there’s more of them. They’ll be using them for men-of-war next, and
then where’ll we be? Times are bad enough without steamers.’
But while he spoke he wore a preoccupied expression, as if he were more
concerned with what was going on at the back of his mind than with what
went on in the front.
‘Did you ever hear about what happened when the first steamer put to
sea in the Gulf of Paria?’ he asked, however.
‘No, what?’ asked Margaret, with an eagerness that even exceeded the
necessities of politeness in its falsity.
‘She was built on the Clyde, and sailed over. (Nobody thought of using
steam for a long ocean voyage in those days.) The Company thought they
ought to make a to-do--to popularise her, so to speak. So the first
time she put to sea under her own power, they invited all the big-wigs
on board: all the Members of Assembly in Trinidad, and the Governor
and his Staff, and a Bishop. It was the Bishop what did the trick.’
His story died out: he became completely absorbed in watching sidelong
the effect of his bravado on the captain.
‘Did what?’ asked Margaret.
‘Ran ’em aground.’
‘But what did they let him steer for?’ asked Edward. ‘They might have
known he couldn’t!’
‘Edward! How dare you talk about a Bishop in that rude way!’ admonished
Rachel.
‘It wasn’t the steamer he ran aground, sonny,’ said the mate: ‘it was a
poor innocent little devil of a pirate craft, that was just beating up
for the Boca Grande in a northerly breeze.’
‘Good for him!’ said Edward. ‘How did he do it?’
‘They were all sea-sick, being on a steamer for the first time: the way
she rolls, not like a decent sailing-vessel. There wasn’t a man who
could stay on deck--except the Bishop, and he just thrived on it. So
when the poor little pirate cut under her bows, and seen her coming up
in the eye of the wind, no sail set, with a cloud of smoke amidships
and an old Bishop bung in the middle of the smoke, and her paddles
making as much turmoil as a whale trying to scratch a flea in its ear,
he just beached his vessel and took to the woods. Never went to sea
again, he didn’t; started growing cocoa-nuts. But there was one poor
fish was in such a hurry he broke his leg, and they came ashore and
found him. When he saw the Bishop coming for him he started yelling out
it was the Devil.’
‘O-oh!’ gasped Rachel, horror-struck.
‘How silly of him,’ said Edward.
‘I don’t know so much!’ said the mate. ‘He wasn’t too far wrong! Ever
since that, they’ve been the death of our profession, Steam and the
Church ... what with steaming, and what with preaching, and steaming
and preaching.... Now that’s a funny thing,’ he broke off, suddenly
interested by what he was saying: ‘_Steam_ and the _Church_! What have
they got in common, eh? Nothing, you’d say: you’d think they’d fight
each other cat-and-dog: but no: they’re thick as two thieves ... thick
as thieves.--Not like in the days of Parson Audain.’
‘Who was he?’ asked Margaret helpfully.
‘He was a right sort of a parson, he was, _yn wyr iawn_! He was Rector
of Roseau--oh, a long time back.’
‘Here! Come and take this wheel while I have a spell!’ grunted the
captain.
‘I couldn’t well say _how_ long back,’ continued the mate in a loud,
unnatural, and now slightly exultant voice: ‘forty years or more.’
He began to tell the story of the famous Rector of Roseau: one of the
finest pathetic preachers of his age, according to contemporaries;
whose appearance was fine, gentle, and venerable, and who supplemented
his stipend by owning a small privateer.
‘Here! Otto!’ called Jonsen.
But the mate had a long recital of the parson’s misfortunes before him:
beginning with the capture of his schooner (while smuggling negroes to
Guadaloupe) by another privateer, from Nevis; and how the parson went
to Nevis, posted his rival’s name on the court-house door, and stood
on guard there with loaded pistols for three days in the hope the man
would come and challenge him.
‘What, to fight a _duel_?’ asked Harry.
‘But wasn’t he a clergyman, you said?’ asked Emily.
But duels, it appeared, did not come amiss to this priest. He fought
thirteen altogether in his life, the mate told them: and on one
occasion, while waiting for the seconds to reload, he went up to his
opponent, suggested ‘just a little something to fill in time, good
sir’--and knocked him flat with his fist.
This time, however, his enemy lay low: so he fitted out a second
schooner, and took command of her, week-days, himself. His first quarry
was an apparently harmless Spanish merchantman: but she suddenly opened
fourteen masked gun-ports and it was he who had to surrender. All his
crew were massacred but himself and his carpenter, who hid behind a
water-cask all night.
‘But I don’t understand,’ said Margaret: ‘was he a pirate?’
‘Of course he was!’ said Otto the mate.
‘Then _why_ did you say he was a clergyman?’ pursued Emily.
The mate looked as puzzled as she did. ‘Well, he was Rector of Roseau,
wasn’t he? And B.A., B.D.? Anyway, he was Rector until the new Governor
listened to some cock-and-bull story against him, and made him resign.
He was the best preacher they ever had--he’d have been a Bishop one
day, if some one hadn’t slandered him to the Governor!’
‘Otto!’ called the captain in a conciliatory voice. ‘Come over here, I
want to speak to you.’
But the deaf and exulting mate had plenty of his story still to run:
how Audain now turned trader, and took a cargo of corn to San Domingo,
and settled there: how he challenged two black generals to a duel, and
shot them both, and Christophe threatened to hang him if they died.
But the parson (having little faith in Domingan doctors) escaped by
night in an open boat and went to St. Eustatius. There he found many
religions but no ministers; so he recommenced clergyman of every kind:
in the morning he celebrated a mass for the Catholics, then a Lutheran
service in Dutch, then Church of England matins: in the evening he sang
hymns and preached hell-fire to the Methodists. Meanwhile his wife, who
had more tranquil tastes, lived at Bristol: so he now married a Dutch
widow, resourcefully conducting the ceremony himself.
‘But I _don’t_ understand!’ said Emily despairingly: ‘Was he a real
clergyman?’
‘Of course he wasn’t,’ said Margaret.
‘But he couldn’t have married himself _himself_ if he wasn’t,’ argued
Edward. ‘Could he?’
The mate heaved a sigh.
‘But the English Church aren’t like that nowadays,’ he said. ‘They’re
all against us.’
‘I should think not, indeed!’ pronounced Rachel slowly, in a deep
indignant voice. ‘He was a very wicked man!’
‘He was a most respectable person,’ replied the mate severely, ‘and a
_wonderful_ pathetic preacher!--You may take it they were chagrined at
Roseau, when they heard St. Eustatius had got him!’
Captain Jonsen had lashed the wheel, and came up, his face piteous with
distress.
‘Otto! Mein Schatz...!’ he began, laying his great bear’s-arm round the
mate’s neck. Without more ado they went below together, and a sailor
came aft unbidden and took the wheel.
* * * * *
Ten minutes later the mate reappeared on deck for a moment, and sought
out the children.
‘What’s the captain been saying to you?’ he asked. ‘Flashed out at you
about something, did he?’
He took their complex, uncomfortable silence for assent.
‘Don’t you take too much notice of what he says,’ he went on. ‘He
flashes out like that sometimes; but a minute after he could eat
himself, fair eat himself!’
The children stared at him in astonishment: what on earth was he trying
to say?
But he seemed to think he had explained his mission fully: turned, and
once more went below.
* * * * *
For hours a merry but rather tedious hubble-bubble, suggesting liquor,
was heard ascending from the cabin skylight. As evening drew on, the
breeze having dropped away almost to a calm, the steersman reported
that both Jonsen and Otto were now fast asleep, their heads on each
other’s shoulders across the cabin table. As he had long forgotten what
the course was, but had been simply steering by the wind, and there was
now no wind to steer by, he (the steersman) concluded the wheel could
get on very well without him.
The reconciliation of the captain and the mate deserved to be
celebrated by all hands with a blind.
A rum-cask was broached: and the common sailors were soon as
unconscious as their betters.
Altogether this was one of the unpleasantest days the children had
spent in their lives.
When dawn came, every one was still pretty incapable, and the neglected
vessel drooped uncertainly. Jonsen, still rather unsteady on his feet,
his head aching and his mind Napoleonic but muddled, came on deck and
looked about him. The sun had come up like a searchlight: but it was
about all there was to be seen. No land was anywhere in sight, and the
sea and sky seemed very uncertain as to the most becoming place to
locate their mutual firmament. It was not till he had looked round and
round a fair number of times that he perceived a vessel, up in what by
all appearances must be sky, yet not very far distant.
For some little while he could not remember what it is a pirate
captain does when he sees a sail; and he felt in no mood to overtax his
brain by trying to. But after a time it came back unbidden--one gives
chase.
‘Give chase!’ he ordered solemnly to the morning air: and then went
below again and roused the mate, who roused the crew.
No one had the least idea where they were, or what kind of a craft
this quarry might be: but such considerations were altogether too
complicated for the moment. As the sun parted further from his
reflection a breeze sprang up: so the sails were trimmed after a
fashion, and chase was duly given.
In an hour or two, as the air grew clearer, it was plain their quarry
was a merchant brig, not too heavily laden, and making a fair pace: a
pace, indeed, which in their incompetently trimmed condition they were
finding it pretty difficult to equal. Jonsen shuffled rapidly up and
down the deck like a shuttle, passing his woof backwards and forwards
through the real business of the ship. He was hugging himself with
excitement, trying to evolve some crafty scheme of capture. The chase
went on: but noon passed, the distance between the two vessels was
barely, if at all, lessened. Jonsen, however, was much too optimistic
to realise this.
It used to be a common device of pirates when in chase of a vessel to
tow behind them a spare topmast, or some other bulky object. This would
act as a drogue, or brake: and the pursued, seeing them with all sail
set apparently doing their utmost, would under-estimate their powers of
speed. Then when night fell the pirate would haul the spar on board,
overtake the other vessel rapidly, and catch it unprepared.
There were several reasons why this device was unsuitable to the
present occasion. First and most obviously, it was doubtful whether, in
their present condition, they were capable of overtaking the brig at
all, leaving such handicaps altogether out of consideration. A second
was that the brig showed no signs of alarm. She was proceeding on her
voyage at her natural pace, quite unaware of the honour they were doing
her.
However, Captain Jonsen was nothing if not a crafty man; and during
the afternoon he gave orders for a spare spar to be towed behind as I
have described. The result was that the schooner lost ground rapidly:
and when night fell they were at least a couple of miles further from
the brig than they had been at dawn. When night fell, of course, they
hauled the spar on board and prepared for the last act. They followed
the brig by compass through the hours of darkness, without catching
sight of her. When morning came, all hands crowded expectantly at the
rail.
But the brig was vanished. The sea was as bare as an egg.
If they were lost before, now they were double-lost. Jonsen did
not know where he might be within two hundred miles; and being no
sextant-man, but an incurable dead-reckoner, he had no means of finding
out. This did not worry him very greatly, however, because sooner or
later one of two things might happen: he might catch sight of some bit
of land he recognised, or he might capture some vessel better informed
than himself. Meanwhile, since he had no particular destination, one
bit of sea was much the same to him as another.
The piece he was wandering in, however, was evidently out of the main
track of shipping; for days went by, and weeks, without his coming even
so near to effecting a capture as he had been in the case of the brig.
But Captain Jonsen was not sorry to be out of the public eye for a
while. Before he had left Santa Lucia, news had reached him of the
_Clorinda_ putting into Havana; and of the fantastic tale Marpole
was telling. The ‘twelve masked gun-ports’ had amused him hugely,
since he was altogether without artillery: but when he heard Marpole
accused him of murdering the children--Marpole, that least reputable
of skunks--his anger had broken out in one of its sudden explosions.
For it was unthinkable--during those first few days--that he would ever
touch a hair of their heads, or even speak a cross word to them. They
were still a sort of holy novelty then: it was not till their shyness
had worn off that he had begun to regret so whole-heartedly the failure
of his attempt to leave them behind with the Chief Magistrate’s wife.
_Chapter 6_
The weeks passed in aimless wandering. For the children, the lapse
of time acquired once more the texture of a dream: things ceased
happening: every inch of the schooner was now as familiar to them as
the _Clorinda_ had been, or Ferndale: they settled down quietly to
grow, as they had done at Ferndale, and as they would have done, had
there been time, on the _Clorinda_.
And then an event did occur, to Emily, of considerable importance. She
suddenly realised who she was.
There is little reason that one can see why it should not have happened
to her five years earlier, or even five later; and none, why it should
have come that particular afternoon.
She had been playing houses in a nook right in the bows, behind the
windlass (on which she had hung a devil’s-claw as a door-knocker); and
tiring of it was walking rather aimlessly aft, thinking vaguely about
some bees and a fairy queen, when it suddenly flashed into her mind
that she was _she_.
She stopped dead, and began looking over all of her person which
came within the range of eyes. She could not see much, except a
fore-shortened view of the front of her frock, and her hands when she
lifted them for inspection: but it was enough for her to form a rough
idea of the little body she suddenly realised to be hers.
She began to laugh, rather mockingly. ‘Well!’ she thought, in effect:
‘Fancy _you_, of all people, going and getting caught like this!--You
can’t get out of it now, not for a very long time: you’ll have to go
through with being a child, and growing up, and getting old, before
you’ll be quit of this mad prank!’
Determined to avoid any interruption of this highly important
occasion, she began to climb the ratlines, on her way to her favourite
perch at the mast-head. Each time she moved an arm or a leg in this
simple action, however, it struck her with fresh amusement to find
them obeying her so readily. Memory told her, of course, that they
had always done so before: but before, she had never realised how
surprising this was.
Once settled on her perch, she began examining the skin of her hands
with the utmost care: for it was _hers_. She slipped a shoulder out of
the top of her frock; and having peeped in to make sure she really was
continuous under her clothes, she shrugged it up to touch her cheek.
The contact of her face and the warm bare hollow of her shoulder gave
her a comfortable thrill, as if it was the caress of some kind friend.
But whether the feeling came to her through her cheek or her shoulder,
which was the caresser and which the caressed, that no analysis could
tell her.
Once fully convinced of this astonishing fact, that she was now Emily
Bas-Thornton (why she inserted the ‘now’ she did not know, for she
certainly imagined no transmigrational nonsense of having been any one
else before), she began seriously to reckon its implications.
First, what agency had so ordered it that out of all the people in the
world who she might have been, she was this particular one, this Emily:
born in such-and-such a year out of all the years in Time, and encased
in this particular rather pleasing little casket of flesh? Had she
chosen herself, or had God done it?
At this, another consideration: who was God? She had heard a terrible
lot about Him, always: but the question of His identity had been left
vague, as much taken for granted as her own. Wasn’t she perhaps God,
herself? Was it that she was trying to remember? However, the more she
tried, the more it eluded her. (How absurd, to disremember such an
important point as whether one was God or not!) So she let it slide:
perhaps it would come back to her later.
Secondly, why had all this not occurred to her before? She had been
alive for over ten years now, and it had never once entered her head.
She felt like a man who suddenly remembers at eleven o’clock at night,
sitting in his own arm-chair, that he had accepted an invitation to go
out to dinner that night. There is no reason for him to remember it
now: but there seems equally little why he should not have remembered
it in time to keep his engagement. How could he have sat there all the
evening without being disturbed by the slightest misgiving? How could
Emily have gone on being Emily for ten years without once noticing this
apparently obvious fact?
It must not be supposed that she argued it all out in this ordered,
but rather long-winded fashion. Each consideration came to her in a
momentary flash, quite innocent of words: and in between her mind
lazed along, either thinking of nothing or returning to her bees and
the fairy queen. If one added up the total of her periods of conscious
thought, it would probably reach something between four and five
seconds; nearer five, perhaps; but it was spread out over the best part
of an hour.
Well then, granted she was Emily, what were the consequences, besides
enclosure in that particular little body (which now began on its
own account to be aware of a sort of unlocated itch, most probably
somewhere on the right thigh), and lodgment behind a particular pair of
eyes?
It implied a whole series of circumstances. In the first place, there
was her family, a number of brothers and sisters from whom, before, she
had never entirely dissociated herself; but now she got such a sudden
feeling of being a discrete person that they seemed as separate from
her as the ship itself. However, willy-nilly she was almost as tied to
them as she was to her body. And then there was this voyage, this ship,
this mast round which she had wound her legs. She began to examine it
with almost as vivid an illumination as she had studied the skin of her
hands. And when she came down from the mast, what would she find at the
bottom? There would be Jonsen, and Otto, and the crew: the whole fabric
of a daily life which up to now she had accepted as it came, but which
now seemed vaguely disquieting. What was going to happen? Were there
disasters running about loose, disasters which her rash marriage to the
body of Emily Thornton made her vulnerable to?
A sudden terror struck her: did any one know? (Know, I mean, that she
was some one in particular, Emily--perhaps even God--not just any
little girl.) She could not tell why, but the idea terrified her.
It would be bad enough if they should discover she was a particular
person--but if they should discover she was God! At all costs she must
hide _that_ from them.--But suppose they knew already, had simply been
hiding it from her (as guardians might from an infant king)? In that
case, as in the other, the only thing to do was to continue to behave
as if she did not know, and so outwit them.
But if she was God, why not turn all the sailors into white mice, or
strike Margaret blind, or cure somebody, or do some other Godlike act
of the kind? Why should she hide it? She never really asked herself
why: but instinct prompted her strongly of the necessity. Of course,
there was the element of doubt (suppose she had made a mistake, and
the miracle missed fire): but more largely it was the feeling that she
would be able to deal with the situation so much better when she was a
little older. Once she had declared herself there would be no turning
back; it was much better to keep her godhead up her sleeve for the
present.
Grown-ups embark on a life of deception with considerable misgiving,
and generally fail. But not so children. A child can hide the most
appalling secret without the least effort, and is practically secure
against detection. Parents, finding that they see through their child
in so many places the child does not know of, seldom realise that, if
there is some point the child really gives his mind to hiding, their
chances are nil.
So Emily had no misgivings when she determined to preserve her secret,
and needed have none.
Down below on the deck the smaller children were repeatedly crowding
themselves into a huge coil of rope, feigning sleep and then suddenly
leaping out with yelps of panic and dancing round it in consternation
and dismay. Emily watched them with that impersonal attention one gives
to a kaleidoscope. Presently Harry spied her, and gave a hail.
‘Emilee-ee! Come down and play House-on-fire!’
At that, her normal interests momentarily revived. Her stomach as it
were leapt within her sympathetically toward the game. But it died in
her as suddenly; and not only died, but she did not even feel disposed
to waste her noble voice on them. She continued to stare without making
any reply whatever.
‘Come on!’ shouted Edward.
‘Come and play!’ shouted Laura. ‘Don’t be a pig!’
Then in the ensuing stillness Rachel’s voice floated up:
‘Don’t call her, Laura, we don’t really want her.’
ii
But Emily was completely unaffected--only glad that for the present
they were all right by themselves. She was already beginning to feel
the charge of the party a burden.
It had automatically devolved on her with the defection of Margaret.
It was puzzling, this Margaret business. She could not understand it,
and it disturbed her. It dated back really to that night, about a week
ago, when she herself had so unaccountably bitten the captain. The
memory of her own extraordinary behaviour gave her now quite a little
shiver of alarm.
Everybody had been very drunk that night, and making a terrible
racket--it was impossible to get to sleep. So at last Edward had asked
her to tell them a story. But she was not feeling ‘storyable,’ so
they had asked Margaret; all except Rachel, who had begged Margaret
not to, because she wanted to think, she said. But Margaret had been
very pleased at being asked, and had begun a very stupid story about a
princess who had lots and lots of clothes and was always beating her
servant for making mistakes and shutting him up in a dark cupboard.
The whole story, really, had been nothing but clothes and beating, and
Rachel had _begged_ her to stop.
In the middle, a sort of rabble of sailors had come down the ladder,
very slowly and with much discussion. They stood at the bottom in a
knot, swaying a little and all turned inwards on one of their number.
It was so dark one could not see who this was. They were urging him to
do something--he hanging back.
‘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.