‘Oh,’ said Edward deeply: and they all went to sleep. _Chapter 7_ Edward often thought, as he strode scowling up and down the deck by himself, that this was exactly the life for him. What a lucky boy he was, to have tumbled into it by good fortune, instead of having to run away to sea as most other people did! In spite of the White Mouse’s pronouncement (whom secretly he had long ceased to believe in), he had no doubt that this was a pirate vessel: and no doubt either that when presently Jonsen was killed in some furious battle the sailors would unanimously elect him their captain. The girls were a great nuisance. A ship was no place for them. When he was captain he would have them marooned. Yet there had been a time when he had wished he was a girl himself. ‘When I was young,’ he once confided to the admiring Harry, ‘I used to think girls were bigger and stronger than boys. Weren’t I silly?’ ‘Yes,’ said Harry. Harry did not confide it to Edward, but he also, _now_, wished he was a girl. It was not for the same reason: younger than Edward, he was still at the amorous age; and because he found the company of girls almost magically pleasing, fondly imagined it would be even more so if he were one himself. He was always finding himself, for being a boy, shut out from their most secret councils. Emily of course was too old to count as female in his eyes: but to Rachel and Laura he was indiscriminately devoted. When Edward was captain, he would be mate: and when he imagined this future, it consisted for the most part in rescuing Rachel--or Laura, _n’importe_--from new and complicated dangers.