A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes

meant, of course, that he would worship them.) It was an important point, this, of the captain: important as the personality of a headmaster.
    â€œSo that’s the nursery, eh?” said the captain, crushing Mrs. Thornton’s hand. She strove to answer, but found her throat undoubtedly paralyzed. 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:
    â€œSmack ’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 good-bye.
    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.
    â€œTime 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
.
    â€œBut think what an adventure it will be,” said Mrs. Thornton bravely: “much more than if I came too!—You’ll have to look after the Liddlies just as if you were a real grown-up!”
    â€œBut I don’t want any more adventures!” sobbed Emily:
    â€œI’ve
got
an
Earthquake
!”
    Passions were running far too high for any one 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 a while 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 every one knew he had no money. Her set white face was turned towards the land, her chin quivering at intervals. Slowly the harbor disappeared: the disordered profligacy of the turbulent, intricate mass of hills sunk lower in the sky. The occasional white houses, and white puffs of steam and smoke from the sugar-mills, vanished. At last the land, all palely shimmering like the bloom on grapes, settled down into the mirror of emerald and blue.
    She wondered whether the Thornton children would prove companionable, or a nuisance. They were all younger than she was: which was a pity.
    II
    On the journey back to Ferndale both father and mother were silent, actuated by that tug of jealousy against sympathy which a strong common emotion begets in familiar rather than passionate companions. They were above the ordinary sentimentalities of grassbereavement (above choking over small shoes found in cupboards): but not above a rather strong dose of the natural instincts of parenthood, Frederic no less than his wife.
    But when they were nearly home, Mrs. Thornton began to chuckle to herself.
    â€œFunny little thing, Emily! Did you notice almost the last thing she said? She said ‘I’ve got an earthquake.’
    She must have got it mixed up in her silly old head