”So Marpole had to give it up, for the time at any rate: took a spike and broke open the fo’c’sle: and as well as the sailors found Margaret’s brown nurse. She had hidden there the whole day: probably from motives of fright.
III
You would have thought that supper on the schooner that night would have been a hilarious affair. But, somehow, it was manqué.
A prize of such value had naturally put the crew in the best of humors: and a meal which consisted mainly of crystallized fruit, followed as an afterthought by bread and chopped onions served in one enormous communal bowl, eaten on the open deck under the stars, after bed-time, should have done the same by the children. But nevertheless both parties were seized by a sudden, overpowering, and most unexpected fit of shyness. Consequently no state banquet was ever so formal, or so boring.
I suppose it was the lack of a common language which first generated the infection. 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 certainly have surprised their parents to see. Whereon the sailors became equally formaclass="underline" 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 confusion 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 belongings they had brought from the barque, sorting 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 empty trunks, stamped in large letters JAS. MARPOLE, that a roar of unassumed indignation arose from the neighboring 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 became even more awkward. The children stood about, not knowing what to do with their hands, or 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 their own: and the captain and mate, as I have said, were already busy.
Once the sorting was over, however, there was nothing for Jonsen to do except return the children 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. They suggested that there was now no reason 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 ears: 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 nightglass.
IV
Captain Jonsen set the little monkeyfied sailor, who had been so mortified earlier in the evening, to clear the schooner’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 their blanket apiece in an uncomfortable silence. Jonsen 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 it up at last, and swung himself up through the fore-hatch, talking to himself.
The last they saw of him was his fantastic slippers, 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 effect, 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 (in slow, sepulchral tones ). I don’t like this bed. RACHEL (ditto ). I do.
LAURA. It’s a horrid bed; there isn’t any!
EMILY. JOHN. Sh! Go to sleep!
EDWARD. I smell cockroaches.
EMILY. Sh!
EDWARD (loudly and hopefully ). They’ll bite all our nails off, because we haven’t washed, and our skin, and our hair, and—
LAURA. There’s a cockroach in my bed! Get out!
(You could hear the brute go zooming away. But Laura was already out too .)
EMILY. Laura! Go back to bed!
LAURA. I can’t when there’s a cockroach in it!
JOHN. Get into bed again, you little fool! He’s gone long ago!
LAURA. But I expect he has left his wife.
HARRY. They don’t have wives, they’re wives themselves. RACHEL. Ow! — Laura, stop it! — Emily, Laura’s walking on me!
EMILY. Lau-rer!
LAURA. Well, I must walk on something!
EMILY. Go to sleep!
(Silence for a while .)
LAURA. I haven’t said my prayers.
EMILY. Well, say them lying down.
RACHEL. She mustn’t, that’s lazy.
JOHN. Shut up, Rachel, she must.
RACHEL. 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? (Silence .) Oughtn’t they? (Still silence .) Emily, I say, oughtn’t they?
JOHN. NO!
RACHEL (dreamily ). I think there’s lots more people ought to be damned than are.
(Silence again .)
HARRY. Marghie.
(Silence .)
Marghie!
(Silence .)
JOHN. What’s up with Marghie? Won’t she speak?
(A faint sob is heard .)
HARRY. I don’t know.
(Another sob .)
JOHN. Is she often like this?
HARRY. She’s an awful ass sometimes.
JOHN. Marghie, what’s up?
MARGARET (miserably ). Let me alone!
RACHEL. I believe she’s frightened! (Chants tauntingly ) Marghie’s got the bogies, the bogies, the bogies!
MARGARET (sobbing out loud ). Oh you little fools!
JOHN. Well, what’s the matter with you, then?
MARGARET (after a pause ). I’m older than any of you.
HARRY. Well, that’s a funny reason to be frightened!
MARGARET. It isn’t.
HARRY. It is!
MARGARET (warming to the argument ). It isn’t, I tell you!