= , “~ = a : . - ‘ a - . < ‘ are : = 4 s - al > , = » - » = a4 . at eee “ais : 7“ ¢ > . -
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA By
RICHARD HUGHES
CHATTO anp WINDUS LONDON
S "Ae a % s24/-% ‘ r 4 * . : %: . r ; vs le J a ‘ ’ Pe. ee 18 & tien “First published 1929 a Fifth i impression 1 1930, Es i b ae ; i 1931 4 ‘ *s a* * r es n~ ‘ ; ‘ : f J - * . eo é “ ‘ e : * ¢ 4 > ; = . . : FF * e* < a ; .. 4 4 ’ 5 ae : : 7? . . « * ’ } =~ « et Copyright 1929 in the U.S.A. under the title of — . “The Innocent Voyage,’ now called “A High Wind in Jamaica.’
Printed in Great Britain: all rights reserved
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Chapter 1
NE of the fruits of Emancipation in the
( )ve Indian islands is the number of the tuins, either attached to the houses that
remain ot within a stone’s throw of them: ruined slaves’ quarters, ruined sugar-grinding houses, ruined boiling houses; often ruined magsions that wete too expensive to maintain. Earthquake, fire, rain, and deadlier vegetation, did their work quickly. One scene is very clear in my mind, in Jamaica. There was a vast stone-built house called Derby Hill (where the Parkers lived). It had been the centre of a vety prosperous plantation. With Emancipation, like many others, that went bung. The sugar buildings fell down. Bush smothered the cane and guinea-gtass. ‘The field negroes left their cottages in a body, to be somewhere less dis- turbed by even the possibility of work. ‘Then the house negroes’ quarters burned down, and the three remaining faithful servants occupied the mansion. The two heiresses of all this, the Miss Parkers, grew old; and were by education incapable. And
I
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
the scene is this: coming to Derby Hill on some business or other, and wading waist-deep in bushes up to the front door, now lashed permanently open by a rank plant. The jalousies of the house had been all torn down, and then supplanted as dark- eners, by powerful vines : and out of this crumb- ling half-vegetable gloom an old negtess peered, wrapped in filthy brocade. The two old Miss Parkers lived in bed, for the negroes had taken away all their clothes: they were nearly starved. Drinking water was brought, in two cracked Wor- cester cups and three coconut shells on a silver salver. Presently one of the heiresses persuaded her tyrants to lend her an old print dress, and came and pottered about in the mess half-heart- edly : tried to wipe the old blood and feathers of slaughtered chickens from a gilt and marble table : tried to talk sensibly: tried to wind an ormolu clock : and then gave it up and mooned away back to bed. Not long after this, I believe, they were both starved altogether to death. Or, if that were hardly possible in so prolific a country, perhaps given ground glass—rumour varied. At any rate, they died.
That is the sort of scene which makes a deep impression on the mind; far deeper than the ordinary, less romantic, everyday thing which shows the real state of an island in the statistical
2
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
sense. Of course, even in the transition period one only found melodrama like this in rare patches. Mote truly typical was Ferndale, for instance, an estate about fifteen miles away from Derby Hill. Only the overseet’s house here remained: the Big House had altogether collapsed and been smothered over. It consisted of a ground floor of Stone, given over to goats and the children, and a first floor of wood, the inhabited part, reached from outside by a double flight of wooden steps. When the earthquakes came the upper part only slid about a little, and could be jacked back into position with big levers. The roof was of shingles : after very dry weather it leaked like a sieve, and the first few days of the rainy season would be spent in a perpetual general-post of beds and other furniture to escape the drips, until the wood swelled.
The people who lived there at the time I have in mind were the Bas-Thorntons : not natives of the Island, ‘Creoles,’ but a family from England, Mr. Bas-Thornton had a business of some kind in St. Anne’s, and used to ride there every day on a mule. He had such long legs that his stunted mount made him look rather ridiculous: and being quite as temperamental as a mule himself, a quarrel between the two was generally worth watching.
Close to the dwelling were the ruined grinding
3
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
and boiling houses. These two are never quite cheek by jowl: the grinding house is set on higher ground, with a water-wheel to turn the immense iron vertical rollers. From these the cane juice runs down a wedge-shaped trough to the boiling house, where a negro stands and rinses a little lime-wash into it with a grass brush to make it granulate. © Then it is emptied into big copper vats, over furnaces burning faggots and ‘trash,’ or squeezed-out cane. There a few negroes stand, skimming the poppling vats with long-handled copper ladles, while their friends sit round, eating sugar or chewing trash, in a mist of hot vapour. What they skim off oozes across the floor with an admixture of a good deal of filth—inse&s, even rats, and. whatever sticks to negroes’ feet—into another basin, thence to be distilled into rum.
This, at any rate, is how it used to be done. I know nothing of modern methods—or if there are any, never having visited the island since 1860, which is a long time ago now.
But long before that year all this was over at Ferndale: the big copper vats were overturned, and up in the grinding house the three great rollers lay about loose. No water reached it: the stream had gone about its own business elsewhere. The Bas-Thornton childrén used to crawl into the cut- well through the vent, among dead leaves and the
4
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
wreck of the wheel. There, one day, they found a wild-cat’s nest, with the mother away. The kittens were tiny, and Emily tried to carry them home in her pinafore ; but they bit and scratched so fiercely, right through her thin frock, that she was vety glad—except for pride—that they all escaped but one. This one, Tom, grew up: though he was never really tamed. Later he begat several litters on an old tame cat they had, Kitty Cranbrook ; and the only survivor of this pro- geny, Tabby, became tather a famous cat in his way. (But Tom soon took to the jungle alto- gether.) Tabby was faithful, and a good swimmer, which he would do for pleasure, sculling around the bathing-pool behind the children, giving an occasional yowl of excitement. Also, he had mottal sport with snakes : would wait for a rattler ot a black-snake like a mere mouse: drop on it from a tree ot somewhere, and fight it to death. Once he got bitten, and they all wept bitterly, ex- pecting to see a spectacular death-agony ; but he just went off into the bush and probably ate some- thing, for he came back in a few days quite cock-a- hoop and as ready to eat snakes as ever. Red-headed John’s room was full of rats: he used to catch them in big gins, and then let them go for Tabby to despatch. Once the cat was so impatient he seized trap and all and caterwauled off
5
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
into the night banging it on the stones and sending up showers of sparks. Again he returned ina few days, very sleek and pleased: but John never saw his trap again. Another plague of his were the bats, which also infested his room in hundreds. Mr. Bas-Thornton could crack a stockwhip, and used to kill a bat on the wing with it most neatly. But the din this made in that little box of a room at midnight was infernal: earsplitting cracks, and the air already full of the tiny penetrating squeaks of the vermin.
It was a kind of paradise for English children to come to, whatever it might be for their parents : especially at that time, when no one lived in at all a wild way at home. Here one had to be a little ahead of the times: or decadent, whichever you like to call it. The difference between boys and girls, for instance, had to be left to look after itself. Long hair would have made the evening search for grass-ticks and nits interminable: Emily and Rachel had their hair cut short, and were allowed to do everything the boys did—to climb trees, swim, and trap animals and birds: they even had two pockets in their frocks.
It was round the bathing-pool their life centred, mote than the house. Every year, when the rains were ovet, a dam was built across the stream, so that all through the dry season there was quite
6
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
a large pool to swim in. There wete trees all round : enormous fluffed cotton trees, with coffee ttees between their paws, and log-wood, and got- geous ted and green peppers : amongst them, the pool was almost completely shaded. Emily and John set tree-springes in them—Lame-foot Sam taught them how. Cut a bendy stick, and tie a string to one end. ‘Then sharpen the other, so that it can impale a fruit as bait. Just at the base of this point flatten it a little, and bore a hole through the flat part. Cut a little peg that will just Stick in the mouth of this hole. Then make a loop in the end of the string : bend the stick, as in stringing a bow, till the loop will thread through the little hole, and jam it with the peg, along which the loop should lie spread. Bait the point, and _ hang it ina tree among the twigs : the bird alights on the peg to peck the fruit, the peg falls out, the loop whips tight round its ankles: then away up out of the water like pink predatory monkeys, and decide by ‘ Eena, deena, dina, do,’ or some such tigmarole, whether to twist its neck or let it go free—thus the excitement and suspense, both for child and bird, can be prolonged beyond the moment of capture.
It was only natural that Emily should have great ideas of improving the negroes. They wete, of course, Christians, so there was nothing to be done
7
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
about theit morals: nor were they in need of soup, ot knitted things ; but they were sadly ignorant. After a good deal of negotiation they consented in the end to let her teach Little Jim to read : but she had no success. Also she had a passion for catch- ing house-lizards without their dropping their tails off, which they do when frightened: it needed endless patience to get them whole and unalarmed into a match-box. Catching green grass-lizards was also very delicate. She would sit and whistle, like Orpheus, till they came out of their crannies and showed their emotion by puffing out their pink throats: then, very gently, she would lasso them with a long blade of grass. Her room was full of these and other pets, some alive, others ptobably dead. She also had tame fairies ; anda familiar, or oracle, the White Mouse with an Elastic Tail, who was always ready to settle any point in question, and whose tule was a rule of iron—especially over Rachel, Edward, and Laura, the little ones (or Liddlies, as they came to be known in the family). ‘To Emily, his interpreter, he allowed, of course, certain privileges : and with John, who was older than Emily, he quite wisely did not interfere.
He was omnipresent: the fairies were more localised, living in a small hole in the hill guarded by two dagger-plants.
8
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
The best fun at the bathing-pool was had with a big forked log. John would sit astride the main stem, and the others pushed him about by the two prongs. ‘The little ones, of course, only splashed about the shallow end: but Johnand Emily dived. John, that is to say, dived properly, head-fore- most: Emily only jumped in feet first, stiff as a tod; but she, on the other hand, would go off higher boughs than he would. Once, when she was eight, Mrs. Thornton had thought she was too big to bathe naked any more. ‘The only bathing-dress she could rig was an old cotton night-gown. Emily jumped in as usual : first the balloons of ait tipped her upside down, and then the wet cotton wrapped itself round her head and arms and neatly drowned her. After that, decency was let go hang again: it is hardly worth being drowned for—at least, it does not at first sight appear to be.
But once a negro really was drowned in the pool. He had gorged himself full of stolen mangoes : and feeling guilty, thought he might as well also cool himself in the forbidden pond, and make one tepentance cover two crimes. He could not swim, and had only a child (Little Jim) with him. The cold water and the surfeit brought on an apoplexy : Jim poked at him with a piece of stick a little, and then tan away in a fright. Whether
9
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
the man died of the apoplexy or the drowning was a point for an inquest ; and the doétor, after Stay- ing at Ferndale for a week, decided it was from drowning, but that he was full of green mangoes tight up to his mouth. The great advantage of this was that no negro would bathe there again, for fear the dead man’s ‘ duppy,’ or ghost, should catch him: So if any black even came near while they were bathing, John and Emily would pretend the duppy had grabbed at them, and off he would go, terribly upset. Only one of the negroes at Ferndale had ever actually seen a duppy : but that was quite enough. They cannot be mistaken for living people, because their heads are turned back- watds on their shoulders, and they carry a chain : moreover one must never call them duppies to their faces, as it gives them power. This poor man forgot, and called out ‘ Duppy!’ when he saw it. He got terrible rheumatics.
Lame-foot Sam told most stories. He used to sit all day on the stone barbecues where the pimento was dried, digging maggots out of his toes. This seemed at first very horrid to the children, but he seemed quite contented: and when jiggers got under their own skins, and laid their little bags of eggs there, it was not absolutely unpleasant. John used to get quite a sort of thrill from rubbing the place. Sam told them the Anansi stories: Anansi
10
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
and the Tiger, and how Anansi looked after the Crocodile’s nursery, and so on. Also he had a little poem which impressed them very much : Quacko Sam Him bery fine man : Him dance all de dances dat de darkies can: Him dance de schottische, him dance de Cod Reel : Him dance ebery kind of dance till him foot-bottom peel.
Perhaps that was how old Sam’s own affliction: first came about: he was very sociable. He was said to have a great many children.
ii The stream which fed the bathing-hole ran into it down a gully through the bush which offered an enticing vista for exploring: but somehow the children did not often go up it very far. Every Stone had to be overturned in the hope of finding crayfish: or if not, John had to take a sporting gun, which he bulleted with spoonfuls of water to shoot humming-birds on the wing, too tiny frail quarry for any solider projectile. For, only a few yatds up, there was a Frangipani tree: a mass of brilliant blossom and no leaves, which was almost hidden in a cloud of humming-birds so vivid.as much to outshine the flowers. Writers have often
II
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
lost their way trying to explain how brilliant a jewel the humming-bird is: it cannot be done.
They build their wee woollen nests on the tops of twigs, where no snake can reach them. ‘They ate devoted to theit eggs, and will not move though you touch them. But they are so delicate the children never did that : they held their breath and stared and stared—and were out-stared.
Somehow the celestial vividness of this barrier generally arrested them: it was seldom they ex- plored further : only once, I think, on a day when Emily was feeling peculiarly irritated.
It was her own tenth birthday. They had frittered away all the morning in the glass-like gloom of the bathing-hole. Now John sat naked on the bank making a wicker trap. In the shallows the small ones rolled and chuckled. Emily, for coolness, sat up to her chin in water, and hundreds of infant fish were tickling with their inquisitive mouths evety inch of her body, a sort of expres- sionless light kissing.
Anyhow she had lately come to hate being touched—but this was abominable. At last, when she could stand it no longer, she clambered out and dressed. Rachel and Laura were too small for a long walk: and the last thing, she felt, that she wanted was to have one of the boys with her : so she stole quietly past John’s back, scowling
12
Ww
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
balefully at him for no petticular reason. Soon she was out of sight among the bushes.
She pushed on rather fast, not taking much notice of things, up the river bed for about three miles. She had never been so far afield befote. Then her attention was caught by a clearing lead- ing down to the water: and here was the soutce of the river. She caught her breath delightedly : it bubbled up cleat and cold, through three dis- tiné springs, under a clump of bamboos, just as a tivet should: the greatest possible find, and a ptivate discovery of her own. She gave instant- aneous inward thanks to God for thinking of such a perfect birthday treat, especially as things had seemed to be going all wrong : and then began to ferret in the limestone sources with the whole length of her arm, among the ferns and cresses.
Heating a splash, she looked round. Some half-dozen strange negto children had come down the clearing to fetch water and were staring at her in astonishment. Emily stared back. In sudden terror they flung down their calabashes and gal- loped away up the clearing like hares. Immedi- ately, but with dignity, Emily followed them. The clearing nartowed to a path, and the path led in a very short time to a village.
It was all ragged and unkempt, and shrill with voices. ‘There were small one-storey wattle huts
B 13
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
dotted about, completely overhung by the most enormous trees. ‘There was no sort of order: they appeated anywhere: there were no railings, and only one ot two of the most terribly starved, mangy cattle to keep in or out. In the middle of all was an indeterminate quagmire or muddy pond, where a group of half-naked negroes, and totally naked black children, and a few brown ones, were splashing with geese and ducks.
Emily stated: they stared back. She made a movement towards them: they separated at once into the various huts, and watched her from there. Encouraged by the comfortable feeling of inspir- ing fright she advanced, and at last found an old creature who would talk: Dis Liberty Hill, dis Black Man’s Town, Old-time niggers, dey go fet run ftom de bushas (overseers), go fer live here. De piccaninnies, dey never see buckras (whites)... And so on. It was a refuge, built by runaway slaves, and still inhabited.
And then, that her cup of happiness might be full, some of the bolder children crept out and re- spectfully offered her flowers—really to geta better look at her pallid face. Her heart bubbled up in her, she swelled with glory : and taking leave with the greatest condescension she ttod all the long way home on veritable air, back to her beloved family, back to a birthday cake wreathed with
14
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
stephanotis, lit with ten candles, and in which it so happened that the sixpenny piece was invariably found in the birthday-person’s slice,
iii
This was, fairly typically, the life of an English family in Jamaica. Mostly these only stayed a few yeats. The Creoles—families who had been in the West Indies for more than one generation— gtadually evolved something a little more distin@- ive. They lost some of the ttaditional mental mechanism of Europe, and the outlines of a new one began to appeat.
There was one such family the Bas-Thorntons were acquainted with, who had a ramshackle estate to the eastwatd. They invited John and — Emily to spend a couple of days with them, but Mrs. Thotnton was in two minds about letting them go, lest they should learn bad ways. The children there were a wildish lot, and, in the morning at least, would often run about barefoot like negroes, which is a very important point in a place like Jamaica where the whites have to keep up appearances. They had a governess whose | blood was possibly not pure, and who used to beat the children ferociously with a hait-brush. How- ever, the climate at the Fernandez’s place was
aD
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
healthy, and also Mrs. Thornton thought it good for them to have some intercourse with other chil- dren outside theit own family, however undesit- able: and she let them go.
It was the afternoon after that birthday, and a long buggy-tide. Both fat John and thin Emily were speechless and solemn with excitement: it was the first visit they had ever paid. Hour after hour the buggy laboured over the uneven toad. At last the lane to Exeter, the Fernandez’s place, was teached. It was evening, the sun about to do his rapid tropical setting. He was unusually large and ted, as if he threatened something peculiar. The lane, or drive, was gorgeous: for the first few hundred yards it was entirely hedged with ‘ seaside grapes,’ clusters of fruit half-way between a goose- berry and a golden pippin, with here and there the ted berries of coffee trees newly planted among the burnt stumps in a clearing, but already neglected. Then a massive stone gateway in a sort of Colonial- Gothic style. ‘This had to be circumvented: no one had taken the trouble to heave open the heavy gates foryeats. ‘There was no fence, nor ever had been, so the track simply passed it by.
And beyond the gates an avenue of magnificent cabbage-palms. No tree, not oldest beech nor chestnut, is more spectacular in an avenue: rising a sheer hundred feet with no break in the line
16
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
before the atual crown of plumes; and palm upon palm, palm upon palm, like a heavenly double row of pillars, leading on interminably, till even the huge house was dwarfed into a sort of ultimate mouse-trap.
As they journeyed on between these palms the sun went suddenly down, darkness flooded up round them out of the ground, retorted to almost immediately by the moon. Presently, shimmer- ing like a ghost, an old blind white donkey stood in their way. Curses did not move him : the driver had to climb down and push him aside. The air was full of the usual tropic din : mosquitoes hum- ming, cicalas trilling, bull-frogs twanging like guitars. That din goes on all night and all day almost : is more insistent, more memorable than the heat itself, even, or the number of things that bite. In the valley beneath the fire-flies came to life : as if at a signal passed along, wave after wave after wave of light swept down the gorge. From neat the house some tame cockatoos began their serenade, an orchestration of drunk men laughing against iron girders tossed at each other and sawn up with rusty hack-saws: the most awful noise. But Emily and John, so far as they noticed it at all, found it vaguely exhilarating. Through it could presently be distinguished another sound : a negro ptaying. They soon came near him: where an
17
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
otange tree loaded with golden fruit gleamed dark © and bright in the moonlight, veiled in the pinpoint scintillation of a thousand fire-flies sat the old black saint among the branches, talking loudly, drunkenly, and confidentially with God.
Almost unexpectedly they came on the house, and were whisked straight off to bed. Emily omitted to.wash, since there seemed such a hurty, but made up for it by spending an unusually long time over her prayers. She pressed her eyeballs devoutly with her fingers to make sparks appear, in spite of the slightly sick feeling it always in- duced: and then, already sound asleep, clambered, I suppose, into bed.
The next day the sun rose as he had set: large, round, and red. It was blindingly hot, foreboding. Emily, who woke early in a strange bed, stood at the window watching the negroes release the hens from the chicken-houses, where they were shut up at night for fear of John-crows. As each bird hopped sleepily out, the black passed his hand over its Stomach to see if it meditated an ege that day : if so, it was confined again, or it would have gone off and laid in the bush. It was already as hot as anoven. Another black, with eschatological yells and tail-twistings and lassoings, was confining a cow in a kind of pillory, that it might have no opportunity of sitting down while being milked.
18
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
The poor brute’s hooves were aching with the heat, its miserable tea-cup of milk fevered in its udder. Even as she stood at the shady window Emily felt as sweaty as if she had been running. The ground was fissured with drought.
Margaret Fernandez, whose room Emily was sharing, slipped out of bed silently and stood be- side her, wrinkling the short nose in her pallid face.
“Good morning,’ said Emily politely.
* Smells like an earthquake,’ said Margaret, and dressed. Emily remembered the awful story about the governess and the hair-brush: certainly Mar- garet did not use one for its ordinary purpose, though she had long hair: so it must be true.
Margaret was teady long before Emily, and banged out of the room. Emily followed later, neat and nervous, to find no one. The house was empty. Presently she spied John under a tree, talking to a negro boy. By his off-hand manner Emily guessed he was telling dsproportionate stories (not es) about the importance of Ferndale com- pared with Exeter. She did not call him, because the house was silent and it was not her place, as guest, to alter anything : so she went out to him. Together they circumnavigated: they found a Stable-yard, and negroes preparing ponies, and the Fernandez children, barefoot even as Rumour had whispered. Emily caught her breath, shocked.
”)
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Even at that moment a chicken, scuttling across the yard, trod on a scorpion and tumbled over Stark dead as if shot. But it was not so much the danger which upset Emily as the unconvention- ality. ‘Come on,’ said Margaret : ‘ it ’s much too hot to Stay about here. Well go down to Exeter Rocks.’
The cavalcade mounted—Emily very conscious of her boots, buttoned respectably half-way up her calf. Somebody had food, and calabashes of water. The ponies evidently knew the way. The sun was still red and large: the sky above cloudless, and like blue glaze poured over baking clay : but close over the ground a dirty grey haze hovered. As they followed the lane towards the sea they came to a place where, yesterday, a fair- sized spting had bubbled up by the roadside. Now it was dry. But even as they passed a kind of gout of water gushed forth: and then it was dty again, although gurgling inwardly to itself. But the cavalcade were hot, far too hot to speak to one another: they sat their ponies as loosely as possible, longing for the sea,
The morning advanced. ‘The heated air grew quite easily hotter, as if from some reserve of enormous blaze on which it could draw at will. Bullocks only shifted their stinging feet when they
20
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
could bear the soil no longer: even the insects wete too languorous to pipe, the basking lizards hid themselves and panted. It was so still you could have heard the least buzz a mile off. Not a naked fish would willingly move his tail. The ponies advanced because they must. The children ceased even to muse.
They all very nearly jumped out of their skins ; for close at hand a ctane had trumpeted once des- petately. Then the broken silence closed down as flawless as before. They perspited twice as violently with the stimulus. Their pace grew slowet and slower. It was no faster than a pro- cession of snails that at last they reached the sea.
Exeter Rocks is a famous place. A bay of the sea, almost a petfe& semicircle, guarded by the reef: shelving white sands to span the few feet from the water to the under-cut turf: and then, almost at the mid point, a jutting-out shelf of rocks tight into deep water—fathoms deep. And a nattow fissure in the rocks, leading the water into a small pool, or miniature lagoon, right inside their bastion. ‘There it was, safe from sharks or drowning, that the Fernandez children meant to soak themselves all day, like turtles in a crawl. The water of the bay was as smooth and immov- able as basalt, yet cleat as the finest gin: albeit the swell muttered a mile away on the reef. The
21
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
water within the pool itself could not reasonably be smoother. No sea-breeze thought of stirring. No bird trespassed on the inert air.
For a while they had not energy to get into the water, but lay on their faces, looking down, down, down, at the sea-fans and sea-feathers, the scarlet- plumed barnacles and corals, the black and yellow schoolmistress-fish, the rainbow-fish—all that for- est of ideal christmas trees which is a tropical sea- ‘bottom, Then they stood up, giddy and seeing black, and in a trice were floating suspended in water like drowned ones, only their noses above the surface, under the shadow of a rocky ledge.
An hour or so after noon they clustered to- gether, puffy from the warm water, in the in- sufficient shade of a Panama fern: ate such of the food they had brought as they had appetite for ; and drank all the water, wishing for more. Then a very odd thing happened: for even as they sat there they heard the most peculiar sound: a Strange, rushing sound that passed overhead like a gale of wind—but not a breath of breeze stirred, that was the odd thing: followed by a sharp hissing and hurtling, like a flight of rockets, or gigantic swans—very distant rocs, perhaps—on the wing. They all looked up: but there was nothing at all. The sky was empty and lucid. Long before they were back in the water again all was
a2
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
sill, Except that after a while John noticed a sort of tapping, as if some one were gently knocking the outside of a bath you were in. But the bath they were in had no outside, it was solid world. It was funny.
..By sunset they were so weak from long immet- sion they could barely stand up, and as salted as bacon: but, with some common impulse, just be- fore the sun went down they all left the rocks and went and stood by their clothes, where the ponies were tethered, under some palms. As he sank the sun grew even larger: and instead of red was now asodden purple. Down he went, behind the western horn of the bay, which blackened till its watet-line disappeated and substance and teflec- tion seemed one sharp symmetrical pattern.
Nota breath of breeze even yet ruffled the water: yet momentarily it trembled of its own accord, shattering the reflections : then was glassy again. On that the children held their breath, waiting for it to happen.
A school of fish, terrified by some purely sub- marine event, thrust their heads right out of the
water, squattering across the bay in an arrowy
tush, dashing up sparkling ripples with the tiny
heave of their shoulders: yet after each distutb-
ance all was soon like hardest, dark, thick glass. Once things vibrated slightly, like a chair in a
23
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
concert-toom: and again there was that mysteri- ous winging, though there was nothing visible beneath the swollen iridescent stars.
Then it came. The water of the bay began to ebb away, as if some one had pulled up the plug: a foot ot so of sand and coral gleamed for a moment new to the air: then back the sea rushed in minia- ture rollers which splashed right up to the feet of the palms. Mouthfuls of turf were torn away: and on the far side of the bay a small piece of cliff tumbled into the water: sand and twigs showered down, dew fell from the trees like diamonds: bitds and beasts, their tongues at last loosed, screamed and bellowed: the ponies, though quite un- alarmed, lifted up their heads and yelled.
That was all: a few moments. ‘Then silence, with a rapid countermarch, recovered all his tebellious kingdom, Stillness again. The trees moved as little as the pillars of a ruin, each leaf laid sleekly in place. The bubbling foam subsided : the reflections of the stars came out among it as if from clouds. Silent, still, dark, placid, as if there could never have been a disturbance. ‘The naked children too continued to stand motionless beside the quiet ponies, dew on their hair and eyelashes, shine on their infantile round paunches.
But as for Emily, it was too much. The earth- quake went completely to her head. She began
24
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
to dance, hopping laboriously from one foot on to another. John caught the infection. He turned head over heels on the damp sand, over and over in an elliptical course, till before he knew it he was in the water, and so giddy as hardly to be able to tell up from down.
At that, Emily knew what it was she wanted to do. She scrambled on to a pony and galloped him up and down the beach, trying to bark like’a dog. ‘The Fernandez children stared, solemn but not disapproving. John, shaping a course for Cuba, was swimming as if sharks were paring his toe-nails. Emily rode her pony into the sea, and beat and beat him till he swam: and so she followed John towards the reef, yapping herself hoatse.
It must have been fully a hundred yards before they were spent. Then they turned for the shore, John holding on to Emily’s leg, puffing and gasp- ing, both a little overdone, their emotion run down. Presently John gasped :
‘You shouldn’t ride on your bateskin, you ’Il catch ringworm.’
‘I don’t care if I do,’ said Emily.
‘You would if you did,’ said John.
“I don’t cate!’ chanted Emily. |
It seemed a long way to the shore. When they reached it the others had dressed and were prepat-
25
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
ing to start. Soon the whole party were on their way home in the dark. Presently Margaret said :
“So that ’s that.’
No one answered.
“I could smell it was an earthquake coming when I got up. Didn’t I say so, Emily ?’
‘You and your smells!’ said Jimmie Fernan- dez. ‘You’re always smelling things ! ’
‘ She ’s awfully good at smells,’ said the young- est, Harry, proudly, to John. ‘ She can sort out people’s dirty clothes for the wash by smell : who they belong to.’
“She can’t really,’ said Jimmie: ‘she fakes it. As if every one smelt different ! ’
rabpeath!
* Dogs can, anyway,’ said John.
Emily said nothing. Of course people smelt different: it didn’t need arguing. She could always tell her own towel from John’s, for in- Stance : of even knew if one of the others had used it. But it just showed what sort of people Creoles were, to /a/k about Smell, in that open way.
‘Well, anyhow I said there was going to be an earthquake and there was one,’ said Margaret.
That was what Emily was waiting for! So it really had been an Earthquake (she had not liked to ask, it seemed so ignorant : but now Margaret had said in so many words that it was one),
26
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
If ever she went back to England, she could now say to people, ‘ I have been in an Earthquake,
With that certainty, her soused excitement began to tevive. For there was nothing, no adventure from the hands of God or Man, to equal it. Realise that if she had suddenly found she could fly it would not have seemed more miraculous to her. Heaven had played its last, most terrible catd; and small Emily had survived, where even grown men (such as Korah, Dathan, and Abiram) had succumbed.
- Life seemed suddenly a little empty : for never again could there happen to her anything so dangerous, so sublime.
Meanwhile, Margaret and Jimmie were Still arguing :
‘Well, there ’s one thing, thete ’ll be plenty of eges to-morrow,’ said Jimmie. ‘There’s nothing like an earthquake for making them lay.’
How funny Creoles were! They didn’t seem to realise the difference it made to a person’s ‘vhole after-life to have been in an Earthquake.
When they got home, Martha, the black house- maid, had hard things to say about the sublime cataclysm. She had dusted the drawing-toom china only the day before: and now everything ‘was covered again in a fine penetrating film of dust.
27
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA iv
The next morning, Sunday, they went home. Emily was still so saturated in earthquake as to be dumb. She ate earthquake and slept earthquake : her fingers and legs were earthquake. With John it was ponies. ‘The earthquake had been fun : but it was the ponies that mattered. But at present it did not worry Emily that she was alone in her sense of proportion. She was too completely possessed to be able to see anything, or realise that any one else pretended to even a self-delusive fiction of existence.
Their mother met them at the door. She bubbled questions: John chattered ponies, but Emily was still tongue-tied. She was, in her mind, like a child who has eaten too much even to be able to be sick.
Mrs. Thornton got a little worried about her at times. ‘This sort of life was very peaceful, and might be excellent for nervy children like John : but a child like Emily, thought Mrs. Thornton, who is far from nervy, really needs some sort of Stimulus and excitement, or there is a danger of her mind going to sleep altogether for ever. ‘This life was too vegetable. Consequently Mrs. Thornton always spoke to Emily in her brightest manner, as if everything was of the greatest possible interest.
28
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
She had hoped, too, the visit to Exeter might liven her up: but she had come back as silent and ex- ' ptessionless as ever. It had evidently made no imptession on her at all.
John marshalled the small ones in the cellar, and round and round they marched, wooden swords at the slope, singing ‘ Onward, Christian Soldiers.’ Emily did not join them. What did it now matter, that earlier woe, that being a girl she could never when gtown up become a teal soldier with a real swotd? She had been in an Earthquake.
Nor did the others keep it up very long. (Some- times they would go on for three or four houts.) For, whatever it might have done for Emily’s soul, the earthquake had done little to clear the air. It was as hot as ever. In the animal world there ‘seemed some strange commotion, as if they had wind of something. ‘The usual lizards and mos- quitoes were still absent: but in their place the eatth’s most horrid progeny, creatures of darkness, sought the open : land-crabs wandered about aim- lessly, angrily twiddling their claws: and the gtound seemed almost alive with red ants and cockroaches. Up on the roof the pigeons were gathered, talking to each other fearfully.
The cellar (or rather, ground floor), where they were playing, had no communication with the wooden structure above, but had an opening of
Cc 29
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
its own under the twin flight of steps leading to the front door; and there the children presently gathered in the shadow. Out in the compound lay one of Mr. Thornton’s best handkerchiefs. He must have dropped it that morning. But none of them felt the energy to go and retrieve it, out into the sun. Then, as they stood there, they saw Lame-foot Sam come limping across the yard. Seeing the prize, he was about to carry it off. Suddenly he remembered it was Sunday. He dropped it like a hot brick, and began to cover it with sand, exaétly where he had found it.
‘Please God, I thieve you to-mortow,’ he ex- plained hopefully. ‘ Please God, you still there ?°
A low mutter of thunder seemed to offer grudg- ing assent.
‘Thank you, Lord,’ said Sam, bowing to a low bank of cloud. He hobbled off: but then, not too sute perhaps that Heaven would keep Its promise, changed his mind: snatched up the handkerchief and made off for his cottage. ‘The thunder mut- tered louder and more angrily : but Sam ignored the warning.
It was the custom that, whenever Mr. Thornton had been to St. Anne’s, John and Emily should run out to meet him, and ride back with him, one perched on each of his stitrups.
That Sunday evening they tan out as soon as
30
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
they saw him coming, in spite of the thunderstorm that by now was clattering over their very heads— and not only over their heads either, for in the Tropics a thunderstorm is not a remote affair up in the sky, as it is in England, but is all round you : lightning plays ducks and drakes across the water, bounds from tree to tree, bounces about the ground, while the thunder seems to proceed from violent explosions in your own very cote.
“Go back! Go back, you damned little fools !” he yelled furiously : ‘ Get into the house ! ’
They stopped, aghast: and began to realise that after all it was a Storm of more than ordinary vio- lence. ‘They discovered that they were drenched to the skin—must have been the moment they left the house. The lightning kept up a continuous blaze: it was playing about their father’s very _ Stitrup-irons ; and all of a sudden they realised that he was afraid. They fled to the house, shocked to the heart : and he was in the house almost as soon as they wete. Mrs. Thornton rushed out :
“My deat, I’mso glad...’
“I’ve never seen such a Storm! Why on earth did you let the children come out ?’
‘I never dreamt they would be so silly! And all the time I was thinking—but thank Heaven you *re back !’
‘1 think the worst is over now.’
31
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Perhaps it was; but all through supper the lightning shone almost without flickering. And John and Emily could hardly eat : the memory of that momentary look on their father’s face haunted them.
It was an unpleasant meal altogether. Mrs. Thornton had prepared for her husband his ‘ fav- ourite dish’: than which no action could more annoy a man of whim. In the middle of it all in burst Sam, ceremony dropped : he flung the hand- kerchief angrily on the table and stumped out.
‘What on earth .. .”? began Mr. Thornton.
But John and Emily knew: and thoroughly agteed with Sam as to the cause of the storm. Stealing was bad enough anyway, but on a Sunday !
Meanwhile, the lightning kept up its play. The thunder made talking arduous, but no one was anyhow in a mood to chatter. Only thunder was heard, and the hammering of the rain. But suddenly, close under the window, there burst out the most appalling inhuman shriek of terror.
‘Tabby!’ cried John, and they all rushed to the window.
But Tabby had already flashed into the house : and behind him was a whole club of wild cats in hot pursuit. John momentarily opened the dining-room door and puss slipped in, dishevelled
32
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
and panting. Not even then did the brutes desist: what insane futy led these jungle creatures to pursue him into the very house is unimaginable ; but there they were, in the passage, caterwauling in concett: and as if at their incantation the thunder awoke anew, and the lightning nulli- fied the meagre table lamp. It was such a din as you could not speak through. ‘Tabby, his fur on end, pranced up and down the room, his eyes blazing, talking and sometimes exclaiming in a tone of voice the children had never heard him use before and which made their blood run cold. He seemed like one inspired in the presence of Death, he had gone utterly Delphic: and with- out in the passage Hell’s pandemonium reigned terrifically.
The check could only be a short one. Outside the door stood the big filter, and above the door the fanlight was long since broken. Something black and yelling flashed through the fanlight, landing clean in the middle of the supper table, scattering the forks and spoons and upsetting the lamp. And another and another—but already Tabby was through the window and streaking again for the bush, The whole dozen of those wild cats leapt one after the other from the top of the filter clean through the fanlight onto the supper table, and away from there only too hot in his tracks: in
33
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
a moment the whole devil-hunt and its hopeless quatry had vanished into the night.
‘Oh Tabby, my darling Tabby!’ wailed John; while Emily rushed again to the window.
They were gone. The lightning behind the creepers in the jungle lit them up like giant cob- webs: but of Tabby and his pursuers there was nothing to be seen.
John burst into tears, the first time for several years, and flung himself on his mother: Emily Stood transfixed at the window, her eyes glued in horrot on what she could not, in fa@, see: and all of a sudden was sick.
‘God, what an evening!’ groaned Mr. Bas- Thornton, groping in the darkness for what might be left of their supper.
Shortly after that Sam’s hut burst into flames. They saw, from the dining-room, the old negro Stagger dramatically out into the darkness. He was throwing stones at the sky. In a lull they heard him cry : ‘I gib it back, didn’t 1? I gib de nasty ting back P’
Then there was another blinding flash, and Sam fell where he stood. Mr. Thornton pulled the children roughly back and said something like ‘Ill go and see. Keep them from the window.’
Then he closed and barred «he shutters, and was gone.
34
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
John and the little ones kept up a continuous sobbing. Emily wished some one would light a lamp, she wanted to read. Anything, so as not to think about poor Tabby.
I suppose the wind must have begun to rise
some while before this, but now, by the time Mr. Thornton had managed to carry old Sam’s body into the house, it was more than a gale. The old man, stiff in the joints as he might have been in life, had gone as limp as a worm. Emily and John, who had slipped unbeknownst into the passage, were thrilled beyond measure at the way he dangled: they could hardly tear themselves away, and be back in the dining-room, before they should be discovered.
There Mts. Thornton sat heroically in a chair, her brood all grouped round her, saying the Psalms, and the poems of Sir Walter Scott, over by heatt : while Emily tried to keep her mind off Tabby by going over in her head all the details of her Earthquake. At times the din, the rocketing of the thunder and torrential shriek of the wind, became so loud as almost to impinge on her inner world: she wished this wretched thunderstorm would hurty up and get over. First she held an actual performance of the earthquake, went over it diredt, as if it was again happening. Then she put it into Oratio Retta, told it as a story, begin-
35
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
ning with that magic phrase, ‘Once I was in an Earthquake.’ But before long the dramatic ele- ment reappeared—this time, the awed comments of her imaginary English audience. When that was done, she put it into the Historical—a Voice, declaring that a gitl called Emily was once in an Earthquake. And so on, tight through the whole thing a third time.
The horrid fate of poot Tabby appeared sud- denly before her eyes, caught her unawares: and she was all but sick again. Even her earthquake had failed her. Caught by the incubus, her mind struggled frantically to clutch at even the outside world, as an only remaining straw. She tried to fix her interest on every least detail of the scene atound her—to count the slats in the shutters, any least detail that was outward. So it was that for the first time she really began to notice the weather.
The wind by now was mote than redoubled. The shutters were bulging as if tired elephants were leaning against them, and Father was trying to tie the fastening with that handkerchief. But to push against this wind was like pushing against rock. ‘The handkerchief, shutters, everything burst : the rain poured in like the sea into a sink- ing ship, the wind occupied the room, snatching piaures from the wall, sweeping the table bare. Through the gaping frames the lightning-lit scene
36
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
without was visible. The creepers, which before had looked like cobwebs, now streamed up into the sky like new-combed hair. Bushes were lying flat, laid back on the ground as close as a rabbit lays back his ears. Branches were leaping about loose in the sky. The negro huts were clean gone, and the negtoes ctawling on their stomachs actoss the compound to gain the shelter of the house. The bouncing rain seemed to cover the ground with a white smoke, a sort of sea in which the blacks wallowed like porpoises. One nigget-boy began to roll away: hismother, forgetting caution, rose to her feet : and immediately the fat old bel- dam was blown clean away, bowling along across fields and hedgerows like some one in a funny fairy-Sstory, till she fetched up against a wall and was pinned there, unable to move. But the others - managed to teach the house, and soon could be heard in the cellar underneath.
Moreover the very floor began to ripple, as a loose carpet will ripple on a gusty day : in opening the cellar door the blacks had let the wind in, and now for some time they could not shut it again. The wind, to push against, was more like a solid block than a current of air.
Mr. Thornton went round the house—to see what could be done, he said. He soon tealised _ that the next thing to go would be the roof. So
37
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
he returned to the Niobe-group in the dining- room. Mrs. Thornton was half-way through The Lady of the Lake, the smaller children listening with rapt attention. Exasperated, he told them - that they would probably not be alive in half an hour. No one seemed particularly interested in his news: Mrs. Thornton continued her recita- tion with faultless memory.
After another couple of cantos the threatened roof went. Fortunately, the wind taking it from inside, most of it was blown clear of the house: but one of the couples collapsed skew-eyed, and was hung up on what was left of the dining-room door—within an ace of hitting John. Emily, to her intense resentment, suddenly felt cold. All at once, she found she had had enough of the storm : it had become intolerable, instead of a welcome distraction.
Mr. Thornton began to look for something to break through the floor. If only he could make a hole in it, he might get his wife and children down into the cellar. Fortunately hedid not have to look far: one arm of the fallen couple had already done the work for him, Laura, Rachel, Emily, Edward and John, Mrs. Thornton and finally Mr. Thorn- ton himself, were passed down into the darkness already thronged with negroes and goats.
With great good sense, Mr. Thornton brought
38
A HIGH WIND IN. JAMAICA
with him from the room above a couple of de- canters of madeira, and every one had a swig, from Laura to the oldest negro. All the children made the most of this unholy chance, but somehow to Emily the bottle got passed twice, and each time she took a good pull. It was enough, at their age; and while what was left of the house was blown away over their heads, through the lull and the ensuing aerial return match, John, Emily, Edward, Rachel, and Laura, blind drunk, slept in a heap on the cellar oor: a sleep over which the appalling fate of Tabby, torn to pieces by those fiends almost under their very eyes, dominated with the easy empire of nightmare.
39
Chapter 2
ALL night the water poured through the
| A house floor onto the people sheltering be-
low: but (perhaps owing to the madeira)
it did them no harm. Shortly after the second
bout of blowing, however, the rain stopped ; and
when dawn came Mr. Thornton crept out to assess the damage.
The country was quite unrecognisable, as if it had been swept by a spate. You could hardly tell, geographically speaking, where you were. It is vegetation which gives the character to a tropic landscape, not the shape of the ground: and all the vegetation, for miles, was now pulp. The ground itself had been ploughed up by instan- taneous rivers, biting deep into the red earth. The only living thing in sight was a cow: and she had lost both her horns,
Thewooden part of the house was nearlyall gone, After they had succeeded in reaching shelter, one wall after another had blown down. The furni- ture was splintered into matchwood. Even the heavy mahogany dining-table, which they loved, and had always kept with its legs in little glass baths of oil to defeat the ants, was spirited right
40
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
away. There were some fragments which might be part of it, or they might not: you could not tell. :
Mr. Thornton returned to the cellar and helped his wife out : she was so cramped as hardly to be able to move. They knelt down together and thanked God for not having treated them any worse. Then they stood up and stared about them rather stupidly. It seemed not credible that all this had been done by a current of air. Mr. Thornton patted the atmosphere with his hand. When still, it was so soft, so rate: how could one believe that Motion, itself something impalpable, had lent it a hardness: that this gentle, hind-like Meteor should have last night seized Fat Betsy with the rapacity of a tiger and the lift of a roc, and flung her, as he had seen her flung, across two fait- sized fields ?
Mts. Thotnton understood his gesture.
‘Remember who is its Prince,’ she said.
The stable was damaged, though not completely destroyed: and Mr. Thornton’s mule was so much hurt he had to tell a negro to cut its throat. The buggy was smashed beyond repair. The only building undamaged was a stone chamber which had been the hospital of the old sugar-estate : so they woke the children, who were feeling ill and beyond words unhappy, and moved into this:
41
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
whete the negroes, with an unexpected energy and kindliness, did everything they could to make them comfortable. It was paved and unlighted : but solid.
The children were bilious for a few days, and inclined to dislike each other: but they accepted the change in their lives practically without notic- ing it. It is a fact that it takes experience before one can realise what is a catastrophe and what is not. Children have little faculty of distinguishing between disaster and the ordinary course of their lives. If Emily had known this was a Hurricane, she woulddoubtless have been far more impressed, for the word was full of romantic terrors. But it never entered her head: and a thunderstorm, however sevete, is after all a commonplace affair.
The mete fact that it had done incalculable damage, while the earthquake had done none at all, gave it no right whatever to rival the latter in the hier- atchy of cataclysms: an Earthquake is a thing apart. If she was silent, and inclined to brood overt some inward terror, it was not the hurricane she was thinking of, it was the death of Tabby. That, at times, seemed a horror beyond all bearing. It was her first intimate contact with death—and a death of violence, too. ‘The death of Old Sam had no such effect: there is, after all, a vast differ- ence between a negro and a favourite cat.
42
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
There was something enjoyable, too, in camp- ing in the hospital: a sort of everlasting picnic in which their parents for once were taking part. Indeed it led them to begin for the first time to regatd their parents as rational human beings, with understandable tastes—such as sitting on the floor to eat one’s dinner.
It would have surptised Mrs. Thornton very much to have been told that hitherto she had meant practically nothing to her children. She took a keen interest in Psychology (the Art Bab- blative, Southey calls it). She was full of theories about their upbringing which she had not time to put into effect; but nevertheless she thought she had a deep understanding of their temperaments and was the centre of their passionate devotion. Adtually, she was congenitally incapable of telling one end of a child from the other. She was a dumpy little woman—Cornish, I believe. When she was herself a baby she was so small they carried her about on a cushion for fear a clumsy human atm might damage her. She could read when she was two and a half. Her reading was always serious. Nor had she been backward in the humaner studies: her mistresses spoke of her Depottment as something rarely seen outside the older Royal Houses: in spite of a figure like a bolster, she could step into a coach like an angel
F
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
getting onto a cloud. She was very quick- tempered.
Mr. Bas-Thornton also had every accomplish- ment, except two: that of primogeniture, and that of making a living. Hither would have pro- vided for them.
If it would have surprised the mother, it would undoubtedly have surprised the children also to be told how little their parents meant to them. Children seldom have any power of quantitative self-analysis : whatever the facts, they believe as an atticle of faith that they love Father and Mother first and equally. A€tually, the Thornton children had loved Tabby first and foremost in all the world, some of each other second, and hardly noticed their mother’s existence mote than once a week. Their father they loved a little more: partly owing to the ceremony of riding home on his stirrups.
Jamaica remained, and blossomed anew, its womb being inexhaustible. Mr. and Mts. Thorn- ton remained, and with patience and tears tried to reconstrué things, in so far as they could be re- constructed. But the danger which their beloved little ones had been through was not a thing to tisk again. Heaven had watned them. ‘The chil- dren must go.
Nor was the only danger physical.
‘ That awful night !” said Mrs. Thornton, once,
44
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
when discussing their plan of sending them home to school: ‘Oh my dear, what the poor little things must have suffered! Think how much more acute Fear is toa child! And they were so brave, so English.’
“I don’t believe they realised it.” (He only said that to be contradictious : he could hardly expect it to be taken seriously.)
‘You know, [am terribly afraid what perman- ent, zuward effect a shock like that may have on them. Have you noticed they never so much as mention it? In England they would at least be safe from dangers of that sort.’
Meanwhile the children, accepting the new life as a matter of course, were thoroughly enjoying it. Most children, ona railway journey, prefer to change at as many stations as possible.
The rebuilding of Ferndale, too, was a matter of absorbing interest. For there is one advantage to these match-box houses—easy gone, easy come: and once begun, the work proceeded apace. Mr. Thornton himself led the building gang, employ- ing no end of mechanical devices of his own de- vising, and it was not long before the day came when he stood with his handsome head emerging through the fast dwindling hole in the new roof, shouting diretions to the two black carpenters, who, lying spread-eagle in their check shitts,
D 45
7 ¥
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
pinned on shingle after shingle—walling him in, like the vi€tim in some horrid story. At last he had to draw in his head, and where it had been the last few shingles were clapped into place.
An hour later the children had looked their last on Ferndale.
When they had been told they were to go to England, they had received it as an isolated fact : thrilling in itself, but without any particular causa- tion—for it could hardly be due to the death of the cat, and nothing else of importance had occurred lately.
The first stage of their journey was by land, to Montego Bay, and the notable thing about it was that the borrowed wagonette was drawn not by a pair of horses or a pair of mules, but by one horse and one mule. Whenever the horse wanted to go fast the mule fell asleep in the shafts: and if the driver woke it up it set off at a gallop, which angered the horse. Their progress would have been slow anyhow, as all the roads were washed away.
John was the only one who could remember England. What he remembered was sitting at the top of a flight of Stairs, which was fenced off from him by a little gate, playing with a red toy milk-cart : and he knew, without having to look, that in the room on the left Baby Emily was lying
46
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
inher cot. Emily said she could remember some- thing which sounded like a Prospeé of the Backs of some Brick Houses at Richmond: but she might have invented it. The others had been born in the Island—Edward only just.
They all had, nevertheless, most elaborate ideas about England, built up out of what their parents had told them, and from the books and old maga- zines they sometimes looked at. Needless to say it was a vety Atlantis, a land at the back of the North Wind: and going there was about aS exciting as it would be to die and go to Heaven.
John told them all about the top of the stairs for the hundredth time as they drove along; the others listening attentively (as the Believing do to a man remembering his reincarnations).
Suddenly Emily recalled sitting at a window and seeing a big bird with a beautiful tail. At the same time there had been a horrid screeching going on, ot perhaps something else disagreeable —she could not quite remember which sense was offended. It did not occur to her that it was this self-same bitd which had screeched : and anyhow it was all too vague for her to try to describe it. She switched off to wondering how it was possible actually to sleep when walking, as the driver said the mule did.
47
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
They put up for the first night at St. Anne’s, and there another notable thing occurred. ‘Their host was a hardened Creole: and at supper he ate Cay- enne pepper withaspoon. Not ordinary Cayenne pepper, mind, such as is sold in shops, which is heavily adulterated with log-wood: but the far fierier pute original. This indeed was an Event of the first water : none of them ever forgot it.
The desolation through which they drove is in- describable. Tropical scenery is anyhow tedious, prolific, and gross: the greens more or less uni- form: great tubular stems supporting thick leaves: no tree has an outline because it is crushed up against something else—no room. In Jamaica this profusion swarms over the very mountain ranges : and even the peaks are so numerous that on the top of one you are surrounded by others, and can see nothing. There are hundreds of flowers. Then imagine all this luxuriance smashed, as with a pestle and mortar—crushed, pulped, and already growing again! Mr. Thornton and his wife were ready to shout with relief when they caught their first elimpse of the sea, and at last came out in view of the whole beautiful sweep of Montego Bay itself.
In the open sea there was a considerable swell : but within the shelter of the coral reef, with its pinhole entrance, all was still as a mirror, where
48
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
three ships of different sizes lay at anchor, the whole of each beautiful machine repeated in the water under it. Within the Roads lay the Bogue Islands ; and immediately to the left of the islands, in the low land at the base of the hills, was the mouth of a small river—swampy, and (Mr. Thorn- ton informed John) infested with crocodiles. The children had never seen a crocodile, and hoped one might venture as far as the town, where they ptesently arrived: but none did. It was with considerable disappointment that they found they were to go on board the barque at once ; for they still hoped that round some corner of the street a crocodile might yet appear.
The Clorinda had let go her anchor in six fathoms: the water so clear, and the light so bright, that as they drew near the refleCtion sud- _ denly disappeared, and instead they found them- selves looking right underneath her and out the other side. The refraction made her seem as flat-bellied as a turtle, as if practically all of her wete above the surface: and the anchor on its cable seemed to stream out flatly, like a downwards kite, twisting and twining (owing to the undulat- ing surface) in the writhing coral.
This was the only impression Emily retained of going on board the ship: but the ship itself was a Strange enough object, requiring all her attention.
49
— A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
John was the only one who could remember the journey out at all clearly. Emily thought she could, but was really only remembering her visual- isations of what she had been told: in faé, she found that a teal ship was totally unlike the thing she thought she remembered.
By some last whim of the captain’s the shrouds were being set up—tauter than seemed good to the sailors, who grumbled as they strained the creak- ing lanyards. John did not envy them, winding away at that handle in the hot sun: but he did envy the chap whose job it was to dip his hand in a gteat pot of aromatic Stockholm tar, and work it into the dead-eyes. He was tarred up to the elbows: and John itched to be so too.
In a moment the children were scattered all over the ship, smelling here, miaowing, sniffing there, like cats ina new home. Mr. and Mrs. Thornton Stood by the main companion-way, a little dis- consolate at their children’s happy preoccupation, a little regretting the lack of proper emotional scene.
‘1 think they will be happy here, Frederic,’ said
Mrs. Thornton. ‘I wish we could have afforded ©
to send them by the steam-boat : but children find amusement even in discomfort.’ Mr. Thornton grunted. ‘I wish schools had never been invented!” he 50
etd A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA suddenly burst out: ‘they wouldn’t then be so indispensable ! ’
There was a short pause for the logic of this to ctoss the footlights : then he went on:
‘I know what will happen; they ll come away ... mugs\| Just ordinary little mugs, like any one else’s brats! I’m dashed if I don’t think a hun- dred hurricanes would be better than that.’
Mts. Thornton shuddered: but she continued bravely :
“You know, I think they were getting almost too devoted to us? We have been such an un- ' tivalled centre of their lives and thoughts. It doesn’t do for minds developing to be completely dependent on one person.’
Captain Marpole’s grizzled head emerged from the scuttle. A sea-dog: clear blue eyes of a translucent trustworthiness: a merty, wrinkled,
morocco-coloured face: a rumbling voice.
“He’s too good to be true,’ whispered Mrs. Thornton.
‘Not atall! It’s a sophism to imagine people don’t conform to type!’ barked Mr. Thornton. He felt at sixes and sevens.
Captain Marpole certainly looked the ideal Chil- dren’s Captain. He would, Mrs. Thornton de- cided, be careful without being fussy—for she was all in favour of courageous gymnastics, though
ae. re
y
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
glad she would not have to witness them herself. Captain Marpole cast his eyes benignantly over the swatming imps. |
‘ They ’ll worship him,’ she whispered to her husband. (She meant, of course, that he would worship them.) It was an important point, this, of the captain: important as the personality of a headmaster.
‘So that ’s the nursery, eh ?’ said the captain, ctushing Mrs. Thornton’s hand. She strove to answer, but found her throat undoubtedly para- lysed. Even Mr. Thornton’s ready tongue was at a loss. He looked hard at the captain, jerked his. thumb towards the children, wrestled in his mind with an elaborate speech, and finally enunci- ated in a small, unlikely voice :
“Smack em.’
Then the captain had to go about his duties : and for an hour the father and mother sat discon- solately on the main hatch, quite deserted. Even when all was ready for departure it was impossible to muster the flock for a colletive good-bye.
Already the tug was fulminating in its gorge: and ashore they must go. Emily and John had been captured, and stood talking uneasily to their parents, as if to Strangers, using only a quarter of their minds. With a rope to be climbed dangling before his very nose, John simply did not
52
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
know how this delay was to be supported, and lapsed into complete silence.
“Time to go ashore, Ma’am,’ said the captain : “we must be off now.’
Very formally the two generations kissed each other, and said farewell. Indeed the eldets were already at the gangway before the meaning of it all dawned in Emily’s head. She rushed after her mother, gripped her ample flesh in two strong fists, and sobbed and wept, ‘ Come too, Mother, oh, do come too!’
Honestly, it had only occurred to her that very moment that this was a parting.
‘But think what an adventure it will be,’ said Mts. Thornton bravely: ‘much more than if I come too !—You ’Il have to look after the Liddlies just as if you were a real grown-up ! ’
“But I don’t want any mote adventures!’ sobbed Emily: ‘I’ve got an Earthquake \’
Passions were running far too high for any one to be awate how the final separation took place. The next thing Mrs. Thornton could remember
was how tited her arm had been, after waving and waving at that dwindling speck which bore away @ on the land breeze, hung awhile stationary in the intervening calm, then won the Trade and climbed up into the blue.
Meanwhile, at the rail Stood Margaret Fernan-
53
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
dez, who, with her little brother Harry, was going to England by the same boat. No one had come to see them off: and the brown nurse who was accompanying them had gone below the moment she came on board, so as to be ill as quickly as possible. How handsome Mr. Bas-Thornton had looked, with his English distin@tion! Yet every one knew he had no money. Her set white face was turned towards the land, her chin quivering at intervals. Slowly the harbour disappeared: the disordered profligacy of the turbulent, intricate mass of hills sunk lower in the sky. The occa- sional white houses, and white puffs of steam and smoke from the sugat-mills, vanished. At last the land, all palely shimmering like the bloom on grapes, settled down into the mirror of emerald and blue.
She wondered whether the Thornton children would prove companionable, or a nuisance. They were all younger than she was : which was a pity.
il On the journey back to Ferndale both father and mother were silent, a€tuated by that tug of jealousy against sympathy which a strong common emotion begets in familiar rather than passionate
54
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
companions. ‘They were above the ordinary sen- timentalities of grass-bereavement (above choking over small shoes found in cupboards): but not above a rather strong dose of the natural instincts of parenthood, Frederic no less than his wife.
But when they were nearly home, Mrs. Thorn- ton began to chuckle to herself.
‘Funny little thing, Emily! Did you notice almost the last thing she said? She said “I’ve got an eatthquake.” She must have got it mixed up in her silly old head with earache.’
There was along pause : and then she remarked again :
‘John is so much the most sensitive: he was absolutely too full to speak.’
iil
When they got home it was many days before they could bring themselves openly to mention the children. When some reference had to be made, they spoke round them, in an uncomfott- able way, as if they had died.
But after a few weeks they had a most welcome surprise. The Clorinda was calling at the Caymans, and taking the Leeward Passage: and while rid- ing off the Grand Cayman Emily and John wrote
55
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
letters, and a vessel bound for Kingston had taken charge of them and eventually they reached Fern- dale. It had not even occurred to either parent that this would be possible.
This was Emily’s :
My prEAR Parents,—This ship is full of Turtles. We stopped here and they came out in boats. There is turtles in the saloon under the tables for you to put your feet on, and turtles in the passages and on the deck, and everywhere you go. The captain says we mustn’t fall overboard now because his boats are full of turtles too, with water. The sailors bring the others on deck every day to have a wash and when you stand them up they look just as if they had pina- fores on. They make such a funny sighing and groaning in the night, at first I thought it was every- body being ill, but you get used to it, it is just like people being ill—Your loving daughter,
EmILy.
And John’s :
My veArEst PARENTS,—The captain’s son Henry is a wonderful chap, he goes up the rigging with his hands alone, he is ever so strong. He can turn round under a bellying pin without touching the deck, I can’t but I hang from the ratlines by my heels which the sailors say is very brave, but they don’t like Emily doing it, funny. I hope you are both in excellent health, one of the sailors has a monkey but its tail is Sore.—Your affectionate Son,
JOHN. 56
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
That was the last news they could expec for many months. The Clorinda was not touching anywhere else. It gave Mrs. Thornton a cold feeling in the stomach to measure just /ow long. But she argued, logically enough, that the time must come to an end, all time does: there is noth- ing so inexorable as a ship, plodding away, plod- ding away, all over the place, till at last it quite cettainly reaches that small speck on the map which all the time it had intended to reach. Philo- sophically speaking, a ship in its port of departure is just as much in its port of arrival: two point- events differing in time and place, but not in degree of teality. Ergo, that first letter from England was as good as written, only not quite... legible yet. And the same applied to seeing them. (But here one must stop, for the same argument applied to old age and death, it wouldn’t do.)
Yet, a bate fortnight after the arrival of this first budget, still another letter arrived, from Havana. The Corinda had put in there unex- pectedly, it appeared: the letter was from Captain Marpole.
‘ What a dear man he is,’ said Alice. ‘ He must have known how anxious we would be for every sctap of news.’
Captain Marpole’s letter was not so terse and
57
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
vivid as the children’s had been: still, for the news it contained, I give it in full:
HAVANA DE CUBA.
HonovureEpD Sir AND MapAm,—I hasten to write to you to relieve you of any uncertainty |
After leaving the Caymans we stood for the Lee- ward Passage, and sighted the Isle of Pines and False Cape on the morning of the r9th and Cape S. Antonio in the evening, but were prevented from rounding the same by a true Norther, the first of the season, on the 22nd, however, the wind coming round suffici- ently we rounded the cape in a lively fashion and stood N4#E. well away from the Coloradoes which are a dangerous reef lying off this part of the Cuban coast. At six o’clock on the morning of the 23rd there being light airs only I sighted three sail in the North-East, evidently merchantmen bound on the same course as ourselves, at the same time a schooner of similar charaéter was observed standing out to- wards us from the direction of Black Key, and I pointed her out to my mate just before going below, having the wind of us he was within hailing distance by ten in the morning, judge then of our astonish- ment when he rudely opened ten or twelve disguised gun-ports and unmasked a whole broadside of artillery trained upon us, ordering us at the same time in the most peremptory manner to heave-to or he would sink us instanter. There was nothing to do but to comply although considering the friendly relations at present existing between the English and
58
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
all other governments my mate was quite at a loss to account for his action, and imagined it due to a mis- take which would be speedily explained, we were immediately boarded by about fifty or seventy ruffians of the worst Spanish type, armed with knives and cutlasses, who took possession of the ship and confined me in my cabin and my mate and crew for- watd while they ransacked the vessel committing every possibleexcess broaching rum-casks and break- ing the necks off wine-bottles and soon a great number of them were lying about the deck in an in- toxicated condition, their leader then informed me he was aware I had a considerable sum in specie on board and used every possible threat which villainy could devise to make me disclose its hiding-place, it was useless for me to assure him that beyond the fifty or so pounds they had already discovered I carried none, he grew even more insistent in his demands, declaring that his information was certain, tearing down the panelling in my cabin in his search. He carried off my instruments, my clothes, and all my personal possessions, even taking from me the poor Locket in which I was used to carry the portrait of my Wife, and no appeal to his sensibility, tho’ I shed tears, would make him return this to him worthless object, he also tore down and carried away the cabin bell-pulls, which could be of no possible use to him and was an act of the most open piracy, at length, seeing I was obdurate, he threatened to blow up the ship and all in it if I would not yield, he prepared the train and would have proceeded to carry out this
i
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
devilish threat if I had not in this last extremity, consented.
I come now to the latter part of my tale. The children had taken refuge in the deck-house and had been up to now free from harm, except for a cuff or two and the Degrading Sights they must have wit- nessed, but no sooner was the specie some five thou- . sand pounds in all mostly my private property and most of our cargo (chiefly rum sugar coffee and arrowroot) removed to the schooner than her captain, in sheer infamous wantonness, had them all brought out from their refuge your own little ones and the two Fernandez children who were also on board and murdered them, every one. ‘That anything so wicked should look like a man I should not have believed, had I been told, tho’ I have lived long and seen all kinds of men, I think he is mad: indeed lam sure of it; and I take Oath that he shall be brought to at least that tithe of justice which is in Human hands, for two days we drifted about in a helpless condition, for our rigging had all been cut, and at last fell in with an American man-of-war, who gave us some assistance, and would have proceeded in pur- suit of the miscreants himself had he not most ex- plicit orders to elsewhere. I then put in to the port of Havana, where I informed the correspondent of Lloyds, the government, and the representative of the Times newspaper, and take the opportunity of writing you this melancholy letter before proceeding to England.
There is one point on which you will still feel
60
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
some anxiety, considering the sex of some of the poor innocents, and on which I am glad to be able to set your minds at rest, the children were taken onto the other vessel in the evening and I am glad to say there done to death immediately, and their little bodies cast into the sea, as I saw with great relief with my own eyes. There was no time for what you might fear to have occurred, and this consolation I am glad to be able to give you.—I have the honour to be, Your obedient servant, Jas. MaArpo.e, Master, barque Clorinda.
Chapter 3 a HE passage from Montego Bay to the Cay-
mans, where the children had written their
letters, is only a matter of a few hours: indeed, in clear weather one can look right across from Jamaica to the peak of Tarquinio in Cuba.
There is no harbour; and the anchorage, owing to the reefs and ledges, is difficult. The Clorinda brought up off the Grand Cayman, the look-out man in the chains feeling his way to a white, sandy patch of bottom which affords the only safe rest- ing-place there, and causing the anchor to be let go to windward of it. Luckily, the weather was fine.
The island, a longish one at the western end of the group, is low, and covered with palms. Pres- ently a succession of boats brought out a quantity of turtles, as Emily described. ‘The natives also brought parrots to sell to the sailors : but failed to dispose of many.
At last, however, the uncomfortable Caymans were left behind, and they set their course towards the Isle of Pines, a large island in a gulf of the Cuban coast. One of the sailors, called Cuttis, had once been wrecked there, and was full of
62
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Stories about it. It is a very unpleasant place ; spatsely inhabited, and covered with labyrinth- ane woods. The only food available is a kind of tree. ‘There is also a species of bean which looks tempting: but it is deadly poison. The croco- diles, Curtis said, were so fierce they chased him and his companions into trees: the only way to escape from them was to throw them your cap to wotty: of if you were bold, to disable them with a blow of a stick on the loins. There were also a great many snakes, including a kind of boa.
The current off the Isle of Pines sets strongly to the east: so the Clorinda kept close inshore, to cheat it. They passed Cape Corrientes—looking, when first sighted, like two hummocks in the sea : they passed Holandes Point, known as False C. Antonio: but were prevented for some time, as Captain Marpole told in his letter, from rounding the true one. For to attempt C. Antonio in a Norther is to waste your labout.
They lay-to in sight of that long, low, rocky, treeless promontory in which the great island of Cuba terminates, and waited. They were so close that the fisherman’s hut on its southern side was clearly discernible.
For the children, those first few days at sea had flashed by like a kind of prolonged circus. There
63
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
is no machine invented for sober purposes so well adapted also to play as the rigging of a ship: and the kindly captain, as Mrs. Thornton had divinedy was willing to give them a lot of freedom, First came the climbing of a few rungs of the ratlines in a sailor’s charge: higher each time, till John attained a gingerly touching of the yard: then hugged it: then straddled it. Soon, running up the ratlines and prancing on the yard (as if it were a mete table-top) had no further thrill for John or Emily either. (To go out on the yard was not allowed.)
But when the ratlines had palled, the most last- ing joy undoubtedly lay in that network of foot- ropes and chains and stays which spreads outunder and on each side of the bowsprit. Here, familiar- ity only bred content. Here, in fine weather, one could climb or be still: stand, sit, hang, swing, or lie: now this end up, now that: and all with the cream of the blue sea being whipt up for one’s own especial pleasure, almost within touching distance : and the big white wooden lady (Clorinda herself), bearing the whole vessel so lightly on her back, her knees in the hubble-bubble, her cracks almost filled up with so much painting, vaster than any living lady, as a constant and unannoying com- panion.
In the midst there was a kind of spear, its haft
64
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
set against the under-side of the bowsprit, its point perpendicularly down towards the water—the
edolphin-striker: Hete it was that the old monkey ~ (who had the Sore tail) loved to hang, by the mere stub which was all a devouring cancer had left him, chattering to the water. He took no notice of the children, nor they of him: but both patties grew attached to each other, for all that.
—How small the children all looked, on a ship, when you saw them beside the sailors! It was as if they were a different order of beings! Yet they were living creatures just the same, full of promise.
John, with his downy, freckled face, and general round energeticalness.
‘Emily, with her huge palm-leaf hat, and colour- less cotton frock tight over her minute impish erect body : her thin, almost expressionless face : her dark grey eyes contracted to escape the blaze, yet shining as it were in spite of themselves : and her really beautiful lips, that looked almost as if they were sculptured.
Margaret Fernandez, taller (as midgets go: she was just thirteen), with her square white face and tangled hair, her elaboratish clothes.
Her little brother Harry, by some throw-back for all the world like a manikin Spaniard.
And the smaller Thorntons: Edward, mouse-
65
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
coloured, with a general mousy (but pleasing) ex-
ptession: Rache/, with tight short gold curls and
a fat pink face (John’s colouring watered down) » and last of all Laura, a queer mite of three with
heavy dark eyebrows, and blue eyes, a big head-
top and a receding chin—as if the Procreative
Spitit was getting a little hysterical by the time it
reached her. A silver-age conception, Laura’s,
decidedly.
When the Norther blew itself out, it soon fell away almost dead calm. The morning they finally rounded Cape San Antonio was hot, blazing hot. But it is never stuffy at sea: there is only this dis- advantage, that while on land a shady hat protects you from the sun, at sea nothing can protec you from that second sun which is mirrored upwards from the water, strikes under all defences, and burns the unseasoned skin from all your under- sides. Poor John! His throat and chin were a blistered red.
From the point itself there is a whitish bank in two fathoms, bowed from north to north-east. The outer side is clean and steep-to, and in fine weather one can Steer along it by eye. It ends in Black Key, a rock standing out of the water like a ship’s hull. Beyond that lies a channel, very foul and difficult to navigate: and beyond that again the Coloradoes Reef begins, the first of a long
66
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
chain of reefs following the coast in a north-easterly dire€tion as far as Honde Bay, two-thirds the way to Havana. Within the reefs lies the intricate Canal de Guaniguanico, of which this channel is the westernmost outlet, with its own tather dubious little ports. But ocean traffic, needless to say, shuns the whole box of tricks: and the Clorinda advisedly stood well away to the north- watd, keeping her course at a gentle amble for the open Atlantic.
John was sitting outside the galley with the sailor called Curtis, who was instructing him in the neat mystery of a Turk’s-head. Young Henry Marpole was steering. Emily was messing around —not talking, just being by him.
As for the other sailors, they were all congte- gated in a ring, up in the bows, so that one saw nothing but their backs. But every now and then a general cuffaw, and a sudden surging of the whole group, showed they were up to something ot other.
John presently tiptoed forward, to see what it might be. He thrust his bullet-head among their legs, and worked his way in till he had as good a view as the earliest comer.
He found they had got the old monkey, and were filling him up with rum. First they gave him biscuit soaked in it: then they dipped rags in
67
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
a pannikin of the stuff, and squeezed them into his mouth. Then they tried to make him drink dite& : but that he would not do—it only wasted a lot of spirit.
John felt a vague horror at all this: though of course he did not guess the purpose behind it.
The poor brute shivered and chattered, rolled his eyes, spluttered. I suppose it must have been an excruciatingly funny sight. Every now and then he would seem altogether overcome by the spirit. Then one of them would lay him on the top of an old beef barrel—but hey presto, he would be up like lightning, trying to streak through the ait over their heads. But he was no bird: they caught him each time, and set to work to dope him again.
As for John, he could no more have left the scene now than Jacko the monkey could.
‘Tt was astonishing what a lot of spirit the wizened little brute could absorb. He was drunk, of course : hopelessly, blindly, madly drunk. But he was not paralytic, not even somnolent : and it seemed as if nothing could overcome him. So at last they gave up the attempt. They fetched a wooden box, and cut a notch in the edge. Then they put him on the barrel-top, and clapped the box over him, and after much manceuvring his gangrenous tail was made to come out through
68
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
the notch. Anaesthetised or not, the operation on him was to ptoceed. John stared, transfixed, at that obscene wriggling stump which was all one could see of the animal: and out of the corner of his eye he could see at the same time the uproatious opetators, the tar-stained knife.
But the moment the blade touched flesh, with an awful screech the mommet contrived to fling off his cage—leapt on the surgeon’s head—leapt from _ there high in the air—caught the forestay—and in a twinkling was away and up high in the fore- rigging.
Then began the hue and cry. Sixteen men flinging about in lofty actobatics, all to catch one poor old drunk monkey. For he was drunk as a lord, and sick asacat. His course varied between wild and hair-raising leaps (a sort of inspired gym- nastics), and doleful incompetent .reelings on a - taut tope which threatened at every moment to catapult him into the sea. But even so they could never quite catch him.
No wonder that all the children, now, stood open-mouthed and open-eyed on the deck beneath in the sun till their necks nearly broke—such a Free Fun Fair and Circus !
And no-wonder that on that passenget-schoonet which Martpole, before going below, had sighted drifting towards them from the dire€tion of the
69
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Black Key channel, the ladies had left the shade of the awning and were crowding at the rail, parasols twitling, lorgnettes and opeta-glasses in action, all twittering like a cage of linnets. Just too far off to distinguish the tiny quarry, they might well have wondered what sott of a bedlam-vessel of sea-actobats the light easterly air was bearing them down upon.
They were so interested that presently a boat was hoisted out, and the ladies—and some gentle- men as well—crowded into it.
Poor little Jacko missed his hold at last: fell plump on the deck and broke his neck. That was the end of him—and of the hunt too, of course. The aerial ballet was over, in its middle, with no final tableau. The sailors began, in twos and threes, to slide to the deck.
But the visitors were already on board.
That is how the Corinda teally was taken. There was no display of artillery—but then, Cap- tain Marpole could hardly know this, seeing he was below in his bunk at the time. Henry was Steering by that sixth sense which only comes into operation when the other five are asleep. The mate and crew had been so intent on what they were doing that the Flying Dutchman himself might have laid alongside, for all they cated.
7°
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
ii
Indeed, the whole manceuvte was executed so quietly that Captain Marpole never even woke— incredible though this will seem to a seaman. But then, Marpole had begun life as a successful coal-merchant.
The mate and crew were bundled into the fo’c’sle (the Fox-hole, the children thought it was called), and confined there, the scuttle being secured with a couple of nails.
The children themselves were shepherded, as related, into the deck-house, where the chairs, and perfe&tly useless pieces of old rope, and broken tools, and dried-up paint-pots were kept, without taking alarm. But the door was immediately shut on them. ‘They had to wait for hours and hours before anything else happened—nearly all day, in fac&: and they got very bored, and rather cross.
The actual number of the men who had effected the capture cannot have been more than eight or nine, most of them ‘women’ at that, and not atmed—at least with any visible weapon. Buta second boatload soon followed them from the schoonet. ‘These, for form’s sake, were armed with muskets. But there was no possible resist- ance to fear. ‘I'wo long nails through the scuttle can secute any number of men pretty effectually.
7I
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
With this second boatload came both the cap- tain andthe mate. The former was a clumsy gteat fellow, with a sad, silly face. He was bulky; yet so ill-proportioned one got no impression of power. He was modestly dressed in a drab shote- going suit: he was newly shaven, and his sparse hair was pomaded so that it lay in a few dark ribbons across his baldish head-top. But all this shore-decency of appearance only accentuated his big splodgy brown hands, stained and scatred and corned with his calling. Moreover, instead of boots he wore a pair of gigantic heel-less slippers in the Moorish manner, which he must have sliced with a knife out of some pair of dead sea-boots. Even his great spreading feet could hardly keep them on, so that he was obliged to walk at the slowest of shuffles, flop-flop along the deck. He . Stooped, as if always afraid of banging his head on something ; and carried the backs of his hands forward, like an orang-outang.
Meanwhile the men set to work methodically but very quietly to remove the wedges that held the battens of the hatches, getting ready to haul up the cargo.
Their leader took several turns up and down the deck before he seemed able to make up his mind to the interview: then lowered himself into Mar- pole’s cabin, followed by his mate.
72
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
This mate was a small man: very fair, and in- telligent-looking beside his chief. He was almost dapper, in a quiet way, in his dress.
They found Captain Marpole even now only half awake: and the stranger stood for a moment in silence, nervously twiddling his cap in his hands. When he spoke at last, it was with a soft German accent :
‘Excuse me,’ he began, ‘ but would you have the goodness to lend me a few stores P’
_ Captain Marpole stated in astonishment, first at him and then at the much be-painted faces of the ‘ladies ’ pressed against his cabin skylight.
‘Who the devil are you?’ he contrived to ask at last.
‘T hold a commission in the Colombian navy,’ the Evareet explained: ‘and I am in need of a few stores.’
(Meanwhile his men had the see off, and were ptepating to help themselves to everything in the ship.)
Marpole looked him up and down. It was barely conceivable that even the Colombian navy should have such a figute of an officer. Then his eye wandered back to the skylight :
“If you call yourself a man-of-war, sit, who in Heaven’s name ate those?’ As he pointed, the smitking faces hastily retreated,
73
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
The stranger blushed.
‘They ate rather difficult to explain,’ he ad- mitted ingenuously.
‘If you had said Turkish navy, that would have been more teasonable-sounding !’ said Marpole.
But the stranger did not seem to take the joke. He étood, silent, in a charateristic attitude : rock- ing himself from foot to foot, and rubbing his cheek on his shoulder.
Suddenly Marpole’s eat caught the muffled tacketing forward. Almost at the same time a bump that shivered the whole barque told that the schooner had been laid alongside.
‘What ’s that P’ he exclaimed. ‘ Is there some one in my hold ?’
‘Stores .. .? mumbled the stranger.
Matpole up to now had lain growling in his bunk like a dog in its kennel. Now for the first time realising that something serious was afoot he flung himself out and made for the companion- way. ‘The little silent fair man tripped him up, and he fell against the table.
‘You had much better stay here, yes?’ said the big man. ‘ My fellows shall keep a tally, you shall be paid in full for everything we take.’
The eyes of the marine coal-merchant gleamed momentarily :
74
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
‘You ’Il have to pay for this outrage to a pretty tune!’ he growled. ;
‘I will pay you,’ said the stranger, with a sudden magnificence in his voice, ‘at the very least five thousand pounds ! ’
Marpole stared in astonishment.
‘I will write you an order on the Colombian government for that amount,’ the other went on.
Matpole thumped the table, almost speechless :
*“D’you think I believe that cock-and-bull Story P’ he thundered.
Captain Jonsen made no protest.
“Do you realise that you ate technically guilty of piracy, making a forced requisition on a British ship like this, even if you pay every farthing P’
Still Jonsen made no reply : though the bored expression of his mate was lit up for a moment by a smile.
“You ’ll pay me in cash!’ Marpole concluded. Then he went off on a fresh tack : ‘ Though how the devil you got on board without being called beats me !—Where ’s my mate ?’
Jonsen began in a toneless voice, as if by rote: ‘I will write you an order for five thousand pounds: three thousand for the stores, and two thousand you will give me in money.’
‘We know you ’ve got specie on board,’ inter- jected the little fair mate, speaking for the first time.
75
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
‘Our information is certain!’ declared Jonsen.
Marpole at last went white and began to sweat. It took even Feat an extraordinarily long time to penetrate his thick skull. But he denied that he had any treasure on board.
‘Is that your answer ?’ said Jonsen. He drew a heavy pistol from his side pocket. * If you do not tell us the truth, your life shall pay the forfeit.’ His voice was peculiarly gentle, and mechanical, as if he did not attach much meaning to what he said. ‘Do not expect mercy, for this is my pro- fession, and in it I am inured to blood.’
A frightful squawking from the deck above told Marpole that his chickens were being moved to new quarters.
In an agony of feeling Marpole told him that he had a wife and children, who would be left desti- tute if his life was taken.
Jonsen, with rather a perplexed look on his face, put the gun back in his pocket, and the two of them began to search for themselves, at the same time stripping the saloon and cabins of everything they contained: firearms, wearing apparel, the bedclothes, and even (as Marpole with a rare touch of accuracy mentioned in his report) the bell-pulls.
Overhead there was a continuous bumping: the rolling of casks, cases, etc.
‘Remember,’ Jonsen went on over his shoulder
76
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
while he searched, ‘ money cannot recall life, nor in the least avail you when you are dead. If you tegatd your life in the least, at once acquaint me with the hiding-place, and your life shall be safe.’
Matpole’s only reply was again to invoke the thought of his wife and children (he was, as a matter of fact, a widower: and his only relative, a niece, would be the better off by his death to the tune of some ten thousand pounds).
But this reiteration seemed to give the mate an idea: and he began to talk to his chief rapidly ina language Matpole had never even heard. Fort a moment a curious glint came into Jonsen’s eyes but soon he was chuckling in the sentimentalest manner, and rubbing his hands.
The mate went on deck to prepare things.
Marpole had no inkling of what was’ afoot. The mate went on deck to ptepate his plan, what- ever it was : and Jonsen busied himself with a last futile search for the hiding-place, in silence.
Presently the mate shouted down to him, and he ordered Matpole on deck.
Poor Marpole groaned. Unloading Catgo is in- clined to be a messy business any way: but these visitors had been none too careful. There is no smell in the world worse than when molasses and bilge-water marry: now it was let loose like ten thousand devils. His heart was almost. broken
F Ty
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
when he saw the havoc that had been made with the cargo: broken cases, casks, bottles, all about the deck: everything in the greatest confusion : tarpaulins cut to pieces : hatches broken.
From the deck-house came the piercing voice of Laura :
‘I want to come out !”
The Spanish ladies seemed to have returned to the schooner. His own men were shut up in the forc’sle. It was obvious where all the children wete, for Laura was not the only vociferator. But the only persons to be seen were six members of the visiting crew, who Stood in a line, facing the deck-house, a musket apiece.
It was the little mate who now took charge of the situation :
‘Where is your specie hid, Captain ?’
The musketeers having their backs to him, “ Go to the Devil!’ replied Marpole.
A Startling volley rang out : six neat holes were pundtured in the top of the deck-house.
‘Hi! Steady there, what are you doing ?’ John cried out indignantly from within.
‘ If you refuse to tell us, next time their aim will be a foot lower.’
‘You fiends!’ cried Marpole.
‘ Will you tell me P’
‘No!’
78
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
waar 1?
The second row of holes can only have missed the taller children by a few inches.
There was a moment’s silence: then a sudden wild shriek from within the deck-house. It was so terrified a sound not their own mothers could have told which throat it came from. One only, though.
The stranger-captain had been slouching about in an agitated way : but at that shriek he turned on Matpole, his face purple with a sudden fury :
* Now will you say ?’
But Marpole was now completely master of himself. He did not hesitate :
*“NO!?’
* Next time he gives the order it will be to shoot
right through their little bodies ! ’ _ So that was what Marpole had meant in his letter by ‘ every. possible threat which villainy could devise’! But even by this he was not to be daunted :
“No, I tell you!’
Heroic obstinacy! But instead of giving the fatal order, Jonsen lifted a paw like a beat’s, and banged Marpole’s jaw with it. The latter fell to the deck, stunned.
It was then they took the children out of the deck-house.
to
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
They were not really much frightened ; except Margaret, who did seem to be taking it all to heart rather. Being shot at is so unlike what one ex- peéts it to be that one can hardly conneét the two ideas enough to have the appropriate emotions, the first few times. It is not half so startling as some one jumping out on you with a * Bvo !’ in the dark, for instance. The boys were crying a little: the girls were hot and cross and hungty.
‘ What were you doing ?” Rachel asked brightly of one of the firing-partty.
But only the captain and the mate could speak English. ‘The latter, ignoring Rachel’s question, explained that they were all to go on board the schooner—‘ to have some supper,’ he said.
He had alla sailor’s reassuring charm of manner. So under the charge of two Spanish seamen they were helped over the bulwarks onto the smaller vessel, which was just casting off.
There the strange sailors broke open a whole case of crystallised fruits, on which they might turn the edge of their long appetites as much as they would.
When poor stunned Captain Marpole came to his senses, it was to find himself tied to the main- mast. Several handfuls of shavings and splintered wood were piled round his feet, and Jonsen was
80
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
sprinkling them plentifully with gun-powder— though not perhaps enough, it is true, to ‘ blow up the ship and all in it.’
The small fair mate stood at hand in the gather- ing dusk with a lighted torch, ready to fire the pyre.
What could a man do in such straits? At that dreadful moment the gallant old fellow had to admit that he was beaten at last. He told them where his freight-money—some {£900—was hid- den: and they let him go.
Just as the darkness closed in, the last of the pirates returned to their ship. Not a sound was to be heard of the children : but Marpole guessed that they had been taken there too.
Before releasing his crew he lit a lantern and began a sort of inventory of what was gone. It was heart-breaking enough : besides the cargo, all his spare sails, cordage, provisions, guns, paint, powder: all his wearing apparel, and that of his mate: all nautical instruments gone, cabin stores —the saloon in fact gutted of everything, not even a knife or spoon left, tea or sugar, nor a second shirt to his back left. Only the children’s luggage was left untouched : and the turtles. Their mel- ancholy sighing was the sole sound to be heard.
But it was almost as heart-breaking to see what the pirates had ft: anything damaged, such worn-
81
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
out and useless geat as he had been only waiting for some ‘ storm’ to wash overboard—not one of these eyesores was missing.
What, in Heaven’s name, was the use of an insurance policy ? He began to colleé the rub- bish himself and dump it over the side.
But Captain Jonsen saw him :
“Hi!” he shouted: ‘ You dirty svindler! I will write to Lloyds and expose you! I will write myself!’ He was horribly shocked at the othet’s dishonesty.
So Marpole had to give it up, for the time at any tate: took a spike and broke open the fo’c’sle : and as well as the sailors found Margaret’s brown nutse. She had hidden there the whole day: probably from motives of fright.
iit
You would have thought that supper on the schoonet that night would have been a hilarious affair. But, somehow, it was manque.
A prize of such value had naturally put the crew in the best of humours: and a meal which con- sisted mainly of crystallised fruit, followed as an afterthought by bread and chopped onions served in one enormous communal bowl, eaten on the
82
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
open deck under the stars, after bed-time, should have done the same by the children. But never- theless both parties were seized by a sudden, ovet- powering, and most unexpected fit of shyness. Consequently no state banquet was ever so formal, ot so boring. |
I suppose it was the lack of a common language which first generated the infetion. The Spanish sailors, used enough to this difficulty, grinned, pointed, and bobbed: but the children retired into a display of good manners which it would cettainly have surprised their parents to see. Wheteon the sailors became equally formal: and one poor monkeyfied little fellow who by nature belched continually was so be-nudged and be- winked by his companions, and so covered in con- fusion of his own accord, that presently he went - away to eat by himself. Even then, so silent was this revel, he could still be heard faintly belching, half the ship’s length away.
Perhaps it would have gone better if the captain and mate had been there, with their English. But they were too busy, looking over the personal be- longings they had brought from the barque, sott- ing out by the light of a lantern anything too easily identifiable and reluctantly committing it to the sea.
It was at the loud splashes made by a couple of
83
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
empty trunks, Stamped in large letters JAS. MAR- POLE, that a toat of unassumed indignation arose from the neighbouring barque. The two paused in their work, astonished: why should a crew already spoiled of all they possessed take it so hardly when one heaved a couple of old worthless trunks in the sea ?
It was inexplicable.
They continued their task, taking no further
notice of the Clorinda. ‘ Once supper was over, the social situation be- came even mote awkward. The children stood about, not knowing what to do with their hands, ot even their legs: unable to talk to their hosts, and feeling it would be rude to talk to each other, wishing badly that it was time to leave. If only it had been light they could have been happy enough exploring : but in the darkness there was nothing to do, nothing whatever.
The sailors soon found occupations of theit own: and the captain and mate, as I have said, wete already busy.
Once the sorting was over, however, there was nothing for Jonsen to do except return the chil- dren to the barque, and get well clear while the breeze and the darkness lasted.
But on hearing those splashes, Marpole’s lively imagination had interpreted them in his own way.
84
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
They suggested that thete was now no feason to wait: indeed, every reason to be gone.
I think he was quite honestly misled.
It was after all but a small slip to say he had “seen with his own eyes’ what he had heard with his ‘own eats: and the intention was pious.
He set his men feverishly to work: and when Captain Jonsen looked his way again, the Clorinda, with every stitch spread in the starlight, was already half a mile to leeward.
To pursue her, right in the track of shipping, was out of the question. Jonsen had to content himself with staring after her through his night- glass. |
iv
Captain Jonsen set the little monkeyfied sailor, who had been so mortified earlier in the evening, to clear the schoonet’s fore-hold. The warps and brooms and fenders it contained were all piled to one side, and a sufficiency of bedclothes for the guests was provided from the plunder.
But nothing could now thaw them. They clambered down the ladder and received theit blanket apiece in an uncomfortable silence. Jon- sen hung about, anxious to be helpful in this matter of getting into beds which were not there, but not knowing how to set about it. So he gave
85
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
it up at last, and swung himself up through the fore-hatch, talking to himself.
The last they saw of him was his fantastic slip- pers, hanging each from a big toe, outlined against the Stars : but it never entered their heads to laugh.
Once, however, the familiar comfort of a blanket under their chins had begun to have its effet, and they were obviously quite alone, a little life did begin to return into these dumb statues.
The darkness was profound, only accentuated by the starlit square of the open hatchway. First the long silence was broken by some one turning over, almost freely. Then presently :
Laura (¢” slow sepulchral tones). 1 don’t like this bed.
RAcuHEL (ditto). Ido.
Laura. It’s a horrid bed; there isn’t any !
rake Sh! Go to sleep ! Joun. Epwarpb. I smell cockroaches.
Emizty. Sh!
Epwarpb (loudly and hopefully). They 711 bite all out nails off, because we haven’t washed, and our skin, and our hair, and.
Laura. ‘There ’sacockroach in my bed! Get out |
(You could hear the brute go zooming away. But Laura was already out too.) 86
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Emiry. Laura! Go back to bed!
Laura. Ican’t when thete’s a cockroach in it !
Joun. Get into bed again, you little fool! He’s gone long ago!
Laura. But I expeé he has left his wife.
Harry. ‘They don’t have wives, they ’re wives themselves.
RacueLt. Ow!— Laura, stop it !— Emily, Lauta ’s walking on me !
Emity. lLau-rer !
Laura. Well, I must walk on something !
Emity. Go to sleep !
(Stlence for a while.)
Laura. I haven’t said my prayers.
Emity. Well, say them lying down.
Racwet. She mustn’t, that’s lazy.
Joun. Shut up, Rachel, she must.
RacHEt. It’s wicked! You go to sleep in the middle then. People who go to sleep in the middle ought to be damned, they ought —Oughtn’t they ? (Stlence.) Oughtn’t they? (S#M silence.) Emily, I say, oughtn’t they ?
Joun. NO!
RacueEt (dreamily). 1 think there ’s lots more people ought to be damned than are.
(Silence again.)
Harry. Marghie.
(Szlence.)
87
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Marghie ! (Szlence.) Joun. What’s up with Marghie? Won’t she speak (A faint sob ts heard.) Harry. I don’t know. (Another sob.) Joun. Is she often like this ? Harry. She’s an awful ass sometimes. Joun. Marghie, what ’s up ? MarGaret (miserably). Let me alone ! Racuet. I believe she’s frightened! (Chants tauntingly) Marghie’s got the bogies, the bogies, the bogies ! MarGarer (sobbing out loud). Oh you little fools ! » Joun. Well, what’s the matter with you then ? MarGarer (after a pause). 1’m older than any of you. Harry. Well, that’s a funny reason to be frightened ! MarGareEr. It isn’t. Harry. It is! MARGARET (warming to the argument). It isn’t, I tell you ! Harry. Its! MarGarer (smugly). ‘That’s simply because you ’te all too young to know... . 88
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Joun. Oh, hit her, Emily !
Emity (sdepi/y). Hit her yourself.
Harry. But, Marghie, why ate we here ?
(No answer.)
Emily, why ate we here ?
Emrty (indifferently). 1 don’t know. I expect they just wanted to change us.
Harry. I expeé so. But they never fof/ us we wete going to be changed.
Emity. Grown-ups never do tell us things.
89
Chapter 4
p SHE children all slept late, and all woke at the same moment as if by clockwork. They sat up, and yawned uniformly, and
stretched the stiffness out of their legs and backs
(they were lying on solid wood, remember).
The schooner was steady, and people tramping about the deck. The main-hold and fore-hold were all one: and from where they were they could see the main-hatch had been opened. The captain appeared through it legs first, and dropped onto the higgledy-piggledy of the Clorinda’s cargo.
For some time they simply stared at him. He looked uneasy, and was talking to himself as he tapped now this case with his pencil, now that ; and presently shouted rather fiercely to people on deck.
‘ All right, all right,’ came from above the in- juted voice of the mate. ‘ There ’s no such hurry as all that.’
On which the captain’s mutterings to himself swelled, as if ten people were conversing at once in his chest.
‘May we get up yet ?” asked Rachel.
go
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Captain Jonsen spun round—he had forgotten their existence.
beh?’
‘ May we get up, please ? ’
‘You can go to the debble.’ He muttered this so low the children did not hear it. But it was not lost on the mate.
‘Hey! Ey! Ey!’ he called down, reprov- ingly.
‘Yes! Get up! Goondeck! Here!’ The captain viciously set up a short ladder for them to climb through the hatch.
They wete greatly astonished to find the schooner was no longer at sea. Instead, she was snugly moored against a little wooden wharf, in a pleasant land-locked bay ; with a pleasant but un- tidy village, of white wooden houses with palm- leaf roofs, behind it; and the tower of a small sandstone chutch emerging from the abundant greenery. On the quay were a few well-dressed loungers, watching the preparations for unloading. The mate was directing the labours of the crew, who wete rigging the cargo-gaft and getting ready for a hot morning’s work.
The mate nodded cheerfully to the children, but thereafter took no notice of them, which was rather mortifying. The truth is that the man was busy.
91
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
At the same time there emerged from some- where aft a collection of the oddest-looking young men. Margaret decided she had never seen such beautiful young men before. They were slim, yet nicely rounded : and dressed in exquisite clothes (if a trifle threadbare). But their faces! Those beautiful olive-tinted ovals! Those large, black- ringed, soft brown eyes, those unnaturally carmine lips! ‘They minced across the deck, chattering to
each other in high-pitched tones, ‘ twittering like a cage of linnets . . .’ and made their way on shore.
‘ Who are they ?” Emily asked the captain, who had just re-emerged from below.
‘Who ate who 2?’ he murmured absently, with- out looking round. ‘Oh, those? Fairies.’ .
‘Hey! Yey! Yey!’ cried the mate, more disapprovingly than ever. $
‘ Fairies ?’ cried Emily in astonishment.
But Captain Jonsen began to blush. He went crimson from the nape of his neck to the bald patches on the top of his head, and left.
‘He is silly!’ said Emily.
‘I wonder if we go onto the land yet,’ said Edward.
“Wed better wait until we ’re told, hadn’t we, Emily ?’ said Harry.
‘I didn’t know England would be like this,’ said Rachel: ‘ it’s very like Jamaica.’
92
af |
'¢
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
* This isn’t England,’ said John, ‘ you stupid !’
‘But it must be,’ said Rachel: ‘ England ’s where we ’re going.’
“We don’t get to England yet,’ said John: ‘ it must be somewhete we ’re stopping at, like when we got all those turtles.’
“I like stopping at places,’ said Laura.
“I don’t,’ said Rachel.
“I do, though,’ pursued Laura.
* Whete ate those young men gone ?’ Margaret asked the mate. ‘ Are they coming back ?’
* They ’II just come back to be paid, after we ’ve sold the cargo,’ he answered,
‘Then they ’re not living on the ship?’ she “pursued,
“No, we hited them from Havana.’
“But what for ?’ ,
He looked at her in surprise : ‘ Why, those ate the “ladies” we had on board, to look like passengers—You didn’t think they were teal ladies, did you P’
“What, were they dressed up?’ asked Emily excitedly ; ‘ What fun ! ’
“T like dressing up,’ said Laura.
‘I don’t,’ said Rachel, ‘I think it ’s babyish,’
“I thought they were real ladies,’ admitted Emily.
“We ’re a respectable ship’s crew, we are,’ said
= 93
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
the mate, a trifle stiffly—and without too good logic, when you come to think of it. ‘ Here, you go on shore and amuse yourselves.’
So the children went ashore, holding hands in a long row, and promenaded the town in a formal sort of way. Laura wanted to go off by herself, but the others would not let her: and when they returned, the line was still unbroken. They had seen all there was to see, and no one had taken the least notice of them (so far as they were awate), and they wanted to start asking questions again.
It was, then, a charming little sleepy old place, in its way, this Santa Lucia: isolated on the for- gotten western end of Cuba between Nombre de Dios and the Rio de Puercos: cut off from the open sea by the intricate nature of the channels through the reefs and the Banks of Isabella, channels only navigable to the pra@tised and creep- _ ing local coasting craft and shunned like poison e by bigger traffic: on land isolated by a hundred miles of forest from Havana.
Time was, these little ports of the Canal de Guaniguanico had been pretty prosperous, as bases for pitates: but it was a fleeting prosperity. There came the heroic attack of an American squadron under Captain Allen, in 1823, on the Bay of Sejuapo, their headquarters. From that blow (although it took many years to take full
94
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
effect) the industry never really recovered: it dwindled and dwindled, like hand-weaving. One could make money much faster in a city like Havana, and with less risk (if less respedtably). Piracy had long since ceased to pay, and should have been scrapped years ago: but a vocational tradition will last on a long time after it has ceased to be economic, in a decadent form. Now, Santa Lucia—and piracy—continued to exist because they always had: but for no other reason. Such a haul as the Corinda did not come once in a blue moon. Every year the amount of land under cultivation dwindled, and the pirate schooners wete abandoned to rot against the whatves or ignominiously sold as traders. ‘The young men left for Havana or the United States. The maidens yawned. ‘The local grandees increased in dignity - as their numbers and property dwindled: an idyllic, simple-minded country community, oblivi- ous of the outer world and of its own approach- ing oblivion.
‘I don’t think I should like to live here,’ John decided, when they got back to the ship.
Meanwhile the cargo had been unloaded onto the quay: and after the siesta a crowd of about a hundred people gathered round, poking and dis- cussing. The auction was about to begin. Cap- tain Jonsen tramped about rather in the way of
95
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
evetybody, but especially annoying the mate by shouting contrary directions every minute. The latter had a ledger, and a number of labels with numbets on them which he was pasting onto the various bales and packages. ‘The sailors were building a kind of temporary stage—the thing was to be done in style.
Every:-moment the crowd increased. Because they all talked Spanish it was a pantomime to the children : like puppets acting, not like real people moving and talking. So they discovered what a fascinating game it is to watch foreigners, whose very simplest words mean nothing to you, and try to guess what they are about.
Moteover, these were all such funny-looking — people: they moved about as if they were kings, — and spat all the time, and smoked thin black cigars, the blue smoke of which ascended from their enormous hats as from censers.
At one moment there was a diversion—the crowd suddenly gaped, and there staggered onto the stage the whole crew of the schooner carrying a huge pait of scales: it was always on the point of being too much for them, and running suddenly away with them in another direction,
There wete quite a number of ladies in the crowd—old ones, they seemed to the children. Some were thin and dried up, like monkeys: but
96
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
most wete fat, and one was fatter than all of them and treated with the greatest respect (perhaps for her moustache). She was the wife of the Chief Magistrate—Sefiora del Illustrious Juzgado del Municipal de Santa Lucia, to give her her title. She had a rocking-chair of suitable strength and width, which was cattied by a shott squinting negto and set in the very middle of the scene, tight in front of the platform. There she throned herself; and the negro stood behind her, holding a violet silk sunshade over her head.
No one can doubt that she immediately became the most noticeable thing in the picture.
She had a powerful bass voice, and when she utteted some jocundity (as she tepeatedly did), evety one heard it, however much they were chattering among themselves, —
The children, as was their custom, wormed their way without any excess of civility through the ctowd and grouped themselves round her throne.
The captain either did not know, or suddenly refused to know, a single word of Spanish: so the auGtioneering devolved on the mate. The latter mounted the stage: and with a great assumption of competence began.
But auctioneering is an att : it is as easy to write a sonnet in a foreign tongue as to condud a suc- cessful auction. One must have at one’s com-
97
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
mand eloquence without a hitch: the faculty of kindling an audience, amusing them, castigating them, converting them, till they rattle out incre- ments as a camp-meeting rattles out Amens: till they totally forget the worth (and even the nature) of the lot, and begin to take a teal pride in a long tun of bidding—as a champion does in a long break at billiards.
This little Viennese had been to a good school, itis true: for he had once resided in Wales, where one sees auctioneering in its finest flower. In Welsh, ot English, or even in his native tongue, he could have acquitted himself fairly well: but in Spanish, just that margin of power was lacking to him. ‘The audience remained stern, cold, critical, bidding grudgingly.
As if this language difficulty were not in itself enough, there sat that overpowering old dame on her throne, distraéting with her jokes whatever vestige of attention he might otherwise have managed to arouse.
When the third lot of coffee came to be dealt with, there was even the beginning of a rather nasty row. The children were highly scandalised : they had never seen grown-ups being rude to one another before. ‘The captain had undertaken the weighing: and it was something to do with a habit he had of leaning against the scales while he
98
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
tead them. Being short-sighted, he could see the figures much more clearly like that: but it dis- pleased the buyers, and they had a lot to say about it.
The captain, mortified, wrung his hands, and began to answer them in Danish. They rejoined in Spanish even more stingingly. He stumped off in a sulk: they could all conduét his affairs without him, if they weren’t prepared to treat him with a little consideration. ,
But who would be less partial? The mate, angty, maintained that to ele one of the buyers was equally objectionable.
Thereon an earthquake began in the fat old lady, and gradually gathered enough force to lift her onto her feet. She took John by the shoulders, and pushed him before her to the scales. Then in a few witty, ringing words she suggested her solution—/e should do the weighing.
The audience were pleased: but as soon as John understood he went very ted, and wanted to escape. The rest of the children, on the other hand, were eaten with envy.
‘Mayn’t I help too?’ piped Rachel.
The despairing mate thought he saw just a for- lorn hope in this. While John was being in- structed, he gathered the other children: and out of the heap of miscellaneous clothing rigged them
99
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
all out in a sort of fancy dress. ‘Then he gave them the samples to carry round, and the sale began anew.
It had now assumed rather the character of a parochial bazaar. Even the Vicar was present— though less well shaved than he would have been in England, and cunninger-looking. He was one of the only buyers.
The children thoroughly enjoyed themselves, and minced and pranced and tugged each othet’s turbans. But the ctowd was a Latin one, not Nordic: and their endearing tricks failed alto- gether to arouse any interest. The sale went worse than ever.
There was only one exception, and that was the important old lady. Once her attention had been called (by her own a) to the children, it fixed itself on one of them, on Edward. She drew him to her bosom, like a mother in melodrama, and with her hairy mouth gave him three resounding kisses.
Edward could no more have struggled than if caught by a boa. Moreover, the portentous woman fascinated him, as if she had been a boa indeed. He lay in her arms limp, self-conscious, and dejected: but without active thought of escape.
And so the business went on: on the one hand
100
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
the unheeded drone of the mate, on the other the great creature Still keeping up her witticisms, still dominating everything: all of a sudden remem- bering Edwatd, and giving him a couple of kisses like so many bombs: then clean forgetting all about him: then remembering him again, and hugging him: then dropping her salts: then neatly dropping Edward : then suddenly twisting round to launch a dart into the crowd behind her —she was the despair of that unhappy auctioneer, who saw lot after lot fall for a tenth of its value, ot even find no bidder at all.
Captain Jonsen, however, had his own idea GE how to enliven a patochial 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 tum, gin, brandy, and porter). Innocent (merely beety) as it looks, refreshing as it tastes, it has the property of increasing tather than allaying thirst, and so, once it has made a breach, soon demolishes the whole fort.
This he poured out into mugs, merely remark- ing 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 mote interest in them than when they came bearing samples of attowroot : and with their popularity their happi-
101
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
ness increased, and like rococo Ganymedekins and Hebelettes they darted about the crowd, distribut- ing the enticing poison to all who would. 4
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 71] 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 ina pause. ‘It’s perfectly sickening ! ’
It was. The very first mug rendered the fat sefiora even more motherly. Edward by now was fascinated, was in her powet 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 instin@. ‘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 com-
102
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
_ pletely whatever vestiges of attention they were still giving to the sale. He stepped down from - the platform—egave it all up in despair. For they had now broken up into little groups, which dis- cussed 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 !
Butalas! No worse host than Jonsen was ever born: he was utterly incapable of either under- Standing or controlling a crowd. All he could think of doing was plying them with more.
For the children the speacle 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 tather 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 mote 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
103
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
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 contaé& and using the other for emphasis, kept up a con- tinuous clacking talk, that faltered intolerably though never quite stopping—like a very old engine.
A dog tan 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 crook- edly—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 tound him perplexedly. Why had Otto abandoned the sale, now the crowd were all primed and ready? Probably he had some
104
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
good teason, though. He was an incomprehens- ible 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 wrtetchedness, 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 fright- ening 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 init. They sat down on the kelson without doing or saying much, still with a vague apprehen- sion, 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.
105
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
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 gtinning 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 ctew, 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 trans- figured, 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.
106
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
There he sat at the head of the table, in uniform ; very stiff, yet his little beard even stiffer than him- self. © 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 sefiota 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 het husband, he did not seem to see her : not did the servants: she was such a vety 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.
107
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
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 fatt, 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 Staitcase, 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 recog- nised most of the rest of the crew of the schooner. At the far end was the most primitive stage you
108
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
evet saw: there was a cradle on it, and a large Stat swung on the end of a piece of String. There was to be a nativity-play—tather early in the season. While the Chief Magistrate entertained the pitate 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 toom 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 open- ing 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 tteading the air a yard from
H * “FO
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
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 cleat idea of what was going on, since they had not a@tually seen John fall. So they were rather annoyed when two of the schoonet’s ctew ap- peared 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.
IIo
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
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 wete all frightened, the sailors even mote than the children, and hastened on board.
In the small hours, Edward suddenly called Emily in his sleep. She woke up: ‘ What is it 2”
‘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,
III
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
no one commented on his absence. No one ques- tioned 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.
iil
Thechildren’s only enemy on board the schooner (which presently put to sea again, with them Still on board) was the big white pig. (Thete 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 teady 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 dty 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 friendli- ness. 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. F
112
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
On the north beach of Cape San Antonio it is possible to land a boat, if you pick your spot. About fifty yatds through. the bushes there are a couple of acres of open gtound: cross this, and among some sharp coral rocks in the scrub on the far side ate 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 blis- tered any hand that touched it. Whete 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 watet-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 ctew wete 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.
113
EEE
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
The sun lit an iridescent glimmer on his shouldets : in sucha light even a negto could not be black.
Emily was missing John badly: but the little black pig snuffed 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 awn- ing, and prepared for the attack. But the goat at that moment bounded nimbly from the bulwarks : and without even stopping to look round, swal- lowed his chin and charged. He caught the old pig full in the ribs, knocking his wind out com- pletely.
Then the battle began. The goat charged, the pig screamed and hustled. Each time the goat atrived 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 ptophet’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 114
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
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 pres- ently 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 swing- ing ona 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.
115
——
Chapter 5
HEN Destiny knocks the first nail in \ X / the coffin of a tyrant, it is seldom long before she khocks the last.
It was the very next morning that the schooner, in the lightest of airs, was sidling gently to lee- watd. ‘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 teach- ing the captain’s terrier to beg, on the cabin-top. The mate shouted to him to hang on to some- thing.
‘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 alarm- edly 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
116
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
time. Ovetboard he went, and vanished to wind- ward, 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. ‘T 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-ted : 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 heatty 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 Ed- ward.
Edward dashed down the companion with
117
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
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 cap- tain, 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-hotse. The crew were in great spirits—chafling the car- penter, who, they declared, had thrown his grind- Stone overboard as a lifebuoy for the pig.
118
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
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 admit- able toboggan-slide ; and for half an hour they tobogganed happily on their bottoms from wind- watd to leeward, shrieking with joy, fetching up in the lee-scuppets, which were mostly awash, and then climbing from thing to thing to the wind- ward bulwarks raised high in the air, and so all overt 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 dis- illusion.
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 re- proof, which can only be compared to the prim- ordial 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.)
119
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
The whole unreasonableness, the monstrous- ness 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 Iam, eh? What do you think.this ship is? What do you think we all ate? ‘To mend your dtawers for you, eh? To mend... your... drawers?”
There was a pause, while they all stood thunder- struck,
But even now he had not finished :
* Where do you think you ’II 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 phen! See? 7
Scarlet to the eyes with outrage they retreated to the bows. ‘They could hardly believe so un- speakable 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 wot all according to plan, that they might even not be wanted. Fora while their
I20
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
actions showed the unhappy watiness of the un- invited 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 patable: 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.
“Tf 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’Z give him !’
The captain appeared equally not to see the mate. He looked quite ready to take both watches till kingdom come.
“Tf 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 op- position to the witnesses at the Transfiguration, they felt it would have been good for them to be
121
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
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.
‘ Aye, they’ll be the death of us, those steamets,’ he said. ‘Every year there’s more of them. They ’Il be using them for men-of-war next, and then where Il we be? Times are bad enough without steamers.’
But while he spoke he wore a preoccupied ex- pression, as if he wete 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 eager- ness that even exceeded the necessities of polite- ness 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 pepularise her, so to speak. So the first time she put to sea under her own power, they invited all the big-wigs on
r2zZ
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
board : all the Members of Assembly in Trinidad, and the Governor and his Staff, anda Bishop. It was the Bishop what did the trick.’
His story died out: he became completely absotbed in watching sidelong the effect of his bravado on the captain.
“Did what 2?” asked Margaret.
‘Ran ’em aground.’
‘But what did they let him steer for?’ asked Edward. ‘ They might have known he couldn’t !’
‘Edward! How date 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 pitate 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,
123
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
he just beached his vessel and took to the woods. Never went to sea again, he didn’t ; Started gtow- ing coconuts. 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.
‘IT don’t know so much!’ said the mate. “He wast’t too fat 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 inter- ested by what he was saying: ‘Sveam 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, ya myr iawn! He was Reétor of Roseau—oh, a long time back.’
‘Here! Come and take this wheel while I have a spell!’ grunted the captain.
‘1 couldn’t well say Low long back,’ continued
124
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
the mate in a loud, unnatural, and now slightly exultant voice: ‘ forty years or mote.’
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 appeatance 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 cap- ture of his schooner (while smuggling negroes to Guadaloupe) by another privateer, from Nevis ; and how the parson went to Nevis, posted his tival’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 dve/?’ asked Harty.
* But wasn’t he a clergyman, you said P” 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 some- thing to fill in time, good sir ’—and knocked him . flat with his fist.
I 125
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
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 ctew 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 P’
‘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 Re&tor of Roseau, wasn’t he? And B.A,, B.D.? Anyway, he was Reétor 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 Chris-
126
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
tophe 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 evety 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-fite to the Methodists. Meanwhile his wife, who had more ttanquil tastes, lived at Bristol: so he now mattied a Dutch widow, resoutcefully condudting the ceremony himself.
‘But I don’t understand!’ said Emily despair- ingly : ‘ Was he a teal clergyman ?’
‘ Of course he wasn’t,’ said Margaret.
‘But he couldn’t have married himself himself if he wasn’t,’ atgued Edward. ‘Could he ?’
The mate heaved a sigh.
‘ But the English Church aren’t like that nowa- days,’ he said. ‘ They ’re all against us.’
‘I should think not, indeed!’ pronounced Rachel slowly, in a deep indignant voice. ‘ He was a vety 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! ’
127
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
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 some- times ; 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 P
But he seemed to think he had explained his mission fully: turned, and once mote 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,
128
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
the steersman reported that both Jonsen and Otto were now fast asleep, theit heads on each othet’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 tum-cask was broached: and the common sailots 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, evety one was still pretty . incapable, and the neglected vessel drooped un- certainly. 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 vety 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
129
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
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 compli- cated for the moment. As the sun parted further from his refleGtion 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 forwatds 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 dis- tance between the two vessels was barely, if at all, ‘lessened. Jonsen, however, was much too opti- mistic to realise this.
130
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
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 obje&. 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 spat on boatd, 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 ctafty man; and during the afternoon he gave otdets 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 wete at least a couple of miles further from the brig than they had been at dawn. When night fell, of coutse, they hauled the spar on board and pre- pared for the last a&. They followed the brig by compass through the hours of darkness, without
131
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
catching sight of her. When morning came, all hands crowded expeétantly at the rail.
But the brig was vanished. The sea was as bate 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 vety 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 C/orinda 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
132
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
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 hait of their heads, ot 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 regtet so whole-heartedly the failure of his attempt to leave them behind with the Chief Magistrate’s wife.
F259
(Chapter 6
HE weeks passed in aimless wandering.
For the children, the lapse of time ac-
quired once mote the texture of a dream :
things ceased happening: every inch of the
schooner was now as familiar to them as the
Clorinda had been, ot 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 con- siderable 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, ot 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.
134
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
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 grow- ing 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 tealised 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
3)
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
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 cettainly 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: per- haps it would come back to her later.
136
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
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 re- membet 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 fac ?
Tt 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 teturning to her bees and the fairy queen. If one added up the total of her periods of conscious thought, it would probably reach something be- tween 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 par- ticular little body (which now began on its own
ERT
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
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 P
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 entitely 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 illumi- nation 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 disquiet- ing. What was going to happen? Were there disasters running about loose, disasters which her tash matriage 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 par- ticular, Emily—perhaps even God—not just any little girl.) She could not tell why, but the idea
138
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
tertified 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 a@ of the kind? Why should she hide it? She never teally asked herself why : but instin@ prompted her strongly of the necessity. Of course, thete 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 alittle 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 appal- ling secret without the least effort, and is prati- cally secure against detection. Parents, finding that they sce through their child in so many places
aso
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
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 deter- mined 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 te- vived. 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.’ 140
‘
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA 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 patty 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 be- haviour 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 vety 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 ina dark cupboard. The whole story, really, had been nothing but clothes and beating, and Rachel had begged her to stop.
K 141
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
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 ! a
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.
At that moment Jonsen had staggered up to Emily, and putting one hand under her chin had
142
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
begun to stroke her hair with the other. A sort of blind vertigo seized her: she caught his thumb and bit as hard as she could : then, terrified at her own madness, dashed across the hold to whete the other children were gatheted in a wondering knot.
‘ What have you done!’ cried Laura, pushing het away angrily : ‘Oh you wicked girl, you ’ve hurt him ! ’
Jonsen was stamping about, sweating and suck- ing his thumb. Edward had produced a hand- kerchief, and between them all they had managed to tie it up. He stood staring at the bandaged member for a few moments: shook his head like a wet tettiever and retreated on deck, dang-dang- ing under his breath. Margaret had then been so sick they thought she must teally have caught fever, and they couldn’t get any sense out of het at all.
As Emily, with her new-found consciousness, tecapitulated the scene, it was like te-reading a Story in a book, so little responsibility did she feel for the merely mechanical creature who had bitten the captain’s thumb. Nor was she even vety in- terested: it had been queer, but then there was very little in life which didn’t seem queer, now.
As for Jonsen, he and Emily had avoided each other ever since, by mutual consent. She indeed had been in Coventry with everybody for biting
143
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
him ; none of the other children would play with
her all the next day, and she recognised that she
thoroughly deserved it—it was a mad thing to
have done. And yet Jonsen, in avoiding her, had
himself more the air of being ashamed than angry . which was unaccountable.
But what interested her more was the curious way Margaret had gone on, those next few days.
For some time she had behaved very oddly in- deed. At first she seemed exaggeratedly fright- ened of all the men: but then she had suddenly taken to following them about the deck like a dog —not Jonsen, it is true, but Otto especially. Then suddenly she had departed from them altogether and taken up her quarters in the cabin. The curious thing was that now she avoided them all utterly, and spent all her time with the sailors : and the sailors, for their part, seemed to take peculiar pains not only not to let her speak to, but even not to let her be seen by the other children.
Now they hardly saw her at all: and when they did she seemed so different they hardly recognised her : though where the difference lay it would be hard to say.
Emily, from her perch at the mast-head, could just see the girl’s head now, through the cabin skylight. Further forward, José had joined the
144
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
children at their game, and was crawling about on hands and knees with all of them on his back—a fite-engine, of course, such as they had seen in the illustrated magazines from England.
“Emily !’ called Harry : ‘Come and play !’
Down with a rush fell the curtain on all Emily’s cogitations. In a second she was once more a happy little animal—any happy little animal. She slid down the shrouds like a real sailor, and in no time was directing the fire-fighting operations as imperiously as any other of this brigade of super- intendents.
itt
That night in the Parliament of Beds there was raised at last a question which you may well be surprised had not been raised before. Emily had just reduced her family to silence by sheer ferocity, when Harty’s rapid, nervous, lisping voice piped up : .
“Emily Emily may I ask you a question, please ??
“Go to sleep !’
There was a moment’s whispered confabulation.
‘But it’s very important, please, and we all want to know.’
“What ?”
145
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
‘ Are these people pirates ?’
Emily sat bolt upright with astonishment.
* Of course not ! ’
Harry sounded rather crestfallen.
‘I don’t know... just thought they might...’
‘But they are!’ declared Rachel firmly. ‘ Margaret told me! ’
‘Nonsense!’ said Emily. ‘ There aren’t any pirates nowadays.’
‘Margaret said went on Rachel, ‘that time — we were shut up on the other ship she heard one of the sailors calling out pirates had come on board.’
Emily had an inspiration.
‘No, you silly, he must have said pilots.’
‘ What are pilots ?’ asked Laura.
‘They Come On Boatd,’ explained Emily, lamely. ‘ Don’t you remember that picture in the dining-room at home, called The Pilot Comes On Board ?’
Laura listened with rapt attention. The ex- planation of what pilots were was not very illumi- nating ; but then she did not know what pirates were either. So you might think the whole dis- cussion meant very little to her, but there you would be wrong: the question was evidently important to the older ones, therefore she gave her whole mind to listening.
146
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
The pirate heresy was considerably shaken. How could they say for certain which word Margaret had really heard? Rachel changed sides.
* They can’t be pirates,’ she said. ‘ Pirates are wicked.’
“Couldn’t we ask them?’ Edward persisted.
Emily considered.
‘I don’t think it would be very polite.’
“I’m sure they wouldn’t mind,’ said Edward. * They ’re awfully decent.’
‘I think they mightn’t like it,’ said Emily. In her heart she was afraid of the answer ; and if they wete pirates, it would here again be better to pre- tend not to know.
‘I know!’ she said. ‘ Shall I ask the Mouse with the Elastic Tail ? ’
“Yes, do!’ cried Laura. It was months since the oracle had been consulted ; but her faith was still perfect.
Emily communed with herself in a series of short squeaks.
* He says they ate Pz/ots,’ she announced.
* Oh,” said Edward deeply : -and they all went to sleep.
147
Chapter 7
DWARD often thought, as he strode scowl- in up and down the deck by himself, that
this was exaétly the life for him, What a lucky boy he was, to have tumbled into it by good fortune, instead of having to run away to sea as most other people did! In spite of the White Mouse’s pronouncement (whom secretly he had long ceased to believe in), he had no doubt that this was a pirate vessel : and no doubt either that when presently Jonsen was killed in some furious battle the sailors would unanimously ele& him their captain.
The girls were a great nuisance. A ship was no place for them. When he was captain he would have them marooned.
Yet there had been a time when he had wished he was a girl himself. ‘ When I was young,’ he once confided to the admiring Harry, ‘I used to think gitls were bigger and stronger than boys. Weren’t I silly ?’
‘Yes,’ said Harty.
Harty did not confide it to Edward, but he also, now, wished he was a gitl. It was not for the same reason: younger than Edward, he was still at the
148
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
amorous age ; and because he found the company of girls almost magically pleasing, fondly imagined it would be even more so if he were one himself. He was always finding himself, for being a boy, shut out from their most secret councils. Emily of course was too old to count as female in his eyes: but to Rachel and Laura he was indis- ctiminately devoted. When Edward was captain, he would be mate: and when he imagined this future, it consisted for the most part in rescuing Rachel—or Laura, »’importe—from new and complicated dangers.
They were all by now just as much at home on the schooner as they had been in Jamaica. In- deed, nothing very continuous was left of Fern- dale for the youngest ones: only a number of luminous pictures of quite unimportant incidents. Emily of course remembered most things, and could put them together. The death of Tabby, fot instance: she would never forget that as long as she lived. She could recolleé, too, that Fern- dale had tumbled down flat. And her Earthquake: she had been in an earthquake, and could remem- ber every detail of that. Had it been as a result of the earthquake that Ferndale had tumbled down ? That sounded likely. There had been quite a high wind at that time, too. . . . She could remember that they had all been bathing when the earthquake
149
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
had come, and then had ridden somewhere on ponies. But they had been iz the house when it fell down: she was pretty sure of that. It was all a little difficult to join up.—Then, when was it she had found that negro village? She could remember with a startling clearness bending down and feeling among the bamboo roots for the bubbling. spring, then looking round and seeing the black children scampering away up the clear- ing. That must have been years and years ago. But clearer than everything was that awful night when Tabby had stalked up and down the room, his eyes blazing and his fur twitching, his voice melodious with tragedy, until those horrible black shapes had flown in through the fanlight and savaged him out into the bush. The horror of the scene was even increased because it had once of twice come back to her in dreams, and because when she dreamt it (though it seemed the same) there was always some frightful difference. One night (and that was the worst of all) she had rushed out to rescue him, when her darling faithful Tabby had come up to her with the same horrible look on his face the captain had worn that time she bit his thumb, and had chased her down avenues and avenues and avenues and avenues of cabbage- palms, with Exeter House at the end of them never getting any nearer however much she tan. She I5o
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
knew, of coutse, it was not the teal Tabby, but a sort of diabolic double: and Margaret had sat up an orange tree jeeting at her, gone as black as a negro.
One of the drawbacks of life at sea was the cock- toaches. ‘They were winged. They infested the fore-hold, and the smell they made was horrible. One had to put up with them. But one didn’t do much washing at sea: and it was a common thing to wake up in the morning and find the brutes had gnawed the quick from under one’s nails, of gnawed all the hard skin off the soles of one’s feet, so that one could hardly walk. Anything in the least greasy or dirty they set on at once. Button- holes were their especial delight. - One did little washing : fresh water was too valuable, and salt _ water had practically no effe&. From handling tatry ropes and greasy ironwork their hands would have disgraced a slum-child. There is a sailor saying which includes a peck of dirt in the matiner’s monthly rations: but the children on the schooner must have often consumed far mote.
Not that it was a dirty ship—the fo’c’sle prob- ably was, but the Nordicism of captain and mate kept the rest looking clean enough. But even the cleanest-looking ship is seldom clean to the touch. Their clothes José washed occasionally with his
151
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
own shirt : and in that climate they were dry again by the morning.
Jamaica had faded into the past: England, to which they had supposed they were going, and of which a very curious picture had formerly been built up in their minds by their parents’ constant references to it, receded again into the mists of myth. They lived in the present, adapted them- selves to it, and might have been born in a ham- mock and christened at a binnacle before they had been there many weeks. They seemed to have no natural fear of heights, and the farther they were above the deck, the happier. On a calm day Edward used to hang by his knees from the cross- trees in order to feel the blood run into his head. The flying-jib, too, which was usually down, made an admirable cocoon for hide-and-seek : one took a firm grip of the hanks and robands, and swathed oneself in the canvas. Once, suspecting Edward was hidden there, instead of going out on the jib-boom to look, the other children cast off the down-haul and then all together gave a great tug at the halyard which nearly pitched him into the sea. The shark myth is greatly exaggerated: it is untrue, for instance, that they can take a leg clean off at the hip—their bite is a tearing one, not a clean cut: anda practised bather can keep them off easily with a welt on the nose each time they
152
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
turn overt to strike 1: but all the same, once ovet- board there would have been little hope for a small boy like Edward: and a severe wigging they all got for their prank.
Often several of those thick, rubber-like pro- tuberances would follow the vessel for hours— perhaps in the hope of just some such antic.
Sharks were not without their uses, however : it is well known that Catch a Shark Catch a Breeze, so when a breeze was needed the sailors baited a big hook and presently hauled one on board with the winch. The bigger he was, the better breeze was hoped for : and his tail was nailed to the jib- boom. One day they got a great whacking fellow on board, and having cut off his jaw some one heaved it into the ship’s latrine (which no one was so lubberly as to use for its proper purpose) and thought no mote about it. One wildish night, however, old José did go there, and sat full on that wicked cheval de frie. He yelled like a madman: and the crew were better pleased than they had been with any joke that year, and even Emily thought if only it had been less improper how funny it would have been. It would certainly have puzzled an archzologist, faced with José’s mummy, to guess how he came by those curious scars.
1 The tiger-shark of the South Seas is of course a very different - cattle.
153
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
The ship’s monkey also added a lot to the ship’s merriment. One day some sucker-fish had fixed themselves firmly to the deck, and he undertook to dislodge them. After a few preliminary tugs, he braced three legs and his tail against the deck and lunged like a madman. But they would not budge. ‘The crew were standing round in a ring, and he felt his honour was at stake: somehow, they must be removed. So, disgusting though they must have tasted to a vegetarian, he set to and ate them, tight down to the sucker, and was loudly applauded.
Edward and Harty often talked over how they would distinguish themselves in the next engage- ment. Sometimes they would rehearse it : storm the galley with uncouth shouts, or spring into the main rigging and order every one to be thrown into the sea. Once, as they went into battle,
“I am armed with a sword and a pistol!’ chanted Edward :
* And Iam armed witha key and half a whist-le!” chanted the more literal Harry.
They took care to hold those reheatsals when the real pirates were out of the way : it was not so much that they feared the criticism of the pro- fessional eye as that it was not yet openly recog- nised what they were ; and all the children shared
154
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
Emily’s instiné that it was better to pretend not to know—a sort of magical belief, at bottom.
Although Laura and Rachel were thrown to- gether a great deal, and were all one goddess to Harty, their inner lives differed in almost every respect. It was a matter of principle, as will have been noticed, for them to disagree on every point : but it was a matter of nature too. Rachel had only two attivities. One was domestic. She was never happy unless surrounded by the full patra- phernalia of a household: she left houses and families wherever she went. She colleéted bits of oakum and the moultings of a worn-out mop, wrapped them in tags and put them to sleep in evety nook and cranny. Gwai, who woke one of her twenty or thirty babies—worse still, should he clear it away! She could even summon up maternal feelings for a marline-spike, and would. sit up aloft rocking it in her arms and crooning, The sailors avoided walking underneath : for such an infant, if dropped from a height, will find its way through the thickest skull (an accident which sometimes befalls unpopular captains),
Further, there was hardly an article of ship’s use, from the windlass to the bosun’s chair, but she had metamorphosed it into some sort of furni- ture: a table or a bed or a lamp or a tea-set : and matked it as her property: and what she had
L55
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
matked as her property no. one might touch—if she could prevent it. ‘To parody Hobbes, she claimed as her own whatever she had mixed her imagination with; and the greater part of her time was spent in angty or tearful assertions of her property-rights.
Her other interest was moral. She had an extraordinary vivid, simple sense, that child, of Right and Wrong—it almost amounted to a pte- cocious ethical genius. Every action, her own or any one else’s, was immediately judged good or bad, and uncompromisingly praised or blamed. She was never in doubt.
To Emily, Conscience meant something very different. She was still only half aware of that secret criterion within her : but was terrified of it. She had not Rachel’s clear divination : she never knew when she might offend this inner harpy, Conscience, unwittingly : and lived in terror of those brazen claws, should she ever let it be hatched from the egg. When she felt its latent Strength stir in its pre-natal sleep, she forced her mind to other things, and would not even let herself recognise her fear of it. But she knew, at the bottom of her heart she Anew, that one day some action of hers would rouse it, something awful done quite unwittingly would send it raging round her soul like a whirlwind. She might go
156
A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA
weeks together in a happy unconsciousness, she might have flashes of vision when she knew she was