When at last he set her down, her face was swollen and purple. She directed a tornado of punches with her little fists against his knees, crying ‘Hell! Hell! Hell!’ in a strangulated voice. He flipped her fists aside with his hand, and presently she went away, so tired with crying she could hardly get her breath. Meanwhile, Laura’s behaviour had been characteristic. When she tripped and fell, she roared till her bumps ceased hurting. Then, with no perceptible transition, her convulsions of agony became an attempt to stand on her head. This she kept up throughout Edward’s flight up the stay, throughout the electric appearance of Rachel. During the latter’s punishment, having happened to topple in the direction of the mainmast, and finding her feet against the rack round its base for belaying the halyards to, she gave a tremendous shove off--she would roll instead. And roll she did, very rapidly, till she arrived at the captain’s feet. There she lay all the while he was smacking Rachel, completely unconcerned, on her back, her knees drawn up to her chin, humming a little tune. iv When Emily returned to the fore-hold, her first act was one which greatly complicated life. As if there was not sea enough already outside the ship, she decreed that practically all the deck was sea also. The main-hatch was an island, of course; and there were others--chiefly natural excrescences of the same kind. But all the rest, all the open deck, could only be safely crossed in a boat, or swimming. As to who was in a boat and who wasn’t, Emily decided that herself. No one ever knew till she had been asked. But Laura, once she had got the main idea into her head, always swam, whether said to be in a boat or not--to be on the safe side. ‘_Isn’t_ she silly?’ said Edward once, when she refused to stop working her arms although they had all told her she was safe on board. ‘I expect we were all as silly as that when we were young,’ said Harry. It was a source of consternation to the children that none of the grown-ups would recognise this ‘sea.’ The sailors trod carelessly on the deepest oceans, refusing so much as to paddle with their hands. But it was equally irritating to the sailors when the children, either safe on an island or bearing down in a vessel of their own, would scream at them in a tone of complete conviction: ‘You’re drowning! You’re drowning! O-o-oh, look out! You’re out of your depth there! The sharks’ll eat you!’ ‘O-oh look! Miguel’s sinking! The waves are right over his head!’ That happens to be the one sort of joke sailors can’t enjoy. Even though the words were unintelligible, their gist--eked out by the slightly malicious hints of the mate--was not. If they steadily refused to swim, they at least took to crossing themselves fervently and continuously whenever they had to traverse a piece of open deck. For there was no way one could be certain that these brats were not gifted with second sight--_hijos de puntas_!