A High Wind in Jamaica - Richard Hughes [35]
John, in his excitement, leaned out too far. He lost his balance and fell clear to the ground, forty feet, right on his head.
José gave a cry of alarm, sprang onto the cow's back, and was instantly lowered away--just as if the cinema had already been invented. He must have looked very comic. But what was going on inside him the while it is difficult to know. Such a responsibility does not often fall on an old sailor; and he would probably feel it all the more for that reason. As for the crowd beneath, they made no attempt to touch the body till José had completed his descent: they stood back and let him have a good look at it, and shake it, and so on. But the neck was quite plainly broken.
Margaret and Edward, however, had not any clear idea of what was going on, since they had not actually seen John fall. So they were rather annoyed when two of the schooner's crew appeared and insisted on their coming back to bed at once. They wanted to know where John was: but even more they wanted to know where José was, and why they weren't to be allowed to stay. However they obeyed, in the impossibility of asking questions, and started back to bed.
Just as they were about to go on board the schooner, they heard a huge report on their left, like a cannon. They turned; and looking past the quiet, silver town, with its palm-groves, to the hills behind, they saw a large ball of fire, traveling at a tremendous rate. It was quite close to the ground: and not very far off either--just beyond the Church. It left a wake of the most brilliant blue, green, and purple blobs of light. For a while it hovered: then it burst, and the air was shortly charged with a strong sulphurous smell.
They were all frightened, the sailors even more than the children, and hastened on board.
IN THE SMALL hours, Edward suddenly called Emily in his sleep. She woke up: "What is it?"
"It's rather cow-catching, isn't it?" he asked anxiously, his eyes tight shut.
"What's the matter?"
He did not answer, so she roused him--or thought she had.
"I only wanted to see if you were a _real_ Cow-catching Zomfanelia," he explained in a kind voice: and was immediately deep asleep again.
In the morning they might easily have thought the whole thing a dream--if John's bed had not been so puzzlingly empty.
Yet, as if by some mute flash of understanding, no one commented on his absence. No one questioned Margaret, and she offered no information. Neither then nor thereafter was his name ever mentioned by anybody: and if you had known the children intimately you would never have guessed from _them_ that he had ever existed.
III
The children's only enemy on board the schooner (which presently put to sea again, with them still on board) was the big white pig. (There was a little black fellow, too.)
He was a pig with no decision of mind. He could never choose a place to lie for himself; but was so ready to follow any one else's opinion, that whatever position you took up he immediately recognized as the best, the only site: and came and routed you out of it. Seeing how rare shady patches of deck are in a calm, or dry patches in a stiff breeze, this was a most infernal nuisance. One is so defenseless against big pigs when lying on one's back.
The little black one could be a nuisance also, it is true--but that was only from excess of friendliness. He hated to be left out of any party: nay more, he hated lying on inanimate matter if a living couch was to be found.
On the north beach of Cape San Antonio it is possible to land a boat, if you pick your spot. About fifty yards through the bushes there are a couple of acres of open ground: cross this, and among some sharp coral rocks in the scrub on the far side are two wells, the northernmost the better of the two.
So, being becalmed off the Mangrove Keys one morning, Jonsen sent a boat on shore to get water.
The heat was extreme. The ropes hung like dead snakes, the sails as heavy as ill-sculptured drapery. The iron stanchion of the awning blistered any hand that