“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, dangdanging 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 recognized 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 recognized her: though where the difference lay it would be hard to say.ﾠ
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 firefighting 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.
7
I
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 stil
l 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 earth-quake, 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.ﾠ
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.ﾠ
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 practiced bather can keep them off easily with a welt on the nose each time they turn over to strike * : 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 archaeologist, 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 honor 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 recognized 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 moltings 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 h
er 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 recognize 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.