Free A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes

the scuttle being secured with a couple of nails.
    The children themselves were shepherded, as related, into the deck-house, where the chairs, and perfectly useless pieces of old rope, and broken tools, and dried-up paint-pots were kept, without taking alarm. But the door was immediately shut on them. They had to wait for hours and hours before anything else happened—nearly all day, in fact: and they got very bored, and rather cross.
    The actual number of the men who had effected the capture cannot have been more than eight or nine, most of them “women” at that, and not armed—at least with any visible weapon. But a second boatload soon followed them from the schooner. These, for form’s sake, were armed with muskets. But there was no possible resistance to fear. Two long nails through the scuttle can secure any number of men pretty effectually.
    With this second boatload came both the captain and the mate. The former was a clumsy great fellow, with a sad, silly face. He was bulky; yet so ill-proportioned one got no impression of power. He was modestly dressed in a drab shore-going suit: he was newly shaven, and his sparse hair was pomaded so that it lay in a few dark ribbons across his baldish head-top. But all this shoredecency of appearance only accentuated his big splodgy brown hands, stained and scarred and corned with his calling. Moreover, instead of boots he wore a pair of gigantic heel-less slippers in the Moorish manner, which he must have sliced with a knife out of some pair of dead sea-boots. Even his great spreading feet could hardly keep them on, so that he was obliged to walk at the slowest of shuffles, flop-flop along the deck. He stooped, as if always afraid of banging his head on something; and carried the backs of his hands forward, like an orangutan.
    Meanwhile the men set to work methodically but very quietly to remove the wedges that held the battens of the hatches, getting ready to haul up the cargo.
    Their leader took several turns up and down the deck before he seemed able to make up his mind to the interview: then lowered himself into Marpole’s cabin, followed by his mate.
    This mate was a small man: very fair, and intelligentlooking beside his chief. He was almost dapper, in a quiet way, in his dress.
    They found Captain Marpole even now only half awake: and the stranger stood for a moment in silence, nervously twiddling his cap in his hands. When he spoke at last, it was with a soft German accent:
    â€œExcuse me,” he began, “but would you have the goodness to lend me a few stores?”
    Captain Marpole stared in astonishment, first at him and then at the much be-painted faces of the “ladies” pressed against his cabin skylight.
    â€œWho the devil are you?” he contrived to ask at last.
    â€œI hold a commission in the Columbian navy,” the stranger explained: “and I am in need of a few stores.”
    (Meanwhile his men had the hatches off, and were preparing to help themselves to everything in the ship.) Marpole looked him up and down. It was barely conceivable that even the Columbian navy should have such a figure of an officer. Then his eye wandered back to the skylight:
    â€œIf you call yourself a man-of-war, sir, who in Heaven’s name are
those
?” As he pointed, the smirking faces hastily retreated.
    The stranger blushed.
    â€œThey are rather difficult to explain,” he admitted ingenuously.
    â€œIf you had said
Turkish
navy, that would have been more reasonable-sounding!” said Marpole.
    But the stranger did not seem to take the joke. He stood, silent, in a characteristic attitude: rocking himself from foot to foot, and rubbing his cheek on his shoulder.
    Suddenly Marpole’s ear caught the muffled racketing forward. Almost at the same time a bump that shivered the whole barque told that the schooner had been laid alongside.
    â€œWhat’s that?” he exclaimed. “Is there some