A High Wind in Jamaica - Richard Hughes [45]
III
That night in the Parliament of Beds there was raised at last a question which you may well be surprised had not been raised before. Emily had just reduced her family to silence by sheer ferocity, when Harry's rapid, nervous, lisping voice piped up:
"Emily Emily may I ask you a question, please?"
"Go to sleep!"
There was a moment's whispered confabulation.
"But it's very important, please, and we all want to know."
"What?"
"Are these people pirates?"
Emily sat bolt upright with astonishment.
"Of course not!"
Harry sounded rather crestfallen.
"I don't know. . . I just thought they might. . ."
"But they _are!_" declared Rachel firmly. "Margaret told me!"
"Nonsense!" said Emily. "There aren't any pirates nowadays."
"Margaret said," went on Rachel, "that time we were shut up on the other ship she heard one of the sailors calling out pirates had come on board."
Emily had an inspiration.
"No, you silly, he must have said _pilots_."
"What are pilots?" asked Laura.
"They Come On Board," explained Emily, lamely. "Don't you remember that picture in the dining-room at home, called The Pilot Comes On Board?"
Laura listened with rapt attention. The explanation of what pilots were was not very illuminating; but then she did not know what pirates were either. So you might think the whole discussion meant very little to her, but there you would be wrong: the question was evidently important to the older ones, therefore she gave her whole mind to listening.
The pirate heresy was considerably shaken. How could they say for certain which word Margaret had really heard? Rachel changed sides.
"They can't be pirates," she said. "Pirates are wicked."
"Couldn't we ask them?" Edward persisted.
Emily considered.
"I don't think it would be very polite."
"I'm sure they wouldn't mind," said Edward. "They're awfully decent."
"I think they mightn't like it," said Emily. In her heart she was afraid of the answer; and if they were pirates, it would here again be better to pretend not to know.
"I know!" she said. "Shall I ask the Mouse with the Elastic Tail?"
"Yes, do!" cried Laura. It was months since the oracle had been consulted; but her faith was still perfect.
Emily communed with herself in a series of short squeaks.
"He says they are _Pilots_," she announced.
"Oh," said Edward deeply: and they all went to sleep.
7
EDWARD OFTEN THOUGHT, as hestrode scowling up and down the deck by himself, that this was exactly the life for him. What a lucky boy he was, to have tumbled into it by good fortune, instead of having to run away to sea as most other people did! In spite of the White Mouse's pronouncement (whom secretly he had long ceased to believe in), he had no doubt that this was a pirate vessel: and no doubt either that when presently Jonsen was killed in some furious battle the sailors would unanimously elect him their captain.
The girls were a great nuisance. A ship was no place for them. When he was captain he would have them marooned.
Yet there had been a time when he had wished he was a girl himself. "When I was young," he once confided to the admiring Harry, "I used to think girls were bigger and stronger than boys. Weren't I silly?"
"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