bazaar that is proving a frost. He went on board, and mixed several
gallons of that potion known in alcoholic circles as Hangman’s Blood
(which is compounded of rum, gin, brandy, and porter). Innocent (merely
beery) as it looks, refreshing as it tastes, it has the property of
increasing rather than allaying thirst, and so, once it has made a
breach, soon demolishes the whole fort.
This he poured out into mugs, merely remarking that it was a noted
English cordial, and gave it to the children to distribute among the
crowd.
At once the Cubans began to show more interest in them than when they
came bearing samples of arrowroot: and with their popularity their
happiness increased, and like rococo Ganymedekins and Hebelettes they
darted about the crowd, distributing the enticing poison to all who
would.
When he saw what was on foot, the mate wiped his mouth in despair.
‘_Oh_ you fool!’ he groaned.
But the captain himself was highly pleased with his ruse: kept rubbing
his hands, and grinning, and winking.
‘That’ll liven ’em, eh?’
‘Wait and see!’ was all the mate let himself say. ‘You just wait and
see!’
‘Look at Edward!’ said Emily to Margaret in a pause. ‘It’s perfectly
sickening!’
It was. The very first mug rendered the fat señora even more motherly.
Edward by now was fascinated, was in her power completely. He sat and
gazed up in her little black eyes, his own large brown ones glazed with
sentiment. He avoided her moustache, it is true: but on her cheek he
was returning her kisses earnestly. All this, of course, without the
possibility of their exchanging a single word--pure instinct. ‘With
a fork drive Nature out ...’ one would gladly have taken a fork to
Nature, on that occasion.
Meanwhile, on the rest of the crowd the liquor was having exactly the
effect the mate had foreseen. Instead of stimulating them, it dissolved
completely whatever vestiges of attention they were still giving to
the sale. He stepped down from the platform--gave it all up in despair.
For they had now broken up into little groups, which discussed and
argued their own affairs as if they were in a café. He in his turn went
on board, and shut himself in his cabin--Captain Jonsen could deal with
the mess he had made himself!
But alas! No worse host than Jonsen was ever born: he was utterly
incapable of either understanding or controlling a crowd. All he could
think of doing was plying them with more.
For the children the spectacle was an absorbing one. The whole nature
of these people, as they drank, seemed to be changing: under their very
eyes something seemed to be breaking up, like ice melting. Remember
that to them this was a pantomime: no word spoken to explain, and so
the eyes exercised a peculiar clearness.
It was rather as if the whole crowd had been immersed in water, and
something dissolved out of them while the general structure yet
remained. The tone of their voices changed, and they began to talk much
slower, to move more slowly and elaborately. The expression of their
faces became more candid, and yet more mask-like: hiding less, there
was also less to hide. Two men even began to fight: but they fought
so incompetently it was like a fight in a poetic play. Conversation,
which before had a beginning and an end, now grew shapeless and
interminable, and the women laughed a lot.
One old gentleman in most respectable clothes settled himself on the
dirty ground at full length, with his head in the shade of the throned
lady, spread a handkerchief over his face, and went to sleep: three
other middle-aged men, holding each other with one hand to establish
contact and using the other for emphasis, kept up a continuous clacking
talk, that faltered intolerably though never quite stopping--like a
very old engine.
A dog ran in and out among them all wagging its tail, but no one kicked
it. Presently it found the old gentleman who was asleep on the ground,
and began licking his ear excitedly: it had never had such a chance
before.
The old lady also had fallen asleep, a little crookedly--she might
even have slipped off her chair if her negro had not buttressed her
up. Edward got off her, and went and joined the other children rather
shamefacedly: but they would not speak to him.
Jonsen looked round him perplexedly. Why had Otto abandoned the sale,
now the crowd were all primed and ready? Probably he had some good
reason, though. He was an incomprehensible man, that mate: but clever.
The truth is that Captain Jonsen was himself a man with a very weak
head for liquor, and so he very seldom touched it, and knew little of
the subtler aspects of its effects.
He paced up and down the dusty wharf at his usual slow shuffle, his
head sunk forward in wretchedness, occasionally wringing his hands in
the naturalest way, and even whimpering. When the priest came up to him
confidentially and offered him a price for all that remained unsold he
simply shook his head and continued his shuffle.
* * * * *
There was something a little nightmare-like in the whole scene which
riveted the children’s attention, and was very near the border of
frightening them. It was with something of a struggle that at last
Margaret said ‘Let’s go on the ship.’ So they all went on board: and
feeling a little unprotected even there, descended into the hold, which
was the safest place because they had already slept in it. They sat
down on the kelson without doing or saying much, still with a vague
apprehension, till boredom at last eliminated it.
‘Oh I _wish_ I had brought my paint-box!’ said Emily, with a sigh
fetched right up from her boots.
ii
That night, after they had all gone to bed, they saw in a half-asleep
state a lantern bobbing up and down in the open hatch. It was held by
José, the little monkeyfied one (they had already decided he was the
nicest of the crew). He was grinning winningly, and beckoning to them.
Emily was too sleepy to move, and so were Laura and Rachel: so leaving
them to lie, the others--Margaret, Edward, and John--scrambled on deck.
It was mysteriously quiet. Not a sign of the crew, but for José. In the
bright starlight the town looked unnormally beautiful: there was music
coming from one of the big houses up by the church. José conducted them
ashore and up to this house: tiptoed up to the jalousies and signed to
them to follow him.
As the light struck his face it became transfigured, so affected was he
by the opulence within.
The children craned up to the level of the windows and peered in too,
oblivious of the mosquitoes making havoc of their necks.
It was a very grand sight. This was the house of the Chief Magistrate:
and he was giving a dinner in honour of Captain Jonsen and his mate.
There he sat at the head of the table, in uniform; very stiff, yet his
little beard even stiffer than himself. His was the kind of dignity
that grows from reserve and stillness, from freezing every minute like
game which scents the hunter: while in total contrast to him there sat
his wife (the important señora who had made so much of Edward), far
more impressive than her husband, but doing it not by dignity but by
that calculated abandon and vulgarity which transcends dignity. Indeed,
her flinging about got the greater part of its effect from the very
formality of her setting.
When the children arrived at the window she must even have been
discussing the size of her own belly: for she suddenly seized the shy
hand of the mate, and made him, willy-nilly, feel it, as if to clench
an argument.
As for her husband, he did not seem to see her: nor did the servants:
she was such a very great lady.
But it was not her, it was the meal which raped José’s attention. It
was certainly an impressive one. Together on the table were tomato
soup, mountain mullet, cray-fish, a huge red-snapper, land-crabs, rice
and fried chicken, a young turkey, a small joint of goat-mutton, a wild
duck, beef steak, fried pork, a dish of wild pigeons, sweet potatoes,
yuca, wine, and guavas and cream.
It was a meal which would take a long time.
Captain Jonsen and the lady appeared to be on excellent terms: he
pressing some project on her, and she, without the least loss of
amiability, putting it on one side. What they were talking about,
of course, the children could not hear. As a matter of fact, it was
themselves. Captain Jonsen was trying to get the lady to discuss the
disposal of his impromptu nursery: the most reasonable solution being
plainly to leave them at Santa Lucia, more or less in her charge. But
she was adept at eluding the importunate. It was not till the banquet
was over that he realised he had failed to make any arrangement
whatever.
But long before this, before the dinner was ended and the dance began,
the children were tired of the peep-show. So José tiptoed away with
them, down to the back streets by the dock. Presently they came to a
mysterious door at the bottom of a staircase, with a negro standing
as if on guard. But he made no effort to stop them, and, José leading
them, they climbed several flights to a large upper room.
The air was one you could hardly push through. The place was crowded
with negroes, and a few rather smudgy whites: among whom they
recognised most of the rest of the crew of the schooner. At the far end
was the most primitive stage you ever saw: there was a cradle on it,
and a large star swung on the end of a piece of string. There was to be
a nativity-play--rather early in the season. While the Chief Magistrate
entertained the pirate captain and mate, the priest had got this up in
honour of the pirate crew.
A nativity-play, with real cattle.
The whole audience had arrived an hour early, so as to see the entry of
the cow. The children were just in time for this.
The room was in the upper part of a warehouse, which had been built,
through some freak of vanity, in the English fashion, several stories
high; and was provided with the usual large door opening onto
nothingness, with a beam-and-tackle over it. Many the load of gold-dust
and arrowroot which must have once been hoisted into it: now, like most
of the others at Santa Lucia, it had long since ceased to be used.
But to-day a new rope had been rove through the block: and a broad
belly-band put round the waist of the priest’s protesting old cow.
Margaret and Edward lingered timidly near the top of the stairs; but
John, putting his head down and burrowing like a mole, was not content
till he had reached the open doorway. There he stood looking out into
the darkness: where he saw a slowly revolving cow treading the air a
yard from the sill, while at each revolution a negro reached out to
the utmost limit of balance, trying to catch her by the tail and draw
her to shore.
John, in his excitement, leaned out too far. He lost his balance and
fell clear to the ground, forty feet, right on his head.
José gave a cry of alarm, sprang onto the cow’s back, and was instantly
lowered away--just as if the cinema had already been invented. He must
have looked very comic. But what was going on inside him the while it
is difficult to know. Such a responsibility does not often fall on an
old sailor; and he would probably feel it all the more for that reason.
As for the crowd beneath, they made no attempt to touch the body till
José had completed his descent: they stood back and let him have a good
look at it, and shake it, and so on. But the neck was quite plainly
broken.
Margaret and Edward, however, had not any clear idea of what was going
on, since they had not actually seen John fall. So they were rather
annoyed when two of the schooner’s crew appeared and insisted on their
coming back to bed at once. They wanted to know where John was: but
even more they wanted to know where José was, and why they weren’t to
be allowed to stay. However they obeyed, in the impossibility of asking
questions, and started back to bed.
Just as they were about to go on board the schooner, they heard a huge
report on their left, like a cannon. They turned; and looking past
the quiet, silver town, with its palm-groves, to the hills behind,
they saw a large ball of fire, travelling at a tremendous rate. It was
quite close to the ground: and not very far off either--just beyond the
Church. It left a wake of the most brilliant blue, green, and purple
blobs of light. For a while it hovered: then it burst, and the air was
shortly charged with a strong sulphurous smell.
They were all frightened, the sailors even more than the children, and
hastened on board.
* * * * *
In the small hours, Edward suddenly called Emily in his sleep. She woke
up: ‘What is it?’
‘It’s rather cow-catching, isn’t it?’ he asked anxiously, his eyes
tight shut.
‘What’s the matter?’
He did not answer, so she roused him--or thought she had.
‘I only wanted to see if you were a _real_ Cow-catching Zomfanelia,’ he
explained in a kind voice: and was immediately deep asleep again.
In the morning they might easily have thought the whole thing a
dream--if John’s bed had not been so puzzlingly empty.
Yet, as if by some mute flash of understanding, no one commented
on his absence. No one questioned Margaret, and she offered no
information. Neither then nor thereafter was his name ever mentioned by
anybody: and if you had known the children intimately you would never
have guessed from _them_ that he had ever existed.
iii
The children’s only enemy on board the schooner (which presently put to
sea again, with them still on board) was the big white pig. (There was
a little black fellow, too.)
He was a pig with no decision of mind. He could never choose a place
to lie for himself; but was so ready to follow any one else’s opinion,
that whatever position you took up he immediately recognised as the
best, the only site: and came and routed you out of it. Seeing how rare
shady patches of deck are in a calm, or dry patches in a stiff breeze,
this was a most infernal nuisance. One is so defenceless against big
pigs when lying on one’s back.
The little black one could be a nuisance also, it is true--but that was
only from excess of friendliness. He hated to be left out of any party:
nay more, he hated lying on inanimate matter if a living couch was to
be found.
On the north beach of Cape San Antonio it is possible to land a boat,
if you pick your spot. About fifty yards through the bushes there are a
couple of acres of open ground: cross this, and among some sharp coral
rocks in the scrub on the far side are two wells, the northernmost the
better of the two.
So, being becalmed off the Mangrove Keys one morning, Jonsen sent a
boat on shore to get water.
The heat was extreme. The ropes hung like dead snakes, the sails as
heavy as ill-sculptured drapery. The iron stanchion of the awning
blistered any hand that touched it. Where the deck was unsheltered, the
pitch boiled out of the seams. The children lay gasping together in the
small shade, the little black pig squealing anxiously till he found a
comfortable stomach to settle down on.
The big white pig had not found them yet.
From the silent shore came an occasional gun-shot. The water-party
were potting pigeons. The sea was like a smooth pampas of quicksilver:
so steady you could not split shore from reflection, till the casual
collision of a pelican broke the phantom. The crew were mending sails,
under the awning, with infinite slowness: all except one negro, who
straddled the bowsprit in his trousers, admiring his own grin in the
mirror beneath. The sun lit an iridescent glimmer on his shoulders: in
such a light even a negro could not be black.
Emily was missing John badly: but the little black pig snuffled in
supreme content, his snout buried amicably in her armpit.
When the boatload returned, they had other game besides pigeons and
grey land-crabs. They had stolen a goat from some lonely fisherman.
It was just as they came up over the side that the big white pig
discovered the party under the awning, and prepared for the attack. But
the goat at that moment bounded nimbly from the bulwarks: and without
even stopping to look round, swallowed his chin and charged. He caught
the old pig full in the ribs, knocking his wind out completely.
Then the battle began. The goat charged, the pig screamed and hustled.
Each time the goat arrived at him the pig yelled as if he was killed;
but each time the goat drew back the pig advanced towards him. The
goat, his beard flying like a prophet’s, his eyes crimson and his
scut as lively as a lamb’s at the teat, bounded in, bounded back into
the bows for a fresh run: but at each charge his run grew shorter and
shorter. The pig was hemming him in.
Suddenly the pig gave a frightful squeal, chiefly in surprise at his
own temerity, and pounced. He had got the goat cornered against the
windlass: and for a few flashing seconds bit and trampled.
It was a very chastened goat which was presently led off to his
quarters: but the children were prepared to love him for ever, for the
heroic bangs he had given the old tyrant.
* * * * *
But he was not entirely inhuman, that pig. That same afternoon, he was
lying on the hatch eating a banana. The ship’s monkey was swinging on a
loose tail of rope; and spotting the prize, swung further and further
till at last he was able to snatch it from between his very trotters.
You would never have thought that the immobile mask of a pig could wear
a look of such astonishment, such dismay, such piteous injury.
_Chapter 5_
When Destiny knocks the first nail in the coffin of a tyrant, it is
seldom long before she knocks the last.
It was the very next morning that the schooner, in the lightest of
airs, was sidling gently to leeward. The mate was at the wheel,
shifting his weight from foot to foot with that rhythmic motion many
steersmen affect, the better to get the feel of a finicky helm; and
Edward was teaching the captain’s terrier to beg, on the cabin-top. The
mate shouted to him to hang on to something.
‘Why?’ said Edward.
‘_Hang on!_’ cried the mate again, spinning the wheel over as fast as
he could to bring her into the wind.
The howling squall took her, through his promptness, almost straight
in the nose; or it would have carried all away. Edward clung to the
skylight. The terrier skidded about alarmedly all over the cabin-top,
slipped off onto the deck, and was kicked by a dashing sailor clean
through the galley door. But not so that poor big pig, who was taking
an airing on deck at the time. Overboard he went, and vanished to
windward, his snout (sometimes) sticking up manfully out of the water.
God, Who had sent him the goat and the monkey for a sign, now required
his soul of him. Overboard, too, went the coops of fowls, three
new-washed shirts, and--of all strange things to get washed away--the
grind-stone.
Up out of his cabin appeared the captain’s shapeless brown head,
cursing the mate as if it was _he_ who had upset the apple-cart. He
came up without his boots, in grey wool socks, and his braces hanging
down his back.
‘Get below!’ muttered the mate furiously. ‘I can manage her!’
The captain did not, however: still in his socks, he came up on deck
and took the wheel out of the mate’s hand. The latter went a dull
brick-red: walked for’ard: then aft again: then went below and shut
himself in his cabin.
In a few moments the wind had combed up some quite hearty waves: then
it blew their tops off, and so flattened the sea out again, a sea that
was black except for little whipt-up fountains of iridescent foam.
‘Get my boots!’ bellowed Jonsen at Edward.
Edward dashed down the companion with alacrity. It is a great moment,
one’s first order at sea; especially when it comes in an emergency. He
reappeared with a boot in each hand, and a lurch flung him boots and
all at the captain’s feet. ‘Never carry things in both hands,’ said the
captain, smiling pleasantly.
‘Why?’ asked Edward.
‘Keep one hand to lay hold with.’
There was a pause.
‘Some day I will teach you the three Sovereign Rules of Life.’ He shook
his head meditatively. ‘They are very wise. But not yet. You are too
young.’
‘Why not?’ asked Edward. ‘When shall I be old enough?’
The captain considered, going over the Rules in his head.
‘When you know which is windward and which is leeward, then I will
teach you the first rule.’
Edward made his way forward, determined to qualify as soon as he
possibly could.
When the worst of the squall was over they got the advantage of it, the
schooner lying over lissomly and spinning along like a race-horse. The
crew were in great spirits--chaffing the carpenter, who, they declared,
had thrown his grind-stone overboard as a lifebuoy for the pig.
The children were in good spirits also. Their shyness was all gone now.
The schooner lying over as she did, her wet deck made a most admirable
toboggan-slide; and for half an hour they tobogganed happily on their
bottoms from windward to leeward, shrieking with joy, fetching up in
the lee-scuppers, which were mostly awash, and then climbing from thing
to thing to the windward bulwarks raised high in the air, and so all
over again.
Throughout that half hour, Jonsen at the wheel said not a single word.
But at last his pent-up irritation broke out:
‘Hi! You! Stop that!’
They gazed at him in astonishment and disillusion.
There is a period in the relations of children with any new grown-up
in charge of them, the period between first acquaintance and the first
reproof, which can only be compared to the primordial innocence of
Eden. Once a reproof has been administered, this can never be recovered
again.
Jonsen now had done it.
But he was not content with that--he was still bursting with rage:
‘Stop it! Stop it, I tell you!’
(They had already done so, of course.)
The whole unreasonableness, the monstrousness of the imposition of
these brats on his ship suddenly came over him, and summed itself up in
a single symbol:
‘If you go and wear holes in your drawers, do you think _I_ am going to
mend them?--Lieber Gott! What do you think I am, eh? What do you think
this ship is? What do you think we all are? To mend your drawers for
you, eh? _To mend ... your ... drawers?_’
There was a pause, while they all stood thunderstruck.
But even now he had not finished:
‘Where do you think you’ll get new ones, eh?’ he asked, in a voice
explosive with rage. Then he added, with an insulting coarseness of
tone: ‘And I’ll not have you going about my ship without them! See?’
Scarlet to the eyes with outrage they retreated to the bows. They
could hardly believe so unspeakable a remark had crossed human lips.
They assumed an air of lightness, and talked together in studied loud
voices: but their joy was dashed for the day.
So it was that--small as a man’s hand--a spectre began to show over
their horizon: the suspicion at last that this was _not_ all according
to plan, that they might even not be wanted. For a while their actions
showed the unhappy wariness of the uninvited guest.
Later in the afternoon, Jonsen, who had not spoken again, but looked
from time to time acutely miserable, was still at the wheel. The mate
had shaved himself and put on shore clothes, as a parable: he now
appeared on deck: pretended not to see the captain, but strolled like a
passenger up to the children and entered into conversation with them.
‘If I’m not fit to steer in foul weather, I’m not fit to steer in
fair!’ he muttered, but without glancing at the captain. ‘He can take
the helum all day and night, for all the help _I’ll_ give him!’
The captain appeared equally not to see the mate. He looked quite ready
to take both watches till kingdom come.
‘If _he’d_ been at the wheel when that squall struck us,’ said the mate
under his voice but with biting passion, ‘he’d have lost the ship! He’s
no more eye for a squall coming than a sucker-fish! And he knows it,
too: that’s what makes him go on this way!’
The children did not answer. It shocked them deeply to have to see
a grown-up, a should-be Olympian, displaying his feelings. In exact
opposition to the witnesses at the Transfiguration, they felt it would
have been good for them to be almost anywhere rather than there. He
was totally unconscious of their discomfort, however: too self-occupied
to notice how they avoided catching his eye.
‘Look! There’s a steamship!’ exclaimed Margaret, with much too bright a
brightness.
The mate glowered at it.