HARRY. It is!
MARGARET (smugly ). That’s simply because you’re all too young to know…
JOHN. Oh, hit her, Emily!
EMILY (sleepily ). Hit her yourself.
HARRY. But, Marghie, why are we here?
(No answer .)
Emily, why are we here?
EMILY (indifferently ). I don’t know. I expect they just wanted to change us.
HARRY. I expect so. But they never told us we were going to be changed.
EMILY. Grown-ups never do tell us things.
4
I
The 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 injured 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.
Captain Jonsen spun round — he had forgotten their existence.
“Eh?”
“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, reprovingly.
“Yes! Get up! Go on deck! Here!” The captain viciously set up a short ladder for them to climb through the hatch.
They were 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 untidy village, of white wooden houses with palm-leaf roofs, behind it; and the tower of a small sandstone church emerging from the abundant greenery. On the quay were a few well-dressed loungers, watching the preparations for unloading. The mate was directing the labors of the crew, who were rigging the cargo-gaff and getting ready for a hot morning’s work.
The mate nodded cheerfully to the children, but there-after took no notice of them, which was rather mortifying. The truth is that the man was busy.
At the same time there emerged from somewhere 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, blackringed, 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 are who?” he murmured absently, without 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.
“We’d better wait until we’re told, hadn’t we, Emily?” said Harry.
“I didn’t know England would be like this,” said Racheclass="underline" “it’s very like Jamaica.”
“This isn’t England,” said John, “you stupid!”
“But it must be,” said Racheclass="underline" “England’s where we’re going.”
“We don’t get to England yet,” said John: “it must be somewhere 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.
“Where are those young men gone?” Margaret asked the mate. “Are they coming back?”
“They’ll 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 hired them from Havana.”
“But what for?”
He looked at her in surprise: “Why, those are the ‘ladies’ we had on board, to look like passengers — You didn’t think they were real ladies, did you?”
“What, were they dressed up?” asked Emily excitedly:
“What fun!”
“I 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 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 aware), 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 forgotten 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 practiced and creeping local coasting craft and shunned like poison 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 pirates: 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 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 respectably). 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 Clorinda did not come once in a blue moon. Every year the amount of land under cultivation dwindled, and the pirate schooners were abandoned to rot against the wharves 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, oblivious of the outer world and of its own approaching 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 discussing. The auction was about to begin. Captain Jonsen tramped about rather in the way of everybody, but especially annoying the mate by shouting contrary directions every minute. The latter had a ledger, and a number of labels with numbers 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.