A High Wind in Jamaica (19 page)

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

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

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

“I can't stop! I can't stop!” they cried at intervals.

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

“I won't!” said Edward.

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

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

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

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

V

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jonsen said nothing, continuing to stare with concentration.

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

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

“Do you love me?” he asked.

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

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

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

Jonsen gave a weary sigh, and sat down on the cabintop. What
on Earth
were children's heads made of, inside?

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

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

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

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

“Not if you help me.”

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

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

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

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

9

1

The darkness closed down with its sudden curtain on that minatory finger.

Captain Jonsen remained on deck all night, whether it was his watch or not. It was a hot night, even for those latitudes: and no moon. The suffused brilliance of the stars lit up everything close quite plainly, but showed nothing in the distance. The black masts towered up, clear against the jewelry, which seemed to swing slowly a little to one side, a little to the other, of their tapering points. The sails, the shadows in their curves all diffused away, seemed flat. The halyards and topping-lifts and braces showed here, were invisible there, with an arbitrariness which took from them all meaning as mechanism.

Looking forward with the glowing binnacle-light at one's back, the narrow milky deck sloped up to the foreshortened tilt of the bowsprit, which seemed to be trying to point at a single enlarged star just above the horizon.

The schooner moved just enough for the sea to divide with a slight rustle on her stem, breaking out into a shower of sparks, which lit up also wherever the water rubbed the ship's side, as if the ocean were a tissue of sensitive nerves; and still twinkled behind in the mere paleness of the wake. Only a faint tang of tar in the nostrils was there to remind one that this was no ivory and ebony fantasia but a machine. For a schooner is in fact one of the most mechanically satisfactory, austere, unornamented engines ever invented by Man.

A few yards off, a shoal of luminous fish shone at different depths.

But a few hundred yards off, one could see nothing! The sea became a steady glittering black that did not seem to move. Near, one could see so much detail it seemed impossible to believe that there a whole ship might lie invisible: impossible to believe that by no glass, no anxious straining of the eyes, could one ever
see
.

Jonsen strode up and down the lee-side of the vessel, so that what breeze there was, collecting in the hollow of the sails, overflowed down onto him in a continuous cool cascade. From time to time he climbed to the foremast-head, in spite of the fact that added height could not possibly give added vision: stared into the blank till his eyes ached, and then came down and resumed his restless pacing. A ship with her lights out might creep within a mile of him, and he not know it.

Jonsen was not given to intuitions: but he had now an extraordinary feeling of certainty that somewhere close in that cover of darkness his enemy lay, preparing destruction for him. He strained his ears too: but he could hear nothing either, except the rustle of the water, the occasional knocking of a loose block.

If only there had been a moon! He remembered another occasion, fifteen years before. The slaver of which he was then second mate was bowling along, the hatches down on her stinking cargo, all canvas spread, when right across the glittering path of the moon a frigate crossed, almost within gun-shot—crossed the light, and disappeared again. Jonsen had realized at once that though the frigate, with the light behind it, was now invisible to them, they, with the moon-light shining full on them, would be perfectly visible to the frigate. The boom of a gun soon proved it. He had wanted to make a blind bolt for it: but his captain, instead, ordered every stitch of sail to be furled: and so they lay all night under their bare poles, not moving, of course, but (with nothing to reflect the light) grown invisible in their turn. When dawn came the frigate was so far down the wind they had easily shown her a clean pair of heels.

But to-night! There was no friendly moon-track to betray the attacker: nothing but this inner conviction, which grew every moment more certain.

Shortly after midnight he had descended from one of his useless climbs to the mast-head, and stood for a moment by the open fore-hatch. The warm breath of the children was easily discernible. Margaret was chattering in her sleep—quite loud, but you could not distinguish a single clear word.

Moved by a whim, Jonsen climbed down the ladder into the hold. Below, it was hot as an oven. A zooming winged cockroach cannoned about. The sound of the water, a dry rustle above, was here a pleasant gurgle and plop against the wooden shell; most musical of sounds to a sailor.

Laura lay on her back in the faint light of the open hatch. She had discarded her blanket; and the vest which did duty for a night-gown was rucked right up under her arms. Jonsen wondered how anything so like a frog could ever conceivably grow into the billowy body of a woman. He bent down and attempted to pull down the vest: but at the first touch Laura rolled violently over onto her stomach, then drew her knees up under her, thrusting her pointed rump up at him; and continued to sleep in that position, breathing noisily.

As his eyes got used to the gloom, vague white splodges showed him that most of the children had discarded their dark blankets. But he did not notice Emily, sitting up in the darkness and watching him.

As he turned to go, an experimental smile lit up his face: he bent, and gently flicked Laura's behind with his finger-nail. It collapsed like a burst balloon; but still she went on sleeping, flat on her face now.

Jonsen was still chuckling to himself as he reached the deck. But there his forebodings returned to him with redoubled force. He could
feel
that man-of-war lying-to in the darkness, biding its time! For the fiftieth time he climbed the ratlines and took his stand at the cross-trees, skinning his eyes.

Presently, looking down, he could just discern the small white figure on the deck which was Emily, hopping and skipping about. But it passed at once out of his mind. Suddenly his tired eye caught a patch of something darker than the sea. He looked away, then back again, to make sure. It was still there: on the port bow: impossible to make out clearly, though...Jonsen slid down the shrouds in a flash, like a prentice. Landing on the deck like a thunderbolt, he nearly startled Emily out of her life: she had no idea he was up there. She startled him no less.

“It's so
hot
down there,” she began, “I can't sleep—”

“Get below!” hissed Jonsen furiously: “don't you dare come up again! And don't let any of the others, till I tell you!”

Emily, thoroughly frightened, tumbled down the ladder as fast as she could, and rolled herself in her blanket from head to foot: partly because her bare legs were really a little chilled, but more for comfort. What had she done? What was happening? She was hardly down when feet were heard scurrying across the deck, and the hatches over her head were loosely fitted into place. The darkness was profound, and seemed to be rolling on her. No one was within reach: and she dared not move an inch. Every one was asleep.

Jonsen called all hands on deck: and in silence they mustered at the rail. The patch was clearly visible now: nearer, and smaller than he had thought at first. They listened for the splash of oars: but it came on in silence.

Suddenly they were upon it, it was grating against the ship's side, slipping astern. It was a dead tree, carried out to sea by some river in spate, and tangled up with weed.

But after that, he kept all hands on deck till dawn. In their new mood they obeyed him readily enough. For they knew he was not incompetent. He generally did the right thing—it was only the fuss he made in any emergency which gave him the appearance of blundering.

Yet, though there were now so many eyes watching, no further alarm was given.

But the moment the first paleness of dawn glimmered, every one's nerves tightened to cracking-point. The rapidly increasing light would any moment show them their fate.

It was not till full daylight, however, that Jonsen would let himself be convinced there was absolutely no man-ofwar there.

As a matter of fact, its royals had sunk below the horizon less than an hour after he had first sighted it.

II

But the alarm of that night caused Jonsen at last to make up his mind.

He altered his course: and as before he had designed it to avoid other shipping, now on the contrary it was calculated to run as soon as possible into the very track of the Eastward Bounders.

Otto rubbed his eyes. What had come over the fellow? Did he want revenge for the fright he had had? Was he going to try and cut out a prize right in the thick of the traffic? It would be like Jonsen, that: to put his head in the lion's mouth after trembling at its roar: and Otto's heart warmed towards him. But he asked no questions.

Meanwhile Jonsen went to his cabin, opened a secret receptacle in his bunk, and took out a job-lot of ships' papers which he had bought from a Havana dealer in such things.
The “John Dodson,” of Liverpool, bound for
the Seychelles with a cargo of cast-iron pots
—what use was that in these waters? The man had sold him a pup!—Ah, this was better:
“Lizzie Green,” of Bristol, bound
from Matanzas to Philadelphia in ballast
...a funny trip to make in ballast, true: but that was no one's affair but his imaginary owner's. Jonsen made sure all was in order—filled in the blank dates, and so on—then returned the bundle to its hiding-place for another occasion. Coming on deck, he gave a number of orders.

First, stages were rigged over the bows and stern, and José and a paint-pot went over the rail to add
Lizzie Green
to the many names which from time to time had decorated the schooner's escutcheon. Not content with that, he had it painted on every other appropriate place—the boats, the buckets—it was as well to be thorough. Meanwhile, many of the sails were taken down and new ones bent—or rather, old ones, distinctive sails that a man would swear he couldn't have forgotten if he had ever seen them before. Otto sewed a large patch to the mainsail, where there was no hole. In his zeal Jonsen even considered lowering the yards and rigging her as a pure fore-and-after: but luckily for his sweating crew, abandoned the idea.