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.