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.
The master-stroke of his disguise was permanent — that he carried no guns. Guns can be hidden or thrown overboard, it is true: but the grooves they make in the deck cannot, as many a protesting-innocent sea-robber has found to his cost. Jonsen not only had no guns to hide, he had no grooves: any fool could see he had no guns, and never had had any. And who ever heard of a pirate without guns? It was laughable: yet he had proved again and again that one could make a capture just as easily without them: and further, that the captured merchantman, in making his report, could generally be counted on to imagine a greater or less display of artillery. Whether it was to save their faces, or pure conservatism — presumption that there must have been guns — nearly every vessel Jonsen had had dealings with had reported masked artillery, manned by “fifty or seventy ruffians of the worst Spanish type.”
Of course if he met and was challenged by a man-ofwar, he would have to give in without a fight. But then, it never pays to fight a man-of-war anyhow. If he is a big one, he sinks you. If he is some little cock-shell of a cutter, commanded by a fire-eating young officer just into his teens, you sink him — and then there is the devil to pay. Better be sunk outright than insult the honor of a great nation in that fashion.
When he at last remembered to take the hatches off the children, they were half dead with suffocation. It was hot enough, stuffy enough anyhow down there, only the square opening above for ventilation; but with the hatches even loosely in place it was a Black Hole. Emily had at last dropped asleep, and slept late, through a chain of nightmares: when she did wake in the closed hold, she sat up, then fainted immediately, and fell back, her breath coming in loud snores. Before she came to again she was already sobbing miserably. At that the little ones began to cry too: which sound it was that reminded Jonsen, rather late, to take the hatches off.”
He was quite alarmed when he saw them. It was not till they had been out in the morning freshness of the deck for some time that they even summoned up interest in the strange metamorphosis of the schooner that was in progress.
Jonsen looked at them with a troubled eye. They had not indeed the appearance of well-cared-for children: though he had not noticed this before. They were dirty to a fault: their clothes torn, and mended, if at all, with twine. Their hair was not only uncombed — there was tar in it. They were mostly thin, and a yellowy-brown color. Only Rachel remained obstinately plump and pink. The scar on Emily’s leg was still a blushing purple: and they all were blotched with insect bites.
Jonsen called José off his painting job: gave him a bucket of fresh water: the mate’s (the only) comb: and a pair of scissors. José wondered innocently: they did not look to him particularly dirty. But he did his duty, while they were still too sorry for themselves to object actively, to do anything more than sob weakly when he hurt them. Even when he had finished their toilet, of course, he had not reached the point at which a nursemaid usually begins.
It was noon before the Lizzie Green looked herself — whoever that might be: and a little after noon she was still heading for “Philadelphia” when, hull down on the horizon, two sail were sighted, many miles apart, at about the same minute. Captain Jonsen considered them carefully; made his choice, and altered his course so as to fall in with her as soon as might be.