At the same time there emerged from somewhere aft a collection of the oddest-looking young men. Margaret decided she had never seen such beautiful young men before. They were slim, yet nicely rounded: and dressed in exquisite clothes (if a trifle threadbare). But their faces! Those beautiful olive-tinted ovals! Those large, black-ringed, soft brown eyes, those unnaturally carmine lips! They minced across the deck, chattering to each other in high-pitched tones, ‘twittering like a cage of linnets ...’ and made their way on shore. ‘Who are they?’ Emily asked the captain, who had just re-emerged from below. ‘Who are who?’ he murmured absently, without looking round. ‘Oh, those? Fairies.’ ‘_Hey! Yey! Yey!_’ cried the mate, more disapprovingly than ever. ‘_Fairies?_’ cried Emily in astonishment. But Captain Jonsen began to blush. He went crimson from the nape of his neck to the bald patches on the top of his head, and left. ‘He is _silly_!’ said Emily. ‘I wonder if we go onto the land yet,’ said Edward. ‘We’d better wait until we’re told, hadn’t we, Emily?’ said Harry. ‘I didn’t know England would be like this,’ said Rachel: ‘it’s very like Jamaica.’ ‘This isn’t England,’ said John, ‘you stupid!’ ‘But it must be,’ said Rachel: ‘England’s where we’re going.’ ‘We don’t get to England yet,’ said John: ‘it must be somewhere we’re stopping at, like when we got all those turtles.’ ‘I like stopping at places,’ said Laura. ‘I don’t,’ said Rachel. ‘I do, though,’ pursued Laura. ‘Where are those young men gone?’ Margaret asked the mate. ‘Are they coming back?’ ‘They’ll just come back to be paid, after we’ve sold the cargo,’ he answered. ‘Then they’re not living on the ship?’ she pursued. ‘No, we hired them from Havana.’ ‘But what for?’ He looked at her in surprise: ‘Why, those are the “ladies” we had on board, to look like passengers--You didn’t think they were real ladies, did you?’ ‘What, were they dressed up?’ asked Emily excitedly: ‘What fun!’ ‘I like dressing up,’ said Laura. ‘I don’t,’ said Rachel, ‘I think it’s babyish.’ ‘_I_ thought they were real ladies,’ admitted Emily. ‘We’re a respectable ship’s crew, we are,’ said the mate, a trifle stiffly--and without too good logic, when you come to think of it. ‘Here, you go on shore and amuse yourselves.’ So the children went ashore, holding hands in a long row, and promenaded the town in a formal sort of way. Laura wanted to go off by herself, but the others would not let her: and when they returned, the line was still unbroken. They had seen all there was to see, and no one had taken the least notice of them (so far as they were aware), and they wanted to start asking questions again.