VIII + 

I + 

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 manoeuvring round to the schooner’s lee and clambering on board. There was a tremendous powwow 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 spyglass, 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 + 

The reopening of the wound in her leg made it several days more before Emily was fit to be moved from the cabin. During this time she was much alone. Jonsen and Otto seldom came below, and when they did were too preoccupied to heed her blandishing. She sang, and conversed to herself, almost incessantly; only interrupting herself to beseech these two, with a superfluity of endearments, to pick up her crochet-hook, to look at the animal she had built out of her blanket, to tell her a story, to tell her what naughty things they did when they were little⁠—how unlike Emily it was, all this gross bidding for attention! But as a rule they went away again, or went to sleep, without taking the least notice of her. + 

As well, she told herself, to herself, endless stories: as many as there are in The Arabian Nights, and quite as involved. But the strings of words she used to utter aloud had nothing to do with this: I mean, that when she made a sort of narrative noise (which was often), she did it for the noise’s sake: the silent, private formation of sentences and scenes, in one’s head, is far preferable for real story-telling. If you had been watching her then, unseen, you could only have told she was doing it by the dramatic expressions of her face, and her restless flexing and tossing⁠—and if she had had the slightest inkling you were there, the audible rigmarole would have started again. (No one who has private thoughts going on loudly in his own head is quite sure of their not being overheard unless he is providing something else to occupy foreign ears.) + 

When she sang, however, it was always wordless: an endless succession of notes, like a bird’s, fixed to the first vocable handy, and practically without tune. Not being musical, there was never any reason for her to stop: so one song would often go on for half an hour. + 

Although José had scrubbed the cabin floor as well as he could, a large stain still remained. + 

At times she let her mind wander about, quite peacefully, in her memories of Jamaica: a period which now seemed to her very remote, a golden age. How young she must have been! When her imagination grew tired, too, she could recall the Anansi stories Old Sam had told her: and they often proved the point of departure for new ones of her own. + 

Also she could remember the creepy things he had told her about duppies. How they used to tease the negroes about the supposed duppy at the bathing-hole, the duppy of the drowned man! It gave one an enormous sense of power, that⁠—not to believe in duppies. + 

But she found herself taking much less pleasure in duppies now than she used. + 

She even once caught herself wondering what the Dutchman’s duppy would look like, all bloody, with its head turned backwards on its shoulders and clanking a chain⁠ ⁠… it was a momentary flash, the way the banished image of Tabby had come back to her. For a moment her head reeled: in another she was far from Jamaica, far from the schooner, far from duppies, on a golden throne in the remotest East. + 

The other children were no longer allowed in the cabin to visit her: but when she heard their feet scampering overhead, she often conversed with them in loud yells. One of these yells from above told her: + 

“Marghie’s back, you know.” + 

“O‑oh.” + 

After that Emily was silent for a bit, her beautiful, innocent grey eyes fixed on the ear of a dwarf at the end of her bunk. Only the slight pucker at the top of her nose showed with what intensity she was thinking: and the minute drops of sweat on her temples. + 

But it was not only when there was some outward occasion, like this, that she suffered acute distress. + 

Froth as she might, those times of consciousness, which had begun with a moment of such sublime vision, were both growing on her and losing their lustre. They were become sinister. Life threatened to be no longer an incessant, automatic discharge of energy: more and more often, and when least expected, all that would suddenly drop from her, and she would remember that she was Emily, who had killed⁠ ⁠… and who was here⁠ ⁠… and that Heaven alone knew what was going to happen to the incompetent little thing, by what miracle she was going to keep her end up.⁠ ⁠… Whenever this happened, her stomach seemed to drop away within her a hundred and fifty feet. + 

She, like Laura, had one foot each side of a threshold now. As a piece of Nature, she was practically invulnerable. But as Emily, she was absolutely naked, tender. It was particularly cruel that this transition should come when so fierce a blast was blowing. + 

For mark this: anyone in bed, with a blanket up to her chin, is in a measure safe. She might go through abysms of terror; but once these passed, no practical harm had been done. But once she was up and about? Suppose it was at some crisis, some call to action, that her Time came on her? What appalling blunder could she fail to make? + 

Oh why must she grow up? Why, for pity’s sake? + 

Quite apart from these attacks of blind, secret panic, she had other times of an ordinary, very rational anxiety. She was ten and a half now. What sort of future lay before her, what career? (Their mother had implanted in them young, as a matter of principle, girls and boys alike, the idea that they would one day have to earn their own livings.) I say she was ten and a half: but it seemed such ages since she had come on the schooner that she thought she was probably older even than that.⁠—Now this life was full of interest: but was it, she asked herself, a really useful education? What did it fit her for? Plainly, it taught her nothing but to be a sort of pirate too (what sort of a pirate, being a girl, was a problem in itself). But as time slipped by, it became clearer and clearer that every other life would be impossible for her⁠—indeed, for all of them. + 

Gone, alas, was any shred of confidence that she was God. That particular, supreme career was closed to her. But the conviction that she was the wickedest person who had ever been born, this would not die for much longer. Some appalling Power had determined it: it was no good struggling against it. Had she not already committed the most awful of crimes⁠ ⁠… the most awful of crimes, though, that was not murder, that was the mysterious crime against the Holy Ghost, which dwarfed even murder⁠ ⁠… had she, unwittingly, at some time committed this too? She so easily might have, since she did not know what it was. And if that were so, no wonder the pity of Heaven was sealed against her! + 

So the poor little outcast lay shivering and sweating under her blanket, her gentle eyes fixed on the ear of the dwarf she had drawn. + 

But presently she was singing again happily, and hanging right out of the bunk to outline in pencil the brown stain on the floor. A touch here, a touch there, and it was an old market-woman to the life, hobbling along with a bundle on her back! I admit that it staggered even Otto a bit when he came in later and saw what she had done. + 

But when again she lay still on her back, and contemplated the practical difficulties of the life ahead of her (even leaving God and her Soul and all that on one side), she had not the support of Edward’s happy optimism: she was old enough to know how helpless she really was. How should she, dependent now for her very life on the kindness of those around her, how should she ever acquire the wit and strength to struggle against them and their kind? + 

She had developed by this time a rather curious feeling about Jonsen and Otto. In the first place, she had become very fond of them. Children, it is true, have a way of becoming more or less attached to anyone they are in close contact with: but it was more than that, deeper. She was far fonder of them than she had ever been of her parents, for instance. They, for their part, showed every mild sign consonant with their natures of being fond of her: but how could she know? It would be so easy for adult things like them to dissemble to her, she felt. Suppose they really intended to kill her: they could so easily hide it: they would behave with exactly this same kindness⁠ ⁠… I suppose this was the reflection of her own instinct for secretiveness? + 

When she heard the captain’s step on the stairs, it might be that he was bringing her a plate of soup, or it might be that he had come to kill her⁠—suddenly, with no warning change of expression on his amiable face even at the very end. + 

If that was his intention, there was nothing whatever she could do to hinder him. To scream, struggle, attempt flight⁠—they would be absolutely useless, and⁠—well, a breach of decorum. If he chose to keep up appearances, it behoved her to do so too. If he showed no sign of his intention, she must show no sign of her inkling of it. + 

That was why, when either of them came below, she would sing on, smile at him impishly and confidently, actually plague him for notice. + 

She was a little fonder of Jonsen than of Otto. Ordinarily, any coarseness or malformity of adult flesh is in the highest degree repulsive to a child: but the cracks and scars on Jonsen’s enormous hands were as interesting to her as the valleys on the moon to a boy with a telescope. As he clumsily handled his parallel rulers and dividers, fitting them with infinite care to the marks on his chart, Emily would lie on her side and explore them, give them all names. + 

Why must she grow up? Why couldn’t she leave her life always in other people’s keeping, to order as if it was no concern of hers? + 

Most children have something of this feeling. With most children it is outweighed: still, they will generally hesitate before telling you they prefer to grow up. But then, most children live secure lives, and have an at least apparently secure future to grow up to. To have already murdered a full-sized man, and to have to keep it forever secret, is not a normal background for a child of ten: to have a Margaret one could not altogether banish from one’s thoughts: to see every ordinary avenue of life locked against one, only a violent road, leading to Hell, open. + 

She was still on the borderline: so often Child still, and nothing but Child⁠ ⁠… it needed little conjuring⁠ ⁠… Anansi and the Blackbird, Genies and golden thrones.⁠ ⁠… + 

Which is all a rather groping attempt to explain a curious fact: that Emily appeared⁠—indeed was rather young for her age: and that this was due to, not in spite of, the adventures she had been through. + 

But this youngness, it burnt with an intenser flame. She had never yelled so loud at Ferndale, for sheer pleasure in her own voice, as now she yelled in the schooner’s cabin, carolling like a larger, fiercer lark. + 

Neither Jonsen nor Otto were nervous men: but the din she made sometimes drove them almost distracted. It was very little use telling her to shut up: she only remembered for such a short time. In a minute she was whispering, in two she was talking, in five her voice was in full blast. + 

Jonsen was himself a man who seldom spoke to anyone. His companionship with Otto, though devoted, was a singularly silent one. But when he did speak, he hated not to be able to make himself heard at all: even when, as was usual, it was himself he was talking to. + 

III + 

Otto was at the wheel (there was hardly one of the crew fit to steer). His lively mind was occupied with Santa Lucia, and his young lady there. Jonsen slipper-sloppered up and down his side of the deck. + 

Presently, his interest in his subject waning, Otto’s eye was caught by the ship’s monkey, which was sporting on its back on the cabin skylight. + 

That animal, with the same ingenious adaptability to circumstance which has produced the human race, had now solved the playmate question. As a gambler will play left hand against right, so he fought back legs against front. His extraordinary lissomness made the dissociation most lifelike: he might not have been joined at the waist at all, for all the junction discommoded him. The battle, if good-tempered on both sides, was quite a serious one: now, while his hind feet were doing their best to pick out his eyes, his sharp little teeth closed viciously on his own private parts. + 

From below the skylight, too, came tears and cries for help that one might easily have taken for real if they had not been occasionally interrupted by such phrases as “It’s no good: I shall cut off your head just the same!” + 

Captain Jonsen was thinking about a little house in far-off, shadowy Lübeck⁠—with a china stove⁠ ⁠… it didn’t do to talk about retiring: above all, one must never say aloud “This is my last voyage,” even addressing oneself. The sea has an ironic way of interpreting it in her own fashion, if you do. Jonsen had seen too many skippers sail on their “last voyage”⁠—and never return. + 

He felt acutely melancholy, not very far from tears: and presently he went below. He wanted to be alone. + 

Emily by now was conducting, in her head, a secret conversation with John. She had never done so before: but today he had suddenly presented himself to her imagination. Of course his disappearance was strictly taboo between them: what they chiefly discussed was the building of a magnificent raft, to use in the bathing-hole at Ferndale; just as if they had never left the place. + 

When she heard the captain’s step, so nearly surprising her at it, she blushed a deep red. She felt her cheeks still hot when he arrived. As usual, he did not even glance at her. He plumped down on a seat, put his elbows on the cabin table, his head in his hands, and rocked it rhythmically from side to side. + 

“Look, Captain!” she insisted. “Do I look pretty like this? Look! Look! Look, do I look pretty like this?” + 

For once he raised his head, turned, and considered her at length. She had rolled up her eyes till only the whites showed, and turned her under lip inside out. With her first finger she was squashing her nose almost level with her cheeks. + 

“No,” he said simply, “you do not.” Then he returned to his cogitation. + 

She stuck out her tongue as well, and waggled it. + 

“Look!” she went on, “Look!” + 

But instead of looking at her, he let his eye wander round the cabin. It seemed changed somehow⁠—emasculated: a little girl’s bedroom, not a man’s cabin. The actual physical changes were tiny: but to a meticulous man they glared. The whole place smelt of children. + 

Unable to contain himself, he crammed on his cap and burst up the stairs. + 

On deck, the others were romping round the binnacle, wildly excited. + 

“Damn!” cried Jonsen at the sight of them, stamping in an ungovernable rage. + 

Of course his slippers came off, and one of them skiddered up the deck. + 

What devil entered into Edward I do not know: but the sight was too much for him. He seized the slipper and rushed off with it, shrieking with delight. Jonsen roared at him: he passed it to Laura, and was soon dancing up and down at the end of the jib-boom. Edward, of all people! The timid, respectful Edward! + 

Laura could hardly carry the enormous thing: but she clasped it tight in her arms, lowered her head, and with the purposeful air of a rugger-player ran back with it very fast up the deck, apparently straight into Jonsen’s arms. At the last moment she dodged him neatly: continued right on past Otto at the wheel, just as serious and just as fast, and forward again on the port-side. Jonsen, no quick mover at any time, stood in his socks and roared himself hoarse. Otto was shaking with laughter like a jelly. + 

This mad intoxication, which had flashed from child to child, now dropped a spark into the crew. They were already peering excitedly from the fo’c’sle hatch, grins struggling with outrage for pride of place: but at this point they broke into a cheer. Then, like the devils in a pantomime, they all sank together through the floor, aghast at themselves, and pulled the scuttle over their heads. + 

Laura, still hugging the slipper, caught her toe in an eye-bolt and fell full length, set up a yell. + 

Otto, with a suddenly straight face, ran forward, picked up the slipper and returned it to Jonsen, who put it on. Edward stopped jumping up and down and became frightened. + 

Jonsen was trembling with rage. He advanced on Edward with an iron belaying-pin in his hand. + 

“Come down from there!” he commanded. + 

“Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!” cried Edward, not moving. Harry suddenly ran and hid himself in the galley, though he had had no part in it. + 

With a surprising agility which he rarely used, Jonsen started out along the bowsprit towards Edward, who did nothing but moan “Don’t!” at the sight of that murderous belaying-pin. When Jonsen was just on him, however, he swarmed up a stay, helping himself with the iron hanks of the jib. + 

Jonsen returned to the deck, wringing his hands and angrier than ever. He sent a sailor to the cross-trees to head the boy off and drive him down again. + 

Indeed, but for an extraordinary diversion, I shudder to think what might have happened to him. But just at this moment there appeared, up the ladder from the children’s fore-hold, Rachel. She wore one of the sailors’ shirts, back to front, and reaching to her heels: in her hand, a book. She was singing “Onward, Christian Soldiers” at the top of her voice. But as soon as she reached the deck she became silent: strutted straight aft, looking neither to right nor left, genuflected to Otto at the wheel, and then sat herself down on a wooden bucket. + 

Everyone, Jonsen included, stood petrified. After a moment of silent prayer she arose, and commenced an inarticulate gabble-gabble which reproduced extraordinarily well the sound of what she used to hear in the little church at St. Anne’s, where the whole family went one Sunday in each month. + 

Rachel’s religious revival had begun. It could hardly have been more opportune: who shall say it was not Heaven which had chosen the moment for her? + 

Otto, entering into the thing at once, rolled up his eyes and spread out his arms, crosswise, against the wheelhouse at his back. + 

Jonsen, rapidly recovering some of his temper, strode up to her. Her imitation was admirable. For a few moments he listened in silence. He wavered: should he laugh? Then what remained of his temper prevailed. + 

“Rachel!” he rebuked. + 

She continued, almost without taking breath, “Gabble-gabble, Bretheren, gabble-gabble.” + 

“I am not a religious man myself,” said the captain, “but I will not allow religion to be made a mock of on my ship!” + 

He caught hold of Rachel. + 

“Gabble-gabble!” she went on, slightly faster and on a higher note. “Let me alone! Gabble-gabble! Amen! Gabble.⁠ ⁠…” + 

But he sat himself on the bucket, and stretched her over his knee. + 

“You’re a wicked pirate! You’ll go to Hell!” she shrieked, breaking at last into the articulate. + 

Then he began to smack her; so hard that she screamed almost as much with pain as with rage. + 

When at last he set her down, her face was swollen and purple. She directed a tornado of punches with her little fists against his knees, crying “Hell! Hell! Hell!” in a strangulated voice. + 

He flipped her fists aside with his hand, and presently she went away, so tired with crying she could hardly get her breath. + 

Meanwhile, Laura’s behaviour had been characteristic. When she tripped and fell, she roared till her bumps ceased hurting. Then, with no perceptible transition, her convulsions of agony became an attempt to stand on her head. This she kept up throughout Edward’s flight up the stay, throughout the electric appearance of Rachel. During the latter’s punishment, having happened to topple in the direction of the mainmast, and finding her feet against the rack round its base for belaying the halyards to, she gave a tremendous shove off⁠—she would roll instead. And roll she did, very rapidly, till she arrived at the captain’s feet. There she lay all the while he was smacking Rachel, completely unconcerned, on her back, her knees drawn up to her chin, humming a little tune. + 

IV + 

When Emily returned to the fore-hold, her first act was one which greatly complicated life. As if there was not sea enough already outside the ship, she decreed that practically all the deck was sea also. The main-hatch was an island, of course; and there were others⁠—chiefly natural excrescences of the same kind. But all the rest, all the open deck, could only be safely crossed in a boat, or swimming. + 

As to who was in a boat and who wasn’t, Emily decided that herself. No one ever knew till she had been asked. But Laura, once she had got the main idea into her head, always swam, whether said to be in a boat or not⁠—to be on the safe side. + 

“Isn’t she silly?” said Edward once, when she refused to stop working her arms although they had all told her she was safe on board. + 

“I expect we were all as silly as that when we were young,” said Harry. + 

It was a source of consternation to the children that none of the grownups would recognise this “sea.” The sailors trod carelessly on the deepest oceans, refusing so much as to paddle with their hands. But it was equally irritating to the sailors when the children, either safe on an island or bearing down in a vessel of their own, would scream at them in a tone of complete conviction: + 

“You’re drowning! You’re drowning! O‑o‑oh, look out! You’re out of your depth there! The sharks’ll eat you!” + 

“O‑oh look! Miguel’s sinking! The waves are right over his head!” + 

That happens to be the one sort of joke sailors can’t enjoy. Even though the words were unintelligible, their gist⁠—eked out by the slightly malicious hints of the mate⁠—was not. If they steadily refused to swim, they at least took to crossing themselves fervently and continuously whenever they had to traverse a piece of open deck. For there was no way one could be certain that these brats were not gifted with second sight⁠—hijos de puntas! + 

What the children were really doing, of course, was trying out what it would feel like when they themselves were all grown pirates, running a joint venture or each with a craft of his own: and though they never so much as mentioned piracy in the course of these public navigations, they talked their heads off about it at night now. + 

Margaret also refused to swim: but they knew by now it was no good trying to make her: no good yelling at her she was drowning, for all she did at that word was to sit down and cry. So it became a recognised convention that Margaret, wherever she went or whatever she was doing, was on a raft, with a keg of biscuit and a barrel of water, by herself⁠—and could be ignored. + 

For, since her return, she had become very dull company. That one game of Consequences had been a flash in the pan. For several days after it she had remained in bed, hardly speaking, and inclined to tear strips off her blanket when she was asleep: and even when she was about again, though perfectly amiable⁠—more amiable than before⁠—she refused to join in any game whatever. She seemed happy: but for any imaginative purpose she was useless. + 

Moreover, she made no attempt to regain the sovereignty to which Emily had succeeded. She never ordered anyone about. There was not even any fun to be got out of baiting her: nothing seemed to ruffle her temper. She was sometimes treated with a good-humoured contempt, sometimes ignored altogether: and it was enough for her to say something for it to be automatically voted silly. + 

Rachel also, for several days after her service, showed no disposition to join with the others. She preferred to sit about below, sulking, in the hold. From time to time she attempted to pick a hole, with a copper nail she had got hold of, in the bottom of the ship, and so sink it. It was Laura who discovered her purpose, and came hotfoot to Emily with the news. Laura never doubted, any more than Rachel did, that the task was a possible one. + 

Emily came below and found her at it. After three days, she had only managed to scratch up one single splinter⁠—partly because she never attacked the same place twice: but both she and Laura expected to see quantities of water come welling through and rapidly fill the ship. Indeed, though no water had yet appeared, Laura was convinced the ship was already perceptibly lowered as a result of Rachel’s efforts. + 

Laura clasped her hands in expectation, waiting to see what Emily would do in the face of this impending disaster. + 

“You stupid, that’s no good!” was all Emily’s comment. + 

Rachel looked at her angrily: + 

“You leave me alone! I know what I am doing!” + 

Emily’s eyes grew very wide, and danced with a strange light. + 

“If you talk to me like that, I’ll have you hanged from the yardarm!” + 

“What’s that?” asked Rachel sulkily. + 

“You ought to know which is the yardarm by now!” + 

“I don’t care!” growled Rachel, and went on scratching with her nail. + 

Emily picked up a big piece of iron, in a corner, so heavy she could hardly carry it: + 

“Do you know what I’m going to do?” she asked in a strange voice. + 

At the sound of it Rachel stopped scratching and looked up. + 

“No,” she said, a trifle uneasily. + 

“I’m going to kill you! I’m turned a pirate, and I’m going to kill you with this sword!” + 

At the word “sword,” the misshapen lump of metal seemed to Rachel to flicker to a sharp, wicked point. + 

She looked Emily in the eyes, doubtfully. Did she mean it, or was it a game? + 

As a matter of fact, she had always been a little afraid of Emily. Emily was so huge, so strong, so old (as good as grown up), so cunning! Emily was the cleverest, the most powerful person in the world! The muscles of a giant, the ancient experience of a serpent!⁠—And now, her terrible eyes, with no hint in them of pretence. + 

Emily glared fixedly, and saw real panic dawn in Rachel’s face. Suddenly the latter turned, and as fast as her short fat legs would carry her began to swarm up the ladder. Emily rang her iron once against it, and Rachel nearly tumbled down again in her haste. + 

The iron was so big and heavy it took Emily a long time to haul it up on deck. Even when that was done, it greatly impeded her running, so that she and Rachel did three laps round the deck without their distances altering much, cheered boisterously by Edward. Even in her terror Rachel did not forget to work her arms as in breaststroke. Finally, with a cry of “Oh, I can’t run any more, my bad leg’s hurting!” Emily flung down the iron and dropped panting beside Edward on the main-hatch. + 

“I shall put poison in your dinner!” she shouted cheerfully to Rachel: but the latter retreated behind the windlass and began to nurse with an abandoned devotion the particular brood she had parked there, working herself almost to tears with the depth of her maternal pity for them. + 

Emily went on chuckling for some time at the memory of her sport. + 

“What’s the matter with you?” asked Edward scornfully, puffing out his chest. He was feeling particularly manly at the moment. “Have you got the giggles?” + 

“I like having the giggles,” said Emily disarmingly. “Let’s see if we can’t all get them. Come on, Laura! Harry, come!” + 

The two smaller ones came obediently. They stared her in the face attentively and seriously, awaiting the Coming of the God, while she herself broke into louder and louder explosions of laughter. Soon the infection took and they were laughing too, each shriller and more wildly than the other. + 

“I can’t stop! I can’t stop!” they cried at intervals. + 

“Come on, Edward! Look me in the face!” + 

“I won’t!” said Edward. + 

So she set on him and tickled him till he was as hysterical as the rest. + 

“Oh, I do want to stop, my tummy is hurting so!” complained Harry at last. + 

“Go away then,” advised Emily in a lucid interval. And so the group presently broke up. But they had all to avoid each other’s eye for a long while, if they were not to risk another attack. + 

It was Laura who was cured the quickest. She suddenly discovered what a beautiful deep cave her armpit made, and decided to keep fairies in it in future. For some time she could think of nothing else. + 

V + 

Captain Jonsen called suddenly to José to take the wheel, and went below for his telescope. Then, buttressing his hip against the rail, and extending the shade over the object-glass, he stared fixedly at something almost in the eye of the setting sun. Emily, in a gentle mood, wandered up to him, and stood, her side just touching him. Then she began lightly rubbing her cheek on his coat, as a cat does. + 

Jonsen lowered the glass and tried his naked eye, as if he had more trust in it. Then he explored with the glass once more. + 

What was that businesslike-looking sail, tall and narrow as a pillar? He swept his eye round the rest of the horizon: it was empty: only that single threatening finger, pointing upwards. + 

Jonsen had chosen his course with care to avoid all the ordinary tracks of shipping at that time of year. Especially he had chosen it to avoid the routine-passages of the Jamaica Squadron from one British island to another. This⁠—it had no business here: no more than he had himself. + 

Emily put her arm round his waist and gave it a slight hug. + 

“What is it?” she said. “Do let me look.” + 

Jonsen said nothing, continuing to stare with concentration. + 

“Do let me look!” said Emily. “I haven’t ever looked through a telescope, ever!” + 

Jonsen abruptly snapped the glass to, and looked down at her. His usually expressionless features were stirred from their roots. He lifted one hand and gently began to stroke her hair. + 

“Do you love me?” he asked. + 

“Mm,” assented Emily. Later she added, with a wriggle, “You’re a darling.” + 

“If it was to help me, would you do something⁠ ⁠… very difficult?” + 

“Yes, but do let me have a look through your telescope, because I haven’t, not ever, and I do so want to!” + 

Jonsen gave a weary sigh, and sat down on the cabin-top. What on Earth were children’s heads made of, inside? + 

“Now listen,” he said. “I want to talk to you seriously.” + 

“Yes,” said Emily, trying to hide her extreme discomfort. Her eye plaintively searched the deck for something to hold it. He pressed her against his knee in an attempt to win her attention. + 

“If bad, cruel men came and wanted to kill me and take you away, what would you do?” + 

“Oh, how horrid!” said Emily. “Will they?” + 

“Not if you help me.” + 

It was unbearable. With a sudden leap she was astride his knees, her arms round his neck and her hands pressing the back of his head. + 

“I wonder if you make a good Cyclops?” she said; and holding his head firmly laid her nose to his nose, her forehead to his forehead, both staring into each other’s eyes, an inch apart, till each saw the other’s face grow narrow and two eyes converge to one large, misty eye in the middle. + 

“Lovely!” said Emily. “You’re just right for one! Only now one of your eyes has got loose and is floating up above the other one!” + 

The sun touched the sea, and for thirty seconds every detail of the distant man-of-war was outlined in black against the flame. But, for the life of him, Jonsen could think of nothing but that house in quiet Lübeck, with the green porcelain stove. + 