Captain Jonsen makes many decisions throughout the novel that have unforeseen consequences. When he and his men raid the Clorinda, the Bas-Thornton children are mistakenly left aboard his ship. When Jonsen docks his ship to sell his booty, John, who is left unsupervised, falls to his death. The rebellious life the pirate captain leads presents a sharp contrast to the more traditional values with which the children have been raised, and living aboard the pirate vessel prompts the children to run wild.
One night Jonsen becomes drunk and enters the children's cabin, where he touches Emily inappropriately. The incident leads Margaret to distance herself from the other children and move into Jonsen's cabin, where they presumably have a sexual relationship. When Emily is injured by Rachael, the captain brings her to his cabin to recover from her wound. He then captures the captain of a Dutch ship and locks the man in his cabin, thereby setting the scene for Emily's murder of the man when he tries to reach for a knife.
As tensions between the children and the pirates mount, Jonsen disguises his ship in order to pass the children off to a steamship, but his scheme backfires when Emily reveals the pirates' identity and they are arrested. Because of Emily's false testimony about the Dutch captain's murder, Jonsen is hanged.
Although Jonsen commits many crimes, it is his interactions with the children, and their own savage impulses, that lead to his downfall.
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