Part 11

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.