A High Wind in Jamaica - Richard Hughes [74]
The captain sent for Emily, and questioned her: but she added nothing to that first, crucial burst of confidence to the stewardess. She seemed struck dumb--with terror, or something: at least, he could get nothing out of her. So he wisely let her alone. She would probably tell her story in her own time: to her new friend, perhaps. But this she did not do. She would not talk about the schooner, or the pirates, or anything concerning them: what she wanted was to listen, to drink in all she could learn about England, where they were really going at last--that wonderfully exotic, romantic place.
Louisa Dawson was quite a wise young person for her years. She saw that Emily did not want to talk about the horrors she had been through: but considered it far better that she should be made to talk than that she should brood over them in secret. So when the days passed and no confidences came, she set herself to draw the child out. She had, as everybody has, a pretty clear idea in her own head of what life is like in a pirate vessel. That these little innocents should have come through it alive was miraculous, like the three Hebrews in the fiery furnace.
"Where used you to live when you were on the schooner?" she asked Emily one day suddenly.
"Oh, in the hold," said Emily nonchalantly. "Is that your Great-uncle _Vaughan_, did you say?"
In the hold. She might have known it. Chained, probably, down there in the darkness like blacks, with rats running over them, fed on bread and water.
"Were you very frightened when there was a battle going on? Did you hear them fighting over your head?"
Emily looked at her with her gentle stare: but kept silence.
Louisa Dawson was very wise in thus trying to ease the load on the child's mind. But also she was consumed with curiosity. It exasperated her that Emily would not talk.
There were two questions which she particularly wanted to ask. One, however, seemed insuperably difficult of approach. The other she could not contain.
"Listen, darling," she said, wrapping her arms round Emily. "Did you ever actually see any one killed?"
Emily stiffened palpably. "Oh no," she said. "Why should we?"
"Didn't you ever even see a body?" she went on: "A dead one?"
"No," said Emily, "there weren't any." She seemed to meditate a while. "There weren't many," she corrected.
"You poor, poor little thing," said Miss Dawson, stroking her forehead.
But though Emily was slow to talk, Edward was not. Suggestion was hardly necessary. He soon saw what he was expected to say. It was also what he wanted to say. All these rehearsals with Harry, these springings into the main rigging, these stormings of the galley.. . they had seemed real enough at the time. Now, he had soon no doubt about them at all. And Harry backed him up.
It was wonderful for Edward that every one seemed ready to believe what he said. Those who came to him for tales of bloodshed were not sent empty away.
Nor did Rachel contradict him. The pirates were wicked--deadly wicked, as she had good reason to know. So they had probably done all Edward said: probably when she was not looking.
Miss Dawson did not always press Emily like this: she had too much sense. She spent a good deal of her time simply in tying more firmly the knots of the child's passion for her.
She was ready enough to tell her about England. But how strange it seemed that these humdrum narrations should interest any one who had seen such romantic, terrible things as Emily had!
She told her all about London, where the traffic was so thick things could hardly pass, where things drove by all day, as if the supply of them would never come to an end. She tried also to describe trains, but Emily could not see them, somehow: all she could envisage was a steamer like this one, only going on land--but she knew that was not right.
What a wonderful person her Miss Dawson was! What marvels she had seen! Emily had again the feeling she had in the schooner's cabin: how time had slipped by, been wasted. Now she would be eleven in a few months: