A High Wind in Jamaica (18 page)

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 wheelhouse at his back.

Jonsen, rapidly recovering some of his temper, strode up to her. Her imitation was admirable. For a few mo-ments 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, “Gabblegabble, 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 behavior 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 recognize 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 recognized 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-humored 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 pretense.

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 breaststroke. 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.