“Yes,” said Harry.
Harry did not confide it to Edward, but he also, now , wished he was a girl. It was not for the same reason: younger than Edward, he was still at the 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 indiscriminately 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, n’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. Indeed, nothing very continuous was left of Ferndale 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, for instance: she would never forget that as long as she lived. She could recollect, too, that Ferndale had tumbled down flat. And her Earthquake: she had been in an earth-quake, and could remember 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 had come, and then had ridden somewhere on ponies. But they had been in 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 clearing. 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 or 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 ran. She knew, of course, it was not the real Tabby, but a sort of diabolic double: and Margaret had sat up an orange tree jeering at her, gone as black as a negro.ﾠ
One of the drawbacks of life at sea was the cockroaches. 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, or 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 effect. From handling tarry 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 mariner’s monthly rations: but the children on the schooner must have often consumed far more.ﾠ
Not that it was a dirty ship — the fo’c’sle probably 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 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 themselves to it, and might have been born in a hammock 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: and a practiced bather can keep them off easily with a welt on the nose each time they turn over to strike *: but all the same, once overboard 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 protuberances 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 more about it. One wildish night, however, old José did go there, and sat full on that wicked cheval de frise . 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 archaeologist, faced with José’s mummy, to guess how he came by those curious scars.
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 honor was at stake: somehow, they must be removed. So, disgusting though they must have tasted to a vegetarian, he set to and ate them, right down to the sucker, and was loudly applauded.
Edward and Harry often talked over how they would distinguish themselves in the next engagement. 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 I am armed with a key and half a whist-le!”
chanted the more literal Harry.
They took care to hold those rehearsals when the real pirates were out of the way: it was not so much that they feared the criticism of the professional eye as that it was not yet openly recognized what they were; and all the children shared Emily’s instinct that it was better to pretend not to know — a sort of magical belief, at bottom. Although Laura and Rachel were thrown together a great deal, and were all one goddess to Harry, 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 activities. One was domestic. She was never happy unless surrounded by the full paraphernalia of a household: she left houses and families wherever she went. She collected bits of oakum and the moltings of a worn-out mop, wrapped them in rags and put them to sleep in every nook and cranny. Guai , 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 furniture: a table or a bed or a lamp or a tea-set: and marked it as her property: and what she had marked 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 angry 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 precocious 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.