A High Wind in Jamaica - Richard Hughes [62]
Laura clasped her hands in expectation, waiting to see what Emily would do in the face of this impending disaster.
"You stupid, _that's_ no good!" was all Emily's comment.
Rachel looked at her angrily:
"You leave me alone! I know what I am doing!"
Emily's eyes grew very wide, and danced with a strange light.
"If you talk to me like that, I'll have you hanged from the yard-arm!"
"What's _that?_" asked Rachel sulkily.
"You ought to know which is the yard-arm by now!"
"I don't care!" growled Rachel, and went on scratching with her nail.
Emily picked up a big piece of iron, in a corner, so heavy she could hardly carry it:
"Do you know what I'm going to do?" she asked in a strange voice.
At the sound of it Rachel stopped scratching and looked up.
"No," she said, a trifle uneasily.
"I'm going to kill you! I'm turned a pirate, and I'm going to kill you with this sword!"
At the word "sword," the misshapen lump of metal seemed to Rachel to flicker to a sharp, wicked point.
She looked Emily in the eyes, doubtfully. Did she mean it, or was it a game?
As a matter of fact, she had always been a little afraid of Emily. Emily was so huge, so strong, so old (as good as grown up), so cunning! Emily was the cleverest, the most powerful person in the world! The muscles of a giant, the ancient experience of a serpent!--And now, her terrible eyes, with no hint in them of pretense.
Emily glared fixedly, and saw real panic dawn in Rachel's face. Suddenly the latter turned, and as fast as her short fat legs would carry her began to swarm up the ladder. Emily rang her iron once against it, and Rachel nearly tumbled down again in her haste.
The iron was so big and heavy it took Emily a long time to haul it up on deck. Even when that was done, it greatly impeded her running, so that she and Rachel did three laps round the deck without their distances altering much, cheered boisterously by Edward. Even in her terror Rachel did not forget to work her arms as in breaststroke. Finally, with a cry of "Oh, I can't run any more, my bad leg's hurting!" Emily flung down the iron and dropped panting beside Edward on the main-hatch.
"I shall put poison in your dinner!" she shouted cheerfully to Rachel: but the latter retreated behind the windlass and began to nurse with an abandoned devotion the particular brood she had parked there, working herself almost to tears with the depth of her maternal pity for them.
Emily went on chuckling for some time at the memory of her sport.
"What's the matter with you?" asked Edward scornfully, puffing out his chest. He was feeling particularly manly at the moment. "Have you got the giggles?"
"I _like_ having the giggles," said Emily disarmingly. "Let's see if we can't all get them. Come on, Laura! Harry, come!"
The two smaller ones came obediently. They stared her in the face attentively and seriously, awaiting the Coming of the God, while she herself broke into louder and louder explosions of laughter. Soon the infection took and they were laughing too, each shriller and more wildly than the other.
"I can't stop! I can't stop!" they cried at intervals.
"Come on, Edward! Look me in the face!"
"I won't!" said Edward.
So she set on him and tickled him till he was as hysterical as the rest.
"Oh, I _do_ want to stop, my tummy is hurting so!" complained Harry at last.
"Go away then," advised Emily in a lucid interval. And so the group presently broke up. But they had all to avoid each other's eye for a long while, if they were not to risk another attack.
It was Laura who was cured the quickest. She suddenly discovered what a beautiful deep cave her arm-pit made, and decided to keep fairies in it in future. For