A High Wind in Jamaica - Richard Hughes [22]
But when the ratlines had palled, the most lasting joy undoubtedly lay in that network of footropes and chains and stays which spreads out under and on each side of the bowsprit. Here, familiarity only bred content. Here, in fine weather, one could climb or be still: stand, sit, hang, swing, or lie: now this end up, now that: and all with the cream of the blue sea being whipt up for one's own especial pleasure, almost within touching distance: and the big white wooden lady (Clorinda herself), bearing the whole vessel so lightly on her back, her knees in the bubble-bubble, her cracks almost filled up with so much painting, vaster than any living lady, as a constant and unannoying companion.
In the midst there was a kind of spear, its haft set against the under-side of the bowsprit, its point perpendicularly down towards the water--the dolphin-striker. Here it was that the old monkey (who had the Sore tail) loved to hang, by the mere stub which was all a devouring cancer had left him, chattering to the water. He took no notice of the children, nor they of him: but both parties grew attached to each other, for all that.
--How small the children all looked, on a ship, when you saw them beside the sailors! It was as if they were a different order of beings! Yet they were living creatures just the same, full of promise.
_John_, with his downy, freckled face, and general round energeticalness.
_Emily_, with her huge palm-leaf hat, and colorless cotton frock tight over her minute impish erect body: her thin, almost expressionless face: her dark gray eyes contracted to escape the blaze, yet shining as it were in spite of themselves: and her really beautiful lips, that looked almost as if they were sculptured.
_Margaret Fernandez_, taller (as midgets go: she was just thirteen), with her square white face and tangled hair, her elaboratish clothes.
Her little brother _Harry_, by some throw-back for all the world like a manikin Spaniard.
And the smaller Thorntons: _Edward_, mouse-colored, with a general mousy (but pleasing) expression: _Rachel_, with tight short gold curls and a fat pink face (John's coloring watered down): and last of all _Laura_, a queer mite of three with heavy dark eyebrows, and blue eyes, a big head-top and a receding chin--as if the Procreative Spirit was getting a little hysterical by the time it reached her. A silver-age conception, Laura's, decidedly.
When the Norther blew itself out, it soon fell away almost dead calm. The morning they finally rounded Cape San Antonio was hot, blazing hot. But it is never stuffy at sea: there is only this disadvantage, that while on land a shady hat protects you from the sun, at sea nothing can protect you from that second sun which is mirrored upwards from the water, strikes under all defenses, and burns the unseasoned skin from all your undersides. Poor John! His throat and chin were a blistered red.
From the point itself there is a whitish bank in two fathoms, bowed from north to north-east. The outer side is clean and steep-to, and in fine weather one can steer along it by eye. It ends in Black Key, a rock standing out of the water like a ship's hull. Beyond that lies a channel, very foul and difficult to navigate: and beyond that again the Coloradoes Reef begins, the first of a long chain of reefs following the coast in a north-easterly direction as far as Honde Bay, two-thirds the way to Havana. Within the reefs lies the intricate Canal de Guaniguanico, of which this channel is the westernmost outlet, with its own rather dubious little ports. But ocean traffic, needless to say, shuns the whole box of tricks: and the _Clorinda_ advisedly stood well away to the northward, keeping her course at a gentle amble for the open Atlantic.
John was sitting outside the galley with the sailor called Curtis, who was instructing him in the neat mystery of a Turk's-head. Young Henry Marpole was steering. Emily was messing around--not talking, just being by him.
As for the other