A High Wind in Jamaica (9 page)

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 nightglass.

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. JOHN. Sh! Go to sleep!

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.

4

I

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 labors 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 there-after 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, blackringed, 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 practiced 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 mustache). 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.