‘Yes!’ cried Emily. ‘Come and stay with us! All of you!--_Promise_ you’ll come and stay with us!’ ‘All right!’ shouted Otto. ‘We’ll come!’ ‘Come _soon_!’ ‘My babies!’ wailed Rachel. ‘I’ve lost ’most all my babies!’ But now they were alongside the steamer: and soon they were mounting a rope ladder to her deck. What a long way up it was! But at last they were all on board. The little boat returned to the schooner. The children never once looked after it. And well might they forget it. For exciting as it had been to go onto a ship of any kind for the first time, to find themselves on this steamer was infinitely more so. The luxury of it! The white paint! The doors! The windows! The stairs! The brass!--A fairy palace, no: but a mundane wonder of a quite unimagined kind. But they had little time now to take in the details. All the passengers, wild with curiosity, were gathered round them in a ring. As the dirty, dishevelled little mites were handed one by one on board, a gasp went up. The story of the capture of the _Clorinda_ by as fiendish a set of buccaneers as any in the past that roamed the same Caribbean was well known: and how the little innocents on board her had been taken and tortured to death before the eyes of the impotent captain. To see now face to face the victims of so foul a murder was for them too a thrill of the first water. The tension was first broken by a beautiful young lady in a muslin dress. She sank on her knees beside little Harry, and folded him in her delicate arms. ‘The little angel!’ she murmured. ‘You poor little man, what horrors you have been through! How will you ever forget them?’ As if that were the signal, all the lady passengers fell on the astonished children and pitied them: while the men, less demonstrative, stood around with lumps in their throats. Bewildered at first, it was not long before they rose to the occasion--as children generally will, when they find themselves the butt of indiscriminate adoration. Bless you, they were kings and queens! They were so sleepy they could hardly keep their eyes open: but they were not going to bed, not they! They had never been treated like this before. Heaven alone knew how long it would last. Best not waste a minute of it. It was not long before they ceased even to be surprised, became convinced that it was all their right and due. They were very important people--quite unique. Only Emily stood apart, shy, answering questions uncomfortably. She did not seem to be able to throw herself into her importance with the same zest as the others. Even the passengers’ children joined in the fuss and admiration: perhaps realising the opportunity which the excitement gave of avoiding their own bed-time. They began to bring (probably not without suggestion) their toys, as offerings to these new gods: and vied with each other in their generosity.