is generally considered wholesome, or to contain vitamines (unless
these lurked in the aforesaid peck of dirt): but they seemed none the
worse. First the cook boiled the various non-perishable vegetables they
carried in a big pot together for a couple of hours. Then a lump of
salt beef from the cask forward, having been rinsed in a little fresh
water, was added, and allowed to simmer with the rest till it was just
cooked. Then it was withdrawn, and the captain and mate ate their soup
first and their meat afterwards, out of plates, like gentlemen. After
that, if it was a week-day, the meat was put to cool on the cabin
shelf, ready to warm up in to-morrow’s soup, and the crew and children
ate the liquor with biscuit: but if it was Sunday, the captain took the
lump of meat and with a benevolent air cut it up in small pieces, as if
indeed for a nursery, and mixed it up with the vegetables in the huge
wooden bowl out of which crew and children all dipped. It was a very
patriarchal way of feeding.
Even at dinner Margaret did not join the others, but ate in the cabin;
though there were only two plates on the whole ship. Probably she used
the mate’s when he had finished.
Laura and Rachel fought that day to tears over a particularly succulent
piece of yam. Emily let them. To make those two agree was a task she
was wise not to undertake. Besides, she was very busy over her own
dinner. Edward managed to silence them, however, by declaring in a most
terrible voice: ‘Shut up or I’ll SABRE you!’
Emily’s estrangement from the captain had reached by now a rather
uncomfortable stage. When these things are fresh and new the two
parties avoid meeting, and all is well: but after some days they are
apt to forget, find themselves on the point of chatting, and then
suddenly remember that they are not on speaking terms and have to
retire in confusion. Nothing can be more uncomfortable for a child.
The difficulty of effecting a reconciliation in this case was that
both parties felt wholly in the wrong. Each repented the impulse of a
momentary insanity, and neither had an inkling the other felt the same:
thus each waited for the other to show signs of forgiveness. Moreover,
while the captain had far the more serious reason for being ashamed of
himself, Emily was naturally far the more sensitive and concerned of
the two: so it about balanced. Thus, if Emily rushed blithely up to the
captain embracing a flying-fish, caught his eye and slunk round the
other side of the galley, he put it down to a permanent feeling of
condemnation and repulsion: blushed a deep purple and stared stonily at
his wrinkling mainsail--and Emily wondered if he was _never_ going to
forget that bitten thumb.
But this afternoon things came to a head. Laura was trotting about
behind him, striking her attitudes. Edward had at last discovered which
was windward and which was leeward, and had come hot-foot to learn
the first of the Sovereign Rules of Life: and Emily, with one of her
wretched lapses of memory, was all agog at his elbow.
Edward was duly catechised and passed.
‘Dis is the first rule,’ said the captain: ‘_Never throw anything to
windward except hot water or ashes._’
Edward’s face developed exactly the look of bewilderment that was
intended.
‘But _windward_ is ...’ he began: ‘I mean, wouldn’t they blow ...’ then
he stopped, wondering if he had got the terms the right way round after
all. Jonsen was delighted at the success of this ancient joke. Emily,
trying to stand on one leg, bewildered also, lost her balance and
clutched at Jonsen’s arm. He looked at her--they all looked at her.
Much the best way of escaping from an embarrassing rencontre, when to
walk away would be an impossible strain on the nerves, is to retire in
a series of somersaults. Emily immediately started turning head over
heels up the deck.
It was very difficult to keep direction, and the giddiness was
appalling; but she _must_ keep it up till she was out of sight, or die.
Just then, Rachel, who was up the mainmast, dropped, for the first
time, her marline-spike. She uttered a terrible shriek--for what _she_
saw was a baby falling to dash its brains out on the deck.
Jonsen gave an ineffectual little grunt of alarm--men can never learn
to give a full-bodied scream like a woman.
But Emily gave the most desperate yell of all, though several seconds
after the other two: for the wicked steel stood quivering in the deck,
having gouged a track through her calf on the way. Her wrought-up
nerves and sickening giddiness joined with the shock and pain to give a
heart-rending poignancy to her crying. Jonsen was by her in a second,
caught her up, and carried her, sobbing miserably, down into the cabin.
There sat Margaret, bending over some mending, her slim shoulders
hunched up, humming softly and feeling deadly ill.
‘Get out!’ said Jonsen, in a low, brutal voice. Without a word or sign
Margaret gathered up her sewing and climbed on deck.
Jonsen smeared some Stockholm tar on a rag, and bound up Emily’s leg
with more than a little skill, though the tar of course was agonising
to her. She had cried herself right out by the time he laid her in his
bunk. When she opened her streaming eyes and saw him bending over her,
nothing in his clumsy face but concern and an almost overpowering pity,
she was so full of joy at being at last forgiven that she reached up
her arms and kissed him. He sat down on the locker, rocking himself
backwards and forwards gently. Emily dozed for a few minutes: when she
woke up he was still there.
‘Tell me about when you were little,’ she said.
Jonsen sat on, silent, trying to project his unwieldy mind back into
the past.
‘When I was a boy,’ he said at last, ‘it wasn’t thought lucky to grease
your own sea-boots. My Auntie used to grease mine before we went out
with the lugger.’
He paused for some time.
‘We divided the fish up into six shares--one for the boat, and one for
each of us.’
That was all. But it was of the greatest interest to Emily, and she
shortly fell asleep again, supremely happy.
So for several days the captain and mate had to share the latter’s
bunk, Box-and-Cox; Heaven knows what hole Margaret was banished to.
The gash in Emily’s leg was one which would take some time to heal. To
make things worse, the weather became very unsteady: when she was awake
she was all right, but if she fell asleep she began to roll about the
bunk, and then, of course, the pain waked her again; which soon reduced
her to a feverish and nervous condition, although the leg itself was
going on as well as could be expected. The other children, of course,
used to come and see her: but they did not enjoy it much, as there was
nothing to do down in the cabin, once the novelty of admittance to the
Holy Place had worn off. So their visits were perfunctory and short.
They must have had a high old time at night, however, by themselves in
the fore-hold, now that the cat was away. They looked like it, too, in
the mornings.
Otto used sometimes to come and teach her to make fancy knots, and at
the same time pour out his grievances against the captain: though these
latter were always received with an uncomfortable silence. Otto was a
Viennese by birth, but had stowed away in a Danube barge when he was
ten years old, had taken to the sea, and thereafter generally served
in English ships. The only place since his childhood where he had ever
spent any considerable time on shore was Wales. For some years he had
sailed coastwise from the once-promising harbour of Portdinlleyn,
which is now practically dead: and so, as well as German, Spanish, and
English, he could talk Welsh fluently. It was not a long residence, but
at an impressionable age; and when he talked to Emily of his past it
was mostly of his life as a ‘boy’ on the slate-boats. Captain Jonsen
came of a Danish family settled on the Baltic coast, at Lübeck. He too
had spent most of his time on English ships. How or when he and Otto
had first met, or how they had drifted into the Cuban piracy business,
Emily never discovered. They had plainly been inseparable for many
years. She preferred letting them ramble on, to asking questions or
trying to fit things together: she had that sort of mind.
When the knots palled, José sent her a beautiful crochet-hook he had
carved out of a beef bone: and by pulling threads out of a piece of
sail-cloth she was able to set to work to crochet doilies for the
cabin table. But I am afraid that she also drew a lot, till the whole
of the inside of the bunk was soon as thoroughly scribbled over as
a palæolithic cave. What the captain would say when he found out
was a consideration best postponed. The fun was to find knots, and
unevennesses in the paint, that looked like something; and then with a
pencil to make them look more like it--putting an eye in the walrus, or
supplying the rabbit with his missing ear. That is what artists call
having a proper feeling for one’s material.
Instead of getting better the weather got worse: and the universe soon
became a very unstable place indeed: it became almost impossible to
crochet. She had to cling on to the side of the bunk all the time, to
prevent her leg getting banged.
It was in this inconvenient weather, however, that the pirates chose
at last to make another capture. It turned out not a rich one: a small
Dutch steamer, taking a consignment of performing animals to one of Mr.
Barnum’s predecessors. The captain of the steamer, who was conceited
in a way that only certain Dutchmen _can_ be conceited, gave them a
lot of trouble, in spite of the fact that he had practically nothing
worth taking. He was a first-class sailor: but he was very fair, and
had no neck. In the end they had to tie him up, bring him on board the
schooner, and lay him on the cabin floor where Emily could keep an eye
on him. He reeked of some particularly nauseous brand of cigars that
made her head swim.
The other children had played quite an important part in the capture.
They did far better as a badge of innocuousness than even the ‘ladies.’
The steamer (little more than dressed-up sailing-vessels they were
then), thoroughly disgruntled at the weather, was wallowing about like
a porpoise, her decks awash and her funnel over one ear, so to speak:
so when a boat put out from the schooner, its departure cheered lustily
by Edward, Harry, Rachel, and Laura, though his pride might resent
it, the Dutchman never thought of suspecting this presumable offer of
assistance, and let them come on board.
It was then he began to give trouble, and they had to remove him onto
the schooner. Their tempers were none too good on finding their booty
was a lion, a tiger, two bears, and a lot of monkeys: so it is quite
likely they were none too gentle with him in transit.
The next thing was to discover whether the _Thelma_, like the
_Clorinda_, carried another, a secret cargo of greater value. They had
imprisoned all the crew, now, aft: so one by one they were brought up
on deck and questioned. But either there was no money on board, or
the crew did not know of it, or would not tell. Most of them, indeed,
appeared frightened enough to have sold their grandmothers: but some of
them simply laughed at the pirates’ bogey-bogey business, guessing they
drew the line at murder in cold blood, sober.
What was done in each case was the same. When each man was finished
with he was sent forward and shut in the fo’c’sle: and before bringing
another up from aft one of the pirates would unmercifully belabour a
roll of sail-cloth with a cat-o’-nine-tails while another yelled like
the damned. Then a shot was fired in the air, and something thrown
overboard to make a splash. All this, of course, was to impress those
still down in the cabin awaiting their turns: and the pretence was
quite as effective as the reality could have been. But it did no good,
since probably there was no treasure to disclose.
There was, however, a plentiful supply of Dutch spirits and liqueurs on
board: and these the pirates found a welcome change after so much West
Indian rum.
After they had been drinking them for an hour or two Otto had a
brilliant idea. Why not give the children a circus? They had begged and
begged to be taken onto the steamer to see the animals. Well, why not
stage something really magnificent for them--a fight between the lion
and the tiger, for instance?
No sooner said than done. The children, and every man who could be
spared, came onto the steamer, and took up positions at safe heights
in the rigging. The cargo-gaff was rigged, the hatch opened, and the
two iron cages, with their stale cat-like reek, were hauled up on deck.
Then the little Malay keepers, who kept twittering to each other in
their windy tones, were made to open them, that the two monarchs of the
jungle might come out and do battle.
How they were to be got in again was a question that never occurred to
any one’s consideration. Yet it is generally supposed to be easier to
let tigers out of cages than to put them back.
In this case, however, even when the cages were open, neither of the
beasts seemed very anxious to get out. They lay on the floor growling
(or groaning) slightly, but making no move except to roll their eyes.
It was very unfortunate for poor Emily that she was missing all this,
laid by the leg in Jonsen’s stuffy cabin with the Dutch captain to
guard.
When at first they had been left alone together he had tried to speak
to her: but unlike so many Dutchmen he did not know a word of English.
He could just move his head, and he kept turning his eyes first on a
very sharp knife which some idiot had dropped in a corner of the cabin
floor, then on Emily. He was asking her to get it for him, of course.
But Emily was terrified of him. There is something much more
frightening about a man who is tied up than a man who is not tied up--I
suppose it is the fear he may get loose.
The feeling of not being able to get out of the bunk and escape added
the true nightmare panic.
Remember that he had no neck, and the cigar-reek.
At last he must have caught the look of fear and disgust in her face,
where he had expected compassion. He began to act for himself. First
gently rocking his bound body from side to side, he set himself to roll.
Emily screamed for help, beating with her fist on the bunk: but none
came. Even the sailors who were left on board were out of ear-shot:
they were straining all their attention to see what was happening on
the steamer that wallowed and heaved seventy yards away. There, one
of the pirates, greatly daring, had descended to the rail and begun
throwing belaying-pins at the cages, to rouse their occupants. If the
beasts so much as lashed their tails in response, however, he would
scuttle up any rope like a frightened mouse. Only the Malay keepers
remained permanently on deck, taking no notice: sitting on their heels
in a ring and crooning discordantly through their noses. Probably they
felt inside much as the lion and tiger did.
After some minutes, however, the pirates grew bolder. Otto came right
up to one cage, and started poking the tiger’s ribs with a hand-spike.
But the poor beast was far too sea-sick to be roused even by that.
Gradually the whole crowd of the spectators descended onto the deck and
stood round, still not unprepared to bolt, while the drunk mate, and
even Captain Jonsen (who was perfectly sober), goaded and jeered.
It was not surprising no one heard poor Emily, left alone in the cabin
with the terrible Dutchman.
She screamed and screamed: but there was no awakening from _this_
nightmare.
By now he had managed to roll himself, in spite of the motion of the
vessel, almost within reach of the coveted knife. The veins on his
forehead stood out with his exertion and the stricture of his bonds.
His fingers were groping, behind his back, for the edge.
Emily, beside herself with terror, suddenly became possessed by the
strength of despair. In spite of the agony it caused her leg she flung
herself out of the bunk, and just managed to seize the knife before he
could manœuvre his bound hands within reach of it.
In the course of the next five seconds she had slashed and jabbed at
him in a dozen places: then, flinging the knife towards the door,
somehow managed to struggle back into the bunk.
The Dutchman, bleeding rapidly, blinded with his own blood, lay still
and groaned. Emily, her own wound reopened, and overcome with pain and
terror, fainted. The knife, flung wildly, missed its aim and clattered
down the steps again onto the cabin floor: and the first witness of the
scene was Margaret, who presently peered down from the deck above, her
dulled eyes standing out from her small, skull-like face.
* * * * *
As for Jonsen and Otto, unable by other means to rouse the dormant
animals, they collected their men and with big levers managed to tilt
the cages, spilling the beasts out onto the deck.
But not even so would they fight--or even show signs of resentment. As
they had lain and groaned in their cages, so they now lay and groaned
on the deck.
They were small specimens of their kind, and emaciated by travel. Otto
with a sudden oath seized the tiger round its middle and hauled it
upright on its hind legs: Jonsen did the same by the more top-heavy
lion: and so the two principals to the duel faced each other, their
heads lolling over the arms of their seconds.
But in the eyes of the tiger a slight ember of consciousness seemed
to smoulder. Suddenly it tautened its muscles: a slight effort, yet
it burst from the merely human grip of Otto like Samson from the new
ropes--nearly dislocated his arms before he had time to let go.
Quicker than eye could see, it had cuffed him, rending half his face.
Tigers are no plaything. Jonsen dropped the huge bulk of the lion
on top of it, and escaped with Otto through an open door: while the
pirates, tumbling over each other like people in a burning theatre,
struggled to get back in the rigging.
The lion rolled clear. The tiger, lurching unsteadily, crept back into
its cage. The keening Malays took no notice of the whole scene.
And yet, what a scene it had been!
But now the heroic circus was over. Chastened, bruised by each other in
their panic, the drunken pirates helped the mate into the first of the
two boats, and pulling helter-skelter in the choppy sea, returned to
the schooner. One by one they climbed the rail and vaulted on deck.
Sailors have keen noses. They smelt blood at once, and crowded round
the companion-way: where Margaret still sat, as if numb, on the top
step.
Emily lay in the bunk below, her eyes shut--conscious again, but her
eyes shut.
The Dutch captain they could see on the floor, stretched in a pool of
blood. ‘_But, Gentlemen, I have a wife and children!_’ he suddenly said
in Dutch, in a surprised and gentle tone: then died, not so much of
any mortal wound as of the number of superficial gashes he had received.
* * * * *
It was plainly Margaret who had done it--killed a bound, defenceless
man, for no reason at all; and now sat watching him die, with her dull,
meaningless stare.
_Chapter 8_
The contempt they already felt for Margaret, their complete lack of
pity in her obvious illness and misery, had been in direct proportion
to the childhood she had belied.
This crime would have seemed to them grave on the part of a grown
man, in its unrelieved wantonness: but done by one of her years, and
nurture, it was unspeakable. She was lifted by the arms from the stair
where she still sat, and without a moment’s hesitation (other than that
resulting from too many helping hands) was dropped into the sea.
But yet the expression of her face, as--like the big white pig in the
squall--she vanished to windward, left a picture in Otto’s mind he
never forgot. She was, after all, his affair.
The Dutchman’s body was fetched up on deck. Captain Jonsen went below:
and once bent over poor little Emily. She only screwed up her eyes
tighter, when she felt his hot breath on her face. She did not open
them till everybody had quite gone--and shut them again when presently
José came to swab the cabin floor.
* * * * *
The second boat, bringing back the rest of the crew and the four
children, almost ran into Margaret before they saw her. She was
swimming desperately, but in complete silence: her hair now plastered
across her eyes and mouth, now floating out on the water as her
head went under. They lifted her into the boat and set her in the
stern-sheets with the other children. So it was they found themselves
together again.
In her sopping condition, the others naturally gave her elbow-room: but
still, she was among them. They sat and stared at her, their eyes very
wide and serious, but without speaking. Margaret, her teeth chattering
with exhaustion, tried ineffectually to wring out the hem of her frock.
She did not speak either: but nevertheless it was not long before both
she and the other children felt a sort of thaw setting in between them.
As to the oarsmen, they never troubled their heads as to how she came
in the water. They supposed she had accidentally slipped over the side:
but were not particularly interested, especially as they had their work
cut out manœuvring round to the schooner’s lee and clambering on board.
There was a tremendous pow-wow going on aft, so that no one noticed
them arrive.
Once on board, Margaret went straight forward as of old, climbed
down the ladder into the fore-hold and undressed, the other children
watching her every movement with an unfeigned interest. Then she
rolled herself in a blanket, and lay down.
They none of them noticed quite how it happened: but in less than
half an hour they were all five absorbed in a game of Consequences.
Presently one of the crew came, peered down the hatch and then shouted
‘Yes!’ to the rest, and then went away again. But they neither saw nor
heard him.
From now on, however, the atmosphere of the schooner suffered a change.
A murder is inclined to have this effect on a small community. As a
matter of fact, the Dutch captain’s was the first blood to be shed on
board, in the course of business at any rate (I will not answer for
private quarrels). The way it had been shed left the pirates profoundly
shocked, their eyes opened to a depravity of human nature they had not
dreamt of: but also it gave them an uncomfortable feeling round the
neck. So long as there was only the circus-prank to avenge, no American
man-of-war was likely to be despatched in their pursuit: high Naval
Authorities shrink naturally from any contact with the ridiculous: but
suppose the steamer put into port, and announced the forcible abduction
of her captain? Or worse, suppose her mate, with an accursed spy-glass,
had seen that captain’s bloody body take its last dive? Pursuit would
be only too likely.
The plea ‘It was none of us men did this wicked deed, but one of our
young female prisoners,’ was hardly one which could be submitted to a
jury.
Captain Jonsen had discovered from the steamer’s log where he was: so
he put the schooner about, and set a course for his refuge at Santa
Lucia. It was unlikely, he thought, now, that any British man-of-war
would still be cruising about the scene of the _Clorinda_ episode--they
had too much to do: and he had reasons (fairly expensive ones) for
not anticipating any molestation from the Spanish authorities. He did
not like going home with an empty ship, of course: but that appeared
inevitable.
The outward sign of this change in the atmosphere of the schooner was a
spontaneous increase in the strictness of discipline. Not a drop of rum
was drunk. Watch was kept with the regularity of a line-of-battle ship.
The schooner became tidier, more seamanlike in every way.
Thunder was slain and eaten the next day, without any regard for the
feelings of his lovers: indeed, all tenderness towards the children
vanished. Even José ceased playing with them. They were treated
with a detached severity not wholly divorced from fear--as if these
unfortunate men at last realised what diabolic yeast had been
introduced into their lump.
So sensible were the children themselves of the change that they even
forgot to mourn for Thunder--excepting Laura, whose face burned an
angry red for half a day.
But the ship’s monkey, on the other hand, with no pig now to tease,
nearly died of ennui.
ii