Just then, Rachel, who was up the mainmast, dropped, for the first time, her marlinespike. She uttered a terrible shriek⁠—for what she saw was a baby falling to dash its brains out on the deck.

Jonsen gave an ineffectual little grunt of alarm⁠—men can never learn to give a full-bodied scream like a woman.

But Emily gave the most desperate yell of all, though several seconds after the other two: for the wicked steel stood quivering in the deck, having gouged a track through her calf on the way. Her wrought-up nerves and sickening giddiness joined with the shock and pain to give a heartrending poignancy to her crying. Jonsen was by her in a second, caught her up, and carried her, sobbing miserably, down into the cabin. There sat Margaret, bending over some mending, her slim shoulders hunched up, humming softly and feeling deadly ill.