This somewhat chilling examination of children and of human nature was first published in 1929 and republished decades later as the very first entry in the NYRB classics imprint. Hughes' debut novel, it tells the story of seven British children, ages about 13 to 3, whose ship is captured by pirates around the waters of Cuba; transported to the pirate ship as part of an effort to terrorize the ship's captain, the pirates become accidental kidnappers when they don't notice the ship fleeing from them in the night. At first indifferent to and annoyed by the presence of the children, the pirates discover the children to be alien creatures who provoke conflicting emotions: fondness, desire, and finally fear, while the children themselves adapt easily and joyously to life aboard a pirate ship.

The boundary between childhood and adulthood is presented as a yawning chasm with mutual incomprehension. The children have not yet learned to be "human", a comprehensive transformation which comes with adulthood. Their minds and nature are alien to adults: "I would rather extract information from the devil himself than from a child," a lawyer at the end of the book confesses. Some of the pirates feel affection for the children, these strange creatures, but this difference can provoke dark emotions as well. There is disturbing pedophilia: the oldest child, 13 year old Margaret, becomes the lover of the first mate on the pirate ship, and its captain, Jonsen, in a charged moment while drunk caresses Emily, a child of about 10 or 11, then is overcome by shame, while she does not understand what happened.

The pirates are stupefied by what happens when they capture another vessel and transport its captain to their ship for safekeeping while they sack it. Emily, seeing this captain straining to reach a knife with which to cut himself loose, grabs the knife herself and in a frenzy stabs and slashes him to death. The pirates return from the captured vessel to find the body in a pool of blood and are gobsmacked. But the children have already displayed an apparent cold indifference to death - Emily's 10 year old brother John had broken his neck in an accidental fall while they were with the pirates, and been promptly forgotten about by all.

After rescue, Emily, with what amount of conscious calculation is left unspecified, leaves the impression that Jonsen murdered that captain, in a dramatic courtroom scene. Jonsen is sentenced to death for the murder, while in the novel's final scene, Emily is integrated into a new classroom, while Hughes writes of the little murderer, with a note of ominousness, that "perhaps God could have picked out from among them which was Emily: but I am sure that I could not."

This novel bears obvious parallels with the later novel Lord of the Flies, and I'm left wondering about its portrayal of human nature in childhood. There's an actual real life Lord of the Flies type situation that I read a news story about recently, and happily the children in real life did not become amoral wild things who discard civilization, but rather cooperated and lived peaceably until rescue. On the other hand, you have child soldiers forced into various conflicts worldwide and these children can reportedly become as vicious as you please. However they are forced into it by adults, they don't choose it. Still, it's true that the brains of children are still developing and maturing past their teenage years, so the gulf between childhood and adulthood is real enough, and children surely don't grasp the concepts of consequences and permanence like adults do. There will always be room to explore the difference, and the similarities. ( )

Amazing! The writing is simply excellent and the dream like adventure a great read. It could be shelved alongside Lord of The Flies and be right at home ( )

This author has an amazing talent for language, and creating characters and scenes with a depth to them. The beauty of Jamaica that he describes is so palpable that it made me long to experience it in person. He also understands how to create child characters, and how different they are from the adults he created. Often, it's what he doesn't say, but only hints at, that has the biggest effect on you.
If you've ever worked with children, you know how cruel they can be. In this book, you'll be shocked at their behavior.
The parents in this work remind me of the parents in "The Rugrats," where the kids go off all by themselves and get into all kinds of mischief and danger, even, and the parents are totally (blissfully) unaware.
I will be reading more of this author's work. ( )

I’m not sure what I expected from this book, but whatever it was, this wasn’t it. It is about a group of children who are taken by pirates, so perhaps I thought it would be in the vein of Treasure Island. It is about the children and more or less from their viewpoint, so perhaps I thought it would be more juvenile or innocent. Its plot reeks of adventure, so perhaps I thought it would be more action and less character study. What it turned out to be was captivating and, while told in a very lighthearted manner, a bit dark.

I have not encountered a character like young Emily since my first reading of Lord of the Flies, and it is, perhaps, only the raw unpredictability of her that garners the comparison. For anyone who thinks children are simple or lack the ability to deceive, she will make you reconsider that position. What is stunning is that she is wholly believable for me, and her sallies between her recognition of the adult problems around her and the childish approach she takes to them is eerily accurate.

There are tragedies galore in this book, as there would be, of course, in a situation like this one. No one seems precisely to blame, but there is a degree of carelessness that it is difficult to overlook, which begins long before the pirates make their fated entrance. The adults seem particularly clueless and make it all up as they go along. None of them seems aware of the need for truth in the stories they tell, and none of them seems to see the implications of what effect this adventure has upon the children.

The story begins with a hurricane, a high wind, and that wind blows through the entire novel, tossing the characters about, quite against their will, and landing them, as it lands the black woman who is tossed by the storm across the fields and into a wall, wherever it desires. But a hurricane is an innocent thing, even though it kills, for there is no intent...after all, it is just a wind, out of control of anyone save God.


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A delightful if somewhat grim novel about childhood and innocence, or loss thereof, that reminded me of both Lord of the Flies and a Decadent Peter Pan. ( )