Laura, still hugging the slipper, caught her toe in an eye-bolt and fell full length, set up a yell. Otto, with a suddenly straight face, ran forward, picked up the slipper and returned it to Jonsen, who put it on. Edward stopped jumping up and down and became frightened. Jonsen was trembling with rage. He advanced on Edward with an iron belaying-pin in his hand. ‘Come down from there!’ he commanded. ‘Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!’ cried Edward, not moving. Harry suddenly ran and hid himself in the galley, though he had had no part in it. With a surprising agility which he rarely used, Jonsen started out along the bowsprit towards Edward, who did nothing but moan ‘Don’t!’ at the sight of that murderous belaying-pin. When Jonsen was just on him, however, he swarmed up a stay, helping himself with the iron hanks of the jib. Jonsen returned to the deck, wringing his hands and angrier than ever. He sent a sailor to the cross-trees to head the boy off and drive him down again. Indeed, but for an extraordinary diversion, I shudder to think what might have happened to him. But just at this moment there appeared, up the ladder from the children’s fore-hold, Rachel. She wore one of the sailors’ shirts, back to front, and reaching to her heels: in her hand, a book. She was singing ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers’ at the top of her voice. But as soon as she reached the deck she became silent: strutted straight aft, looking neither to right nor left, genuflected to Otto at the wheel, and then sat herself down on a wooden bucket. Every one, Jonsen included, stood petrified. After a moment of silent prayer she arose, and commenced an inarticulate gabble-gabble which reproduced extraordinarily well the sound of what she used to hear in the little church at St. Anne’s, where the whole family went one Sunday in each month. Rachel’s religious revival had begun. It could hardly have been more opportune: who shall say it was not Heaven which had chosen the moment for her? Otto, entering into the thing at once, rolled up his eyes and spread out his arms, cross-wise, against the wheel-house at his back. Jonsen, rapidly recovering some of his temper, strode up to her. Her imitation was admirable. For a few moments he listened in silence. He wavered: should he laugh? Then what remained of his temper prevailed. ‘Rachel!’ he rebuked. She continued, almost without taking breath, ‘Gabble-gabble, Bretheren, gabble-gabble.’ ‘I am not a religious man myself,’ said the captain, ‘but I will not allow religion to be made a mock of on my ship!’ He caught hold of Rachel. ‘Gabble-gabble!’ she went on, slightly faster and on a higher note. ‘Let me alone! Gabble-gabble! Amen! Gabble....’ But he sat himself on the bucket, and stretched her over his knee. ‘You’re a wicked pirate! You’ll go to Hell!’ she shrieked, breaking at last into the articulate. Then he began to smack her; so hard that she screamed almost as much with pain as with rage.