onions served in one
+enormous communal bowl, eaten on the open deck under the stars, after
+bed-time, should have done the same by the children. But nevertheless
+both parties were seized by a sudden, overpowering, and most unexpected
+fit of shyness. Consequently no state banquet was ever so formal, or so
+boring.
+
+I suppose it was the lack of a common language which first generated
+the infection. The Spanish sailors, used enough to this difficulty,
+grinned, pointed, and bobbed: but the children retired into a display
+of good manners which it would certainly have surprised their parents
+to see. Whereon the sailors became equally formal: and one poor
+monkeyfied little fellow who by nature belched continually was so
+be-nudged and be-winked by his companions, and so covered in confusion
+of his own accord, that presently he went away to eat by himself.
+Even then, so silent was this revel, he could still be heard faintly
+belching, half the ship’s length away.
+
+Perhaps it would have gone better if the captain and mate had been
+there, with their English. But they were too busy, looking over the
+personal belongings they had brought from the barque, sorting out by
+the light of a lantern anything too easily identifiable and reluctantly
+committing it to the sea.
+
+It was at the loud splashes made by a couple of empty trunks, stamped
+in large letters JAS. MARPOLE, that a roar of unassumed indignation
+arose from the neighbouring barque. The two paused in their work,
+astonished: why should a crew already spoiled of all they possessed
+take it so hardly when one heaved a couple of old worthless trunks in
+the sea?
+
+It was inexplicable.
+
+They continued their task, taking no further notice of the _Clorinda_.
+
+Once supper was over, the social situation became even more awkward.
+The children stood about, not knowing what to do with their hands, or
+even their legs: unable to talk to their hosts, and feeling it would be
+rude to talk to each other, wishing badly that it was time to leave. If
+only it had been light they could have been happy enough exploring: but
+in the darkness there was nothing to do, nothing whatever.
+
+The sailors soon found occupations of their own: and the captain and
+mate, as I have said, were already busy.
+
+Once the sorting was over, however, there was nothing for Jonsen to do
+except return the children to the barque, and get well clear while the
+breeze and the darkness lasted.
+
+But on hearing those splashes, Marpole’s lively imagination had
+interpreted them in his own way. They suggested that there was now no
+reason to wait: indeed, every reason to be gone.
+
+I think he was quite honestly misled.
+
+It was after all but a small slip to say he had ‘seen with his own
+eyes’ what he had heard with his own ears: and the intention was pious.
+
+He set his men feverishly to work: and when Captain Jonsen looked his
+way again, the _Clorinda_, with every stitch spread in the starlight,
+was already half a mile to leeward.
+
+To pursue her, right in the track of shipping, was out of the question.
+Jonsen had to content himself with staring after her through his
+night-glass.
+
+
+iv
+
+Captain Jonsen set the little monkeyfied sailor, who had been so
+mortified earlier in the evening, to clear the schooner’s fore-hold.
+The warps and brooms and fenders it contained were all piled to one
+side, and a sufficiency of bedclothes for the guests was provided from
+the plunder.
+
+But nothing could now thaw them. They clambered down the ladder and
+received their blanket apiece in an uncomfortable silence. Jonsen hung
+about, anxious to be helpful in this matter of getting into beds which
+were not there, but not knowing how to set about it. So he gave it
+up at last, and swung himself up through the fore-hatch, talking to
+himself.
+
+The last they saw of him was his fantastic slippers, hanging each from
+a big toe, outlined against the stars: but it never entered their heads
+to laugh.
+
+Once, however, the familiar comfort of a blanket under their chins had
+begun to have its effect, and they were obviously quite alone, a little
+life did begin to return into these dumb statues.
+
+The darkness was profound, only accentuated by the starlit square
+of the open hatchway. First the long silence was broken by some one
+turning over, almost freely. Then presently:
+
+LAURA (_in slow sepulchral tones_). I don’t like this bed.
+
+RACHEL (_ditto_). I do.
+
+LAURA. It’s a horrid bed; there isn’t any!
+
+EMILY. }
+       } Sh! Go to sleep!
+JOHN.  }
+
+EDWARD. I smell cockroaches.
+
+EMILY. Sh!
+
+EDWARD (_loudly and hopefully_). They’ll bite all our nails off,
+because we haven’t washed, and our skin, and our hair, and----
+
+LAURA. There’s a cockroach in my bed! Get out!
+
+  (_You could hear the brute go zooming away. But Laura was already out
+  too._)
+
+EMILY. Laura! Go back to bed!
+
+LAURA. I can’t when there’s a cockroach in it!
+
+JOHN. Get into bed again, you little fool! He’s gone long ago!
+
+LAURA. But I expect he has left his wife.
+
+HARRY. They don’t have wives, they’re wives themselves.
+
+RACHEL. Ow!--Laura, stop it!--Emily, Laura’s walking on me!
+
+EMILY. Lau-RER!
+
+LAURA. Well, I must walk on something!
+
+EMILY. Go to sleep!
+
+  (_Silence for a while._)
+
+LAURA. I haven’t said my prayers.
+
+EMILY. Well, say them lying down.
+
+RACHEL. She mustn’t, that’s lazy.
+
+JOHN. Shut up, Rachel, she must.
+
+RACHEL. It’s wicked! You go to sleep in the middle then. People who go
+to sleep in the middle ought to be damned, they ought.--Oughtn’t they?
+(_Silence._) Oughtn’t they? (_Still silence._) Emily, I say, oughtn’t
+they?
+
+JOHN. NO!
+
+RACHEL (_dreamily_). I think there’s lots more people ought to be
+damned than are.
+
+  (_Silence again._)
+
+HARRY. Marghie.
+
+  (_Silence._)
+
+Marghie!
+
+  (_Silence._)
+
+JOHN. What’s up with Marghie? Won’t she speak?
+
+  (_A faint sob is heard._)
+
+HARRY. I don’t know.
+
+  (_Another sob._)
+
+JOHN. Is she often like this?
+
+HARRY. She’s an awful ass sometimes.
+
+JOHN. Marghie, what’s up?
+
+MARGARET (_miserably_). Let me alone!
+
+RACHEL. I believe she’s frightened! (_Chants tauntingly_) Marghie’s got
+the bogies, the bogies, the bogies!
+
+MARGARET (_sobbing out loud_). _Oh_ you little fools!
+
+JOHN. Well, what’s the matter with you then?
+
+MARGARET (_after a pause_). I’m older than any of you.
+
+HARRY. Well, _that’s_ a funny reason to be frightened!
+
+MARGARET. It isn’t.
+
+HARRY. It is!
+
+MARGARET (_warming to the argument_). It isn’t, I tell you!
+
+HARRY. _It is!_
+
+MARGARET (_smugly_). That’s simply because you’re all too young to
+know....
+
+JOHN. Oh, hit her, Emily!
+
+EMILY (_sleepily_). Hit her yourself.
+
+HARRY. But, Marghie, why are we here?
+
+  (_No answer._)
+
+Emily, why are we here?
+
+EMILY (_indifferently_). I don’t know. I expect they just wanted to
+change us.
+
+HARRY. I expect so. But they never _told_ us we were going to be
+changed.
+
+EMILY. Grown-ups never _do_ tell us things.
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter 4_
+
+
+The children all slept late, and all woke at the same moment as if
+by clockwork. They sat up, and yawned uniformly, and stretched the
+stiffness out of their legs and backs (they were lying on solid wood,
+remember).
+
+The schooner was steady, and people tramping about the deck. The
+main-hold and fore-hold were all one: and from where they were they
+could see the main-hatch had been opened. The captain appeared
+through it legs first, and dropped onto the higgledy-piggledy of the
+_Clorinda’s_ cargo.
+
+For some time they simply stared at him. He looked uneasy, and was
+talking to himself as he tapped now this case with his pencil, now
+that; and presently shouted rather fiercely to people on deck.
+
+‘All right, all right,’ came from above the injured voice of the mate.
+‘There’s no such hurry as all that.’
+
+On which the captain’s mutterings to himself swelled, as if ten people
+were conversing at once in his chest.
+
+‘May we get up yet?’ asked Rachel.
+
+Captain Jonsen spun round--he had forgotten their existence.
+
+‘Eh?’
+
+‘May we get up, please?’
+
+‘You can go to the debble.’ He muttered this so low the children did
+not hear it. But it was not lost on the mate.
+
+‘Hey! Ey! Ey!’ he called down, reprovingly.
+
+‘Yes! Get up! Go on deck! Here!’ The captain viciously set up a short
+ladder for them to climb through the hatch.
+
+They were greatly astonished to find the schooner was no longer at sea.
+Instead, she was snugly moored against a little wooden wharf, in a
+pleasant land-locked bay; with a pleasant but untidy village, of white
+wooden houses with palm-leaf roofs, behind it; and the tower of a small
+sandstone church emerging from the abundant greenery. On the quay were
+a few well-dressed loungers, watching the preparations for unloading.
+The mate was directing the labours of the crew, who were rigging the
+cargo-gaff and getting ready for a hot morning’s work.
+
+The mate nodded cheerfully to the children, but thereafter took no
+notice of them, which was rather mortifying. The truth is that the man
+was busy.
+
+At the same time there emerged from somewhere aft a collection of the
+oddest-looking young men. Margaret decided she had never seen such
+beautiful young men before. They were slim, yet nicely rounded: and
+dressed in exquisite clothes (if a trifle threadbare). But their faces!
+Those beautiful olive-tinted ovals! Those large, black-ringed, soft
+brown eyes, those unnaturally carmine lips! They minced across the
+deck, chattering to each other in high-pitched tones, ‘twittering like
+a cage of linnets ...’ and made their way on shore.
+
+‘Who are they?’ Emily asked the captain, who had just re-emerged from
+below.
+
+‘Who are who?’ he murmured absently, without looking round. ‘Oh, those?
+Fairies.’
+
+‘_Hey! Yey! Yey!_’ cried the mate, more disapprovingly than ever.
+
+‘_Fairies?_’ cried Emily in astonishment.
+
+But Captain Jonsen began to blush. He went crimson from the nape of his
+neck to the bald patches on the top of his head, and left.
+
+‘He is _silly_!’ said Emily.
+
+‘I wonder if we go onto the land yet,’ said Edward.
+
+‘We’d better wait until we’re told, hadn’t we, Emily?’ said Harry.
+
+‘I didn’t know England would be like this,’ said Rachel: ‘it’s very
+like Jamaica.’
+
+‘This isn’t England,’ said John, ‘you stupid!’
+
+‘But it must be,’ said Rachel: ‘England’s where we’re going.’
+
+‘We don’t get to England yet,’ said John: ‘it must be somewhere we’re
+stopping at, like when we got all those turtles.’
+
+‘I like stopping at places,’ said Laura.
+
+‘I don’t,’ said Rachel.
+
+‘I do, though,’ pursued Laura.
+
+‘Where are those young men gone?’ Margaret asked the mate. ‘Are they
+coming back?’
+
+‘They’ll just come back to be paid, after we’ve sold the cargo,’ he
+answered.
+
+‘Then they’re not living on the ship?’ she pursued.
+
+‘No, we hired them from Havana.’
+
+‘But what for?’
+
+He looked at her in surprise: ‘Why, those are the “ladies” we had on
+board, to look like passengers--You didn’t think they were real ladies,
+did you?’
+
+‘What, were they dressed up?’ asked Emily excitedly: ‘What fun!’
+
+‘I like dressing up,’ said Laura.
+
+‘I don’t,’ said Rachel, ‘I think it’s babyish.’
+
+‘_I_ thought they were real ladies,’ admitted Emily.
+
+‘We’re a respectable ship’s crew, we are,’ said the mate, a trifle
+stiffly--and without too good logic, when you come to think of it.
+‘Here, you go on shore and amuse yourselves.’
+
+So the children went ashore, holding hands in a long row, and
+promenaded the town in a formal sort of way. Laura wanted to go off by
+herself, but the others would not let her: and when they returned, the
+line was still unbroken. They had seen all there was to see, and no one
+had taken the least notice of them (so far as they were aware), and
+they wanted to start asking questions again.
+
+It was, then, a charming little sleepy old place, in its way, this
+Santa Lucia: isolated on the forgotten western end of Cuba between
+Nombre de Dios and the Rio de Puercos: cut off from the open sea by
+the intricate nature of the channels through the reefs and the Banks
+of Isabella, channels only navigable to the practised and creeping
+local coasting craft and shunned like poison by bigger traffic: on land
+isolated by a hundred miles of forest from Havana.
+
+Time was, these little ports of the Canal de Guaniguanico had been
+pretty prosperous, as bases for pirates: but it was a fleeting
+prosperity. There came the heroic attack of an American squadron under
+Captain Allen, in 1823, on the Bay of Sejuapo, their headquarters.
+From that blow (although it took many years to take full effect)
+the industry never really recovered: it dwindled and dwindled, like
+hand-weaving. One could make money much faster in a city like Havana,
+and with less risk (if less respectably). Piracy had long since ceased
+to pay, and should have been scrapped years ago: but a vocational
+tradition will last on a long time after it has ceased to be economic,
+in a decadent form. Now, Santa Lucia--and piracy--continued to exist
+because they always had: but for no other reason. Such a haul as the
+_Clorinda_ did not come once in a blue moon. Every year the amount
+of land under cultivation dwindled, and the pirate schooners were
+abandoned to rot against the wharves or ignominiously sold as traders.
+The young men left for Havana or the United States. The maidens yawned.
+The local grandees increased in dignity as their numbers and property
+dwindled: an idyllic, simple-minded country community, oblivious of the
+outer world and of its own approaching oblivion.
+
+‘I don’t think I should like to live here,’ John decided, when they got
+back to the ship.
+
+Meanwhile the cargo had been unloaded onto the quay: and after the
+siesta a crowd of about a hundred people gathered round, poking and
+discussing. The auction was about to begin. Captain Jonsen tramped
+about rather in the way of everybody, but especially annoying the mate
+by shouting contrary directions every minute. The latter had a ledger,
+and a number of labels with numbers on them which he was pasting onto
+the various bales and packages. The sailors were building a kind of
+temporary stage--the thing was to be done in style.
+
+Every moment the crowd increased. Because they all talked Spanish it
+was a pantomime to the children: like puppets acting, not like real
+people moving and talking. So they discovered what a fascinating game
+it is to watch foreigners, whose very simplest words mean nothing to
+you, and try to guess what they are about.
+
+Moreover, these were all such funny-looking people: they moved about
+as if they were kings, and spat all the time, and smoked thin black
+cigars, the blue smoke of which ascended from their enormous hats as
+from censers.
+
+At one moment there was a diversion--the crowd suddenly gaped, and
+there staggered onto the stage the whole crew of the schooner carrying
+a huge pair of scales: it was always on the point of being too much for
+them, and running suddenly away with them in another direction.
+
+There were quite a number of ladies in the crowd--old ones, they seemed
+to the children. Some were thin and dried up, like monkeys: but most
+were fat, and one was fatter than all of them and treated with the
+greatest respect (perhaps for her moustache). She was the wife of the
+Chief Magistrate--Señora del Illustrious Juzgado del Municipal de Santa
+Lucia, to give her her title. She had a rocking-chair of suitable
+strength and width, which was carried by a short squinting negro and
+set in the very middle of the scene, right in front of the platform.
+There she throned herself: and the negro stood behind her, holding a
+violet silk sunshade over her head.
+
+No one can doubt that she immediately became the most noticeable thing
+in the picture.
+
+She had a powerful bass voice, and when she uttered some jocundity
+(as she repeatedly did), every one heard it, however much they were
+chattering among themselves.
+
+The children, as was their custom, wormed their way without any excess
+of civility through the crowd and grouped themselves round her throne.
+
+The captain either did not know, or suddenly refused to know, a single
+word of Spanish: so the auctioneering devolved on the mate. The latter
+mounted the stage: and with a great assumption of competence began.
+
+But auctioneering is an art: it is as easy to write a sonnet in a
+foreign tongue as to conduct a successful auction. One must have at
+one’s command eloquence without a hitch: the faculty of kindling an
+audience, amusing them, castigating them, converting them, till they
+rattle out increments as a camp-meeting rattles out Amens: till they
+totally forget the worth (and even the nature) of the lot, and begin
+to take a real pride in a long run of bidding--as a champion does in a
+long break at billiards.
+
+This little Viennese had been to a good school, it is true: for he
+had once resided in Wales, where one sees auctioneering in its finest
+flower. In Welsh, or English, or even in his native tongue, he could
+have acquitted himself fairly well: but in Spanish, just that margin of
+power was lacking to him. The audience remained stern, cold, critical,
+bidding grudgingly.
+
+As if this language difficulty were not in itself enough, there sat
+that overpowering old dame on her throne, distracting with her jokes
+whatever vestige of attention he might otherwise have managed to arouse.
+
+When the third lot of coffee came to be dealt with, there was even the
+beginning of a rather nasty row. The children were highly scandalised:
+they had never seen grown-ups being rude to one another before. The
+captain had undertaken the weighing: and it was something to do with a
+habit he had of leaning against the scales while he read them. Being
+short-sighted, he could see the figures much more clearly like that:
+but it displeased the buyers, and they had a lot to say about it.
+
+The captain, mortified, wrung his hands, and began to answer them in
+Danish. They rejoined in Spanish even more stingingly. He stumped off
+in a sulk: they could all conduct his affairs without him, if they
+weren’t prepared to treat him with a little consideration.
+
+But who would be less partial? The mate, angry, maintained that to
+elect one of the buyers was equally objectionable.
+
+Thereon an earthquake began in the fat old lady, and gradually gathered
+enough force to lift her onto her feet. She took John by the shoulders,
+and pushed him before her to the scales. Then in a few witty, ringing
+words she suggested her solution--_he_ should do the weighing.
+
+The audience were pleased: but as soon as John understood he went very
+red, and wanted to escape. The rest of the children, on the other hand,
+were eaten with envy.
+
+‘Mayn’t I help too?’ piped Rachel.
+
+The despairing mate thought he saw just a forlorn hope in this. While
+John was being instructed, he gathered the other children: and out of
+the heap of miscellaneous clothing rigged them all out in a sort of
+fancy dress. Then he gave them the samples to carry round, and the sale
+began anew.
+
+It had now assumed rather the character of a parochial bazaar. Even the
+Vicar was present--though less well shaved than he would have been in
+England, and cunninger-looking. He was one of the only buyers.
+
+The children thoroughly enjoyed themselves, and minced and pranced and
+tugged each other’s turbans. But the crowd was a Latin one, not Nordic:
+and their endearing tricks failed altogether to arouse any interest.
+The sale went worse than ever.
+
+There was only one exception, and that was the important old lady.
+Once her attention had been called (by her own act) to the children,
+it fixed itself on one of them, on Edward. She drew him to her bosom,
+like a mother in melodrama, and with her hairy mouth gave him three
+resounding kisses.
+
+Edward could no more have struggled than if caught by a boa. Moreover,
+the portentous woman fascinated him, as if she had been a boa indeed.
+He lay in her arms limp, self-conscious, and dejected: but without
+active thought of escape.
+
+And so the business went on: on the one hand the unheeded drone of the
+mate, on the other the great creature still keeping up her witticisms,
+still dominating everything: all of a sudden remembering Edward, and
+giving him a couple of kisses like so many bombs: then clean forgetting
+all about him: then remembering him again, and hugging him: then
+dropping her salts: then nearly dropping Edward: then suddenly twisting
+round to launch a dart into the crowd behind her--she was the despair
+of that unhappy auctioneer, who saw lot after lot fall for a tenth of
+its value, or even find no bidder at all.
+
+Captain Jonsen, however, had his own idea of how to enliven a parochial
+bazaar that is proving a frost. He went on board, and mixed several
+gallons of that potion known in alcoholic circles as Hangman’s Blood
+(which is compounded of rum, gin, brandy, and porter). Innocent (merely
+beery) as it looks, refreshing as it tastes, it has the property of
+increasing rather than allaying thirst, and so, once it has made a
+breach, soon demolishes the whole fort.
+
+This he poured out into mugs, merely remarking that it was a noted
+English cordial, and gave it to the children to distribute among the
+crowd.
+
+At once the Cubans began to show more interest in them than when they
+came bearing samples of arrowroot: and with their popularity their
+happiness increased, and like rococo Ganymedekins and Hebelettes they
+darted about the crowd, distributing the enticing poison to all who
+would.
+
+When he saw what was on foot, the mate wiped his mouth in despair.
+
+‘_Oh_ you fool!’ he groaned.
+
+But the captain himself was highly pleased with his ruse: kept rubbing
+his hands, and grinning, and winking.
+
+‘That’ll liven ’em, eh?’
+
+‘Wait and see!’ was all the mate let himself say. ‘You just wait and
+see!’
+
+‘Look at Edward!’ said Emily to Margaret in a pause. ‘It’s perfectly
+sickening!’
+
+It was. The very first mug rendered the fat señora even more motherly.
+Edward by now was fascinated, was in her power completely. He sat and
+gazed up in her little black eyes, his own large brown ones glazed with
+sentiment. He avoided her moustache, it is true: but on her cheek he
+was returning her kisses earnestly. All this, of course, without the
+possibility of their exchanging a single word--pure instinct. ‘With
+a fork drive Nature out ...’ one would gladly have taken a fork to
+Nature, on that occasion.
+
+Meanwhile, on the rest of the crowd the liquor was having exactly the
+effect the mate had foreseen. Instead of stimulating them, it dissolved
+completely whatever vestiges of attention they were still giving to
+the sale. He stepped down from the platform--gave it all up in despair.
+For they had now broken up into little groups, which discussed and
+argued their own affairs as if they were in a café. He in his turn went
+on board, and shut himself in his cabin--Captain Jonsen could deal with
+the mess he had made himself!
+
+But alas! No worse host than Jonsen was ever born: he was utterly
+incapable of either understanding or controlling a crowd. All he could
+think of doing was plying them with more.
+
+For the children the spectacle was an absorbing one. The whole nature
+of these people, as they drank, seemed to be changing: under their very
+eyes something seemed to be breaking up, like ice melting. Remember
+that to them this was a pantomime: no word spoken to explain, and so
+the eyes exercised a peculiar clearness.
+
+It was rather as if the whole crowd had been immersed in water, and
+something dissolved out of them while the general structure yet
+remained. The tone of their voices changed, and they began to talk much
+slower, to move more slowly and elaborately. The expression of their
+faces became more candid, and yet more mask-like: hiding less, there
+was also less to hide. Two men even began to fight: but they fought
+so incompetently it was like a fight in a poetic play. Conversation,
+which before had a beginning and an end, now grew shapeless and
+interminable, and the women laughed a lot.
+
+One old gentleman in most respectable clothes settled himself on the
+dirty ground at full length, with his head in the shade of the throned
+lady, spread a handkerchief over his face, and went to sleep: three
+other middle-aged men, holding each other with one hand to establish
+contact and using the other for emphasis, kept up a continuous clacking
+talk, that faltered intolerably though never quite stopping--like a
+very old engine.
+
+A dog ran in and out among them all wagging its tail, but no one kicked
+it. Presently it found the old gentleman who was asleep on the ground,
+and began licking his ear excitedly: it had never had such a chance
+before.
+
+The old lady also had fallen asleep, a little crookedly--she might
+even have slipped off her chair if her negro had not buttressed her
+up. Edward got off her, and went and joined the other children rather
+shamefacedly: but they would not speak to him.
+
+Jonsen looked round him perplexedly. Why had Otto abandoned the sale,
+now the crowd were all primed and ready? Probably he had some good
+reason, though. He was an incomprehensible man, that mate: but clever.
+
+The truth is that Captain Jonsen was himself a man with a very weak
+head for liquor, and so he very seldom touched it, and knew little of
+the subtler aspects of its effects.
+
+He paced up and down the dusty wharf at his usual slow shuffle, his
+head sunk forward in wretchedness, occasionally wringing his hands in
+the naturalest way, and even whimpering. When the priest came up to him
+confidentially and offered him a price for all that remained unsold he
+simply shook his head and continued his shuffle.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was something a little nightmare-like in the whole scene which
+riveted the children’s attention, and was very near the border of
+frightening them. It was with something of a struggle that at last
+Margaret said ‘Let’s go on the ship.’ So they all went on board: and
+feeling a little unprotected even there, descended into the hold, which
+was the safest place because they had already slept in it. They sat
+down on the kelson without doing or saying much, still with a vague
+apprehension, till boredom at last eliminated it.
+
+‘Oh I _wish_ I had brought my paint-box!’ said Emily, with a sigh
+fetched right up from her boots.
+
+
+ii
+
+That night, after they had all gone to bed, they saw in a half-asleep
+state a lantern bobbing up and down in the open hatch. It was held by
+José, the little monkeyfied one (they had already decided he was the
+nicest of the crew). He was grinning winningly, and beckoning to them.
+
+Emily was too sleepy to move, and so were Laura and Rachel: so leaving
+them to lie, the others--Margaret, Edward, and John--scrambled on deck.
+
+It was mysteriously quiet. Not a sign of the crew, but for José. In the
+bright starlight the town looked unnormally beautiful: there was music
+coming from one of the big houses up by the church. José conducted them
+ashore and up to this house: tiptoed up to the jalousies and signed to
+them to follow him.
+
+As the light struck his face it became transfigured, so affected was he
+by the opulence within.
+
+The children craned up to the level of the windows and peered in too,
+oblivious of the mosquitoes making havoc of their necks.
+
+It was a very grand sight. This was the house of the Chief Magistrate:
+and he was giving a dinner in honour of Captain Jonsen and his mate.
+There he sat at the head of the table, in uniform; very stiff, yet his
+little beard even stiffer than himself. His was the kind of dignity
+that grows from reserve and stillness, from freezing every minute like
+game which scents the hunter: while in total contrast to him there sat
+his wife (the important señora who had made so much of Edward), far
+more impressive than her husband, but doing it not by dignity but by
+that calculated abandon and vulgarity which transcends dignity. Indeed,
+her flinging about got the greater part of its effect from the very
+formality of her setting.
+
+When the children arrived at the window she must even have been
+discussing the size of her own belly: for she suddenly seized the shy
+hand of the mate, and made him, willy-nilly, feel it, as if to clench
+an argument.
+
+As for her husband, he did not seem to see her: nor did the servants:
+she was such a very great lady.
+
+But it was not her, it was the meal which raped José’s attention. It
+was certainly an impressive one. Together on the table were tomato
+soup, mountain mullet, cray-fish, a huge red-snapper, land-crabs, rice
+and fried chicken, a young turkey, a small joint of goat-mutton, a wild
+duck, beef steak, fried pork, a dish of wild pigeons, sweet potatoes,
+yuca, wine, and guavas and cream.
+
+It was a meal which would take a long time.
+
+Captain Jonsen and the lady appeared to be on excellent terms: he
+pressing some project on her, and she, without the least loss of
+amiability, putting it on one side. What they were talking about,
+of course, the children could not hear. As a matter of fact, it was
+themselves. Captain Jonsen was trying to get the lady to discuss the
+disposal of his impromptu nursery: the most reasonable solution being
+plainly to leave them at Santa Lucia, more or less in her charge. But
+she was adept at eluding the importunate. It was not till the banquet
+was over that he realised he had failed to make any arrangement
+whatever.
+
+But long before this, before the dinner was ended and the dance began,
+the children were tired of the peep-show. So José tiptoed away with
+them, down to the back streets by the dock. Presently they came to a
+mysterious door at the bottom of a staircase, with a negro standing
+as if on guard. But he made no effort to stop them, and, José leading
+them, they climbed several flights to a large upper room.
+
+The air was one you could hardly push through. The place was crowded
+with negroes, and a few rather smudgy whites: among whom they
+recognised most of the rest of the crew of the schooner. At the far end
+was the most primitive stage you ever saw: there was a cradle on it,
+and a large star swung on the end of a piece of string. There was to be
+a nativity-play--rather early in the season. While the Chief Magistrate
+entertained the pirate captain and mate, the priest had got this up in
+honour of the pirate crew.
+
+A nativity-play, with real cattle.
+
+The whole audience had arrived an hour early, so as to see the entry of
+the cow. The children were just in time for this.
+
+The room was in the upper part of a warehouse, which had been built,
+through some freak of vanity, in the English fashion, several stories
+high; and was provided with the usual large door opening onto
+nothingness, with a beam-and-tackle over it. Many the load of gold-dust
+and arrowroot which must have once been hoisted into it: now, like most
+of the others at Santa Lucia, it had long since ceased to be used.
+
+But to-day a new rope had been rove through the block: and a broad
+belly-band put round the waist of the priest’s protesting old cow.
+
+Margaret and Edward lingered timidly near the top of the stairs; but
+John, putting his head down and burrowing like a mole, was not content
+till he had reached the open doorway. There he stood looking out into
+the darkness: where he saw a slowly revolving cow treading the air a
+yard from the sill, while at each revolution a negro reached out to
+the utmost limit of balance, trying to catch her by the tail and draw
+her to shore.
+
+John, in his excitement, leaned out too far. He lost his balance and
+fell clear to the ground, forty feet, right on his head.
+
+José gave a cry of alarm, sprang onto the cow’s back, and was instantly
+lowered away--just as if the cinema had already been invented. He must
+have looked very comic. But what was going on inside him the while it
+is difficult to know. Such a responsibility does not often fall on an
+old sailor; and he would probably feel it all the more for that reason.
+As for the crowd beneath, they made no attempt to touch the body till
+José had completed his descent: they stood back and let him have a good
+look at it, and shake it, and so on. But the neck was quite plainly
+broken.
+
+Margaret and Edward, however, had not any clear idea of what was going
+on, since they had not actually seen John fall. So they were rather
+annoyed when two of the schooner’s crew appeared and insisted on their
+coming back to bed at once. They wanted to know where John was: but
+even more they wanted to know where José was, and why they weren’t to
+be allowed to stay. However they obeyed, in the impossibility of asking
+questions, and started back to bed.
+
+Just as they were about to go on board the schooner, they heard a huge
+report on their left, like a cannon. They turned; and looking past
+the quiet, silver town, with its palm-groves, to the hills behind,
+they saw a large ball of fire, travelling at a tremendous rate. It was
+quite close to the ground: and not very far off either--just beyond the
+Church. It left a wake of the most brilliant blue, green, and purple
+blobs of light. For a while it hovered: then it burst, and the air was
+shortly charged with a strong sulphurous smell.
+
+They were all frightened, the sailors even more than the children, and
+hastened on board.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the small hours, Edward suddenly called Emily in his sleep. She woke
+up: ‘What is it?’
+
+‘It’s rather cow-catching, isn’t it?’ he asked anxiously, his eyes
+tight shut.
+
+‘What’s the matter?’
+
+He did not answer, so she roused him--or thought she had.
+
+‘I only wanted to see if you were a _real_ Cow-catching Zomfanelia,’ he
+explained in a kind voice: and was immediately deep asleep again.
+
+In the morning they might easily have thought the whole thing a
+dream--if John’s bed had not been so puzzlingly empty.
+
+Yet, as if by some mute flash of understanding, no one commented
+on his absence. No one questioned Margaret, and she offered no
+information. Neither then nor thereafter was his name ever mentioned by
+anybody: and if you had known the children intimately you would never
+have guessed from _them_ that he had ever existed.
+
+
+iii
+
+The children’s only enemy on board the schooner (which presently put to
+sea again, with them still on board) was the big white pig. (There was
+a little black fellow, too.)
+
+He was a pig with no decision of mind. He could never choose a place
+to lie for himself; but was so ready to follow any one else’s opinion,
+that whatever position you took up he immediately recognised as the
+best, the only site: and came and routed you out of it. Seeing how rare
+shady patches of deck are in a calm, or dry patches in a stiff breeze,
+this was a most infernal nuisance. One is so defenceless against big
+pigs when lying on one’s back.
+
+The little black one could be a nuisance also, it is true--but that was
+only from excess of friendliness. He hated to be left out of any party:
+nay more, he hated lying on inanimate matter if a living couch was to
+be found.
+
+On the north beach of Cape San Antonio it is possible to land a boat,
+if you pick your spot. About fifty yards through the bushes there are a
+couple of acres of open ground: cross this, and among some sharp coral
+rocks in the scrub on the far side are two wells, the northernmost the
+better of the two.
+
+So, being becalmed off the Mangrove Keys one morning, Jonsen sent a
+boat on shore to get water.
+
+The heat was extreme. The ropes hung like dead snakes, the sails as
+heavy as ill-sculptured drapery. The iron stanchion of the awning
+blistered any hand that touched it. Where the deck was unsheltered, the
+pitch boiled out of the seams. The children lay gasping together in the
+small shade, the little black pig squealing anxiously till he found a
+comfortable stomach to settle down on.
+
+The big white pig had not found them yet.
+
+From the silent shore came an occasional gun-shot. The water-party
+were potting pigeons. The sea was like a smooth pampas of quicksilver:
+so steady you could not split shore from reflection, till the casual
+collision of a pelican broke the phantom. The crew were mending sails,
+under the awning, with infinite slowness: all except one negro, who
+straddled the bowsprit in his trousers, admiring his own grin in the
+mirror beneath. The sun lit an iridescent glimmer on his shoulders: in
+such a light even a negro could not be black.
+
+Emily was missing John badly: but the little black pig snuffled in
+supreme content, his snout buried amicably in her armpit.
+
+When the boatload returned, they had other game besides pigeons and
+grey land-crabs. They had stolen a goat from some lonely fisherman.
+
+It was just as they came up over the side that the big white pig
+discovered the party under the awning, and prepared for the attack. But
+the goat at that moment bounded nimbly from the bulwarks: and without
+even stopping to look round, swallowed his chin and charged. He caught
+the old pig full in the ribs, knocking his wind out completely.
+
+Then the battle began. The goat charged, the pig screamed and hustled.
+Each time the goat arrived at him the pig yelled as if he was killed;
+but each time the goat drew back the pig advanced towards him. The
+goat, his beard flying like a prophet’s, his eyes crimson and his
+scut as lively as a lamb’s at the teat, bounded in, bounded back into
+the bows for a fresh run: but at each charge his run grew shorter and
+shorter. The pig was hemming him in.
+
+Suddenly the pig gave a frightful squeal, chiefly in surprise at his
+own temerity, and pounced. He had got the goat cornered against the
+windlass: and for a few flashing seconds bit and trampled.
+
+It was a very chastened goat which was presently led off to his
+quarters: but the children were prepared to love him for ever, for the
+heroic bangs he had given the old tyrant.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But he was not entirely inhuman, that pig. That same afternoon, he was
+lying on the hatch eating a banana. The ship’s monkey was swinging on a
+loose tail of rope; and spotting the prize, swung further and further
+till at last he was able to snatch it from between his very trotters.
+You would never have thought that the immobile mask of a pig could wear
+a look of such astonishment, such dismay, such piteous injury.
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter 5_
+
+
+When Destiny knocks the first nail in the coffin of a tyrant, it is
+seldom long before she knocks the last.
+
+It was the very next morning that the schooner, in the lightest of
+airs, was sidling gently to leeward. The mate was at the wheel,
+shifting his weight from foot to foot with that rhythmic motion many
+steersmen affect, the better to get the feel of a finicky helm; and
+Edward was teaching the captain’s terrier to beg, on the cabin-top. The
+mate shouted to him to hang on to something.
+
+‘Why?’ said Edward.
+
+‘_Hang on!_’ cried the mate again, spinning the wheel over as fast as
+he could to bring her into the wind.
+
+The howling squall took her, through his promptness, almost straight
+in the nose; or it would have carried all away. Edward clung to the
+skylight. The terrier skidded about alarmedly all over the cabin-top,
+slipped off onto the deck, and was kicked by a dashing sailor clean
+through the galley door. But not so that poor big pig, who was taking
+an airing on deck at the time. Overboard he went, and vanished to
+windward, his snout (sometimes) sticking up manfully out of the water.
+God, Who had sent him the goat and the monkey for a sign, now required
+his soul of him. Overboard, too, went the coops of fowls, three
+new-washed shirts, and--of all strange things to get washed away--the
+grind-stone.
+
+Up out of his cabin appeared the captain’s shapeless brown head,
+cursing the mate as if it was _he_ who had upset the apple-cart. He
+came up without his boots, in grey wool socks, and his braces hanging
+down his back.
+
+‘Get below!’ muttered the mate furiously. ‘I can manage her!’
+
+The captain did not, however: still in his socks, he came up on deck
+and took the wheel out of the mate’s hand. The latter went a dull
+brick-red: walked for’ard: then aft again: then went below and shut
+himself in his cabin.
+
+In a few moments the wind had combed up some quite hearty waves: then
+it blew their tops off, and so flattened the sea out again, a sea that
+was black except for little whipt-up fountains of iridescent foam.
+
+‘Get my boots!’ bellowed Jonsen at Edward.
+
+Edward dashed down the companion with alacrity. It is a great moment,
+one’s first order at sea; especially when it comes in an emergency. He
+reappeared with a boot in each hand, and a lurch flung him boots and
+all at the captain’s feet. ‘Never carry things in both hands,’ said the
+captain, smiling pleasantly.
+
+‘Why?’ asked Edward.
+
+‘Keep one hand to lay hold with.’
+
+There was a pause.
+
+‘Some day I will teach you the three Sovereign Rules of Life.’ He shook
+his head meditatively. ‘They are very wise. But not yet. You are too
+young.’
+
+‘Why not?’ asked Edward. ‘When shall I be old enough?’
+
+The captain considered, going over the Rules in his head.
+
+‘When you know which is windward and which is leeward, then I will
+teach you the first rule.’
+
+Edward made his way forward, determined to qualify as soon as he
+possibly could.
+
+When the worst of the squall was over they got the advantage of it, the
+schooner lying over lissomly and spinning along like a race-horse. The
+crew were in great spirits--chaffing the carpenter, who, they declared,
+had thrown his grind-stone overboard as a lifebuoy for the pig.
+
+The children were in good spirits also. Their shyness was all gone now.
+The schooner lying over as she did, her wet deck made a most admirable
+toboggan-slide; and for half an hour they tobogganed happily on their
+bottoms from windward to leeward, shrieking with joy, fetching up in
+the lee-scuppers, which were mostly awash, and then climbing from thing
+to thing to the windward bulwarks raised high in the air, and so all
+over again.
+
+Throughout that half hour, Jonsen at the wheel said not a single word.
+But at last his pent-up irritation broke out:
+
+‘Hi! You! Stop that!’
+
+They gazed at him in astonishment and disillusion.
+
+There is a period in the relations of children with any new grown-up
+in charge of them, the period between first acquaintance and the first
+reproof, which can only be compared to the primordial innocence of
+Eden. Once a reproof has been administered, this can never be recovered
+again.
+
+Jonsen now had done it.
+
+But he was not content with that--he was still bursting with rage:
+
+‘Stop it! Stop it, I tell you!’
+
+(They had already done so, of course.)
+
+The whole unreasonableness, the monstrousness of the imposition of
+these brats on his ship suddenly came over him, and summed itself up in
+a single symbol:
+
+‘If you go and wear holes in your drawers, do you think _I_ am going to
+mend them?--Lieber Gott! What do you think I am, eh? What do you think
+this ship is? What do you think we all are? To mend your drawers for
+you, eh? _To mend ... your ... drawers?_’
+
+There was a pause, while they all stood thunderstruck.
+
+But even now he had not finished:
+
+‘Where do you think you’ll get new ones, eh?’ he asked, in a voice
+explosive with rage. Then he added, with an insulting coarseness of
+tone: ‘And I’ll not have you going about my ship without them! See?’
+
+Scarlet to the eyes with outrage they retreated to the bows. They
+could hardly believe so unspeakable a remark had crossed human lips.
+They assumed an air of lightness, and talked together in studied loud
+voices: but their joy was dashed for the day.
+
+So it was that--small as a man’s hand--a spectre began to show over
+their horizon: the suspicion at last that this was _not_ all according
+to plan, that they might even not be wanted. For a while their actions
+showed the unhappy wariness of the uninvited guest.
+
+Later in the afternoon, Jonsen, who had not spoken again, but looked
+from time to time acutely miserable, was still at the wheel. The mate
+had shaved himself and put on shore clothes, as a parable: he now
+appeared on deck: pretended not to see the captain, but strolled like a
+passenger up to the children and entered into conversation with them.
+
+‘If I’m not fit to steer in foul weather, I’m not fit to steer in
+fair!’ he muttered, but without glancing at the captain. ‘He can take
+the helum all day and night, for all the help _I’ll_ give him!’
+
+The captain appeared equally not to see the mate. He looked quite ready
+to take both watches till kingdom come.
+
+‘If _he’d_ been at the wheel when that squall struck us,’ said the mate
+under his voice but with biting passion, ‘he’d have lost the ship! He’s
+no more eye for a squall coming than a sucker-fish! And he knows it,
+too: that’s what makes him go on this way!’
+
+The children did not answer. It shocked them deeply to have to see
+a grown-up, a should-be Olympian, displaying his feelings. In exact
+opposition to the witnesses at the Transfiguration, they felt it would
+have been good for them to be almost anywhere rather than there. He
+was totally unconscious of their discomfort, however: too self-occupied
+to notice how they avoided catching his eye.
+
+‘Look! There’s a steamship!’ exclaimed Margaret, with much too bright a
+brightness.
+
+The mate glowered at it.
+
+‘Aye, they’ll be the death of us, those steamers,’ he said. ‘Every year
+there’s more of them. They’ll be using them for men-of-war next, and
+then where’ll we be? Times are bad enough without steamers.’
+
+But while he spoke he wore a preoccupied expression, as if he were more
+concerned with what was going on at the back of his mind than with what
+went on in the front.
+
+‘Did you ever hear about what happened when the first steamer put to
+sea in the Gulf of Paria?’ he asked, however.
+
+‘No, what?’ asked Margaret, with an eagerness that even exceeded the
+necessities of politeness in its falsity.
+
+‘She was built on the Clyde, and sailed over. (Nobody thought of using
+steam for a long ocean voyage in those days.) The Company thought they
+ought to make a to-do--to popularise her, so to speak. So the first
+time she put to sea under her own power, they invited all the big-wigs
+on board: all the Members of Assembly in Trinidad, and the Governor
+and his Staff, and a Bishop. It was the Bishop what did the trick.’
+
+His story died out: he became completely absorbed in watching sidelong
+the effect of his bravado on the captain.
+
+‘Did what?’ asked Margaret.
+
+‘Ran ’em aground.’
+
+‘But what did they let him steer for?’ asked Edward. ‘They might have
+known he couldn’t!’
+
+‘Edward! How dare you talk about a Bishop in that rude way!’ admonished
+Rachel.
+
+‘It wasn’t the steamer he ran aground, sonny,’ said the mate: ‘it was a
+poor innocent little devil of a pirate craft, that was just beating up
+for the Boca Grande in a northerly breeze.’
+
+‘Good for him!’ said Edward. ‘How did he do it?’
+
+‘They were all sea-sick, being on a steamer for the first time: the way
+she rolls, not like a decent sailing-vessel. There wasn’t a man who
+could stay on deck--except the Bishop, and he just thrived on it. So
+when the poor little pirate cut under her bows, and seen her coming up
+in the eye of the wind, no sail set, with a cloud of smoke amidships
+and an old Bishop bung in the middle of the smoke, and her paddles
+making as much turmoil as a whale trying to scratch a flea in its ear,
+he just beached his vessel and took to the woods. Never went to sea
+again, he didn’t; started growing cocoa-nuts. But there was one poor
+fish was in such a hurry he broke his leg, and they came ashore and
+found him. When he saw the Bishop coming for him he started yelling out
+it was the Devil.’
+
+‘O-oh!’ gasped Rachel, horror-struck.
+
+‘How silly of him,’ said Edward.
+
+‘I don’t know so much!’ said the mate. ‘He wasn’t too far wrong! Ever
+since that, they’ve been the death of our profession, Steam and the
+Church ... what with steaming, and what with preaching, and steaming
+and preaching.... Now that’s a funny thing,’ he broke off, suddenly
+interested by what he was saying: ‘_Steam_ and the _Church_! What have
+they got in common, eh? Nothing, you’d say: you’d think they’d fight
+each other cat-and-dog: but no: they’re thick as two thieves ... thick
+as thieves.--Not like in the days of Parson Audain.’
+
+‘Who was he?’ asked Margaret helpfully.
+
+‘He was a right sort of a parson, he was, _yn wyr iawn_! He was Rector
+of Roseau--oh, a long time back.’
+
+‘Here! Come and take this wheel while I have a spell!’ grunted the
+captain.
+
+‘I couldn’t well say _how_ long back,’ continued the mate in a loud,
+unnatural, and now slightly exultant voice: ‘forty years or more.’
+
+He began to tell the story of the famous Rector of Roseau: one of the
+finest pathetic preachers of his age, according to contemporaries;
+whose appearance was fine, gentle, and venerable, and who supplemented
+his stipend by owning a small privateer.
+
+‘Here! Otto!’ called Jonsen.
+
+But the mate had a long recital of the parson’s misfortunes before him:
+beginning with the capture of his schooner (while smuggling negroes to
+Guadaloupe) by another privateer, from Nevis; and how the parson went
+to Nevis, posted his rival’s name on the court-house door, and stood
+on guard there with loaded pistols for three days in the hope the man
+would come and challenge him.
+
+‘What, to fight a _duel_?’ asked Harry.
+
+‘But wasn’t he a clergyman, you said?’ asked Emily.
+
+But duels, it appeared, did not come amiss to this priest. He fought
+thirteen altogether in his life, the mate told them: and on one
+occasion, while waiting for the seconds to reload, he went up to his
+opponent, suggested ‘just a little something to fill in time, good
+sir’--and knocked him flat with his fist.
+
+This time, however, his enemy lay low: so he fitted out a second
+schooner, and took command of her, week-days, himself. His first quarry
+was an apparently harmless Spanish merchantman: but she suddenly opened
+fourteen masked gun-ports and it was he who had to surrender. All his
+crew were massacred but himself and his carpenter, who hid behind a
+water-cask all night.
+
+‘But I don’t understand,’ said Margaret: ‘was he a pirate?’
+
+‘Of course he was!’ said Otto the mate.
+
+‘Then _why_ did you say he was a clergyman?’ pursued Emily.
+
+The mate looked as puzzled as she did. ‘Well, he was Rector of Roseau,
+wasn’t he? And B.A., B.D.? Anyway, he was Rector until the new Governor
+listened to some cock-and-bull story against him, and made him resign.
+He was the best preacher they ever had--he’d have been a Bishop one
+day, if some one hadn’t slandered him to the Governor!’
+
+‘Otto!’ called the captain in a conciliatory voice. ‘Come over here, I
+want to speak to you.’
+
+But the deaf and exulting mate had plenty of his story still to run:
+how Audain now turned trader, and took a cargo of corn to San Domingo,
+and settled there: how he challenged two black generals to a duel, and
+shot them both, and Christophe threatened to hang him if they died.
+But the parson (having little faith in Domingan doctors) escaped by
+night in an open boat and went to St. Eustatius. There he found many
+religions but no ministers; so he recommenced clergyman of every kind:
+in the morning he celebrated a mass for the Catholics, then a Lutheran
+service in Dutch, then Church of England matins: in the evening he sang
+hymns and preached hell-fire to the Methodists. Meanwhile his wife, who
+had more tranquil tastes, lived at Bristol: so he now married a Dutch
+widow, resourcefully conducting the ceremony himself.
+
+‘But I _don’t_ understand!’ said Emily despairingly: ‘Was he a real
+clergyman?’
+
+‘Of course he wasn’t,’ said Margaret.
+
+‘But he couldn’t have married himself _himself_ if he wasn’t,’ argued
+Edward. ‘Could he?’
+
+The mate heaved a sigh.
+
+‘But the English Church aren’t like that nowadays,’ he said. ‘They’re
+all against us.’
+
+‘I should think not, indeed!’ pronounced Rachel slowly, in a deep
+indignant voice. ‘He was a very wicked man!’
+
+‘He was a most respectable person,’ replied the mate severely, ‘and a
+_wonderful_ pathetic preacher!--You may take it they were chagrined at
+Roseau, when they heard St. Eustatius had got him!’
+
+Captain Jonsen had lashed the wheel, and came up, his face piteous with
+distress.
+
+‘Otto! Mein Schatz...!’ he began, laying his great bear’s-arm round the
+mate’s neck. Without more ado they went below together, and a sailor
+came aft unbidden and took the wheel.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ten minutes later the mate reappeared on deck for a moment, and sought
+out the children.
+
+‘What’s the captain been saying to you?’ he asked. ‘Flashed out at you
+about something, did he?’
+
+He took their complex, uncomfortable silence for assent.
+
+‘Don’t you take too much notice of what he says,’ he went on. ‘He
+flashes out like that sometimes; but a minute after he could eat
+himself, fair eat himself!’
+
+The children stared at him in astonishment: what on earth was he trying
+to say?
+
+But he seemed to think he had explained his mission fully: turned, and
+once more went below.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For hours a merry but rather tedious hubble-bubble, suggesting liquor,
+was heard ascending from the cabin skylight. As evening drew on, the
+breeze having dropped away almost to a calm, the steersman reported
+that both Jonsen and Otto were now fast asleep, their heads on each
+other’s shoulders across the cabin table. As he had long forgotten what
+the course was, but had been simply steering by the wind, and there was
+now no wind to steer by, he (the steersman) concluded the wheel could
+get on very well without him.
+
+The reconciliation of the captain and the mate deserved to be
+celebrated by all hands with a blind.
+
+A rum-cask was broached: and the common sailors were soon as
+unconscious as their betters.
+
+Altogether this was one of the unpleasantest days the children had
+spent in their lives.
+
+When dawn came, every one was still pretty incapable, and the neglected
+vessel drooped uncertainly. Jonsen, still rather unsteady on his feet,
+his head aching and his mind Napoleonic but muddled, came on deck and
+looked about him. The sun had come up like a searchlight: but it was
+about all there was to be seen. No land was anywhere in sight, and the
+sea and sky seemed very uncertain as to the most becoming place to
+locate their mutual firmament. It was not till he had looked round and
+round a fair number of times that he perceived a vessel, up in what by
+all appearances must be sky, yet not very far distant.
+
+For some little while he could not remember what it is a pirate
+captain does when he sees a sail; and he felt in no mood to overtax his
+brain by trying to. But after a time it came back unbidden--one gives
+chase.
+
+‘Give chase!’ he ordered solemnly to the morning air: and then went
+below again and roused the mate, who roused the crew.
+
+No one had the least idea where they were, or what kind of a craft
+this quarry might be: but such considerations were altogether too
+complicated for the moment. As the sun parted further from his
+reflection a breeze sprang up: so the sails were trimmed after a
+fashion, and chase was duly given.
+
+In an hour or two, as the air grew clearer, it was plain their quarry
+was a merchant brig, not too heavily laden, and making a fair pace: a
+pace, indeed, which in their incompetently trimmed condition they were
+finding it pretty difficult to equal. Jonsen shuffled rapidly up and
+down the deck like a shuttle, passing his woof backwards and forwards
+through the real business of the ship. He was hugging himself with
+excitement, trying to evolve some crafty scheme of capture. The chase
+went on: but noon passed, the distance between the two vessels was
+barely, if at all, lessened. Jonsen, however, was much too optimistic
+to realise this.
+
+It used to be a common device of pirates when in chase of a vessel to
+tow behind them a spare topmast, or some other bulky object. This would
+act as a drogue, or brake: and the pursued, seeing them with all sail
+set apparently doing their utmost, would under-estimate their powers of
+speed. Then when night fell the pirate would haul the spar on board,
+overtake the other vessel rapidly, and catch it unprepared.
+
+There were several reasons why this device was unsuitable to the
+present occasion. First and most obviously, it was doubtful whether, in
+their present condition, they were capable of overtaking the brig at
+all, leaving such handicaps altogether out of consideration. A second
+was that the brig showed no signs of alarm. She was proceeding on her
+voyage at her natural pace, quite unaware of the honour they were doing
+her.
+
+However, Captain Jonsen was nothing if not a crafty man; and during
+the afternoon he gave orders for a spare spar to be towed behind as I
+have described. The result was that the schooner lost ground rapidly:
+and when night fell they were at least a couple of miles further from
+the brig than they had been at dawn. When night fell, of course, they
+hauled the spar on board and prepared for the last act. They followed
+the brig by compass through the hours of darkness, without catching
+sight of her. When morning came, all hands crowded expectantly at the
+rail.
+
+But the brig was vanished. The sea was as bare as an egg.
+
+If they were lost before, now they were double-lost. Jonsen did
+not know where he might be within two hundred miles; and being no
+sextant-man, but an incurable dead-reckoner, he had no means of finding
+out. This did not worry him very greatly, however, because sooner or
+later one of two things might happen: he might catch sight of some bit
+of land he recognised, or he might capture some vessel better informed
+than himself. Meanwhile, since he had no particular destination, one
+bit of sea was much the same to him as another.
+
+The piece he was wandering in, however, was evidently out of the main
+track of shipping; for days went by, and weeks, without his coming even
+so near to effecting a capture as he had been in the case of the brig.
+
+But Captain Jonsen was not sorry to be out of the public eye for a
+while. Before he had left Santa Lucia, news had reached him of the
+_Clorinda_ putting into Havana; and of the fantastic tale Marpole
+was telling. The ‘twelve masked gun-ports’ had amused him hugely,
+since he was altogether without artillery: but when he heard Marpole
+accused him of murdering the children--Marpole, that least reputable
+of skunks--his anger had broken out in one of its sudden explosions.
+For it was unthinkable--during those first few days--that he would ever
+touch a hair of their heads, or even speak a cross word to them. They
+were still a sort of holy novelty then: it was not till their shyness
+had worn off that he had begun to regret so whole-heartedly the failure
+of his attempt to leave them behind with the Chief Magistrate’s wife.
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter 6_
+
+
+The weeks passed in aimless wandering. For the children, the lapse
+of time acquired once more the texture of a dream: things ceased
+happening: every inch of the schooner was now as familiar to them as
+the _Clorinda_ had been, or Ferndale: they settled down quietly to
+grow, as they had done at Ferndale, and as they would have done, had
+there been time, on the _Clorinda_.
+
+And then an event did occur, to Emily, of considerable importance. She
+suddenly realised who she was.
+
+There is little reason that one can see why it should not have happened
+to her five years earlier, or even five later; and none, why it should
+have come that particular afternoon.
+
+She had been playing houses in a nook right in the bows, behind the
+windlass (on which she had hung a devil’s-claw as a door-knocker); and
+tiring of it was walking rather aimlessly aft, thinking vaguely about
+some bees and a fairy queen, when it suddenly flashed into her mind
+that she was _she_.
+
+She stopped dead, and began looking over all of her person which
+came within the range of eyes. She could not see much, except a
+fore-shortened view of the front of her frock, and her hands when she
+lifted them for inspection: but it was enough for her to form a rough
+idea of the little body she suddenly realised to be hers.
+
+She began to laugh, rather mockingly. ‘Well!’ she thought, in effect:
+‘Fancy _you_, of all people, going and getting caught like this!--You
+can’t get out of it now, not for a very long time: you’ll have to go
+through with being a child, and growing up, and getting old, before
+you’ll be quit of this mad prank!’
+
+Determined to avoid any interruption of this highly important
+occasion, she began to climb the ratlines, on her way to her favourite
+perch at the mast-head. Each time she moved an arm or a leg in this
+simple action, however, it struck her with fresh amusement to find
+them obeying her so readily. Memory told her, of course, that they
+had always done so before: but before, she had never realised how
+surprising this was.
+
+Once settled on her perch, she began examining the skin of her hands
+with the utmost care: for it was _hers_. She slipped a shoulder out of
+the top of her frock; and having peeped in to make sure she really was
+continuous under her clothes, she shrugged it up to touch her cheek.
+The contact of her face and the warm bare hollow of her shoulder gave
+her a comfortable thrill, as if it was the caress of some kind friend.
+But whether the feeling came to her through her cheek or her shoulder,
+which was the caresser and which the caressed, that no analysis could
+tell her.
+
+Once fully convinced of this astonishing fact, that she was now Emily
+Bas-Thornton (why she inserted the ‘now’ she did not know, for she
+certainly imagined no transmigrational nonsense of having been any one
+else before), she began seriously to reckon its implications.
+
+First, what agency had so ordered it that out of all the people in the
+world who she might have been, she was this particular one, this Emily:
+born in such-and-such a year out of all the years in Time, and encased
+in this particular rather pleasing little casket of flesh? Had she
+chosen herself, or had God done it?
+
+At this, another consideration: who was God? She had heard a terrible
+lot about Him, always: but the question of His identity had been left
+vague, as much taken for granted as her own. Wasn’t she perhaps God,
+herself? Was it that she was trying to remember? However, the more she
+tried, the more it eluded her. (How absurd, to disremember such an
+important point as whether one was God or not!) So she let it slide:
+perhaps it would come back to her later.
+
+Secondly, why had all this not occurred to her before? She had been
+alive for over ten years now, and it had never once entered her head.
+She felt like a man who suddenly remembers at eleven o’clock at night,
+sitting in his own arm-chair, that he had accepted an invitation to go
+out to dinner that night. There is no reason for him to remember it
+now: but there seems equally little why he should not have remembered
+it in time to keep his engagement. How could he have sat there all the
+evening without being disturbed by the slightest misgiving? How could
+Emily have gone on being Emily for ten years without once noticing this
+apparently obvious fact?
+
+It must not be supposed that she argued it all out in this ordered,
+but rather long-winded fashion. Each consideration came to her in a
+momentary flash, quite innocent of words: and in between her mind
+lazed along, either thinking of nothing or returning to her bees and
+the fairy queen. If one added up the total of her periods of conscious
+thought, it would probably reach something between four and five
+seconds; nearer five, perhaps; but it was spread out over the best part
+of an hour.
+
+Well then, granted she was Emily, what were the consequences, besides
+enclosure in that particular little body (which now began on its
+own account to be aware of a sort of unlocated itch, most probably
+somewhere on the right thigh), and lodgment behind a particular pair of
+eyes?
+
+It implied a whole series of circumstances. In the first place, there
+was her family, a number of brothers and sisters from whom, before, she
+had never entirely dissociated herself; but now she got such a sudden
+feeling of being a discrete person that they seemed as separate from
+her as the ship itself. However, willy-nilly she was almost as tied to
+them as she was to her body. And then there was this voyage, this ship,
+this mast round which she had wound her legs. She began to examine it
+with almost as vivid an illumination as she had studied the skin of her
+hands. And when she came down from the mast, what would she find at the
+bottom? There would be Jonsen, and Otto, and the crew: the whole fabric
+of a daily life which up to now she had accepted as it came, but which
+now seemed vaguely disquieting. What was going to happen? Were there
+disasters running about loose, disasters which her rash marriage to the
+body of Emily Thornton made her vulnerable to?
+
+A sudden terror struck her: did any one know? (Know, I mean, that she
+was some one in particular, Emily--perhaps even God--not just any
+little girl.) She could not tell why, but the idea terrified her.
+It would be bad enough if they should discover she was a particular
+person--but if they should discover she was God! At all costs she must
+hide _that_ from them.--But suppose they knew already, had simply been
+hiding it from her (as guardians might from an infant king)? In that
+case, as in the other, the only thing to do was to continue to behave
+as if she did not know, and so outwit them.
+
+But if she was God, why not turn all the sailors into white mice, or
+strike Margaret blind, or cure somebody, or do some other Godlike act
+of the kind? Why should she hide it? She never really asked herself
+why: but instinct prompted her strongly of the necessity. Of course,
+there was the element of doubt (suppose she had made a mistake, and
+the miracle missed fire): but more largely it was the feeling that she
+would be able to deal with the situation so much better when she was a
+little older. Once she had declared herself there would be no turning
+back; it was much better to keep her godhead up her sleeve for the
+present.
+
+Grown-ups embark on a life of deception with considerable misgiving,
+and generally fail. But not so children. A child can hide the most
+appalling secret without the least effort, and is practically secure
+against detection. Parents, finding that they see through their child
+in so many places the child does not know of, seldom realise that, if
+there is some point the child really gives his mind to hiding, their
+chances are nil.
+
+So Emily had no misgivings when she determined to preserve her secret,
+and needed have none.
+
+Down below on the deck the smaller children were repeatedly crowding
+themselves into a huge coil of rope, feigning sleep and then suddenly
+leaping out with yelps of panic and dancing round it in consternation
+and dismay. Emily watched them with that impersonal attention one gives
+to a kaleidoscope. Presently Harry spied her, and gave a hail.
+
+‘Emilee-ee! Come down and play House-on-fire!’
+
+At that, her normal interests momentarily revived. Her stomach as it
+were leapt within her sympathetically toward the game. But it died in
+her as suddenly; and not only died, but she did not even feel disposed
+to waste her noble voice on them. She continued to stare without making
+any reply whatever.
+
+‘Come on!’ shouted Edward.
+
+‘Come and play!’ shouted Laura. ‘Don’t be a pig!’
+
+Then in the ensuing stillness Rachel’s voice floated up:
+
+‘Don’t call her, Laura, we don’t really want her.’
+
+
+ii
+
+But Emily was completely unaffected--only glad that for the present
+they were all right by themselves. She was already beginning to feel
+the charge of the party a burden.
+
+It had automatically devolved on her with the defection of Margaret.
+
+It was puzzling, this Margaret business. She could not understand it,
+and it disturbed her. It dated back really to that night, about a week
+ago, when she herself had so unaccountably bitten the captain. The
+memory of her own extraordinary behaviour gave her now quite a little
+shiver of alarm.
+
+Everybody had been very drunk that night, and making a terrible
+racket--it was impossible to get to sleep. So at last Edward had asked
+her to tell them a story. But she was not feeling ‘storyable,’ so
+they had asked Margaret; all except Rachel, who had begged Margaret
+not to, because she wanted to think, she said. But Margaret had been
+very pleased at being asked, and had begun a very stupid story about a
+princess who had lots and lots of clothes and was always beating her
+servant for making mistakes and shutting him up in a dark cupboard.
+The whole story, really, had been nothing but clothes and beating, and
+Rachel had _begged_ her to stop.
+
+In the middle, a sort of rabble of sailors had come down the ladder,
+very slowly and with much discussion. They stood at the bottom in a
+knot, swaying a little and all turned inwards on one of their number.
+It was so dark one could not see who this was. They were urging him to
+do something--he hanging back.
+
+‘Oh, damn it!’ he cried in a thick voice. ‘Bring me a light, I can’t
+see where dey are!’
+
+It was the voice of the captain--but how altered! There was a sort of
+suppressed excitement in it. Some one lit a lantern and held it up in
+the middle. Captain Jonsen stood on his legs half like a big sack of
+flour, half like a waiting tiger.
+
+‘What do you want?’ Emily had asked kindly.
+
+But Captain Jonsen stood irresolute, shifting his weight from foot to
+foot as if he was steering.
+
+‘You’re drunk, aren’t you?’ Rachel had piped, loudly and disapprovingly.
+
+But it was Margaret who had behaved most queerly. She had gone yellow
+as cheese, and her eyes large with terror. She was shivering from head
+to foot as if she had the fever. It was absurd. Then Emily remembered
+how stupidly frightened Margaret had been the very first night on the
+schooner.
+
+At that moment Jonsen had staggered up to Emily, and putting one hand
+under her chin had begun to stroke her hair with the other. A sort of
+blind vertigo seized her: she caught his thumb and bit as hard as she
+could: then, terrified at her own madness, dashed across the hold to
+where the other children were gathered in a wondering knot.
+
+‘What _have_ you done!’ cried Laura, pushing her away angrily: ‘Oh you
+wicked girl, you’ve hurt him!’
+
+Jonsen was stamping about, swearing and sucking his thumb. Edward had
+produced a handkerchief, and between them all they had managed to tie
+it up. He stood staring at the bandaged member for a few moments: shook
+his head like a wet retriever and retreated on deck, dang-danging under
+his breath. Margaret had then been so sick they thought she must really
+have caught fever, and they couldn’t get any sense out of her at all.
+
+As Emily, with her new-found consciousness, recapitulated the scene, it
+was like re-reading a story in a book, so little responsibility did she
+feel for the merely mechanical creature who had bitten the captain’s
+thumb. Nor was she even very interested: it had been queer, but then
+there was very little in life which didn’t seem queer, now.
+
+As for Jonsen, he and Emily had avoided each other ever since, by
+mutual consent. She indeed had been in Coventry with everybody for
+biting him; none of the other children would play with her all the
+next day, and she recognised that she thoroughly deserved it--it was a
+_mad_ thing to have done. And yet Jonsen, in avoiding her, had himself
+more the air of being ashamed than angry ... which was unaccountable.
+
+But what interested her more was the curious way Margaret had gone on,
+those next few days.
+
+For some time she had behaved very oddly indeed. At first she seemed
+exaggeratedly frightened of all the men: but then she had suddenly
+taken to following them about the deck like a dog--not Jonsen, it is
+true, but Otto especially. Then suddenly she had departed from them
+altogether and taken up her quarters in the cabin. The curious thing
+was that now she avoided them all utterly, and spent all her time with
+the sailors: and the sailors, for their part, seemed to take peculiar
+pains not only not to let her speak to, but even not to let her be seen
+by the other children.
+
+Now they hardly saw her at all: and when they did she seemed so
+different, they hardly recognised her: though where the difference lay
+it would be hard to say.
+
+Emily, from her perch at the mast-head, could just see the girl’s head
+now, through the cabin skylight. Further forward, José had joined the
+children at their game, and was crawling about on hands and knees with
+all of them on his back--a fire-engine, of course, such as they had
+seen in the illustrated magazines from England.
+
+‘Emily!’ called Harry: ‘Come and play!’
+
+Down with a rush fell the curtain on all Emily’s cogitations. In a
+second she was once more a happy little animal--_any_ happy little
+animal. She slid down the shrouds like a real sailor, and in no time
+was directing the fire-fighting operations as imperiously as any other
+of this brigade of superintendents.
+
+
+iii
+
+That night in the Parliament of Beds there was raised at last a
+question which you may well be surprised had not been raised before.
+Emily had just reduced her family to silence by sheer ferocity, when
+Harry’s rapid, nervous, lisping voice piped up:
+
+‘Emily, Emily may I ask you a question, please?’
+
+‘Go to sleep!’
+
+There was a moment’s whispered confabulation.
+
+‘But it’s very important, please, and we all want to know.’
+
+‘What?’
+
+‘Are these people pirates?’
+
+Emily sat bolt upright with astonishment.
+
+‘Of course not!’
+
+Harry sounded rather crestfallen.
+
+‘I don’t know ... I just thought they might....’
+
+‘But they _are_!’ declared Rachel firmly. ‘Margaret told me!’
+
+‘Nonsense!’ said Emily. ‘There aren’t any pirates nowadays.’
+
+‘Margaret said,’ went on Rachel, ‘that time we were shut up on the
+other ship she heard one of the sailors calling out pirates had come on
+board.’
+
+Emily had an inspiration.
+
+‘No, you silly, he must have said _pilots_.’
+
+‘What are pilots?’ asked Laura.
+
+‘They Come On Board,’ explained Emily, lamely. ‘Don’t you remember that
+picture in the dining-room at home, called The Pilot Comes On Board?’
+
+Laura listened with rapt attention. The explanation of what pilots were
+was not very illuminating; but then she did not know what pirates were
+either. So you might think the whole discussion meant very little to
+her, but there you would be wrong: the question was evidently important
+to the older ones, therefore she gave her whole mind to listening.
+
+The pirate heresy was considerably shaken. How could they say for
+certain which word Margaret had really heard? Rachel changed sides.
+
+‘They can’t be pirates,’ she said. ‘Pirates are wicked.’
+
+‘Couldn’t we ask them?’ Edward persisted.
+
+Emily considered.
+
+‘I don’t think it would be very polite.’
+
+‘I’m sure they wouldn’t mind,’ said Edward. ‘They’re awfully decent.’
+
+‘I think they mightn’t like it,’ said Emily. In her heart she was
+afraid of the answer; and if they were pirates, it would here again be
+better to pretend not to know.
+
+‘I know!’ she said. ‘Shall I ask the Mouse with the Elastic Tail?’
+
+‘Yes, do!’ cried Laura. It was months since the oracle had been
+consulted; but her faith was still perfect.
+
+Emily communed with herself in a series of short squeaks.
+
+‘He says they are _Pilots_,’ she announced.
+
+‘Oh,’ said Edward deeply: and they all went to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter 7_
+
+
+Edward often thought, as he strode scowling up and down the deck by
+himself, that this was exactly the life for him. What a lucky boy he
+was, to have tumbled into it by good fortune, instead of having to run
+away to sea as most other people did! In spite of the White Mouse’s
+pronouncement (whom secretly he had long ceased to believe in), he had
+no doubt that this was a pirate vessel: and no doubt either that when
+presently Jonsen was killed in some furious battle the sailors would
+unanimously elect him their captain.
+
+The girls were a great nuisance. A ship was no place for them. When he
+was captain he would have them marooned.
+
+Yet there had been a time when he had wished he was a girl himself.
+‘When I was young,’ he once confided to the admiring Harry, ‘I used to
+think girls were bigger and stronger than boys. Weren’t I silly?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Harry.
+
+Harry did not confide it to Edward, but he also, _now_, wished he was a
+girl. It was not for the same reason: younger than Edward, he was still
+at the amorous age; and because he found the company of girls almost
+magically pleasing, fondly imagined it would be even more so if he were
+one himself. He was always finding himself, for being a boy, shut out
+from their most secret councils. Emily of course was too old to count
+as female in his eyes: but to Rachel and Laura he was indiscriminately
+devoted. When Edward was captain, he would be mate: and when he
+imagined this future, it consisted for the most part in rescuing
+Rachel--or Laura, _n’importe_--from new and complicated dangers.
+
+They were all by now just as much at home on the schooner as they had
+been in Jamaica. Indeed, nothing very continuous was left of Ferndale
+for the youngest ones: only a number of luminous pictures of quite
+unimportant incidents. Emily of course remembered most things, and
+could put them together. The death of Tabby, for instance: she would
+never forget that as long as she lived. She could recollect, too, that
+Ferndale had tumbled down flat. And her Earthquake: she had been in an
+earthquake, and could remember every detail of _that_. Had it been as a
+result of the earthquake that Ferndale had tumbled down? That sounded
+likely. There had been quite a high wind at that time, too.... She
+could remember that they had all been bathing when the earthquake had
+come, and then had ridden somewhere on ponies. But they had been _in_
+the house when it fell down: she was pretty sure of that. It was all
+a little difficult to join up.--Then, when was it she had found that
+negro village? She could remember with a startling clearness bending
+down and feeling among the bamboo roots for the bubbling spring, then
+looking round and seeing the black children scampering away up the
+clearing. That must have been years and years ago. But clearer than
+everything was that awful night when Tabby had stalked up and down the
+room, his eyes blazing and his fur twitching, his voice melodious with
+tragedy, until those horrible black shapes had flown in through the
+fanlight and savaged him out into the bush. The horror of the scene was
+even increased because it had once or twice come back to her in dreams,
+and because when she dreamt it (though it seemed the same) there was
+always some frightful difference. One night (and that was the worst of
+all) she had rushed out to rescue him, when her darling faithful Tabby
+had come up to her with the same horrible look on his face the captain
+had worn that time she bit his thumb, and had chased her down avenues
+and avenues and avenues and avenues of cabbage-palms, with Exeter House
+at the end of them never getting any nearer however much she ran. She
+knew, of course, it was not the real Tabby, but a sort of diabolic
+double: and Margaret had sat up an orange tree jeering at her, gone as
+black as a negro.
+
+One of the drawbacks of life at sea was the cockroaches. They were
+winged. They infested the fore-hold, and the smell they made was
+horrible. One had to put up with them. But one didn’t do much washing
+at sea: and it was a common thing to wake up in the morning and find
+the brutes had gnawed the quick from under one’s nails, or gnawed all
+the hard skin off the soles of one’s feet, so that one could hardly
+walk. Anything in the least greasy or dirty they set on at once.
+Button-holes were their especial delight. One did little washing: fresh
+water was too valuable, and salt water had practically no effect.
+From handling tarry ropes and greasy ironwork their hands would have
+disgraced a slum-child. There is a sailor saying which includes a peck
+of dirt in the mariner’s monthly rations: but the children on the
+schooner must have often consumed far more.
+
+Not that it was a dirty ship--the fo’c’sle probably was, but the
+Nordicism of captain and mate kept the rest looking clean enough. But
+even the cleanest-looking ship is seldom clean to the touch. Their
+clothes José washed occasionally with his own shirt: and in that
+climate they were dry again by the morning.
+
+Jamaica had faded into the past: England, to which they had supposed
+they were going, and of which a very curious picture had formerly
+been built up in their minds by their parents’ constant references to
+it, receded again into the mists of myth. They lived in the present,
+adapted themselves to it, and might have been born in a hammock and
+christened at a binnacle before they had been there many weeks. They
+seemed to have no natural fear of heights, and the farther they were
+above the deck, the happier. On a calm day Edward used to hang by his
+knees from the cross-trees in order to feel the blood run into his
+head. The flying-jib, too, which was usually down, made an admirable
+cocoon for hide-and-seek: one took a firm grip of the hanks and
+robands, and swathed oneself in the canvas. Once, suspecting Edward was
+hidden there, instead of going out on the jib-boom to look, the other
+children cast off the down-haul and then all together gave a great tug
+at the halyard which nearly pitched him into the sea. The shark myth
+is greatly exaggerated: it is untrue, for instance, that they can take
+a leg clean off at the hip--their bite is a tearing one, not a clean
+cut: and a practised bather can keep them off easily with a welt on
+the nose each time they turn over to strike[1]: but all the same,
+once overboard there would have been little hope for a small boy like
+Edward: and a severe wigging they all got for their prank.
+
+Often several of those thick, rubber-like protuberances would follow
+the vessel for hours--perhaps in the hope of just some such antic.
+
+Sharks were not without their uses, however: it is well known that
+Catch a Shark Catch a Breeze, so when a breeze was needed the sailors
+baited a big hook and presently hauled one on board with the winch. The
+bigger he was, the better breeze was hoped for: and his tail was nailed
+to the jib-boom. One day they got a great whacking fellow on board,
+and having cut off his jaw some one heaved it into the ship’s latrine
+(which no one was so lubberly as to use for its proper purpose) and
+thought no more about it. One wildish night, however, old José did go
+there, and sat full on that wicked _cheval de frise_. He yelled like
+a madman: and the crew were better pleased than they had been with
+any joke that year, and even Emily thought if only it had been less
+improper how funny it would have been. It would certainly have puzzled
+an archæologist, faced with José’s mummy, to guess how he came by those
+curious scars.
+
+The ship’s monkey also added a lot to the ship’s merriment. One day
+some sucker-fish had fixed themselves firmly to the deck, and he
+undertook to dislodge them. After a few preliminary tugs, he braced
+three legs and his tail against the deck and lunged like a madman.
+But they would not budge. The crew were standing round in a ring, and
+he felt his honour was at stake: somehow, they _must_ be removed. So,
+disgusting though they must have tasted to a vegetarian, he set to and
+ate them, right down to the sucker, and was loudly applauded.
+
+Edward and Harry often talked over how they would distinguish
+themselves in the next engagement. Sometimes they would rehearse it:
+storm the galley with uncouth shouts, or spring into the main rigging
+and order every one to be thrown into the sea. Once, as they went into
+battle,
+
+‘I am armed with a sword and a pistol!’ chanted Edward:
+
+‘And I am armed with a key and half a whist-le!’ chanted the more
+literal Harry.
+
+They took care to hold those rehearsals when the real pirates were out
+of the way: it was not so much that they feared the criticism of the
+professional eye as that it was not yet openly recognised what they
+were; and all the children shared Emily’s instinct that it was better
+to pretend not to know--a sort of magical belief, at bottom.
+
+Although Laura and Rachel were thrown together a great deal, and were
+all one goddess to Harry, their inner lives differed in almost every
+respect. It was a matter of principle, as will have been noticed, for
+them to disagree on every point: but it was a matter of nature too.
+Rachel had only two activities. One was domestic. She was never happy
+unless surrounded by the full paraphernalia of a household: she left
+houses and families wherever she went. She collected bits of oakum and
+the moultings of a worn-out mop, wrapped them in rags and put them to
+sleep in every nook and cranny. _Guai_, who woke one of her twenty or
+thirty babies--worse still, should he clear it away! She could even
+summon up maternal feelings for a marline-spike, and would sit up
+aloft rocking it in her arms and crooning. The sailors avoided walking
+underneath: for such an infant, if dropped from a height, will find its
+way through the thickest skull (an accident which sometimes befalls
+unpopular captains).
+
+Further, there was hardly an article of ship’s use, from the windlass
+to the bosun’s chair, but she had metamorphosed it into some sort of
+furniture: a table or a bed or a lamp or a tea-set: and marked it as
+her property: and what she had marked as her property no one might
+touch--if she could prevent it. To parody Hobbes, she claimed as her
+own whatever she had mixed her imagination with; and the greater
+part of her time was spent in angry or tearful assertions of her
+property-rights.
+
+Her other interest was moral. She had an extraordinary vivid, _simple_
+sense, that child, of Right and Wrong--it almost amounted to a
+precocious ethical genius. Every action, her own or any one else’s, was
+immediately judged good or bad, and uncompromisingly praised or blamed.
+She was never in doubt.
+
+To Emily, Conscience meant something very different. She was still
+only half aware of that secret criterion within her: but was terrified
+of it. She had not Rachel’s clear divination: she never knew when she
+might offend this inner harpy, Conscience, unwittingly: and lived in
+terror of those brazen claws, should she ever let it be hatched from
+the egg. When she felt its latent strength stir in its pre-natal sleep,
+she forced her mind to other things, and would not even let herself
+recognise her fear of it. But she knew, at the bottom of her heart she
+_knew_, that one day some action of hers would rouse it, something
+awful done quite unwittingly would send it raging round her soul like
+a whirlwind. She might go weeks together in a happy unconsciousness,
+she might have flashes of vision when she knew she was God Himself: but
+at the same time she knew, beyond all doubt, in her innermost being,
+that she was damned, that there never had been any one as wicked as her
+since the world began.
+
+Not so Rachel: to her, Conscience was by no means so depressing
+an affair. It was simply a comfortable mainspring of her life,
+smooth-working, as pleasant as a healthy appetite. For instance, it was
+now tacitly admitted that all these men were pirates. That is, they
+were wicked. It therefore devolved on her to convert them: and she
+entered on her plans for this without a shadow either of misgiving or
+reluctance. Her conscience gave her no pain because it never occurred
+to her as conceivable that she should do anything but follow its
+dictates, or fail to see them clearly. She would try and convert these
+people first: probably they would reform, but if they did not--well,
+she would send for the police. Since either result was right, it
+mattered not at all which Circumstance should call for.
+
+So much for Rachel. The inside of Laura was different indeed:
+something vast, complicated, and nebulous that can hardly be put into
+language. To take a metaphor from tadpoles, though legs were growing
+her gills had not yet dropped off. Being nearly four years old, she
+was certainly a child: and children are human (if one allows the term
+‘human’ a wide sense): but she had not altogether ceased to be a baby:
+and babies of course are not human--they are animals, and have a very
+ancient and ramified culture, as cats have, and fishes, and even
+snakes: the same in kind as these, but much more complicated and vivid,
+since babies are, after all, one of the most developed species of the
+lower vertebrates.
+
+In short, babies have minds which work in terms and categories of their
+own which cannot be translated into the terms and categories of the
+human mind.
+
+It is true they look human--but not so human, to be quite fair, as many
+monkeys.
+
+Subconsciously, too, every one recognises they are animals--why else
+do people always laugh when a baby does some action resembling the
+human, as they would at a praying mantis? If the baby was only a
+less-developed man, there would be nothing funny in it, surely.
+
+Possibly a case might be made out that children are not human either:
+but I should not accept it. Agreed that their minds are not just more
+ignorant and stupider than ours, but differ in kind of thinking (are
+_mad_, in fact): but one can, by an effort of will and imagination,
+think like a child, at least in a partial degree--and even if one’s
+success is infinitesimal it invalidates the case: while one can no more
+think like a baby, in the smallest respect, than one can think like a
+bee.
+
+How then can one begin to describe the inside of Laura, where the
+child-mind lived in the midst of the familiar relics of the baby-mind,
+like a Fascist in Rome?
+
+When swimming under water, it is a very sobering thing suddenly to look
+a large octopus in the face. One never forgets it: one’s respect, yet
+one’s feeling of the hopelessness of any real intellectual sympathy.
+One is soon reduced to mere physical admiration, like any silly
+painter, of the cow-like tenderness of the eye, of the beautiful and
+infinitesimal mobility of that large and toothless mouth, which accepts
+as a matter of course that very water against which you, for your
+life’s sake, must be holding your breath. There he reposes in a fold of
+rock, apparently weightless in the clear green medium but very large,
+his long arms, suppler than silk, coiled in repose, or stirring in
+recognition of your presence. Far above, everything is bounded by the
+surface of the air, like a bright window of glass. Contact with a small
+baby can conjure at least an echo of that feeling in those who are not
+obscured by an uprush of maternity to the brain.
+
+Of course it is not really so cut-and-dried as all this; but often the
+only way of attempting to express the truth is to build it up, like a
+card-house, of a pack of lies.
+
+It was only in Laura’s inner mind, however, that these elaborate
+vestiges of babyhood remained: outwardly she appeared fully a child--a
+rather reserved, odd, and indeed rather captivating one. Her face was
+not pretty, with its heavy eyebrows and reduced chin: but she had a
+power of apt movement, the appropriate attitude for every occasion,
+that was most striking. A child who can show her affection for you,
+for instance, in the very way she plants her feet on the ground,
+has a liberal gift of that bodily genius called charm. Actually,
+this particular one was a rare gesture with her: nine-tenths of her
+life being spent in her own head, she seldom had time to feel at all
+strongly either for or against people. The feelings she thus expressed
+were generally of a more impersonal kind, and would have fascinated
+an admirer of the ballet: and it was all the more remarkable that she
+_had_ developed a dog-like devotion to the reserved and coarse-looking
+captain of the pirates.
+
+No one really contends that children have any insight into character:
+their likings are mostly imaginative, not intuitive. ‘What do you think
+I am?’ the exasperated ruffian had asked on a famous occasion. One
+might well ask what Laura thought he was: and there is no means of
+knowing.
+
+
+ii
+
+Pigs grow quickly, quicker even than children: and much though the
+latter altered in the first month on board, the little black porker
+(whose name by the by was Thunder) altered even more. He soon grew to
+such a size one could not possibly allow him to lie on one’s stomach
+any more: so, as his friendliness did not diminish, the functions
+were reversed, and it became a common thing to find one child, or a
+whole bench of them, sitting on his scaly side. They grew very fond
+of him indeed (especially Emily), and called him their Dear Love,
+their Only Dear, their Own True Heart, and other names. But he had
+only two things he ever said. When his back was being scratched he
+enunciated an occasional soft and happy grunt; and that same phrase
+(only in a different tone) had to serve for every other occasion and
+emotion--except one. When a particularly heavy lot of children sat down
+on him at once, he uttered the faintest ghost of a little moan, as
+affecting as the wind in a very distant chimney, as if the air in him
+was being squeezed out through a pinhole.
+
+One cannot wish for a more comfortable seat than an acquiescent pig.
+
+‘If I was the Queen,’ said Emily, ‘I should most certainly have a pig
+for a throne.’
+
+‘Perhaps she has,’ suggested Harry.
+
+‘He _does_ like being scratched,’ she added presently in a very
+sentimental tone, as she rubbed his scurfy back.
+
+The mate was watching:
+
+‘I should think _you_’d like being scratched, if your skin was in that
+condition!’
+
+‘Oh how disGUSTing you are!’ cried Emily, delighted.
+
+But the idea took root.
+
+‘I don’t think I should kiss him quite so much if I was you,’ Emily
+presently advised Laura, who was lying with her arms tight round his
+neck and covering his briny snout with kisses from ring to ears.
+
+‘My pet! My love!’ murmured Laura, by way of indirect protest.
+
+The wily mate had foreseen that some estrangement would be necessary
+if they were ever to have fresh pork served without salt tears. He
+intended this to be the thin end of the wedge. But alas! Laura’s mind
+was as humoursome an instrument to play as the Twenty-three-stringed
+Lute.
+
+When dinner-time came, the children mustered for their soup and biscuit.
+
+They were not overfed on the schooner: they were given little that
+is generally considered wholesome, or to contain vitamines (unless
+these lurked in the aforesaid peck of dirt): but they seemed none the
+worse. First the cook boiled the various non-perishable vegetables they
+carried in a big pot together for a couple of hours. Then a lump of
+salt beef from the cask forward, having been rinsed in a little fresh
+water, was added, and allowed to simmer with the rest till it was just
+cooked. Then it was withdrawn, and the captain and mate ate their soup
+first and their meat afterwards, out of plates, like gentlemen. After
+that, if it was a week-day, the meat was put to cool on the cabin
+shelf, ready to warm up in to-morrow’s soup, and the crew and children
+ate the liquor with biscuit: but if it was Sunday, the captain took the
+lump of meat and with a benevolent air cut it up in small pieces, as if
+indeed for a nursery, and mixed it up with the vegetables in the huge
+wooden bowl out of which crew and children all dipped. It was a very
+patriarchal way of feeding.
+
+Even at dinner Margaret did not join the others, but ate in the cabin;
+though there were only two plates on the whole ship. Probably she used
+the mate’s when he had finished.
+
+Laura and Rachel fought that day to tears over a particularly succulent
+piece of yam. Emily let them. To make those two agree was a task she
+was wise not to undertake. Besides, she was very busy over her own
+dinner. Edward managed to silence them, however, by declaring in a most
+terrible voice: ‘Shut up or I’ll SABRE you!’
+
+Emily’s estrangement from the captain had reached by now a rather
+uncomfortable stage. When these things are fresh and new the two
+parties avoid meeting, and all is well: but after some days they are
+apt to forget, find themselves on the point of chatting, and then
+suddenly remember that they are not on speaking terms and have to
+retire in confusion. Nothing can be more uncomfortable for a child.
+The difficulty of effecting a reconciliation in this case was that
+both parties felt wholly in the wrong. Each repented the impulse of a
+momentary insanity, and neither had an inkling the other felt the same:
+thus each waited for the other to show signs of forgiveness. Moreover,
+while the captain had far the more serious reason for being ashamed of
+himself, Emily was naturally far the more sensitive and concerned of
+the two: so it about balanced. Thus, if Emily rushed blithely up to the
+captain embracing a flying-fish, caught his eye and slunk round the
+other side of the galley, he put it down to a permanent feeling of
+condemnation and repulsion: blushed a deep purple and stared stonily at
+his wrinkling mainsail--and Emily wondered if he was _never_ going to
+forget that bitten thumb.
+
+But this afternoon things came to a head. Laura was trotting about
+behind him, striking her attitudes. Edward had at last discovered which
+was windward and which was leeward, and had come hot-foot to learn
+the first of the Sovereign Rules of Life: and Emily, with one of her
+wretched lapses of memory, was all agog at his elbow.
+
+Edward was duly catechised and passed.
+
+‘Dis is the first rule,’ said the captain: ‘_Never throw anything to
+windward except hot water or ashes._’
+
+Edward’s face developed exactly the look of bewilderment that was
+intended.
+
+‘But _windward_ is ...’ he began: ‘I mean, wouldn’t they blow ...’ then
+he stopped, wondering if he had got the terms the right way round after
+all. Jonsen was delighted at the success of this ancient joke. Emily,
+trying to stand on one leg, bewildered also, lost her balance and
+clutched at Jonsen’s arm. He looked at her--they all looked at her.
+
+Much the best way of escaping from an embarrassing rencontre, when to
+walk away would be an impossible strain on the nerves, is to retire in
+a series of somersaults. Emily immediately started turning head over
+heels up the deck.
+
+It was very difficult to keep direction, and the giddiness was
+appalling; but she _must_ keep it up till she was out of sight, or die.
+
+Just then, Rachel, who was up the mainmast, dropped, for the first
+time, her marline-spike. She uttered a terrible shriek--for what _she_
+saw was a baby falling to dash its brains out on the deck.
+
+Jonsen gave an ineffectual little grunt of alarm--men can never learn
+to give a full-bodied scream like a woman.
+
+But Emily gave the most desperate yell of all, though several seconds
+after the other two: for the wicked steel stood quivering in the deck,
+having gouged a track through her calf on the way. Her wrought-up
+nerves and sickening giddiness joined with the shock and pain to give a
+heart-rending poignancy to her crying. Jonsen was by her in a second,
+caught her up, and carried her, sobbing miserably, down into the cabin.
+There sat Margaret, bending over some mending, her slim shoulders
+hunched up, humming softly and feeling deadly ill.
+
+‘Get out!’ said Jonsen, in a low, brutal voice. Without a word or sign
+Margaret gathered up her sewing and climbed on deck.
+
+Jonsen smeared some Stockholm tar on a rag, and bound up Emily’s leg
+with more than a little skill, though the tar of course was agonising
+to her. She had cried herself right out by the time he laid her in his
+bunk. When she opened her streaming eyes and saw him bending over her,
+nothing in his clumsy face but concern and an almost overpowering pity,
+she was so full of joy at being at last forgiven that she reached up
+her arms and kissed him. He sat down on the locker, rocking himself
+backwards and forwards gently. Emily dozed for a few minutes: when she
+woke up he was still there.
+
+‘Tell me about when you were little,’ she said.
+
+Jonsen sat on, silent, trying to project his unwieldy mind back into
+the past.
+
+‘When I was a boy,’ he said at last, ‘it wasn’t thought lucky to grease
+your own sea-boots. My Auntie used to grease mine before we went out
+with the lugger.’
+
+He paused for some time.
+
+‘We divided the fish up into six shares--one for the boat, and one for
+each of us.’
+
+That was all. But it was of the greatest interest to Emily, and she
+shortly fell asleep again, supremely happy.
+
+So for several days the captain and mate had to share the latter’s
+bunk, Box-and-Cox; Heaven knows what hole Margaret was banished to.
+The gash in Emily’s leg was one which would take some time to heal. To
+make things worse, the weather became very unsteady: when she was awake
+she was all right, but if she fell asleep she began to roll about the
+bunk, and then, of course, the pain waked her again; which soon reduced
+her to a feverish and nervous condition, although the leg itself was
+going on as well as could be expected. The other children, of course,
+used to come and see her: but they did not enjoy it much, as there was
+nothing to do down in the cabin, once the novelty of admittance to the
+Holy Place had worn off. So their visits were perfunctory and short.
+They must have had a high old time at night, however, by themselves in
+the fore-hold, now that the cat was away. They looked like it, too, in
+the mornings.
+
+Otto used sometimes to come and teach her to make fancy knots, and at
+the same time pour out his grievances against the captain: though these
+latter were always received with an uncomfortable silence. Otto was a
+Viennese by birth, but had stowed away in a Danube barge when he was
+ten years old, had taken to the sea, and thereafter generally served
+in English ships. The only place since his childhood where he had ever
+spent any considerable time on shore was Wales. For some years he had
+sailed coastwise from the once-promising harbour of Portdinlleyn,
+which is now practically dead: and so, as well as German, Spanish, and
+English, he could talk Welsh fluently. It was not a long residence, but
+at an impressionable age; and when he talked to Emily of his past it
+was mostly of his life as a ‘boy’ on the slate-boats. Captain Jonsen
+came of a Danish family settled on the Baltic coast, at Lübeck. He too
+had spent most of his time on English ships. How or when he and Otto
+had first met, or how they had drifted into the Cuban piracy business,
+Emily never discovered. They had plainly been inseparable for many
+years. She preferred letting them ramble on, to asking questions or
+trying to fit things together: she had that sort of mind.
+
+When the knots palled, José sent her a beautiful crochet-hook he had
+carved out of a beef bone: and by pulling threads out of a piece of
+sail-cloth she was able to set to work to crochet doilies for the
+cabin table. But I am afraid that she also drew a lot, till the whole
+of the inside of the bunk was soon as thoroughly scribbled over as
+a palæolithic cave. What the captain would say when he found out
+was a consideration best postponed. The fun was to find knots, and
+unevennesses in the paint, that looked like something; and then with a
+pencil to make them look more like it--putting an eye in the walrus, or
+supplying the rabbit with his missing ear. That is what artists call
+having a proper feeling for one’s material.
+
+Instead of getting better the weather got worse: and the universe soon
+became a very unstable place indeed: it became almost impossible to
+crochet. She had to cling on to the side of the bunk all the time, to
+prevent her leg getting banged.
+
+It was in this inconvenient weather, however, that the pirates chose
+at last to make another capture. It turned out not a rich one: a small
+Dutch steamer, taking a consignment of performing animals to one of Mr.
+Barnum’s predecessors. The captain of the steamer, who was conceited
+in a way that only certain Dutchmen _can_ be conceited, gave them a
+lot of trouble, in spite of the fact that he had practically nothing
+worth taking. He was a first-class sailor: but he was very fair, and
+had no neck. In the end they had to tie him up, bring him on board the
+schooner, and lay him on the cabin floor where Emily could keep an eye
+on him. He reeked of some particularly nauseous brand of cigars that
+made her head swim.
+
+The other children had played quite an important part in the capture.
+They did far better as a badge of innocuousness than even the ‘ladies.’
+The steamer (little more than dressed-up sailing-vessels they were
+then), thoroughly disgruntled at the weather, was wallowing about like
+a porpoise, her decks awash and her funnel over one ear, so to speak:
+so when a boat put out from the schooner, its departure cheered lustily
+by Edward, Harry, Rachel, and Laura, though his pride might resent
+it, the Dutchman never thought of suspecting this presumable offer of
+assistance, and let them come on board.
+
+It was then he began to give trouble, and they had to remove him onto
+the schooner. Their tempers were none too good on finding their booty
+was a lion, a tiger, two bears, and a lot of monkeys: so it is quite
+likely they were none too gentle with him in transit.
+
+The next thing was to discover whether the _Thelma_, like the
+_Clorinda_, carried another, a secret cargo of greater value. They had
+imprisoned all the crew, now, aft: so one by one they were brought up
+on deck and questioned. But either there was no money on board, or
+the crew did not know of it, or would not tell. Most of them, indeed,
+appeared frightened enough to have sold their grandmothers: but some of
+them simply laughed at the pirates’ bogey-bogey business, guessing they
+drew the line at murder in cold blood, sober.
+
+What was done in each case was the same. When each man was finished
+with he was sent forward and shut in the fo’c’sle: and before bringing
+another up from aft one of the pirates would unmercifully belabour a
+roll of sail-cloth with a cat-o’-nine-tails while another yelled like
+the damned. Then a shot was fired in the air, and something thrown
+overboard to make a splash. All this, of course, was to impress those
+still down in the cabin awaiting their turns: and the pretence was
+quite as effective as the reality could have been. But it did no good,
+since probably there was no treasure to disclose.
+
+There was, however, a plentiful supply of Dutch spirits and liqueurs on
+board: and these the pirates found a welcome change after so much West
+Indian rum.
+
+After they had been drinking them for an hour or two Otto had a
+brilliant idea. Why not give the children a circus? They had begged and
+begged to be taken onto the steamer to see the animals. Well, why not
+stage something really magnificent for them--a fight between the lion
+and the tiger, for instance?
+
+No sooner said than done. The children, and every man who could be
+spared, came onto the steamer, and took up positions at safe heights
+in the rigging. The cargo-gaff was rigged, the hatch opened, and the
+two iron cages, with their stale cat-like reek, were hauled up on deck.
+Then the little Malay keepers, who kept twittering to each other in
+their windy tones, were made to open them, that the two monarchs of the
+jungle might come out and do battle.
+
+How they were to be got in again was a question that never occurred to
+any one’s consideration. Yet it is generally supposed to be easier to
+let tigers out of cages than to put them back.
+
+In this case, however, even when the cages were open, neither of the
+beasts seemed very anxious to get out. They lay on the floor growling
+(or groaning) slightly, but making no move except to roll their eyes.
+
+It was very unfortunate for poor Emily that she was missing all this,
+laid by the leg in Jonsen’s stuffy cabin with the Dutch captain to
+guard.
+
+When at first they had been left alone together he had tried to speak
+to her: but unlike so many Dutchmen he did not know a word of English.
+He could just move his head, and he kept turning his eyes first on a
+very sharp knife which some idiot had dropped in a corner of the cabin
+floor, then on Emily. He was asking her to get it for him, of course.
+
+But Emily was terrified of him. There is something much more
+frightening about a man who is tied up than a man who is not tied up--I
+suppose it is the fear he may get loose.
+
+The feeling of not being able to get out of the bunk and escape added
+the true nightmare panic.
+
+Remember that he had no neck, and the cigar-reek.
+
+At last he must have caught the look of fear and disgust in her face,
+where he had expected compassion. He began to act for himself. First
+gently rocking his bound body from side to side, he set himself to roll.
+
+Emily screamed for help, beating with her fist on the bunk: but none
+came. Even the sailors who were left on board were out of ear-shot:
+they were straining all their attention to see what was happening on
+the steamer that wallowed and heaved seventy yards away. There, one
+of the pirates, greatly daring, had descended to the rail and begun
+throwing belaying-pins at the cages, to rouse their occupants. If the
+beasts so much as lashed their tails in response, however, he would
+scuttle up any rope like a frightened mouse. Only the Malay keepers
+remained permanently on deck, taking no notice: sitting on their heels
+in a ring and crooning discordantly through their noses. Probably they
+felt inside much as the lion and tiger did.
+
+After some minutes, however, the pirates grew bolder. Otto came right
+up to one cage, and started poking the tiger’s ribs with a hand-spike.
+But the poor beast was far too sea-sick to be roused even by that.
+Gradually the whole crowd of the spectators descended onto the deck and
+stood round, still not unprepared to bolt, while the drunk mate, and
+even Captain Jonsen (who was perfectly sober), goaded and jeered.
+
+It was not surprising no one heard poor Emily, left alone in the cabin
+with the terrible Dutchman.
+
+She screamed and screamed: but there was no awakening from _this_
+nightmare.
+
+By now he had managed to roll himself, in spite of the motion of the
+vessel, almost within reach of the coveted knife. The veins on his
+forehead stood out with his exertion and the stricture of his bonds.
+His fingers were groping, behind his back, for the edge.
+
+Emily, beside herself with terror, suddenly became possessed by the
+strength of despair. In spite of the agony it caused her leg she flung
+herself out of the bunk, and just managed to seize the knife before he
+could manœuvre his bound hands within reach of it.
+
+In the course of the next five seconds she had slashed and jabbed at
+him in a dozen places: then, flinging the knife towards the door,
+somehow managed to struggle back into the bunk.
+
+The Dutchman, bleeding rapidly, blinded with his own blood, lay still
+and groaned. Emily, her own wound reopened, and overcome with pain and
+terror, fainted. The knife, flung wildly, missed its aim and clattered
+down the steps again onto the cabin floor: and the first witness of the
+scene was Margaret, who presently peered down from the deck above, her
+dulled eyes standing out from her small, skull-like face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+As for Jonsen and Otto, unable by other means to rouse the dormant
+animals, they collected their men and with big levers managed to tilt
+the cages, spilling the beasts out onto the deck.
+
+But not even so would they fight--or even show signs of resentment. As
+they had lain and groaned in their cages, so they now lay and groaned
+on the deck.
+
+They were small specimens of their kind, and emaciated by travel. Otto
+with a sudden oath seized the tiger round its middle and hauled it
+upright on its hind legs: Jonsen did the same by the more top-heavy
+lion: and so the two principals to the duel faced each other, their
+heads lolling over the arms of their seconds.
+
+But in the eyes of the tiger a slight ember of consciousness seemed
+to smoulder. Suddenly it tautened its muscles: a slight effort, yet
+it burst from the merely human grip of Otto like Samson from the new
+ropes--nearly dislocated his arms before he had time to let go.
+Quicker than eye could see, it had cuffed him, rending half his face.
+Tigers are no plaything. Jonsen dropped the huge bulk of the lion
+on top of it, and escaped with Otto through an open door: while the
+pirates, tumbling over each other like people in a burning theatre,
+struggled to get back in the rigging.
+
+The lion rolled clear. The tiger, lurching unsteadily, crept back into
+its cage. The keening Malays took no notice of the whole scene.
+
+And yet, what a scene it had been!
+
+But now the heroic circus was over. Chastened, bruised by each other in
+their panic, the drunken pirates helped the mate into the first of the
+two boats, and pulling helter-skelter in the choppy sea, returned to
+the schooner. One by one they climbed the rail and vaulted on deck.
+
+Sailors have keen noses. They smelt blood at once, and crowded round
+the companion-way: where Margaret still sat, as if numb, on the top
+step.
+
+Emily lay in the bunk below, her eyes shut--conscious again, but her
+eyes shut.
+
+The Dutch captain they could see on the floor, stretched in a pool of
+blood. ‘_But, Gentlemen, I have a wife and children!_’ he suddenly said
+in Dutch, in a surprised and gentle tone: then died, not so much of
+any mortal wound as of the number of superficial gashes he had received.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was plainly Margaret who had done it--killed a bound, defenceless
+man, for no reason at all; and now sat watching him die, with her dull,
+meaningless stare.
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter 8_
+
+
+The contempt they already felt for Margaret, their complete lack of
+pity in her obvious illness and misery, had been in direct proportion
+to the childhood she had belied.
+
+This crime would have seemed to them grave on the part of a grown
+man, in its unrelieved wantonness: but done by one of her years, and
+nurture, it was unspeakable. She was lifted by the arms from the stair
+where she still sat, and without a moment’s hesitation (other than that
+resulting from too many helping hands) was dropped into the sea.
+
+But yet the expression of her face, as--like the big white pig in the
+squall--she vanished to windward, left a picture in Otto’s mind he
+never forgot. She was, after all, his affair.
+
+The Dutchman’s body was fetched up on deck. Captain Jonsen went below:
+and once bent over poor little Emily. She only screwed up her eyes
+tighter, when she felt his hot breath on her face. She did not open
+them till everybody had quite gone--and shut them again when presently
+José came to swab the cabin floor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The second boat, bringing back the rest of the crew and the four
+children, almost ran into Margaret before they saw her. She was
+swimming desperately, but in complete silence: her hair now plastered
+across her eyes and mouth, now floating out on the water as her
+head went under. They lifted her into the boat and set her in the
+stern-sheets with the other children. So it was they found themselves
+together again.
+
+In her sopping condition, the others naturally gave her elbow-room: but
+still, she was among them. They sat and stared at her, their eyes very
+wide and serious, but without speaking. Margaret, her teeth chattering
+with exhaustion, tried ineffectually to wring out the hem of her frock.
+She did not speak either: but nevertheless it was not long before both
+she and the other children felt a sort of thaw setting in between them.
+
+As to the oarsmen, they never troubled their heads as to how she came
+in the water. They supposed she had accidentally slipped over the side:
+but were not particularly interested, especially as they had their work
+cut out manœuvring round to the schooner’s lee and clambering on board.
+There was a tremendous pow-wow going on aft, so that no one noticed
+them arrive.
+
+Once on board, Margaret went straight forward as of old, climbed
+down the ladder into the fore-hold and undressed, the other children
+watching her every movement with an unfeigned interest. Then she
+rolled herself in a blanket, and lay down.
+
+They none of them noticed quite how it happened: but in less than
+half an hour they were all five absorbed in a game of Consequences.
+Presently one of the crew came, peered down the hatch and then shouted
+‘Yes!’ to the rest, and then went away again. But they neither saw nor
+heard him.
+
+From now on, however, the atmosphere of the schooner suffered a change.
+A murder is inclined to have this effect on a small community. As a
+matter of fact, the Dutch captain’s was the first blood to be shed on
+board, in the course of business at any rate (I will not answer for
+private quarrels). The way it had been shed left the pirates profoundly
+shocked, their eyes opened to a depravity of human nature they had not
+dreamt of: but also it gave them an uncomfortable feeling round the
+neck. So long as there was only the circus-prank to avenge, no American
+man-of-war was likely to be despatched in their pursuit: high Naval
+Authorities shrink naturally from any contact with the ridiculous: but
+suppose the steamer put into port, and announced the forcible abduction
+of her captain? Or worse, suppose her mate, with an accursed spy-glass,
+had seen that captain’s bloody body take its last dive? Pursuit would
+be only too likely.
+
+The plea ‘It was none of us men did this wicked deed, but one of our
+young female prisoners,’ was hardly one which could be submitted to a
+jury.
+
+Captain Jonsen had discovered from the steamer’s log where he was: so
+he put the schooner about, and set a course for his refuge at Santa
+Lucia. It was unlikely, he thought, now, that any British man-of-war
+would still be cruising about the scene of the _Clorinda_ episode--they
+had too much to do: and he had reasons (fairly expensive ones) for
+not anticipating any molestation from the Spanish authorities. He did
+not like going home with an empty ship, of course: but that appeared
+inevitable.
+
+The outward sign of this change in the atmosphere of the schooner was a
+spontaneous increase in the strictness of discipline. Not a drop of rum
+was drunk. Watch was kept with the regularity of a line-of-battle ship.
+The schooner became tidier, more seamanlike in every way.
+
+Thunder was slain and eaten the next day, without any regard for the
+feelings of his lovers: indeed, all tenderness towards the children
+vanished. Even José ceased playing with them. They were treated
+with a detached severity not wholly divorced from fear--as if these
+unfortunate men at last realised what diabolic yeast had been
+introduced into their lump.
+
+So sensible were the children themselves of the change that they even
+forgot to mourn for Thunder--excepting Laura, whose face burned an
+angry red for half a day.
+
+But the ship’s monkey, on the other hand, with no pig now to tease,
+nearly died of ennui.
+
+
+ii
+
+The reopening of the wound in her leg made it several days more before
+Emily was fit to be moved from the cabin. During this time she was
+much alone. Jonsen and Otto seldom came below, and when they did were
+too preoccupied to heed her blandishing. She sang, and conversed to
+herself, almost incessantly; only interrupting herself to beseech these
+two, with a superfluity of endearments, to pick up her crochet-hook,
+to look at the animal she had built out of her blanket, to tell her
+a story, to tell her what naughty things they did when they were
+little--how unlike Emily it was, all this gross bidding for attention!
+But as a rule they went away again, or went to sleep, without taking
+the least notice of her.
+
+As well, she told herself, _to_ herself, endless stories: as many
+as there are in _The Arabian Nights_, and quite as involved. But
+the strings of words she used to utter aloud had nothing to do with
+this: I mean, that when she made a sort of narrative noise (which was
+often), she did it for the noise’s sake: the silent, private formation
+of sentences and scenes, in one’s head, is far preferable for real
+story-telling. If you had been watching her then, unseen, you could
+only have told she was doing it by the dramatic expressions of her
+face, and her restless flexing and tossing--and if she had had the
+slightest inkling you were there, the audible rigmarole would have
+started again. (No one who has private thoughts going on loudly in
+his own head is quite sure of their not being overheard unless he is
+providing something else to occupy foreign ears.)
+
+When she sang, however, it was always wordless: an endless succession
+of notes, like a bird’s, fixed to the first vocable handy, and
+practically without tune. Not being musical, there was never any reason
+for her to stop: so one song would often go on for half an hour.
+
+Although José had scrubbed the cabin floor as well as he could, a large
+stain still remained.
+
+At times she let her mind wander about, quite peacefully, in her
+memories of Jamaica: a period which now seemed to her very remote, a
+golden age. How young she must have been! When her imagination grew
+tired, too, she could recall the Anansi stories Old Sam had told her:
+and they often proved the point of departure for new ones of her own.
+
+Also she could remember the creepy things he had told her about
+duppies. _How_ they used to tease the negroes about the supposed duppy
+at the bathing-hole, the duppy of the drowned man! It gave one an
+enormous sense of power, that--not to believe in duppies.
+
+But she found herself taking much less pleasure in duppies now than she
+used.
+
+She even once caught herself wondering what the Dutchman’s duppy would
+look like, all bloody, with its head turned backwards on its shoulders
+and clanking a chain ... it was a momentary flash, the way the banished
+image of Tabby had come back to her. For a moment her head reeled:
+in another she was far from Jamaica, far from the schooner, far from
+duppies, on a golden throne in the remotest East.
+
+The other children were no longer allowed in the cabin to visit her:
+but when she heard their feet scampering overhead, she often conversed
+with them in loud yells. One of these yells from above told her:
+
+‘Marghie’s back, you know.’
+
+‘O-oh.’
+
+After that Emily was silent for a bit, her beautiful, innocent grey
+eyes fixed on the ear of a dwarf at the end of her bunk. Only the
+slight pucker at the top of her nose showed with what intensity she was
+thinking: and the minute drops of sweat on her temples.
+
+But it was not only when there was some outward occasion, like this,
+that she suffered acute distress.
+
+Froth as she might, those times of consciousness, which had begun
+with a moment of such sublime vision, were both growing on her and
+losing their lustre. They were become sinister. Life threatened to be
+no longer an incessant, automatic discharge of energy: more and more
+often, and when least expected, all that would suddenly drop from her,
+and she would remember that she was _Emily_, who had killed ... and
+who was _here_ ... and that Heaven alone knew what was going to happen
+to the incompetent little thing, by what miracle she was going to keep
+her end up.... Whenever this happened, her stomach seemed to drop away
+within her a hundred and fifty feet.
+
+She, like Laura, had one foot each side of a threshold now. As a piece
+of Nature, she was practically invulnerable. But as _Emily_, she
+was absolutely naked, tender. It was particularly cruel that this
+transition should come when so fierce a blast was blowing.
+
+For mark this: any one in bed, with a blanket up to her chin, is in a
+measure safe. She might go through abysms of terror; but once these
+passed, no practical harm had been done. But once she was up and about?
+Suppose it was at some crisis, some call to action, that her Time came
+on her? What appalling blunder could she fail to make?
+
+Oh why must she grow up? Why, for pity’s sake?
+
+Quite apart from these attacks of blind, secret panic, she had other
+times of an ordinary, very rational anxiety. She was ten and a half
+now. What sort of future lay before her, what career? (Their mother
+had implanted in them young, as a matter of principle, girls and
+boys alike, the idea that they would one day have to earn their own
+livings.) I say she was ten and a half: but it seemed such ages since
+she had come on the schooner that she thought she was probably older
+even than that.--Now this life was full of interest: but was it, she
+asked herself, a really useful education? What did it fit her for?
+Plainly, it taught her nothing but to be a sort of pirate too (what
+sort of a pirate, being a girl, was a problem in itself). But as time
+slipped by, it became clearer and clearer that every other life would
+be impossible for her--indeed, for all of them.
+
+Gone, alas, was any shred of confidence that she was God. That
+particular, supreme career was closed to her. But the conviction that
+she was the wickedest person who had ever been born, this would not die
+for much longer. Some appalling Power had determined it: it was no good
+struggling against it. Had she not already committed the most awful of
+crimes ... the most awful of crimes, though, that was not murder, that
+was the mysterious crime against the Holy Ghost, which dwarfed even
+murder ... had she, unwittingly, at some time committed this too? She
+so easily might have, since she did not know what it was. And if that
+were so, no wonder the pity of Heaven was sealed against her!
+
+So the poor little outcast lay shivering and sweating under her
+blanket, her gentle eyes fixed on the ear of the dwarf she had drawn.
+
+But presently she was singing again happily, and hanging right out of
+the bunk to outline in pencil the brown stain on the floor. A touch
+here, a touch there, and it was an old market-woman to the life,
+hobbling along with a bundle on her back! I admit that it staggered
+even Otto a bit when he came in later and saw what she had done.
+
+But when again she lay still on her back, and contemplated the
+practical difficulties of the life ahead of her (even leaving God and
+her Soul and all that on one side), she had not the support of Edward’s
+happy optimism: she was old enough to know how helpless she really was.
+How should she, dependent now for her very life on the kindness of
+those around her, how should she ever acquire the wit and strength to
+struggle against them and their kind?
+
+She had developed by this time a rather curious feeling about Jonsen
+and Otto. In the first place, she had become very fond of them.
+Children, it is true, have a way of becoming more or less attached to
+any one they are in close contact with: but it was more than that,
+deeper. She was far fonder of them than she had ever been of her
+parents, for instance. They, for their part, showed every mild sign
+consonant with their natures of being fond of her: but how could she
+_know_? It would be so easy for adult things like them to dissemble to
+her, she felt. Suppose they really intended to kill her: they could so
+easily hide it: they would behave with exactly this same kindness ... I
+suppose this was the reflection of her own instinct for secretiveness?
+
+When she heard the captain’s step on the stairs, it might be that he
+was bringing her a plate of soup, or it might be that he had come to
+kill her--suddenly, with no warning change of expression on his amiable
+face even at the very end.
+
+If that was his intention, there was nothing whatever she could do
+to hinder him. To scream, struggle, attempt flight--they would be
+absolutely useless, and--well, a breach of decorum. If he chose to keep
+up appearances, it behoved her to do so too. If he showed no sign of
+his intention, she must show no sign of her inkling of it.
+
+That was why, when either of them came below, she would sing on, smile
+at him impishly and confidently, actually plague him for notice.
+
+She was a little fonder of Jonsen than of Otto. Ordinarily, any
+coarseness or malformity of adult flesh is in the highest degree
+repulsive to a child: but the cracks and scars on Jonsen’s enormous
+hands were as interesting to her as the valleys on the moon to a boy
+with a telescope. As he clumsily handled his parallel rulers and
+dividers, fitting them with infinite care to the marks on his chart,
+Emily would lie on her side and explore them, give them all names.
+
+_Why_ must she grow up? _Why_ couldn’t she leave her life always in
+other people’s keeping, to order as if it was no concern of hers?
+
+Most children have something of this feeling. With most children it is
+outweighed: still, they will generally hesitate before telling you
+they prefer to grow up. But then, most children live secure lives,
+and have an at least apparently secure future to grow up to. To have
+already murdered a full-sized man, and to have to keep it for ever
+secret, is not a normal background for a child of ten: to have a
+Margaret one could not altogether banish from one’s thoughts: to see
+every ordinary avenue of life locked against one, only a violent road,
+leading to Hell, open.
+
+She was still on the border-line: so often Child still, and nothing
+but Child ... it needed little conjuring ... Anansi and the Blackbird,
+Genies and golden thrones....
+
+Which is all a rather groping attempt to explain a curious fact: that
+Emily appeared--indeed _was_ rather young for her age: and that this
+was due to, not in spite of, the adventures she had been through.
+
+But this youngness, it burnt with an intenser flame. She had never
+yelled so loud at Ferndale, for sheer pleasure in her own voice, as now
+she yelled in the schooner’s cabin, carolling like a larger, fiercer
+lark.
+
+Neither Jonsen nor Otto were nervous men: but the din she made
+sometimes drove them almost distracted. It was very little use telling
+her to shut up: she only remembered for such a short time. In a minute
+she was whispering, in two she was talking, in five her voice was in
+full blast.
+
+Jonsen was himself a man who seldom spoke to any one. His companionship
+with Otto, though devoted, was a singularly silent one. But when he did
+speak, he hated not to be able to make himself heard at all: even when,
+as was usual, it was himself he was talking to.
+
+
+iii
+
+Otto was at the wheel (there was hardly one of the crew fit to steer).
+His lively mind was occupied with Santa Lucia, and his young lady
+there. Jonsen slipper-sloppered up and down his side of the deck.
+
+Presently, his interest in his subject waning, Otto’s eye was caught by
+the ship’s monkey, which was sporting on its back on the cabin skylight.
+
+That animal, with the same ingenious adaptability to circumstance which
+has produced the human race, had now solved the playmate question. As
+a gambler will play left hand against right, so he fought back legs
+against front. His extraordinary lissomness made the dissociation
+most lifelike: he might not have been joined at the waist at all, for
+all the junction discommoded him. The battle, if good-tempered on
+both sides, was quite a serious one: now, while his hind feet were
+doing their best to pick out his eyes, his sharp little teeth closed
+viciously on his own private parts.
+
+From below the skylight, too, came tears and cries for help that one
+might easily have taken for real if they had not been occasionally
+interrupted by such phrases as ‘It’s no good: I shall cut off your head
+just the same!’
+
+Captain Jonsen was thinking about a little house in far-off, shadowy
+Lübeck--with a china stove ... it didn’t do to talk about retiring:
+above all, one must never say aloud ‘This is my last voyage,’ even
+addressing oneself. The sea has an ironic way of interpreting it in her
+own fashion, if you do. Jonsen had seen too many skippers sail on their
+‘last voyage’--and never return.
+
+He felt acutely melancholy, not very far from tears: and presently he
+went below. He wanted to be alone.
+
+Emily by now was conducting, in her head, a secret conversation
+with John. She had never done so before: but to-day he had suddenly
+presented himself to her imagination. Of course his disappearance
+was strictly taboo between them: what they chiefly discussed was
+the building of a magnificent raft, to use in the bathing-hole at
+Ferndale; just as if they had never left the place.
+
+When she heard the captain’s step, so nearly surprising her at it, she
+blushed a deep red. She felt her cheeks still hot when he arrived. As
+usual, he did not even glance at her. He plumped down on a seat, put
+his elbows on the cabin table, his head in his hands, and rocked it
+rhythmically from side to side.
+
+‘Look, Captain!’ she insisted. ‘Do I look pretty like this? Look!
+_Look!_ Look, _do_ I look pretty like this?’
+
+For once he raised his head, turned, and considered her at length. She
+had rolled up her eyes till only the whites showed, and turned her
+under lip inside out. With her first finger she was squashing her nose
+almost level with her cheeks.
+
+‘No,’ he said simply, ‘you do not.’ Then he returned to his cogitation.
+
+She stuck out her tongue as well, and waggled it.
+
+‘Look!’ she went on, ‘Look!’
+
+But instead of looking at her, he let his eye wander round the cabin.
+It seemed changed somehow--emasculated: a little girl’s bedroom, not a
+man’s cabin. The actual physical changes were tiny: but to a meticulous
+man they glared. The whole place smelt of children.
+
+Unable to contain himself, he crammed on his cap and burst up the
+stairs.
+
+On deck, the others were romping round the binnacle, wildly excited.
+
+‘_Damn!_’ cried Jonsen at the sight of them, stamping in an
+ungovernable rage.
+
+Of course his slippers came off, and one of them skiddered up the deck.
+
+What devil entered into Edward I do not know: but the sight was too
+much for him. He seized the slipper and rushed off with it, shrieking
+with delight. Jonsen roared at him: he passed it to Laura, and was soon
+dancing up and down at the end of the jib-boom. Edward, of all people!
+The timid, respectful Edward!
+
+Laura could hardly carry the enormous thing: but she clasped it
+tight in her arms, lowered her head, and with the purposeful air of
+a rugger-player ran back with it very fast up the deck, apparently
+straight into Jonsen’s arms. At the last moment she dodged him neatly:
+continued right on past Otto at the wheel, just as serious and just as
+fast, and forward again on the port-side. Jonsen, no quick mover at any
+time, stood in his socks and roared himself hoarse. Otto was shaking
+with laughter like a jelly.
+
+This mad intoxication, which had flashed from child to child, now
+dropped a spark into the crew. They were already peering excitedly
+from the fo’c’sle hatch, grins struggling with outrage for pride of
+place: but at this point they broke into a cheer. Then, like the devils
+in a pantomime, they all sank together through the floor, aghast at
+themselves, and pulled the scuttle over their heads.
+
+Laura, still hugging the slipper, caught her toe in an eye-bolt and
+fell full length, set up a yell.
+
+Otto, with a suddenly straight face, ran forward, picked up the slipper
+and returned it to Jonsen, who put it on. Edward stopped jumping up and
+down and became frightened.
+
+Jonsen was trembling with rage. He advanced on Edward with an iron
+belaying-pin in his hand.
+
+‘Come down from there!’ he commanded.
+
+‘Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!’ cried Edward, not moving. Harry suddenly ran and
+hid himself in the galley, though he had had no part in it.
+
+With a surprising agility which he rarely used, Jonsen started out
+along the bowsprit towards Edward, who did nothing but moan ‘Don’t!’ at
+the sight of that murderous belaying-pin. When Jonsen was just on him,
+however, he swarmed up a stay, helping himself with the iron hanks of
+the jib.
+
+Jonsen returned to the deck, wringing his hands and angrier than ever.
+He sent a sailor to the cross-trees to head the boy off and drive him
+down again.
+
+Indeed, but for an extraordinary diversion, I shudder to think what
+might have happened to him. But just at this moment there appeared, up
+the ladder from the children’s fore-hold, Rachel. She wore one of the
+sailors’ shirts, back to front, and reaching to her heels: in her hand,
+a book. She was singing ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ at the top of her
+voice. But as soon as she reached the deck she became silent: strutted
+straight aft, looking neither to right nor left, genuflected to Otto at
+the wheel, and then sat herself down on a wooden bucket.
+
+Every one, Jonsen included, stood petrified. After a moment of silent
+prayer she arose, and commenced an inarticulate gabble-gabble which
+reproduced extraordinarily well the sound of what she used to hear in
+the little church at St. Anne’s, where the whole family went one Sunday
+in each month.
+
+Rachel’s religious revival had begun. It could hardly have been more
+opportune: who shall say it was not Heaven which had chosen the moment
+for her?
+
+Otto, entering into the thing at once, rolled up his eyes and spread
+out his arms, cross-wise, against the wheel-house at his back.
+
+Jonsen, rapidly recovering some of his temper, strode up to her. Her
+imitation was admirable. For a few moments he listened in silence. He
+wavered: should he laugh? Then what remained of his temper prevailed.
+
+‘Rachel!’ he rebuked.
+
+She continued, almost without taking breath, ‘Gabble-gabble, Bretheren,
+gabble-gabble.’
+
+‘I am not a religious man myself,’ said the captain, ‘but I will not
+allow religion to be made a mock of on my ship!’
+
+He caught hold of Rachel.
+
+‘Gabble-gabble!’ she went on, slightly faster and on a higher note.
+‘Let me alone! Gabble-gabble! Amen! Gabble....’
+
+But he sat himself on the bucket, and stretched her over his knee.
+
+‘You’re a wicked pirate! You’ll go to Hell!’ she shrieked, breaking at
+last into the articulate.
+
+Then he began to smack her; so hard that she screamed almost as much
+with pain as with rage.
+
+When at last he set her down, her face was swollen and purple. She
+directed a tornado of punches with her little fists against his knees,
+crying ‘Hell! Hell! Hell!’ in a strangulated voice.
+
+He flipped her fists aside with his hand, and presently she went away,
+so tired with crying she could hardly get her breath.
+
+Meanwhile, Laura’s behaviour had been characteristic. When she tripped
+and fell, she roared till her bumps ceased hurting. Then, with no
+perceptible transition, her convulsions of agony became an attempt to
+stand on her head. This she kept up throughout Edward’s flight up the
+stay, throughout the electric appearance of Rachel. During the latter’s
+punishment, having happened to topple in the direction of the mainmast,
+and finding her feet against the rack round its base for belaying the
+halyards to, she gave a tremendous shove off--she would roll instead.
+And roll she did, very rapidly, till she arrived at the captain’s
+feet. There she lay all the while he was smacking Rachel, completely
+unconcerned, on her back, her knees drawn up to her chin, humming a
+little tune.
+
+
+iv
+
+When Emily returned to the fore-hold, her first act was one which
+greatly complicated life. As if there was not sea enough already
+outside the ship, she decreed that practically all the deck was
+sea also. The main-hatch was an island, of course; and there were
+others--chiefly natural excrescences of the same kind. But all the
+rest, all the open deck, could only be safely crossed in a boat, or
+swimming.
+
+As to who was in a boat and who wasn’t, Emily decided that herself. No
+one ever knew till she had been asked. But Laura, once she had got the
+main idea into her head, always swam, whether said to be in a boat or
+not--to be on the safe side.
+
+‘_Isn’t_ she silly?’ said Edward once, when she refused to stop working
+her arms although they had all told her she was safe on board.
+
+‘I expect we were all as silly as that when we were young,’ said Harry.
+
+It was a source of consternation to the children that none of the
+grown-ups would recognise this ‘sea.’ The sailors trod carelessly on
+the deepest oceans, refusing so much as to paddle with their hands. But
+it was equally irritating to the sailors when the children, either safe
+on an island or bearing down in a vessel of their own, would scream at
+them in a tone of complete conviction:
+
+‘You’re drowning! You’re drowning! O-o-oh, look out! You’re out of your
+depth there! The sharks’ll eat you!’
+
+‘O-oh look! Miguel’s sinking! The waves are right over his head!’
+
+That happens to be the one sort of joke sailors can’t enjoy. Even
+though the words were unintelligible, their gist--eked out by the
+slightly malicious hints of the mate--was not. If they steadily refused
+to swim, they at least took to crossing themselves fervently and
+continuously whenever they had to traverse a piece of open deck. For
+there was no way one could be certain that these brats were not gifted
+with second sight--_hijos de puntas_!
+
+What the children were really doing, of course, was trying out what it
+would feel like when they themselves were all grown pirates, running a
+joint venture or each with a craft of his own: and though they never
+so much as mentioned piracy in the course of these public navigations,
+they talked their heads off about it at night now.
+
+Margaret also refused to swim: but they knew by now it was no good
+trying to make her: no good yelling at _her_ she was drowning, for all
+she did at that word was to sit down and cry. So it became a recognised
+convention that Margaret, wherever she went or whatever she was
+doing, was on a raft, with a keg of biscuit and a barrel of water, by
+herself--and could be ignored.
+
+For, since her return, she had become very dull company. That one game
+of Consequences had been a flash in the pan. For several days after it
+she had remained in bed, hardly speaking, and inclined to tear strips
+off her blanket when she was asleep: and even when she was about
+again, though perfectly amiable--more amiable than before--she refused
+to join in any game whatever. She seemed happy: but for any imaginative
+purpose she was useless.
+
+Moreover, she made no attempt to regain the sovereignty to which Emily
+had succeeded. She never ordered any one about. There was not even any
+fun to be got out of baiting her: nothing seemed to ruffle her temper.
+She was sometimes treated with a good-humoured contempt, sometimes
+ignored altogether: and it was enough for _her_ to say something for it
+to be automatically voted silly.
+
+Rachel also, for several days after her service, showed no disposition
+to join with the others. She preferred to sit about below, sulking, in
+the hold. From time to time she attempted to pick a hole, with a copper
+nail she had got hold of, in the bottom of the ship, and so sink it. It
+was Laura who discovered her purpose, and came hot-foot to Emily with
+the news. Laura never doubted, any more than Rachel did, that the task
+was a possible one.
+
+Emily came below and found her at it. After three days, she had only
+managed to scratch up one single splinter--partly because she never
+attacked the same place twice: but both she and Laura expected to see
+quantities of water come welling through and rapidly fill the ship.
+Indeed, though no water had yet appeared, Laura was convinced the ship
+was already perceptibly lowered as a result of Rachel’s efforts.
+
+Laura clasped her hands in expectation, waiting to see what Emily would
+do in the face of this impending disaster.
+
+‘You stupid, _that’s_ no good!’ was all Emily’s comment.
+
+Rachel looked at her angrily:
+
+‘You leave me alone! I know what I am doing!’
+
+Emily’s eyes grew very wide, and danced with a strange light.
+
+‘If you talk to me like that, I’ll have you hanged from the yard-arm!’
+
+‘What’s _that_?’ asked Rachel sulkily.
+
+‘You ought to know which is the yard-arm by now!’
+
+‘I don’t care!’ growled Rachel, and went on scratching with her nail.
+
+Emily picked up a big piece of iron, in a corner, so heavy she could
+hardly carry it:
+
+‘Do you know what I’m going to do?’ she asked in a strange voice.
+
+At the sound of it Rachel stopped scratching and looked up.
+
+‘No,’ she said, a trifle uneasily.
+
+‘I’m going to kill you! I’m turned a pirate, and I’m going to kill you
+with this sword!’
+
+At the word ‘sword,’ the misshapen lump of metal seemed to Rachel to
+flicker to a sharp, wicked point.
+
+She looked Emily in the eyes, doubtfully. Did she mean it, or was it a
+game?
+
+As a matter of fact, she had always been a little afraid of Emily.
+Emily was so huge, so strong, so old (as good as grown up), so cunning!
+Emily was the cleverest, the most powerful person in the world! The
+muscles of a giant, the ancient experience of a serpent!--And now, her
+terrible eyes, with no hint in them of pretence.
+
+Emily glared fixedly, and saw real panic dawn in Rachel’s face.
+Suddenly the latter turned, and as fast as her short fat legs would
+carry her began to swarm up the ladder. Emily rang her iron once
+against it, and Rachel nearly tumbled down again in her haste.
+
+The iron was so big and heavy it took Emily a long time to haul it
+up on deck. Even when that was done, it greatly impeded her running,
+so that she and Rachel did three laps round the deck without their
+distances altering much, cheered boisterously by Edward. Even in her
+terror Rachel did not forget to work her arms as in breast-stroke.
+Finally, with a cry of ‘Oh, I can’t run any more, my bad leg’s
+hurting!’ Emily flung down the iron and dropped panting beside Edward
+on the main-hatch.
+
+‘I shall put poison in your dinner!’ she shouted cheerfully to Rachel:
+but the latter retreated behind the windlass and began to nurse with an
+abandoned devotion the particular brood she had parked there, working
+herself almost to tears with the depth of her maternal pity for them.
+
+Emily went on chuckling for some time at the memory of her sport.
+
+‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked Edward scornfully, puffing out his
+chest. He was feeling particularly manly at the moment. ‘Have you got
+the giggles?’
+
+‘I _like_ having the giggles,’ said Emily disarmingly. ‘Let’s see if we
+can’t all get them. Come on, Laura! Harry, come!’
+
+The two smaller ones came obediently. They stared her in the face
+attentively and seriously, awaiting the Coming of the God, while she
+herself broke into louder and louder explosions of laughter. Soon the
+infection took and they were laughing too, each shriller and more
+wildly than the other.
+
+‘I can’t stop! I can’t stop!’ they cried at intervals.
+
+‘Come on, Edward! Look me in the face!’
+
+‘I won’t!’ said Edward.
+
+So she set on him and tickled him till he was as hysterical as the rest.
+
+‘Oh, I _do_ want to stop, my tummy is hurting so!’ complained Harry at
+last.
+
+‘Go away then,’ advised Emily in a lucid interval. And so the group
+presently broke up. But they had all to avoid each other’s eye for a
+long while, if they were not to risk another attack.
+
+It was Laura who was cured the quickest. She suddenly discovered what a
+beautiful deep cave her armpit made, and decided to keep fairies in it
+in future. For some time she could think of nothing else.
+
+
+v
+
+Captain Jonsen called suddenly to José to take the wheel, and went
+below for his telescope. Then, buttressing his hip against the rail,
+and extending the shade over the object-glass, he stared fixedly at
+something almost in the eye of the setting sun. Emily, in a gentle
+mood, wandered up to him, and stood, her side just touching him. Then
+she began lightly rubbing her cheek on his coat, as a cat does.
+
+Jonsen lowered the glass and tried his naked eye, as if he had more
+trust in it. Then he explored with the glass once more.
+
+What was that business-like-looking sail, tall and narrow as a pillar?
+He swept his eye round the rest of the horizon: it was empty: only that
+single threatening finger, pointing upwards.
+
+Jonsen had chosen his course with care to avoid all the ordinary tracks
+of shipping at that time of year. Especially he had chosen it to avoid
+the routine-passages of the Jamaica Squadron from one British island to
+another. This--it had no business here: no more than he had himself.
+
+Emily put her arm round his waist and gave it a slight hug.
+
+‘What is it?’ she said. ‘Do let me look.’
+
+Jonsen said nothing, continuing to stare with concentration.
+
+‘_Do_ let me look!’ said Emily. ‘I haven’t ever looked through a
+telescope, ever!’
+
+Jonsen abruptly snapped the glass to, and looked down at her. His
+usually expressionless features were stirred from their roots. He
+lifted one hand and gently began to stroke her hair.
+
+‘Do you love me?’ he asked.
+
+‘Mm,’ assented Emily. Later she added, with a wriggle, ‘You’re a
+darling.’
+
+‘If it was to help me, would you do something ... very difficult?’
+
+‘Yes, but _do_ let me have a look through your telescope, because I
+haven’t, not ever, and I do so want to!’
+
+Jonsen gave a weary sigh, and sat down on the cabin-top. What _on
+Earth_ were children’s heads made of, inside?
+
+‘Now listen,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you seriously.’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Emily, trying to hide her extreme discomfort. Her eye
+plaintively searched the deck for something to hold it. He pressed her
+against his knee in an attempt to win her attention.
+
+‘If bad, cruel men came and wanted to kill me and take you away, what
+would you do?’
+
+‘Oh, how horrid!’ said Emily. ‘Will they?’
+
+‘Not if you help me.’
+
+It was unbearable. With a sudden leap she was astride his knees, her
+arms round his neck and her hands pressing the back of his head.
+
+‘I wonder if you make a good Cyclops?’ she said; and holding his head
+firmly laid her nose to his nose, her forehead to his forehead, both
+staring into each other’s eyes, an inch apart, till each saw the
+other’s face grow narrow and two eyes converge to one large, misty eye
+in the middle.
+
+‘Lovely!’ said Emily. ‘You’re just right for one! Only now one of your
+eyes has got loose and is floating up above the other one!’
+
+The sun touched the sea, and for thirty seconds every detail of the
+distant man-of-war was outlined in black against the flame. But, for
+the life of him, Jonsen could think of nothing but that house in quiet
+Lübeck, with the green porcelain stove.
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter 9_
+
+
+The darkness closed down with its sudden curtain on that minatory
+finger.
+
+Captain Jonsen remained on deck all night, whether it was his watch or
+not. It was a hot night, even for those latitudes: and no moon. The
+suffused brilliance of the stars lit up everything close quite plainly,
+but showed nothing in the distance. The black masts towered up, clear
+against the jewelry, which seemed to swing slowly a little to one
+side, a little to the other, of their tapering points. The sails, the
+shadows in their curves all diffused away, seemed flat. The halyards
+and topping-lifts and braces showed here, were invisible there, with an
+arbitrariness which took from them all meaning as mechanism.
+
+Looking forward with the glowing binnacle-light at one’s back, the
+narrow milky deck sloped up to the fore-shortened tilt of the bowsprit,
+which seemed to be trying to point at a single enlarged star just above
+the horizon.
+
+The schooner moved just enough for the sea to divide with a slight
+rustle on her stem, breaking out into a shower of sparks, which lit
+up also wherever the water rubbed the ship’s side, as if the ocean
+were a tissue of sensitive nerves; and still twinkled behind in the
+mere paleness of the wake. Only a faint tang of tar in the nostrils
+was there to remind one that this was no ivory and ebony fantasia but
+a machine. For a schooner is in fact one of the most mechanically
+satisfactory, austere, unornamented engines ever invented by Man.
+
+A few yards off, a shoal of luminous fish shone at different depths.
+
+But a few hundred yards off, one could see nothing! The sea became a
+steady glittering black that did not seem to move. Near, one could see
+so much detail it seemed impossible to believe that there a whole ship
+might lie invisible: impossible to believe that by no glass, no anxious
+straining of the eyes, could one ever _see_.
+
+Jonsen strode up and down the lee-side of the vessel, so that what
+breeze there was, collecting in the hollow of the sails, overflowed
+down onto him in a continuous cool cascade. From time to time he
+climbed to the foremast-head, in spite of the fact that added height
+could not possibly give added vision: stared into the blank till his
+eyes ached, and then came down and resumed his restless pacing. A ship
+with her lights out might creep within a mile of him, and he not know
+it.
+
+Jonsen was not given to intuitions: but he had now an extraordinary
+feeling of certainty that somewhere close in that cover of darkness his
+enemy lay, preparing destruction for him. He strained his ears too:
+but he could hear nothing either, except the rustle of the water, the
+occasional knocking of a loose block.
+
+If only there had been a moon! He remembered another occasion, fifteen
+years before. The slaver of which he was then second mate was bowling
+along, the hatches down on her stinking cargo, all canvas spread, when
+right across the glittering path of the moon a frigate crossed, almost
+within gun-shot--crossed the light, and disappeared again. Jonsen had
+realised at once that though the frigate, with the light behind it,
+was now invisible to them, they, with the moonlight shining full on
+them, would be perfectly visible to the frigate. The boom of a gun soon
+proved it. He had wanted to make a blind bolt for it: but his captain,
+instead, ordered every stitch of sail to be furled: and so they lay all
+night under their bare poles, not moving, of course, but (with nothing
+to reflect the light) grown invisible in their turn. When dawn came the
+frigate was so far down the wind they had easily shown her a clean pair
+of heels.
+
+But to-night! There was no friendly moon-track to betray the attacker:
+nothing but this inner conviction, which grew every moment more
+certain.
+
+Shortly after midnight he had descended from one of his useless climbs
+to the mast-head, and stood for a moment by the open fore-hatch. The
+warm breath of the children was easily discernible. Margaret was
+chattering in her sleep--quite loud, but you could not distinguish a
+single clear word.
+
+Moved by a whim, Jonsen climbed down the ladder into the hold. Below,
+it was hot as an oven. A zooming winged cockroach cannoned about. The
+sound of the water, a dry rustle above, was here a pleasant gurgle and
+plop against the wooden shell; most musical of sounds to a sailor.
+
+Laura lay on her back in the faint light of the open hatch. She had
+discarded her blanket; and the vest which did duty for a night-gown was
+rucked right up under her arms. Jonsen wondered how anything so like a
+frog could ever conceivably grow into the billowy body of a woman. He
+bent down and attempted to pull down the vest: but at the first touch
+Laura rolled violently over onto her stomach, then drew her knees up
+under her, thrusting her pointed rump up at him; and continued to sleep
+in that position, breathing noisily.
+
+As his eyes got used to the gloom, vague white splodges showed him that
+most of the children had discarded their dark blankets. But he did not
+notice Emily, sitting up in the darkness and watching him.
+
+As he turned to go, an experimental smile lit up his face: he bent, and
+gently flicked Laura’s behind with his finger-nail. It collapsed like a
+burst balloon; but still she went on sleeping, flat on her face now.
+
+Jonsen was still chuckling to himself as he reached the deck. But
+there his forebodings returned to him with redoubled force. He could
+_feel_ that man-of-war lying-to in the darkness, biding its time! For
+the fiftieth time he climbed the ratlines and took his stand at the
+cross-trees, skinning his eyes.
+
+Presently, looking down, he could just discern the small white figure
+on the deck which was Emily, hopping and skipping about. But it passed
+at once out of his mind.
+
+Suddenly his tired eye caught a patch of something darker than the sea.
+He looked away, then back again, to make sure. It was still there: on
+the port bow: impossible to make out clearly, though.... Jonsen slid
+down the shrouds in a flash, like a prentice. Landing on the deck like
+a thunderbolt, he nearly startled Emily out of her life: she had no
+idea he was up there. She startled him no less.
+
+‘It’s so _hot_ down there,’ she began, ‘I can’t sleep----’
+
+‘Get below!’ hissed Jonsen furiously: ‘don’t you dare come up again!
+And don’t let any of the others, till I tell you!’
+
+Emily, thoroughly frightened, tumbled down the ladder as fast as she
+could, and rolled herself in her blanket from head to foot: partly
+because her bare legs were really a little chilled, but more for
+comfort. What had she done? What was happening? She was hardly down
+when feet were heard scurrying across the deck, and the hatches over
+her head were loosely fitted into place. The darkness was profound, and
+seemed to be rolling on her. No one was within reach: and she dared not
+move an inch. Every one was asleep.
+
+Jonsen called all hands on deck: and in silence they mustered at the
+rail. The patch was clearly visible now: nearer, and smaller than he
+had thought at first. They listened for the splash of oars: but it came
+on in silence.
+
+Suddenly they were upon it, it was grating against the ship’s side,
+slipping astern. It was a dead tree, carried out to sea by some river
+in spate, and tangled up with weed.
+
+But after that, he kept all hands on deck till dawn. In their new mood
+they obeyed him readily enough. For they knew he was not incompetent.
+He generally did the right thing--it was only the fuss he made in any
+emergency which gave him the appearance of blundering.
+
+Yet, though there were now so many eyes watching, no further alarm was
+given.
+
+But the moment the first paleness of dawn glimmered, every one’s nerves
+tightened to cracking-point. The rapidly increasing light would any
+moment show them their fate.
+
+It was not till full daylight, however, that Jonsen would let himself
+be convinced there was absolutely no man-of-war there.
+
+As a matter of fact, its royals had sunk below the horizon less than an
+hour after he had first sighted it.
+
+
+ii
+
+But the alarm of that night caused Jonsen at last to make up his mind.
+
+He altered his course: and as before he had designed it to avoid other
+shipping, now on the contrary it was calculated to run as soon as
+possible into the very track of the Eastward Bounders.
+
+Otto rubbed his eyes. What had come over the fellow? Did he want
+revenge for the fright he had had? Was he going to try and cut out a
+prize right in the thick of the traffic? It would be like Jonsen, that:
+to put his head in the lion’s mouth after trembling at its roar: and
+Otto’s heart warmed towards him. But he asked no questions.
+
+Meanwhile Jonsen went to his cabin, opened a secret receptacle in his
+bunk, and took out a job-lot of ships’ papers which he had bought from
+a Havana dealer in such things. _The ‘John Dodson,’ of Liverpool, bound
+for the Seychelles with a cargo of cast-iron pots_--what use was that
+in these waters? The man had sold him a pup!--Ah, this was better:
+‘_Lizzie Green,’ of Bristol, bound from Matanzas to Philadelphia in
+ballast_ ... a funny trip to make in ballast, true: but that was no
+one’s affair but his imaginary owner’s. Jonsen made sure all was in
+order--filled in the blank dates, and so on--then returned the bundle
+to its hiding-place for another occasion. Coming on deck, he gave a
+number of orders.
+
+First, stages were rigged over the bows and stern, and José and a
+paint-pot went over the rail to add _Lizzie Green_ to the many names
+which from time to time had decorated the schooner’s escutcheon.
+Not content with that, he had it painted on every other appropriate
+place--the boats, the buckets--it was as well to be thorough.
+Meanwhile, many of the sails were taken down and new ones bent--or
+rather, old ones, distinctive sails that a man would swear he couldn’t
+have forgotten if he had ever seen them before. Otto sewed a large
+patch to the mainsail, where there was no hole. In his zeal Jonsen even
+considered lowering the yards and rigging her as a pure fore-and-after:
+but luckily for his sweating crew, abandoned the idea.
+
+The master-stroke of his disguise was permanent--that he carried no
+guns. Guns can be hidden or thrown overboard, it is true: but the
+grooves they make in the deck cannot, as many a protesting-innocent
+sea-robber has found to his cost. Jonsen not only had no guns to hide,
+he had no grooves: any fool could see he had no guns, and never had had
+any. And who ever heard of a pirate without guns? It was laughable:
+yet he had proved again and again that one could make a capture just
+as easily without them: and further, that the captured merchantman, in
+making his report, could generally be counted on to imagine a greater
+or less display of artillery. Whether it was to save their faces, or
+pure conservatism--presumption that there must have been guns--nearly
+every vessel Jonsen had had dealings with had reported masked
+artillery, manned by ‘fifty or seventy ruffians of the worst Spanish
+type.’
+
+Of course if he met and was challenged by a man-of-war, he would
+have to give in without a fight. But then, it never pays to fight a
+man-of-war anyhow. If he is a big one, he sinks you. If he is some
+little cock-shell of a cutter, commanded by a fire-eating young officer
+just into his teens, you sink him--and then there is the devil to pay.
+Better be sunk outright than insult the honour of a great nation in
+that fashion.
+
+When he at last remembered to take the hatches off the children, they
+were half dead with suffocation. It was hot enough, stuffy enough
+anyhow down there, only the square opening above for ventilation; but
+with the hatches even loosely in place it was a Black Hole. Emily had
+at last dropped asleep, and slept late, through a chain of nightmares:
+when she did wake in the closed hold, she sat up, then fainted
+immediately, and fell back, her breath coming in loud snores. Before
+she came to again she was already sobbing miserably. At that the little
+ones began to cry too: which sound it was that reminded Jonsen, rather
+late, to take the hatches off.
+
+He was quite alarmed when he saw them. It was not till they had been
+out in the morning freshness of the deck for some time that they even
+summoned up interest in the strange metamorphosis of the schooner that
+was in progress.
+
+Jonsen looked at them with a troubled eye. They had not indeed the
+appearance of well-cared-for children: though he had not noticed this
+before. They were dirty to a fault: their clothes torn, and mended, if
+at all, with twine. Their hair was not only uncombed--there was tar
+in it. They were mostly thin, and a yellowy-brown colour. Only Rachel
+remained obstinately plump and pink. The scar on Emily’s leg was still
+a blushing purple: and they all were blotched with insect bites.
+
+Jonsen called José off his painting job: gave him a bucket of fresh
+water: the mate’s (the only) comb: and a pair of scissors. José
+wondered innocently: they did not look to him particularly dirty. But
+he did his duty, while they were still too sorry for themselves to
+object actively, to do anything more than sob weakly when he hurt them.
+Even when he had finished their toilet, of course, he had not reached
+the point at which a nursemaid usually begins.
+
+It was noon before the _Lizzie Green_ looked herself--whoever
+that might be: and a little after noon she was still heading for
+‘Philadelphia’ when, hull down on the horizon, two sail were sighted,
+many miles apart, at about the same minute. Captain Jonsen considered
+them carefully; made his choice, and altered his course so as to fall
+in with her as soon as might be.
+
+Meanwhile, the crew had no more doubt than Otto had of Jonsen’s
+intention: and the sound of the whetstone floated merrily aft, till
+each man’s knife had an edge that did its master’s heart good. I have
+said that the murder of the Dutch captain had affected the whole
+character of their piracy. The yeast was working.
+
+Presently the smoke of a large steamer cropped up over the horizon as
+well. Otto sniffed the breeze. It might hold, or it might not. They
+were still far from home, and these seas crowded. The whole enterprise
+looked to him pretty desperate.
+
+Jonsen was at his usual shuffle-shuffle, nervously biting his nails.
+Suddenly he turned on Otto and called him below. He was plainly very
+agitated; his cheeks red, his eye wild. He began by plotting himself
+meticulously on the chart. Then he growled over his shoulder:
+
+‘Those children, they must go.’
+
+‘Aye,’ said Otto. Then, as Jonsen said no more, he added: ‘You’ll land
+them at Santa, I take it?’
+
+‘No! They must go now. We may never get to Santa.’
+
+Otto took a deep breath.
+
+Jonsen turned on him, blustering:
+
+‘If we get taken with them, where’ll _we_ be, eh?’
+
+Otto went white, then red, before he answered.
+
+‘You’ll have to risk that,’ he said slowly. ‘You can’t land them no
+other place.’
+
+‘Who said I was going to land them?’
+
+‘There’s nothing else you can do,’ said Otto stubbornly.
+
+A light of comprehension dawned suddenly in Jonsen’s worried face.
+
+‘We could sew them up in little bags,’ he said with a genial smile,
+‘and put them over the side.’
+
+Otto gave him one quick glance; what he saw was enough to relieve him.
+
+‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.
+
+‘Sew them up in little bags! Sew them up in little bags!’ Jonsen
+affirmed, rubbing his hands together and chuckling, all the latent
+sentimentality of the man getting the better of him. Then he pushed
+past Otto and went on deck.
+
+The big brigantine, which he had aimed for at first, was proving a
+bit too far up the wind for him: so now he took the helm and let the
+schooner’s head down a couple of points, to intercept the steamer
+instead.
+
+Otto whistled. At last an inkling of what the captain was at had dawned
+on him.
+
+
+iii
+
+As they drew nearer, the children were all immensely interested: they
+had never before seen anything like this big, miraculous tub. The Dutch
+steamer, an old-fashioned craft, had not differed very materially from
+a sailing-vessel: but this, in form, was already more like the steamers
+of our own day. Its funnel was still tall and narrow, with a kind of
+artichoke on top, it is true: but otherwise it was much the same as you
+and I are used to.
+
+Jonsen spoke her urgently: and presently her engines stopped. The
+_Lizzie Green_ slipped round under her lee. Jonsen had a boat lowered:
+then embarked in it himself. The children and the schooner’s crew stood
+at the rail in tense excitement: watched a little ladder lowered from
+her towering iron side: watched Jonsen, alone, in his dark Sunday suit
+and the peaked cap of his rank, climb on board. He had timed it nicely:
+in another hour it would be dark.
+
+He had no easy task. First he had his premeditated fiction to
+establish, his explanation of how he came by his passengers. Secondly,
+he had to persuade the captain of the steamship, a stranger, to relieve
+him, where he had so signally failed to persuade his friend the señora
+at Santa Lucia.
+
+Otto was not a man to show agitation: but he felt it, none the less.
+This scheme of Jon’s was the foolhardiest thing he had ever heard of:
+the slightest suspicion, and they were as good as done for.
+
+Jonsen had ordered him, if he guessed anything was wrong, to run.
+
+Meanwhile, the breeze was dropping, and it was still light.
+
+Jonsen had vanished into the steamer as into a forest.
+
+Emily was as excited as any of them, pointing out the novel features
+of this extraordinary vessel. The children still thought it was
+professional quarry. Edward was openly bragging of what he would do
+when he had captured it.
+
+‘I shall cut the captain’s head off and throw it in the water!’ he
+declared aloud.
+
+‘S-s-sh!’ exclaimed Harry in a stage whisper.
+
+‘Coo! I don’t care!’ cried Edward, intoxicated with bravado. ‘Then I
+shall take out all the gold and keep it for myself.’
+
+‘I shall sink it!’ said Harry, in imitation: then added as an
+afterthought, ‘Right to the very bottom!’
+
+Emily fell silent, her peculiarly vivid imagination having the mastery
+of her. She saw the hold of the steamer, piled with gold and jewels.
+She saw herself, fighting her way through hordes of hairy sailors,
+with her bare fists, till only the steamer’s captain stood between her
+and the treasure.
+
+Then it happened! It was as if a small cold voice inside her said
+suddenly, ‘_How can you? You’re only a little girl!_’ She felt herself
+falling giddily from the heights, shrinking. She was _Emily_.
+
+The awful, blood-covered face of the Dutch captain seemed to threaten
+her out of the air. She cowered back at the shock. But it was over in a
+moment.
+
+She looked around her in terror. Did any one know how defenceless she
+was? Surely some one must have noticed her. The other children were
+gibbering in their animal innocence. The sailors, their knives half
+concealed, grinned at each other or cursed. Otto, his brows knotted,
+stood with his eyes fixed on the steamer.
+
+She feared everybody, she hated everybody.
+
+Margaret was whispering something to Edward, and he nodded. Again
+panic seized her. What was Margaret telling him? Had she told every
+one? Did they all know? Were they all playing with her, deceiving
+her by pretending not to know, waiting their own time to burst their
+revelation on her and punish her in some quite unimaginably awful way?
+
+_Had_ Margaret told? If she crept up behind Margaret now, and pushed
+her in the sea, might she yet be in time?--But even as she thought it,
+she seemed to see Margaret rising waist-high out of the waves, telling
+the whole story to everybody in a calm, dispassionate voice, and
+climbing back on board.
+
+In another flash she saw the fat, comfortable person of her mother,
+standing at the door of Ferndale, abusing the cook.
+
+Again her eyes roamed round the sinister reality of the schooner. She
+suddenly felt sick to death of it all: tired, beyond words tired.
+Why must she be chained for ever to this awful life? Could she never
+escape, never get back to the ordinary life little girls lead, with
+their papas and mamas and ... birthday cakes?
+
+Otto called her. She went to him obediently: though with a presentiment
+that it was to her execution. He turned, and called Margaret too.
+
+She was in a more attentive mood than she had been the other night with
+the captain, Heaven knows! But Otto was too preoccupied to notice how
+frightened her eyes were.
+
+Jonsen had no easy task on the steamer: but Otto did not greatly relish
+his own. He did not know how to begin--and everything depended on his
+success.
+
+‘See here,’ he burst out. ‘You’re going to England.’
+
+Emily shot him a quick glance. ‘Yes?’ she said at last: her voice
+showing merely a polite interest.
+
+‘The captain has gone onto that steamboat to arrange about it.’
+
+‘Aren’t we staying with you any longer, then?’
+
+‘No,’ said Otto: ‘you’re going home on that steamboat.’
+
+‘Shan’t we see you any more, then?’ Emily pursued.
+
+‘No,’ said Otto: ‘--Well, some day, perhaps.’
+
+‘Are they all going, or only us two?’
+
+‘Why, all of you, of course!’
+
+‘Oh. I didn’t know.’
+
+There was an awkward silence, while Otto wondered how to tackle the
+real problem.
+
+‘Had we better go and get ready?’ asked Margaret.
+
+‘Now listen!’ Otto interrupted her. ‘When you get on board, they’ll ask
+you all about everything. They’ll want to know how you got here.’
+
+‘Are we to tell them?’
+
+Otto was astonished she took his point so readily.
+
+‘No,’ he said. ‘The captain and me don’t want you to. We want you to
+keep it a secret, do you see?’
+
+‘What _are_ we to say, then?’ Emily asked.
+
+‘Tell them ... you were captured by pirates, and then ... they put you
+ashore at a little port in Cuba----’
+
+‘--Where the Fat Woman was?’
+
+‘--Yes. And then we came along, and took you on board our schooner,
+which was going to America, to save you from the pirates.’
+
+‘I see,’ said Emily.
+
+‘You’ll say that, and keep the ... other a secret?’ Otto asked
+anxiously.
+
+Emily gave him her peculiar, gentle stare.
+
+‘Of course!’ she said.
+
+Well, he had done his best: but Otto felt heavy at heart. That little
+cherub! He didn’t believe she could keep a secret for ten seconds.
+
+‘Now: do you think you can make the little ones understand?’
+
+‘Oh yes, I’ll tell them,’ said Emily easily. She considered for a
+moment: ‘I don’t suppose they remember much anyway. Is that all?’
+
+‘That’s all,’ said Otto: and they walked away.
+
+‘What was he saying?’ Margaret asked. ‘What was it all about?’
+
+‘Oh shut up!’ said Emily rudely. ‘It’s nothing to do with you!’
+
+But inwardly she did not know whether she was on her head or her heels.
+Were they really going to let her escape? Weren’t they just tantalising
+her, meaning to stop her at the last moment? Were they handing her
+over to strangers, who had come to hang her for murder? Was her mother
+perhaps on that steamer, come to save her? But she loved Jonsen
+and Otto: how could she bear to part with them? The dear, familiar
+schooner.... All these thoughts in her head at once! But she dealt
+firmly enough with the Liddlies:
+
+‘Come on!’ she said. ‘We’re going on that steamer.’
+
+‘Are _we_ to do the fighting?’ Edward asked, timorously enough.
+
+‘There isn’t going to be any fighting,’ said Emily.
+
+‘Will there be another circus?’ asked Laura.
+
+Then she told them they were to change ships again.
+
+When Captain Jonsen came back, mopping the sweat from his polished
+forehead with a big cotton handkerchief, he seemed in a terrible hurry.
+As for the children, they were so excited they were ready to tumble
+into the boat: in such a flurry they nearly tumbled into the sea
+instead. _Now_ they knew why they had been washed and combed.
+
+It did not seem at first as if there was going to be any difficulty
+about getting them started. But it was Rachel who began the break-away.
+
+‘My babies! My babies!’ she shrieked, and began running all over the
+ship, routing out bits of rag, fuzzy rope-ends, paint-pots ... her arms
+were soon full.
+
+‘Here, you can’t take all that junk!’ dissuaded Otto.
+
+‘Oh but my darlings, I can’t leave you behind!’ cried Rachel piteously.
+Out rushed the cook, just in time to retrieve his ladle--and a
+battle-royal began.
+
+Naturally, Jonsen was on tenterhooks to be gone. But it was essential
+they should part on good terms.
+
+José was lifting Laura over the side.
+
+‘_Darling_ José!’ she burst out suddenly, and twined her arms tightly
+round his neck.
+
+At that Harry and Edward, who were already in the boat, scrambled back
+on deck. They had forgotten to say good-bye. And so each child said
+good-bye to each pirate, kissing him and lavishing endearments on him.
+
+‘Go on! Go on!’ muttered Jonsen impatiently.
+
+Emily flung herself in his arms, sobbing as if her heart would break.
+
+‘Don’t make me go!’ she begged. ‘Let me stay with you always, always!’
+She clung tight to the lapels of his coat, hiding her face in his
+chest: ‘Oh, I _don’t_ want to go!’
+
+Jonsen was strangely moved: for a moment, almost toyed with the idea.
+
+But the others were already in the boat.
+
+‘Come on!’ said Otto, ‘or they’ll go without you!’
+
+‘Wait! Wait!’ shrieked Emily, and was over the side and in the boat in
+a flash.
+
+Jonsen shook his head confusedly. For this last time, she had him
+puzzled.
+
+But now, as they rowed across to the steamer, all the children stood up
+in the boat, in danger of tumbling out, and cried:
+
+‘Good-bye! Good-bye!’
+
+‘Adios!’ cried the pirates, waving sentimental hands, and guffawing
+secretly to each other.
+
+‘C-c-come and see us in England!’ came Edward’s clear treble.
+
+‘Yes!’ cried Emily. ‘Come and stay with us! All of you!--_Promise_
+you’ll come and stay with us!’
+
+‘All right!’ shouted Otto. ‘We’ll come!’
+
+‘Come _soon_!’
+
+‘My babies!’ wailed Rachel. ‘I’ve lost ’most all my babies!’
+
+But now they were alongside the steamer: and soon they were mounting a
+rope ladder to her deck.
+
+What a long way up it was! But at last they were all on board.
+
+The little boat returned to the schooner.
+
+The children never once looked after it.
+
+And well might they forget it. For exciting as it had been to go onto a
+ship of any kind for the first time, to find themselves on this steamer
+was infinitely more so. The luxury of it! The white paint! The doors!
+The windows! The stairs! The brass!--A fairy palace, no: but a mundane
+wonder of a quite unimagined kind.
+
+But they had little time now to take in the details. All the
+passengers, wild with curiosity, were gathered round them in a ring. As
+the dirty, dishevelled little mites were handed one by one on board, a
+gasp went up. The story of the capture of the _Clorinda_ by as fiendish
+a set of buccaneers as any in the past that roamed the same Caribbean
+was well known: and how the little innocents on board her had been
+taken and tortured to death before the eyes of the impotent captain. To
+see now face to face the victims of so foul a murder was for them too a
+thrill of the first water.
+
+The tension was first broken by a beautiful young lady in a muslin
+dress. She sank on her knees beside little Harry, and folded him in her
+delicate arms.
+
+‘The little angel!’ she murmured. ‘You poor little man, what horrors
+you have been through! How will you ever forget them?’
+
+As if that were the signal, all the lady passengers fell on the
+astonished children and pitied them: while the men, less demonstrative,
+stood around with lumps in their throats.
+
+Bewildered at first, it was not long before they rose to the
+occasion--as children generally will, when they find themselves the
+butt of indiscriminate adoration. Bless you, they were kings and
+queens! They were so sleepy they could hardly keep their eyes open: but
+they were not going to bed, not they! They had never been treated like
+this before. Heaven alone knew how long it would last. Best not waste a
+minute of it.
+
+It was not long before they ceased even to be surprised, became
+convinced that it was all their right and due. They were very important
+people--quite unique.
+
+Only Emily stood apart, shy, answering questions uncomfortably. She did
+not seem to be able to throw herself into her importance with the same
+zest as the others.
+
+Even the passengers’ children joined in the fuss and admiration:
+perhaps realising the opportunity which the excitement gave of
+avoiding their own bed-time. They began to bring (probably not without
+suggestion) their toys, as offerings to these new gods: and vied with
+each other in their generosity.
+
+A shy little boy of about her own age, with brown eyes and a nice
+smile, his long hair brushed smooth as silk, his clothes neat and
+sweet-smelling, sidled up to Rachel.
+
+‘What’s your name?’ she asked him.
+
+‘Harold.’
+
+She told him hers.
+
+‘How much do you weigh?’ he asked her.
+
+‘I don’t know.’
+
+‘You look rather heavy. May I see if I can lift you?’
+
+‘Yes.’
+
+He clasped his arms round her stomach from behind, leant back, and
+staggered a few paces with her. Then he set her down, the friendship
+cemented.
+
+Emily stood apart; and for some reason every one unconsciously
+respected her reserve. But suddenly something seemed to snap in her
+heart. She flung herself face-downwards on the deck--not crying, but
+kicking convulsively. It was a huge great stewardess who picked her
+up and carried her, still quivering from head to foot, down to a neat,
+clean cabin. There, soothing and talking to her without ceasing, she
+undressed her, and washed her with warm water, and put her to bed.
+
+Emily’s head felt different to any way it had ever felt before: hardly
+as if it were her own. It sang, and went round like a wheel, without so
+much as with your leave or by your leave. But her body, on the other
+hand, was more than usually sensitive, absorbing the tender, smooth
+coolness of the sheets, the softness of the mattress, as a thirsty
+horse sucks up water. Her limbs drank in comfort at every pore: it
+seemed as if she could never be sated with it. She felt physical peace
+soaking slowly through to her marrow: and when at last it got there,
+her head became more quiet and orderly too.
+
+All this while she had hardly heard what was said to her: only a
+refrain that ran through it all made any impression, ‘_Those wicked men
+... men ... nothing but men ... those cruel men._...’
+
+Men! It was perfectly true that for months and months she had seen
+nothing but men. To be at last back among other women was heavenly.
+When the kind stewardess bent over her to kiss her, she caught tight
+hold of her, and buried her face in the warm, soft, yielding flesh, as
+if to sink herself in it. Lord! How unlike the firm, muscular bodies of
+Jonsen and Otto!
+
+When the stewardess stood up again, Emily feasted her eyes on her, eyes
+grown large and warm and mysterious. The woman’s enormous, swelling
+bosom fascinated her. Forlornly, she began to pinch her own thin little
+chest. Was it conceivable she would herself ever grow breasts like
+that--beautiful, mountainous breasts, that had to be cased in a sort of
+cornucopia? Or even firm little apples, like Margaret’s?
+
+Thank God she had not been born a boy! She was overtaken with a sudden
+revulsion against the whole sex of them. From the tips of her fingers
+to the tips of her toes she felt female: one with that exasperating,
+idiotic secret communion: initiate of the γυναικεῖον.
+
+Suddenly Emily reached up and caught the stewardess by the head,
+pulling it down to her close: began whispering earnestly in her ear.
+
+On the woman’s face the first look of incredulity changed to utter
+stupefaction, from stupefaction to determination.
+
+‘My eye!’ she said at last. ‘The cheek of the rascals! The impudence!’
+
+Without another word she slipped out of the cabin. And you may imagine
+that the steamer captain, when he heard the trick that had been played
+upon him, was as astonished as she.
+
+For a few moments after she had gone Emily lay staring at nothing, a
+very curious expression on her face indeed. Then, all of a sudden, she
+dropped asleep, breathing sweetly and easily.
+
+But she only slept for about ten minutes: and when she woke the cabin
+door was open, and in it stood Rachel and her little boy friend.
+
+‘What do you want?’ said Emily forbiddingly.
+
+‘Harold has brought his alligator,’ said Rachel.
+
+Harold stepped forward, and laid the little creature on Emily’s
+coverlet. It was very small: only about six inches long: a yearling:
+but an exact miniature of its adult self, with the snub nose and round
+Socratic forehead that distinguish it from the crocodile. It moved
+jerkily, like a clockwork toy. Harold picked it up by the tail: it
+spread its paws in the air, and jerked from side to side, more like
+clockwork than ever. Then he set it down again, and it stood there, its
+tongueless mouth wide open and its harmless teeth looking like grains
+of sand-paper, alternately barking and hissing. Harold let it snap at
+his finger--it was plainly hungry in the warmth down there. It darted
+its head so fast you could hardly see it move: but its bite was still
+so weak as to be painless, even to a child.
+
+Emily drew a deep breath, fascinated.
+
+‘May I have him for the night?’ she asked.
+
+‘All right,’ said Harold: and he and Rachel were summoned away by some
+one without.
+
+Emily was translated into Heaven. So this was an alligator! She was
+actually going to sleep with an alligator! She had thought that to any
+one who had once been in an earthquake nothing really exciting could
+happen again: but then, she had not thought of this.
+
+_There was once a girl called Emily, who slept with an alligator...._
+
+In search of greater warmth, the creature high-stepped warily up the
+bed towards her face. About six inches away it paused, and they looked
+each other in the eye, those two children.
+
+The eye of an alligator is large, protruding, and of a brilliant
+yellow, with a slit pupil like a cat’s. A cat’s eye, to the casual
+observer, is expressionless: though with attention one can distinguish
+in it many changes of emotion. But the eye of an alligator is
+infinitely more stony and brilliant--reptilian.
+
+What possible meaning could Emily find in such an eye? Yet she lay
+there, and stared, and stared: and the alligator stared too. If there
+had been an observer it might have given him a shiver to see them
+so--well, eye to eye like that.
+
+Presently the beast opened his mouth and hissed again gently. Emily
+lifted a finger and began to rub the corner of his jaw. The hiss
+changed to a sound almost like a purr. A thin, filmy lid first covered
+his eye from the front backwards, then the outer lid closed up from
+below.
+
+Suddenly he opened his eyes again, and snapped on her finger: then
+turned and wormed his way into the neck of her night-gown, and crawled
+down inside, cool and rough against her skin, till he found a place
+to rest. It is surprising that she could stand it as she did, without
+flinching.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Alligators are utterly untamable.
+
+
+iv
+
+From the deck of the schooner, Jonsen and Otto watched the children
+climb onto the steamer: watched their boat return, and the steamer get
+under way.
+
+So: it had all gone without a hitch. No one had suspected his story--a
+story so simple as to be very nearly the truth.
+
+They were gone.
+
+Jonsen could feel the difference at once: and it seemed almost as if
+the schooner could. A schooner, after all, is a place for _men_. He
+stretched himself, and took a deep breath, feeling that a cloying,
+enervating influence was lifted. José was industriously sweeping up
+some of Rachel’s abandoned babies. He swept them into the lee-scuppers.
+He drew a bucket of water, and dashed it at them over the deck. The
+trap swung open--whew, it was gone, all that truck!
+
+‘Batten down that fore-hatch!’ ordered Jonsen.
+
+The men all seemed lighter of heart than they had been for many months:
+as if the weight they were relieved of had been enormous. They sang
+as they worked, and two friends playfully pummelled each other in
+passing--hard. The lean, masculine schooner shivered and plunged in the
+freshening evening breeze. A shower of spray for no particular reason
+suddenly burst over the bows, swept aft and dashed full in Jonsen’s
+face. He shook his head like a wet dog, and grinned.
+
+Rum appeared: and for the first time since the encounter with the Dutch
+steamer all the sailors got bestially drunk, and lay about the deck,
+and were sick in the scuppers. José was belching like a bassoon.
+
+It was dark by then. The breeze dropped away again. The gaffs clanked
+aimlessly in the calm, with the motion of the sea: the empty sails
+flapped with reports like cannon, a hearty applause. Jonsen and Otto
+themselves remained sober, but they had not the heart to discipline the
+crew.
+
+The steamer had long since disappeared into the dark. The foreboding
+which had oppressed Jonsen all the night before was gone. No intuition
+told him of Emily’s whispering to the stewardess: of the steamer,
+shortly after, meeting with a British gunboat: of the long series
+of lights flickering between them. The gunboat, even now, was fast
+overhauling him: but no premonition disturbed his peace.
+
+He was tired--as tired as a sailor ever lets himself be. The last
+twenty-four hours had been hard. He went below as soon as his watch was
+over, and climbed into his bunk.
+
+But he did not, at once, sleep. He lay for a while conning over the
+step he had taken. It was really very astute. He had returned the
+children, undoubtedly safe and sound: Marpole would be altogether
+discredited. Even to have landed them at Santa Lucia, his first
+intention, could never have closed the _Clorinda_ episode so
+completely, since the world at large would not have heard of it: and it
+would have been difficult to produce them, should need arise.
+
+Indeed, it had seemed to be a choice of evils: either he must carry
+them about always, as a proof that they were alive, or he must land
+them and lose control of them. In the first case, their presence would
+certainly connect him with the _Clorinda_ piracy of which he might
+otherwise go unsuspected: in the second, he might be convicted of their
+murder if he could not produce them.
+
+But this wonderful idea of his, now that he had carried it out
+successfully, solved both difficulties.
+
+It had been a near thing with that little bitch Margaret, though ...
+lucky the second boat had picked her up....
+
+The light from the cabin lamp shone into the bunk, illuminating part of
+the wall defaced with Emily’s puerile drawings. As they caught his eye
+a frown gathered on his forehead: but as well a sudden twinge affected
+his heart. He remembered the way she had lain there, ill and helpless.
+He suddenly found himself remembering at least forty things about
+her--an overwhelming flood of memories.
+
+The pencil she had used was still among the bedding, and his fingers
+happened on it. There were still some white spaces not drawn on.
+
+Jonsen could only draw two things: ships, and naked women. He could
+draw any type of ship he liked, down to the least detail--any
+particular ship he had sailed in, even. In the same way he could
+draw voluptuous, buxom women, also down to the least detail: in any
+position, and from any point of view: from the front, from the back,
+from the side, from above, from below: his fore-shortening faultless.
+But set him to draw any third thing--even a woman with her clothes
+on--and he could not have produced a scribble that would have been even
+recognisable.
+
+He took the pencil: and before long there began to appear between
+Emily’s crude uncertain lines round thighs, rounder bellies, high
+swelling bosoms, all somewhat in the manner of Rubens.
+
+At the same time his mind was still occupied with reflections on his
+own astuteness. Yes, it had been a near thing with Margaret--it would
+have been awkward if, when he returned the party, there had been one
+missing.
+
+A recollection descended on his mind like a cold douche, something he
+had completely forgotten about till then. His heart sank--as well it
+might:
+
+‘Hey!’ he called to Otto on the deck above. ‘What was the name of that
+boy who broke his neck at Santa? Jim--Sam--what was he called?’
+
+Otto did not answer, except by a long-drawn-out whistle.
+
+
+
+
+_Chapter 10_
+
+
+Emily grew quite a lot during the passage to England on the steamer:
+suddenly shot up, as children will at that age. But she did it without
+any gawkiness: instead, an actual increase of grace. Her legs and
+arms, though longer, did not lose any of the nicety of their shape;
+and her grave face lost none of its attractiveness by being a fraction
+nearer your own. The only drawback was that she used to get pains in
+the calves of her legs, now, and sometimes in her back: but those of
+course did not show. (They were all provided with clothes by a general
+collection, so it did not matter that she grew out of her old ones.)
+
+She was a nice child: and being a little less shy than formerly, was
+soon the most popular of all of them. Somehow, no one seemed to care
+very much for Margaret: old ladies used to shake their heads over her a
+good deal. At least, any one could see that Emily had infinitely more
+sense.
+
+You would never have believed that Edward after a few days’ washing and
+combing would look such a little gentleman.
+
+After a short while Rachel threw Harold over, to be uninterrupted in
+her peculiar habits of parthenogenesis, eased now a little by the many
+presents of real dolls. But Harold became soon just as firm friends
+with Laura, young though she was.
+
+Most of the steamer children had made friends with the seamen, and
+loved to follow them about at their romantic occupations--swabbing
+decks, and so on. One day, one of these men actually went a short way
+up the rigging (what little there was), leaving a glow of admiration on
+the deck below. But all this had no glamour for the Thorntons. Edward
+and Harry liked best to peer in at the engines: but what Emily liked
+best was to walk up and down the deck with her arm round the waist of
+Miss Dawson, the beautiful young lady with the muslin dresses: or stand
+behind her while she did little water-colour compositions of toppling
+waves with wrecks foundering in them, or mounted dried tropical flowers
+in wreaths round photographs of her uncles and aunts. One day Miss
+Dawson took her down to her cabin and showed her all her clothes, every
+single item--it took hours. It was the opening of a new world to Emily.
+
+The captain sent for Emily, and questioned her: but she added nothing
+to that first, crucial burst of confidence to the stewardess. She
+seemed struck dumb--with terror, or something: at least, he could get
+nothing out of her. So he wisely let her alone. She would probably
+tell her story in her own time: to her new friend, perhaps. But this
+she did not do. She would not talk about the schooner, or the pirates,
+or anything concerning them: what she wanted was to listen, to drink
+in all she could learn about England, where they were really going at
+last--that wonderfully exotic, romantic place.
+
+Louisa Dawson was quite a wise young person for her years. She saw that
+Emily did not want to talk about the horrors she had been through: but
+considered it far better that she should be made to talk than that
+she should brood over them in secret. So when the days passed and no
+confidences came, she set herself to draw the child out. She had, as
+everybody has, a pretty clear idea in her own head of what life is
+like in a pirate vessel. That these little innocents should have come
+through it alive was miraculous, like the three Hebrews in the fiery
+furnace.
+
+‘Where used you to live when you were on the schooner?’ she asked Emily
+one day suddenly.
+
+‘Oh, in the hold,’ said Emily nonchalantly. ‘Is that your Great-uncle
+_Vaughan_, did you say?’
+
+In the hold. She might have known it. Chained, probably, down there in
+the darkness like blacks, with rats running over them, fed on bread
+and water.
+
+‘Were you very frightened when there was a battle going on? Did you
+hear them fighting over your head?’
+
+Emily looked at her with her gentle stare: but kept silence.
+
+Louisa Dawson was very wise in thus trying to ease the load on the
+child’s mind. But also she was consumed with curiosity. It exasperated
+her that Emily would not talk.
+
+There were two questions which she particularly wanted to ask. One,
+however, seemed insuperably difficult of approach. The other she could
+not contain.
+
+‘Listen, darling,’ she said, wrapping her arms round Emily. ‘Did you
+ever actually see any one killed?’
+
+Emily stiffened palpably. ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Why should we?’
+
+‘Didn’t you ever even see a body?’ she went on: ‘A dead one?’
+
+‘No,’ said Emily, ‘there weren’t any.’ She seemed to meditate a while.
+‘There weren’t many,’ she corrected.
+
+‘You poor, poor little thing,’ said Miss Dawson, stroking her forehead.
+
+But though Emily was slow to talk, Edward was not. Suggestion was
+hardly necessary. He soon saw what he was expected to say. It was
+also what he wanted to say. All these rehearsals with Harry, these
+springings into the main rigging, these stormings of the galley ...
+they had seemed real enough at the time. Now, he had soon no doubt
+about them at all. And Harry backed him up.
+
+It was wonderful for Edward that every one seemed ready to believe what
+he said. Those who came to him for tales of bloodshed were not sent
+empty away.
+
+Nor did Rachel contradict him. The pirates were wicked--deadly wicked,
+as she had good reason to know. So they had probably done all Edward
+said: probably when she was not looking.
+
+Miss Dawson did not always press Emily like this: she had too much
+sense. She spent a good deal of her time simply in tying more firmly
+the knots of the child’s passion for her.
+
+She was ready enough to tell her about England. But how strange it
+seemed that these humdrum narrations should interest any one who had
+seen such romantic, terrible things as Emily had!
+
+She told her all about London, where the traffic was so thick things
+could hardly pass, where things drove by all day, as if the supply of
+them would never come to an end. She tried also to describe trains,
+but Emily could not see them, somehow: all she could envisage was a
+steamer like this one, only going on land--but she knew that was not
+right.
+
+What a wonderful person her Miss Dawson was! What marvels she had seen!
+Emily had again the feeling she had in the schooner’s cabin: how time
+had slipped by, been wasted. Now she would be eleven in a few months:
+a great age: and in all that long life, how little of interest or
+significance had happened to her! There was her Earthquake, of course,
+and she had slept with an alligator: but what were these compared with
+the experiences of Miss Dawson, who knew London so well it hardly
+seemed any longer wonderful to her, who could not even count the number
+of times she had travelled in a train?
+
+Her Earthquake ... it was a great possession. Dared she tell Miss
+Dawson about it? Was it possible that it would raise her a little
+in Miss Dawson’s esteem, show that even she, little Emily, had
+had experiences? But she never dared. Suppose that to Miss Dawson
+earthquakes were as familiar as railway trains: the fiasco would be
+unbearable. As for the alligator, Miss Dawson had told Harold to take
+it away as if it was a worm.
+
+Sometimes Miss Dawson sat silently fondling Emily, looking now at her,
+now at the other children at play. How difficult it was to imagine
+that these happy-looking creatures had been, for months together, in
+hourly danger of their lives! Why had they not died of fright? She was
+sure that she would have. Or at least gone stark, staring, raving mad?
+
+She had always wondered how people survived even a moment of danger
+without dropping dead with fear: but months and months ... and
+children.... Her head could not swallow it.
+
+As for that other question, how dearly she would have liked to ask it,
+if only she could have devised a formula delicate enough.
+
+Meanwhile Emily’s passion for her was nearing its crisis; and one day
+this was provoked. Miss Dawson kissed Emily three times, and told her
+in future to call her Lulu.
+
+Emily jumped as if shot. Call this goddess by her Christian name? She
+burnt a glowing vermilion at the very thought. The Christian names of
+all grown-ups were sacred: something never to be uttered by childish
+lips: to do so, the most blasphemous disrespect.
+
+For Miss Dawson to tell her to do so was as embarrassing as if she had
+seen written up in church,
+
+  PLEASE SPIT.
+
+Of course, if Miss Dawson told her to call her Lulu, at least she must
+not call her Miss Dawson any more. But say ... the Other Word aloud,
+her lips refused.
+
+And so for some time, by elaborate subterfuges, she managed to avoid
+calling her anything at all. But the difficulty of this increased
+in geometrical progression: it began to render all intercourse an
+intolerable strain. Before long she was avoiding Miss Dawson.
+
+Miss Dawson was terribly wounded: what could she have done to offend
+this strange child? (‘Little Fairy-girl,’ she used to call her.) The
+darling had seemed so fond of her, but now....
+
+So Miss Dawson used to follow her about the ship with hurt eyes, and
+Emily used to escape from her with scarlet cheeks. They had never had
+a real talk, heart to heart, again, by the time the steamer reached
+England.
+
+
+ii
+
+When the steamer took in her pilot, you may imagine that her news
+travelled ashore; and also, that it quickly reached the _Times_
+newspaper.
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Bas-Thornton, after the disaster, unable to bear Jamaica
+any longer, had sold Ferndale for a song and travelled straight back
+to England, where Mr. Thornton soon got posts as London dramatic
+critic to various Colonial newspapers, and manipulated rather remote
+influences at the Admiralty in the hope of getting a punitive
+expedition sent against the whole island of Cuba. It was thus the
+_Times_ which, in its quiet way, broke the news to them, the very
+morning that the steamer docked at Tilbury. She was a long time doing
+it, owing to the fog, out of which the gigantic noises of dockland
+reverberated unintelligibly. Voices shouted things from the quays.
+Bells ting-a-linged. The children welded themselves into a compact
+mass facing outwards, an improvised Argus determined to miss nothing
+whatever. But they could not gather really what anything was about,
+much less everything.
+
+Miss Dawson had taken charge of them all, meaning to convey them to her
+Aunt’s London house till their relations could be found. So now she
+took them ashore, and up to the train, into which they climbed.
+
+‘What are we getting into this box for?’ asked Harry: ‘Is it going to
+rain?’
+
+It took Rachel several journeys up and down the steep steps to get all
+her babies inside.
+
+The fog, which had met them at the mouth of the river, was growing
+thicker than ever. So they sat there in semi-darkness at first, till a
+man came and lit the light. It was not very comfortable, and horribly
+cold: but presently another man came, and put in a big flat thing which
+was hot: it was full of hot water, Miss Dawson said, and for you to put
+your feet on.
+
+Even now that she was in a train, Emily could hardly believe it would
+ever start. She had become quite sure it was not going to when at last
+it did, jerking along like a cannon-ball would on a leash.
+
+Then their powers of observation broke down. For the time they were
+full. So they played Up-Jenkins riotously all the way to London: and
+when they arrived hardly noticed it. They were quite loath to get out,
+and finally did so into as thick a pea-soup fog as London could produce
+at the tail end of the season. At this they began to wake up again, and
+jog themselves to remember that this really was _England_, so as not to
+miss things.
+
+They had just realised that the train had run right inside a sort
+of enormous house, lit by haloed yellow lights and full of this
+extraordinary orange-coloured air, when Mrs. Thornton found them.
+
+‘Mother!’ cried Emily. She had not known she could be so glad to see
+her. As for Mrs. Thornton, she was far beyond the bounds of hysteria.
+The little ones held back at first, but soon followed Emily’s example,
+leaping on her and shouting: indeed it looked more like Actæon with his
+hounds than a mother with her children: their monkey-like little hands
+tore her clothes in pieces, but she didn’t care a hoot. As for their
+father, he had totally forgotten how much he disliked emotional scenes.
+
+‘I slept with an alligator!’ Emily was shouting at intervals. ‘Mother!
+I’ve slept with an alligator!’
+
+Margaret stood in the background holding all their parcels. None of her
+relations had appeared at the station. Mrs. Thornton’s eye at last took
+her in.
+
+‘Why, Margaret ...’ she began vaguely.
+
+Margaret smiled and came forward to kiss her.
+
+‘Get out!’ cried Emily fiercely, punching her in the chest. ‘She’s _my_
+mother!’
+
+‘Get out!’ shouted all the others. ‘She’s _our_ mother!’
+
+Margaret fell back again into the shadows: and Mrs. Thornton was too
+distracted to be as shocked as she would normally have been.
+
+Mr. Thornton, however, was just sane enough to take in the situation.
+‘Come on, Margaret!’ he said. ‘Margaret’s _my_ pal! Let’s go and look
+for a cab!’
+
+He took the girl’s arm, bowing his fine shoulders, and walked off with
+her up the platform.
+
+They found a cab, and brought it to the scene, and they all got in,
+Mrs. Thornton just remembering to say ‘How-d’you-do-good-bye’ to Miss
+Dawson.
+
+Packing themselves inside was difficult. It was in the middle of it all
+that Mrs. Thornton suddenly exclaimed:
+
+‘But where’s John?’
+
+The children fell immediately silent.
+
+‘Where is he?--Wasn’t he on the train with you?’
+
+‘No,’ said Emily, and went as dumb as the rest.
+
+Mrs. Thornton looked from one of them to another.
+
+‘John! Where is John?’ she asked the world at large, a faint hint of
+uneasiness beginning to tinge her voice.
+
+It was then that Miss Dawson showed a puzzled face at the window.
+
+‘_John?_’ she asked. ‘Why, who is John?’
+
+
+iii
+
+The children passed the spring at the house their father had taken in
+Hammersmith Terrace, on the borders of Chiswick: but Captain Jonsen,
+Otto, and the crew passed it in Newgate.
+
+They were taken there as soon as the gunboat which apprehended them
+reached the Thames.
+
+The children’s bewilderment lasted. London was not what they had
+expected, but it was even more astounding. From time to time, however,
+they would realise how this or that did chime in with something they
+had been told, though not at all with the idea that the telling had
+conjured up. On these occasions they felt something as Saint Matthew
+must have felt when, after recounting some trivial incident, he adds:
+‘That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Prophet So-and-So.’
+
+‘Why look!’ exclaimed Edward. ‘There’s only toys in this store!’
+
+‘Why, don’t you remember ...’ began Emily.
+
+Yes, their mother had told them, on a visit to their father’s general
+store in St. Anne’s, that in London there were stores which not only
+sold toys but which sold toys only. At that time they hardly knew what
+toys were. A cousin in England had once sent them out some expensive
+wax dolls, but even before the box was opened the wax had melted:
+consequently the only dolls they had were empty bottles, which they
+clothed with bits of rag. These had another advantage over the wax
+kind: you could feed them, poking it into the neck. If you put in
+some water too, in a day or so the food began to digest, visibly. The
+bottles with square shoulders they called He-beasties, and the bottles
+with round shoulders they called She-beasties.
+
+Their other toys were mostly freakish sticks, and different kinds of
+seeds and berries. No wonder it seemed strange to them to imagine
+these things in a shop. But the idea engaged them, nevertheless. Down
+by the bathing-hole there were several enormous cotton-trees, which
+lift themselves on their roots right out of the earth, as on stilts,
+making a big cage. One of these they dubbed their toy-shop: decorated
+it up with lace-bark, and strings of bright-coloured seeds, and their
+other toys: then they would go inside and take turns to sell them to
+each other. So now this was the picture the phrase ‘toy-shop’ evoked in
+them. No wonder the London kind was a surprise to them, seemed a very
+far-fetched fulfilment of the prophecy.
+
+The houses in Hammersmith are tall, roomy, comfortable houses, though
+not big or aristocratic, with gardens running right down to the river.
+
+It was a shock to them to find how dirty the river was. The
+litter-strewn mud when the tide was out somehow offended them much less
+than the sewery water when it was up. At low tide they would often
+climb down the wall and scrounge about in the mud for things of value
+to them happily enough. They stank like polecats when they came up
+again. Their father was sensible about dirt. He ordered a tub of water
+to be kept permanently outside the basement door, in which they must
+wash before entering the house: but none of the other children in the
+terrace were allowed to play in the mud at all.
+
+Emily did not play in the mud either: it was only the little ones.
+
+Mr. Thornton was generally at a theatre till the small hours; and when
+he came home used to sit and write, and then he would go out, about
+dawn, to the post. The children were often awake in time to hear him
+going to bed. He drank whisky while he worked, and that helped him to
+sleep all the morning (they had to be quiet too). But he got up for
+luncheon, and then he often had battles with their mother about the
+food. She would try to make him eat it.
+
+All that spring they were an object of wonder to their acquaintances,
+as they had been on the steamer; and also an object of pity. In
+the wide world they had become almost national figures: but it was
+easier to hide this from them then than it would be nowadays. But
+people--friends--would often come and tell them about the pirates:
+what wicked men they were, and how cruelly they had maltreated them.
+Children would generally ask to see Emily’s scar. They were especially
+sorry for Rachel and Laura, who, as being the youngest, must have
+suffered most. These people used also to tell them about John’s
+heroism, and that he had died for his country just the same as if he
+had grown up and become a real soldier: that he had shown himself a
+true English gentleman, like the knights of old were and the martyrs.
+They were to grow up to be very proud of John, who though still a child
+had dared to defy these villains and die rather than allow anything to
+happen to his sisters.
+
+The glorious deeds which Edward would occasionally confess to were
+still received with an admiration hardly at all tempered with
+incredulity. He had the intuition, by now, to make them always done in
+defiance of Jonsen and his crew, not, as formerly, in alliance with or
+superseding them.
+
+The children listened to all they were told: and according to their
+ages believed it. Having as yet little sense of contradiction, they
+blended it quite easily in their minds with their own memories; or
+sometimes it even cast their memories out. Who were they, children, to
+know better what had happened to them than grown-ups?
+
+Mrs. Thornton was a feeling, but an essentially Christian woman. The
+death of John was a blow to her from which she would never recover,
+as indeed the death of all of them had once been. But she taught the
+children in saying their prayers to thank God for John’s noble end and
+let it always be an example to them: and then she taught them to ask
+God to forgive the pirates for all their cruelty to them. She explained
+to them that God could only do this when they had been properly
+punished on earth. The only one who could not understand this at all
+was Laura--she was, after all, rather young. She used the same form
+of words as the others, yet contrived to imagine that she was praying
+to the pirates, not for them; so that it gradually came about that
+whenever God was mentioned in her hearing the face she imagined for Him
+was Captain Jonsen’s.
+
+Once more a phase of their lives was receding into the past, and
+crystallising into myth.
+
+Emily was too old to say her prayers aloud, so no one could know
+whether she put in the same phrase as the others about the pirates or
+not. No one, in point of fact, knew much what Emily was thinking about
+anything, at that time.
+
+
+iv
+
+One day a cab came for the whole family, and they drove together right
+into London. The cab took them into the Temple: and then they had to
+walk through twisting passages and up some stairs.
+
+It was a day of full spring, and the large room into which they were
+ushered faced south. The windows were tall and heavily draped with
+curtains. After the gloomy stairs it seemed all sunshine and warmth.
+There was a big fire blazing, and the furniture was massive and
+comfortable, the dark carpet so thick it clung to their shoes.
+
+A young man was standing in front of the fire when they came in. He was
+very correctly, indeed beautifully dressed: and he was very handsome as
+well, like a prince. He smiled at them all pleasantly, and came forward
+and talked like an old friend. The suspicious eyes of the Liddlies soon
+accepted him as such. He gave their parents cake and wine: and then
+he insisted on the children being allowed a sip too, with some cake,
+which was very kind of him. The taste of the wine recalled to all of
+them that blowy night in Jamaica: they had had none since.
+
+Soon some more people arrived. They were Margaret and Harry, with a
+small, yellow, fanatical-looking aunt. The two lots of children had not
+seen each other for a long time: so they only said Hallo to each other
+very perfunctorily. Mr. Mathias, their host, was just as kind to the
+new arrivals.
+
+Every one was at great pains to make the visit appear a casual one; but
+the children all knew more or less that it was nothing of the sort,
+that something was presently going to happen. However, they could
+play-act too. Rachel climbed onto Mr. Mathias’s knee. They all gathered
+round the fire, Emily sitting bolt upright on a foot-stool, Edward and
+Laura side by side in a capacious arm-chair.
+
+In the middle of every one talking there was a pause, and Mr. Thornton,
+turning to Emily, said, ‘Why don’t you tell Mr. Mathias about your
+adventures?’
+
+‘Oh yes!’ said Mr. Mathias, ‘do tell me all about it. Let me see,
+you’re ...’
+
+‘Emily,’ whispered Mr. Thornton.
+
+‘Age?’
+
+‘Ten.’
+
+Mr. Mathias reached for a piece of clean paper and a pen.
+
+‘What adventures?’ asked Emily clearly.
+
+‘Well,’ said Mr. Mathias, ‘you started for England on a sailing-ship,
+didn’t you? The _Clorinda_?’
+
+‘Yes. She was a barque.’
+
+‘And then what happened?’
+
+She paused before answering.
+
+‘There was a monkey,’ she said judicially.
+
+‘A monkey?’
+
+‘And a lot of turtles,’ put in Rachel.
+
+‘Tell him about the pirates,’ prompted Mrs. Thornton. Mr. Mathias
+frowned at her slightly: ‘Let her tell it in her own words, please.’
+
+‘Oh yes,’ said Emily dully, ‘we were captured by pirates, of course.’
+
+Both Edward and Laura had sat up at the word, stiff as spokes.
+
+‘Weren’t you with them too, Miss Fernandez?’ Mr. Mathias asked.
+
+Miss Fernandez! Every one turned to see who he could mean. He was
+looking at Margaret.
+
+‘Me?’ she said suddenly, as if waking up.
+
+‘Yes, you! Go on!’ said her aunt.
+
+‘Say yes,’ prompted Edward. ‘You were with us, weren’t you?’
+
+‘Yes,’ said Margaret, smiling.
+
+‘Then why couldn’t you say so?’ hectored Edward.
+
+Mr. Mathias silently noted this curious treatment of the eldest: and
+Mrs. Thornton told Edward he mustn’t speak like that.
+
+‘Tell us what you remember about the capture, will you?’ he asked,
+still of Margaret.
+
+‘The what?’
+
+‘Of how the pirates captured the _Clorinda_.’
+
+She looked round nervously and laughed, but said nothing.
+
+‘The monkey was in the rigging, so they just came on the ship,’ Rachel
+volunteered.
+
+‘Did they--er--fight with the sailors? Did you see them hit anybody? Or
+threaten anybody?’
+
+‘Yes!’ cried Edward, and jumped up from his chair, his eyes wide and
+inspired. ‘_Bing! Bang! Bong!_’ he declared, thumping the seat at each
+word; then sat down again.
+
+‘They didn’t,’ said Emily. ‘Don’t be silly, Edward.’
+
+‘Bing, bang, bong,’ he repeated, with less conviction.
+
+‘_Bung!_’ contributed Harry to his support, from under the arm of the
+fanatical aunt.
+
+‘Bim-bam, bim-bam,’ sing-songed Laura, suddenly waking up and starting
+a tattoo of her own.
+
+‘Shut up!’ cried Mr. Thornton. ‘Did you, or did you not, any of you,
+see them hit anybody?’
+
+‘Cut off their heads!’ cried Edward. ‘And throw them in the sea!--Far,
+far ...’ his eyes became dreamy and sad.
+
+‘They didn’t hit anybody,’ said Emily. ‘There wasn’t any one to hit.’
+
+‘Then where were all the sailors?’ asked Mr. Mathias.
+
+‘They were all up the rigging,’ said Emily.
+
+‘I see,’ said Mr. Mathias. ‘Er--didn’t you say the monkey was in the
+rigging?’
+
+‘He broke his neck,’ said Rachel. She wrinkled up her nose disgustedly:
+‘He was drunk.’
+
+‘His tail was rotted,’ explained Harry.
+
+‘Well,’ said Mr. Mathias, ‘when they came on board, what did they do?’
+
+There was a general silence.
+
+‘Come, come! What did they do?--What did they do, Miss Fernandez?’
+
+‘I don’t know.’
+
+‘Emily?’
+
+‘_I_ don’t know.’
+
+He sat back in despair: ‘But you saw them!’
+
+‘No we didn’t,’ said Emily, ‘we went in the deck-house.’
+
+‘And stayed there?’
+
+‘We couldn’t open the door.’
+
+‘_Bang-bang-bang!_’ Laura suddenly rapped out.
+
+‘Shut up!’
+
+‘And then, when they let you out?’
+
+‘We went on the schooner.’
+
+‘Were you frightened?’
+
+‘What of?’
+
+‘Well: them.’
+
+‘Who?’
+
+‘The pirates.’
+
+‘Why should we?’
+
+‘They didn’t do anything to frighten you?’
+
+‘To _frighten_ us?’
+
+‘Coo! José did belch!’ Edward interjected merrily, and began giving an
+imitation. Mrs. Thornton chid him.
+
+‘Now,’ said Mr. Mathias gravely, ‘there’s something I want you to tell
+me, Emily. When you were with the pirates, did they ever do anything
+you didn’t like? You know what I mean, something _nasty_?’
+
+‘Yes!’ cried Rachel, and every one turned to her. ‘He talked about
+drawers,’ she said in a shocked voice.
+
+‘What did he say?’
+
+‘He told us once not to toboggan down the deck on them,’ put in Emily
+uncomfortably.
+
+‘Was that all?’
+
+‘He shouldn’t have talked about drawers,’ said Rachel.
+
+‘Don’t _you_ talk about them, then,’ cried Edward: ‘Smarty!’
+
+‘Miss Fernandez,’ said the lawyer diffidently, ‘have you anything to
+add to that?’
+
+‘What?’
+
+‘Well ... what we are talking about.’
+
+She looked from one person to another, but said nothing.
+
+‘I don’t want to press you for details,’ he said gently, ‘but did they
+ever--well, make suggestions to you?’
+
+Emily fixed her glowing eyes on Margaret, catching hers.
+
+‘It’s no good questioning Margaret,’ said the Aunt morosely; ‘but it
+ought to be perfectly clear to you what has happened.’
+
+‘Then I am afraid I must,’ said Mr. Mathias. ‘Another time, perhaps.’
+
+Mrs. Thornton had for some while been frowning and pursing her lips, to
+stop him.
+
+‘Another time would be much better,’ she said: and Mr. Mathias turned
+the examination back to the capture of the _Clorinda_.
+
+But they seemed to have been strangely unobservant of what went on
+around them, he found.
+
+
+v
+
+When the others had all gone, Mathias offered Thornton, whom he liked,
+a cigar: and the two sat together for a while over the fire.
+
+‘Well,’ said Thornton, ‘did the interview go as you had expected?’
+
+‘Pretty much.’
+
+‘I noticed you questioned them chiefly about the _Clorinda_. But you
+have got all the information you need on that score, surely?’
+
+‘Naturally I did. Anything they affirmed I could check exactly by
+Marpole’s detailed affidavit. I wanted to test their reliability.’
+
+‘And you found?’
+
+‘What I have always known. That I would rather have to extract
+information from the devil himself than from a child.’
+
+‘But what information, exactly, do you want?’
+
+‘Everything. The whole story.’
+
+‘You know it.’
+
+Mathias spoke with a dash of exasperation:
+
+‘Do you realise, Thornton, that without considerable help from them we
+may even fail to get a conviction?’
+
+‘What is the difficulty?’ asked Thornton in a peculiar, restrained tone.
+
+‘We could get a conviction for piracy, of course. But since ’37,
+piracy has ceased to be a hanging offence unless it is accompanied by
+murder.’
+
+‘And is the killing of one small boy insufficient to count as murder?’
+asked Thornton in the same cold voice.
+
+Mathias looked at him curiously.
+
+‘We can guess at the probabilities of what happened,’ he said. ‘The boy
+was undoubtedly taken onto the schooner; and now he can’t be found.
+But, strictly speaking, we have no proof that he is dead.’
+
+‘He may, of course, have swum across the Gulf of Mexico and landed at
+New Orleans.’
+
+Thornton’s cigar, as he finished speaking, snapped in two.
+
+‘I know this is ...’ began Mathias with professional gentleness, then
+had the sense to check himself. ‘I am afraid there is no doubt that we
+can personally entertain that the lad is dead: but there is a legal
+doubt: and where there is a legal doubt a jury might well refuse to
+convict.’
+
+‘Unless they were carried away by an attack of common sense.’
+
+Mathias paused for a moment before asking:
+
+‘And the other children have dropped, as yet, no hint as to what
+precisely did happen to him?’
+
+‘None.’
+
+‘Their mother has questioned them?’
+
+‘Exhaustively.’
+
+‘Yet they must surely know.’
+
+‘It is a great pity,’ said Thornton, deliberately, ‘that when the
+pirates decided to kill the child, they did not invite in his sisters
+to watch.’
+
+Mathias was ready to make allowances. He merely shifted his position
+and cleared his voice.
+
+‘Unless we can get definite evidence of murder, either of your boy
+or the Dutch captain, I am afraid there is a very real danger of
+these men escaping with their lives: though they would of course be
+transported.--It’s all highly unsatisfactory, Thornton,’ he went on
+confidentially. ‘We do not, as lawyers, like aiming at a conviction for
+piracy alone. It is too vague. The most eminent jurists have not even
+yet decided on a satisfactory definition of piracy. I doubt, now, if
+they ever will. One school holds that it is any felony committed on the
+High Seas. But that does little except render a separate term otiose.
+Moreover, it is not accepted by other schools of thought.’
+
+‘To the layman, at least, it would seem to be a queer sort of piracy to
+commit suicide in one’s cabin, or perform an illegal operation on the
+captain’s daughter!’
+
+‘Well, you see the difficulties. Consequently we always prefer to make
+use of it simply as a make-weight with another more serious charge.
+Captain Kidd, for instance, was not, strictly speaking, hanged for
+piracy. The first count in his indictment, on which he was condemned,
+sets forth that he feloniously, intentionally, and with malice
+aforethought hit his own gunner on the head with a wooden bucket value
+eightpence. That is something definite. What _we_ need is something
+definite. We have not got it. Take the second case, the piracy of the
+Dutch steamer. We are in the same difficulty there: a man is taken on
+board the schooner, he disappears. What happened? We can only surmise.’
+
+‘Isn’t there such a thing as turning King’s Evidence?’
+
+‘Another most unsatisfactory proceeding, to which I should be loath to
+have recourse. No, the natural and proper witnesses are the children.
+There is a kind of beauty in making them, who have suffered so much at
+these men’s hands, the instruments of justice upon them.’
+
+Mathias paused, and looked at Thornton narrowly.
+
+‘You haven’t been able, in all these weeks, to get the smallest hint
+from them with regard to the death of Captain Vandervoort either?’
+
+‘None.’
+
+‘Well, is it your impression that they do truly know nothing, or that
+they have been terrorised into hiding something?’
+
+Thornton gave a gentle sigh, almost of relief.
+
+‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t think they have been terrorised. But I do think
+they may know something they won’t tell.’
+
+‘But why?’
+
+‘Because, during the time they were on the schooner, it is plain they
+got very fond of this man Jonsen, and of his lieutenant, the man called
+Otto.’
+
+Mathias was incredulous.
+
+‘Is it possible for children to be mistaken in a man’s whole nature
+like that?’
+
+The look of irony on Thornton’s face attained an intensity that was
+almost diabolical.
+
+‘I think it is possible,’ he said, ‘even for children to make such a
+mistake.’
+
+‘But this ... affection: it is highly improbable.’
+
+‘It is a fact.’
+
+Mathias shrugged. After all, a criminal lawyer is not concerned with
+facts. He is concerned with probabilities. It is the novelist who is
+concerned with facts, whose job it is to say what a particular man did
+do on a particular occasion: the lawyer does not, cannot be expected to
+go further than to show what the ordinary man would be most likely to
+do under presumed circumstances.
+
+Mathias, as he conned these paradoxes, smiled to himself a little
+grimly. It would never do to give utterance to them.
+
+‘I think if they know anything I shall be able to find it out,’ was all
+he said.
+
+‘D’you mean to put them in the box?’ Thornton asked suddenly.
+
+‘Not all of them, certainly: Heaven forbid! But we shall have to
+produce one of them at least, I am afraid.’
+
+‘Which?’
+
+‘Well. We had intended it to be the Fernandez girl. But she seems ...
+unsatisfactory?’
+
+‘Exactly.’ Then Thornton added, with a characteristic forward jerk:
+‘She was sane enough when she left Jamaica.--Though always a bit of a
+fool.’
+
+‘Her aunt tells me that she seems to have lost her memory: or a
+great part of it. No, if I call her it will simply be to exhibit her
+condition.’
+
+‘Then?’
+
+‘I think I shall call your Emily.’
+
+Thornton stood up.
+
+‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’ll have to settle with her yourself what she’s to
+say. Write it out, and make her learn it by heart.’
+
+‘Certainly,’ said Mathias, looking at his finger-nails. ‘I am not in
+the habit of going into court unprepared.--It’s bad enough having a
+child in the box anyway,’ he went on.
+
+Thornton paused at the door.
+
+‘--You can never count on them. They say what they think you want them
+to say. And then they say what they think the opposing counsel wants
+them to say too--if they like his face.’
+
+Thornton gesticulated--a foreign habit.
+
+‘I think I will take her to Madame Tussaud’s on Thursday afternoon and
+try my luck,’ ended Mathias: and the two bade each other good-bye.
+
+
+vi
+
+Emily enjoyed the wax-works; even though she did not know that a
+wax-work of Captain Jonsen, his scowling face bloody and a knife in
+his hand, was already in contemplation. She got on well with Mr.
+Mathias. She felt very grown-up, going out at last without the little
+ones endlessly tagging. Afterwards he took her to a bun-shop in Baker
+Street, and tried to persuade her to pour out his tea for him: but she
+turned shy at that, and he had in the end to do it for himself.
+
+Mr. Mathias, like Miss Dawson, spent a good deal of his time and energy
+in courting the child’s liking. He was at least sufficiently successful
+for it to come as a complete surprise to her when presently he began
+to throw out questions about the death of Captain Vandervoort. Their
+studied casualness did not deceive her for a moment. He learnt nothing:
+but she was hardly home, and his carriage departed, than she was
+violently sick. Presumably she had eaten too many cream buns. But, as
+she lay in bed sipping from a tumbler of water in that mood of fatalism
+which follows on the heels of vomiting, Emily had a lot to think over,
+as well as an opportunity of doing so without emotion.
+
+Her father was spending a rare evening at home: and now he stood unseen
+in the shadows of her bedroom, watching her. To his fantastic mind, the
+little chit seemed the stage of a great tragedy: and while his bowels
+of compassion yearned towards the child of his loins, his intellect was
+delighted at the beautiful, the subtle combination of the contending
+forces which he read into the situation. He was like a powerless
+stalled audience, which pities unbearably, but would not on any account
+have missed the play.
+
+But as he stood now watching her, his sensitive eyes communicated to
+him an emotion which was not pity and was not delight: he realised,
+with a sudden painful shock, that he was afraid of her!
+
+But surely it was some trick of the candle-light, or of her
+indisposition, that gave her face momentarily that inhuman, stony,
+basilisk look?
+
+Just as he was tiptoeing from the room, she burst out into a sudden,
+despairing moan, and leaning half out of her bed began again an
+ineffectual, painful retching. Thornton persuaded her to drink off her
+tumbler of water, and then held her hot moist temples between his hands
+till at last she sank back, exhausted, in a complete passivity, and
+slipped off to sleep.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There were several occasions after this when Mr. Mathias took her out
+on excursions, or simply came and examined her at the house. But still
+he learnt nothing.
+
+What was in her mind now? I can no longer read Emily’s deeper thoughts,
+or handle their cords. Henceforth we must be content to surmise.
+
+As for Mathias, there was nothing for it but to accept defeat at her
+hands, and then explain it away to himself. He ceased to believe that
+she had anything to hide, because, if she had, he was convinced she
+could not have hidden it.
+
+But if she could not give him any information, she remained,
+spectacularly speaking, a most valuable witness. So, as Thornton had
+suggested, he set his clerk to copy out in his beautiful hand a sort
+of Shorter Catechism: and this he gave to Emily and told her to learn
+it.
+
+She took it home and showed it to her mother, who said Mr. Mathias
+was quite right, she was to learn it. So Emily pinned it to her
+looking-glass, and learnt the answers to two new questions every
+morning. Her mother heard her these with her other lessons,
+and badgered her a lot for the sing-song way she repeated them. But how
+can one speak naturally anything learnt by heart, Emily wondered? It
+is impossible. And Emily knew this catechism backwards and forwards,
+inside and out, before the day came.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Once more they drove into town: but this time it was to the Central
+Criminal Court. The crowd outside was enormous, and Emily was bundled
+in with the greatest rapidity. The building was impressive, and full of
+policemen, and the longer she had to wait in the little room where they
+were shown, the more nervous she became. Would she remember her piece,
+or would she forget it? From time to time echoing voices sounded down
+the corridors, summoning this person or that. Her mother stayed with
+her, but her father only looked in occasionally, when he would give
+some news to her mother in a low tone. Emily had her catechism with
+her, and read it over and over.
+
+Finally a policeman came, and conducted them into the court.
+
+A criminal court is a very curious place. The seat of a ritual quite as
+elaborate as any religious one, it lacks in itself any impressiveness
+or symbolism of architecture. A robed judge in court looks like a
+catholic bishop would if he were to celebrate mass in some municipal
+bath-house. There is nothing to make one aware that here the Real
+Presence is: the presence of death.
+
+As Emily came into court, past the many men in black gowns writing with
+their quill pens, she did not at first see judge, jury, or prisoners.
+Her eye was caught by the face of the Clerk, where he sat below the
+Bench. It was an old and very beautiful face, cultured, unearthly
+refined. His head laid back, his mouth slightly open, his eyes closed,
+he was gently sleeping.
+
+That face remained etched on her mind as she was shown her way into the
+box. The Oath, which formed the opening passages of her catechism, was
+administered; and with its familiar phrases her nervousness vanished,
+and with complete confidence she sang out her responses to the familiar
+questions which Mr. Mathias, in fancy dress, was putting to her. But
+until he had finished she kept her eyes fixed on the rail in front of
+her, for fear something should confuse her. At last, however, Mr.
+Mathias sat down; and Emily began to look around her. High above the
+sleeping man sat another, with a face even more refined, but wide
+awake. His voice, when now he spoke a few words to her, was the kindest
+she had ever heard. Dressed in his strange disguise, toying with a
+pretty nosegay, he looked like some benign old wizard who spent his
+magic in doing good.
+
+Beneath her was the table where so many other wigged men were sitting.
+One was drawing funny faces: but his own was grave. Two more were
+whispering together.
+
+Now another man was on his feet. He was shorter than Mr. Mathias, and
+older, and in no way good-looking or even interesting. He in turn began
+to ask her questions.
+
+He, Watkin, the defending counsel, was no fool. He had not failed to
+notice that, among all the questions Mathias had put to her, there had
+been no reference to the death of Captain Vandervoort. That must mean
+that either the child knew nothing of it--itself a valuable lacuna in
+the evidence to establish, or that what she did know was somehow in
+his clients’ favour. Up till now he had meant to pursue the obvious
+tactics--question her on the evidence she had already given, perhaps
+frighten her, at any rate confuse her and make her contradict herself.
+But any one, even a jury, could see through that. Nor was there any
+hope, under any circumstances, of a total acquittal: the most he could
+hope for was escape from the murder charge.
+
+He suddenly decided to change his whole policy. When he spoke, his
+voice too was kind (though it lacked perforce the full benign timbre of
+the judge’s). He made no attempt to confuse her. By his sympathy with
+her, he hoped for the sympathy, himself, of the court.
+
+His first few questions were of a general nature: and he continued them
+until her answers were given with complete confidence.
+
+‘Now, my dear young lady,’ he said at last. ‘There is just one more
+question I want to ask you: and please answer it loudly and clearly, so
+that we can all hear. We have been told about the Dutch Steamer, which
+had the animals on board. Now a very horrible thing has been suggested.
+It has been said that a man was taken off the steamer, the captain of
+it in fact, onto the schooner, and that he was murdered there. Now what
+I want to ask you is this. Did you see any such thing happen?’
+
+Those who were watching the self-contained Emily saw her turn very
+white and begin to tremble. Suddenly she gave a shriek: then after
+a second’s pause she began to sob. Every one listened in an icy
+stillness, their hearts in their mouths. Through her tears they heard,
+they all heard, the words: ‘... He was all lying in his blood ... he
+was awful! He ... he died, he said something and then he _died_!’
+
+That was all that was articulate. Watkin sat down, thunderstruck. The
+effect on the court could hardly have been greater. As for Mathias, he
+did not show surprise: he looked more like a man who has digged a pit
+into which his enemy has fallen.
+
+The judge leant forward and tried to question her: but she only sobbed
+and screamed. He tried to soothe her: but by now she had become too
+hysterical for that. She had already, however, said quite enough for
+the matter in hand: and they let her father come forward and lift her
+out of the box.
+
+As he stepped down with her she caught sight for the first time of
+Jonsen and the crew, huddled up together in a sort of pen. But they
+were much thinner than the last time she had seen them. The terrible
+look on Jonsen’s face as his eye met hers, what was it that it reminded
+her of?
+
+Her father hurried her home. As soon as she was in the cab she became
+herself again with a surprising rapidity. She began to talk about all
+she had seen, just as if it had been a party: the man asleep, and the
+man drawing funny faces, and the man with the bunch of flowers, and had
+she said her piece properly?
+
+‘Captain was there,’ she said. ‘Did you see him?’
+
+‘What was it all about?’ she asked presently. ‘Why did I have to learn
+all those questions?’
+
+Mr. Thornton made no attempt to answer her questions: he even shrank
+back, physically, from touching his child Emily. His mind reeled with
+the many possibilities. Was it conceivable she was such an idiot as
+really not to know what it was all about? Could she possibly not know
+what she had done? He stole a look at her innocent little face, even
+the tear-stains now gone. What was he to think?
+
+But as if she read his thoughts, he saw a faint cloud gather.
+
+‘What are they going to do to Captain?’ she asked, a faint hint of
+anxiety in her voice.
+
+Still he made no answer. In Emily’s head the Captain’s face, as she had
+last seen it ... what was it she was trying to remember?
+
+Suddenly she burst out:
+
+‘Father, _what_ happened to Tabby in the end, that dreadful windy night
+in Jamaica?’
+
+
+vii
+
+Trials are quickly over, once they begin. It was no time before the
+judge had condemned these prisoners to death and was trying some one
+else with the same concentrated, benevolent, individual attention.
+
+Afterwards, a few of the crew were reprieved and transported.
+
+The night before the execution, Jonsen managed to cut his throat: but
+they found out in time to bandage him up. He was unconscious by the
+morning, and had to be carried to the gallows in a chair: indeed, he
+was finally hanged in it. Otto bent over once and kissed his forehead;
+but he was completely insensible.
+
+It was the negro cook, however, according to the account in the
+_Times_, who figured most prominently. He showed no fear of death
+himself, and tried to comfort the others.
+
+‘We have all come here to die,’ he said. ‘_That_’ (pointing to the
+gallows) ‘was not built for nothing. We shall certainly end our lives
+in this place: nothing can now save us. But in a few years we should
+die in any case. In a few years the judge who condemned us, all men now
+living, will be dead. _You_ know that I die innocent: anything I have
+done, I was forced to do by the rest of you. But I am not sorry. I
+would rather die now, innocent, than in a few years perhaps guilty of
+some great sin.’
+
+
+viii
+
+It was a few days later that term began, and Mr. and Mrs. Thornton took
+Emily to her new school at Blackheath. While they remained to tea with
+the head mistress, Emily was introduced to her new playmates.
+
+‘Poor little thing,’ said the mistress, ‘I hope she will soon forget
+the terrible things she has been through. I think our girls will have
+an especially kind corner in their hearts for her.’
+
+In another room, Emily with the other new girls was making friends
+with the older pupils. Looking at that gentle, happy throng of clean
+innocent faces and soft graceful limbs, listening to the ceaseless,
+artless babble of chatter rising, perhaps God could have picked out
+from among them which was Emily: but I am sure that I could not.
+
+
+FINIS
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] The tiger-shark of the South Seas is of course a very different
+cattle.
+
+
+
+
+TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
+
+
+  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
+
+  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
+
+  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
+
+  Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.
+
+  New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the
+    public domain.
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75530 ***