The Clorinda had let go her anchor in six fathoms: the water so clear, and the light so bright, that as they drew near the reflection suddenly disappeared, and instead they found themselves looking right underneath her and out the other side. The refraction made her seem as flat-bellied as a turtle, as if practically all of her were above the surface: and the anchor on its cable seemed to stream out flatly, like a downwards kite, twisting and twining (owing to the undulating surface) in the writhing coral.
This was the only impression Emily retained of going on board the ship: but the ship itself was a strange enough object, requiring all her attention. John was the only one who could remember the journey out at all clearly. Emily thought she could, but was really only remembering her visualisations of what she had been told: in fact, she found that a real ship was totally unlike the thing she thought she remembered.
By some last whim of the captain’s the shrouds were being set up—tauter than seemed good to the sailors, who grumbled as they strained the creaking lanyards. John did not envy them, winding away at that handle in the hot sun: but he did envy the chap whose job it was to dip his hand in a great pot of aromatic Stockholm tar, and work it into the dead-eyes. He was tarred up to the elbows: and John itched to be so too.
In a moment the children were scattered all over the ship, smelling here, meowing, sniffing there, like cats in a new home. Mr. and Mrs. Thornton stood by the main companionway, a little disconsolate at their children’s happy preoccupation, a little regretting the lack of proper emotional scene.
“I think they will be happy here, Frederic,” said Mrs. Thornton. “I wish we could have afforded to send them by the steamboat: but children find amusement even in discomfort.”
Mr. Thornton grunted.
“I wish schools had never been invented!” he suddenly burst out: “they wouldn’t then be so indispensable!”
There was a short pause for the logic of this to cross the footlights: then he went on:
“I know what will happen; they’ll come away … mugs! Just ordinary little mugs, like anyone else’s brats! I’m dashed if I don’t think a hundred hurricanes would be better than that.”
Mrs. Thornton shuddered: but she continued bravely:
“You know, I think they were getting almost too devoted to us? We have been such an unrivalled centre of their lives and thoughts. It doesn’t do for minds developing to be completely dependent on one person.”
Captain Marpole’s grizzled head emerged from the scuttle. A sea-dog: clear blue eyes of a translucent trustworthiness: a merry, wrinkled, morocco-coloured face: a rumbling voice.
“He’s too good to be true,” whispered Mrs. Thornton.
“Not at all! It’s a sophism to imagine people don’t conform to type!” barked Mr. Thornton. He felt at sixes and sevens.
Captain Marpole certainly looked the ideal Children’s Captain. He would, Mrs. Thornton decided, be careful without being fussy—for she was all in favour of courageous gymnastics, though glad she would not have to witness them herself. Captain Marpole cast his eyes benignantly over the swarming imps.
“They’ll worship him,” she whispered to her husband. (She meant, of course, that he would worship them.) It was an important point, this, of the captain: important as the personality of a headmaster.
“So that’s the nursery, eh?” said the captain, crushing Mrs. Thornton’s hand. She strove to answer, but found her throat undoubtedly paralysed. Even Mr. Thornton’s ready tongue was at a loss. He looked hard at the captain, jerked his thumb towards the children, wrestled in his mind with an elaborate speech, and finally enunciated in a small, unlikely voice:
“Smack ’em.”
Then the captain had to go about his duties: and for an hour the father and mother sat disconsolately on the main-hatch, quite deserted. Even when all was ready for departure it was impossible to muster the flock for a collective goodbye.
Already the tug was fulminating in its gorge: and ashore they must go. Emily and John had been captured, and stood talking uneasily to their parents, as if to strangers, using only a quarter of their minds. With a rope to be climbed dangling before his very nose, John simply did not know how this delay was to be supported, and lapsed into complete silence.
“Time to go ashore, Ma’am,” said the captain: “we must be off now.”
Very formally the two generations kissed each other, and said farewell. Indeed the elders were already at the gangway before the meaning of it all dawned in Emily’s head. She rushed after her mother, gripped her ample flesh in two strong fists, and sobbed and wept, “Come too, Mother, oh, do come too!”
Honestly, it had only occurred to her that very moment that this was a parting.
“But think what an adventure it will be,” said Mrs. Thornton bravely: “much more than if I come too!—You’ll have to look after the Liddlies just as if you were a real grownup!”
“But I don’t want any more adventures!” sobbed Emily: “I’ve got an Earthquake!”
Passions were running far too high for anyone to be aware how the final separation took place. The next thing Mrs. Thornton could remember was how tired her arm had been, after waving and waving at that dwindling speck which bore away on the land breeze, hung awhile stationary in the intervening calm, then won the Trade and climbed up into the blue.
Meanwhile, at the rail stood Margaret Fernandez, who, with her little brother Harry, was going to England by the same boat. No one had come to see them off: and the brown nurse who was accompanying them had gone below the moment she came on board, so as to be ill as quickly as possible. How handsome Mr. Bas-Thornton had looked, with his English distinction! Yet everyone knew he had no money. Her set
