A High Wind in Jamaica - Richard Hughes [26]
Presently the mate shouted down to him, and he ordered Marpole on deck.
Poor Marpole groaned. Unloading cargo is inclined to be a messy business any way: but these visitors had been none too careful. There is no smell in the world worse than when molasses and bilge-water marry: now it was let loose like ten thousand devils. His heart was almost broken when he saw the havoc that had been made with the cargo: broken cases, casks, bottles, all about the deck: everything in the greatest confusion: tarpaulins cut to pieces: hatches broken.
From the deck-house came the piercing voice of Laura:
"_I want to come out!_"
The Spanish ladies seemed to have returned to the schooner. His own men were shut up in the fo'c'sle. It was obvious where all the children were, for Laura was not the only vociferator. But the only persons to be seen were six members of the visiting crew, who stood in a line, facing the deck-house, a musket apiece.
It was the little mate who now took charge of the situation:
"Where is your specie hid, Captain?"
The musketeers having their backs to him, "Go to the Devil!" replied Marpole.
A startling volley rang out: six neat holes were punctured in the top of the deck-house.
"Hi! Steady there, what are you doing?" John cried out indignantly from within.
"If you refuse to tell us, next time their aim will be a foot lower."
"You fiends!" cried Marpole.
"Will you tell me?"
"_No!_"
"_Fire!_"
The second row of holes can only have missed the taller children by a few inches.
There was a moment's silence: then a sudden wild shriek from within the deck-house. It was so terrified a sound not their own mothers could have told which throat it came from. One only, though.
The stranger-captain had been slouching about in an agitated way: but at that shriek he turned on Marpole, his face purple with a sudden fury:
"Now will you say?"
But Marpole was now completely master of himself. He did not hesitate:
"NO!"
"Next time he gives the order it will be to shoot right through their little bodies!"
So that was what Marpole had meant in his letter by "_every possible threat which villainy could devise_"! But even by this he was not to be daunted:
"No, I tell you!"
Heroic obstinacy! But instead of giving the fatal order, Jonsen lifted a paw like a bear's, and banged Marpole's jaw with it. The latter fell to the deck, stunned.
It was then they took the children out of the deck-house. They were not really much frightened; except Margaret, who did seem to be taking it all to heart rather. Being shot at is so unlike what one expects it to be that one can hardly connect the two ideas enough to have the appropriate emotions, the first few times. It is not half so startling as some one jumping out on you with a "Boo!" in the dark, for instance. The boys were crying a little: the girls were hot and cross and hungry.
"What were you doing?" Rachel asked brightly of one of the firing-party.
But only the captain and the mate could speak English. The latter, ignoring Rachel's question explained that they were all to go on board the schooner--" to have some supper," he said.
He had all a sailor's reassuring charm of manner. So under the charge of two Spanish seamen they were helped over the bulwarks onto the smaller vessel, which was just casting off.
There the strange sailors broke open a whole case of crystallized fruits, on which they might turn the edge of their long appetites as much as they would.
WHEN POOR STUNNED Captain Marpole came to his senses, it was to find himself tied to the mainmast. Several handfuls of shavings and splintered wood were piled round his feet, and Jonsen was sprinkling them plentifully with gun-powder--though not perhaps enough, it is true, to "blow up the ship and all in it."
The small fair mate stood at hand in the gathering dusk with a lighted torch, ready to fire the pyre.
What could a man do in such straits? At that dreadful moment the gallant old fellow had to admit that he was beaten at last. He told them where his freight-money-- some £900--was hidden: