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Title: The Lady and the Pirate
Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive
Author: Emerson Hough
Illustrator: Harry A. Mathes
Release Date: March 24, 2008 [EBook #24907]
Language: English
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THE LADY AND THE
PIRATE
_Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate
and a Fair Captive_
_By_
EMERSON HOUGH
_Author of_
THE MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE, 54-40 OR FIGHT
THE PURCHASE PRICE, JOHN RAWN, ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY
HARRY A. MATHES
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
[Illustration: Thus the heartless jade stood, unable to
meet my eagle eye]
COPYRIGHT 1913
EMERSON HOUGH
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I IN WHICH I AM A CAITIFF 1
II IN WHICH I HOLD A PARLEY 6
III IN WHICH I AM A CAPTIVE 14
IV IN WHICH I AM A PIRATE 23
V IN WHICH WE SAIL FOR THE SPANISH MAIN 34
VI IN WHICH I ACQUIRE A FRIEND 44
VII IN WHICH I ACHIEVE A NAME 52
VIII IN WHICH WE HAVE AN ADVENTURE 60
IX IN WHICH WE TAKE MUCH TREASURE 75
X IN WHICH I SHOW MY TRUE COLORS 90
XI IN WHICH MY PLOT THICKENS 97
XII IN WHICH WE CLOSE WITH THE ENEMY 102
XIII IN WHICH WE BOARD THE ENEMY 110
XIV IN WHICH IS ABOUNDING TROUBLE 122
XV IN WHICH IS CONVERSATION WITH THE CAPTIVE MAIDEN 131
XVI IN WHICH IS FURTHER PARLEY WITH THE CAPTIVE MAIDEN 143
XVII IN WHICH IS HUE AND CRY 154
XVIII IN WHICH IS DISCUSSION OF TWO AUNTIES 158
XIX IN WHICH I ESTABLISH A MODUS VIVENDI 166
XX IN WHICH I HAVE POLITE CONVERSATION, BUT LITTLE
ELSE 175
XXI IN WHICH WE MAKE A RUN FOR IT 184
XXII IN WHICH I WALK AND TALK WITH HELENA 192
XXIII IN WHICH IS A PRETTY KETTLE OF FISH 205
XXIV IN WHICH WE HAVE A SENSATION 213
XXV IN WHICH WE MEET THE OTHER MAN, ALSO ANOTHER WOMAN 224
XXVI IN WHICH WE BURN ALL BRIDGES 244
XXVII IN WHICH WE REACH THE SPANISH MAIN 258
XXVIII IN WHICH IS CERTAIN POLITE CONVERSATION 267
XXIX IN WHICH IS SHIPWRECK 285
XXX IN WHICH IS SHIPWRECK OF OTHER SORT 299
XXXI IN WHICH WE TAKE TO THE BOATS 312
XXXII IN WHICH I RESCUE THE COOK 324
XXXIII IN WHICH WE ARE CASTAWAYS 333
XXXIV IN WHICH IS NO RAPPROCHEMENT WITH THE FAIR CAPTIVE 349
XXXV IN WHICH I FIND TWO ESTIMABLE FRIENDS, BUT LOSE
ONE BELOVED 357
XXXVI IN WHICH WE FOLD OUR TENTS 375
XXXVII IN WHICH IS PHILOSOPHY; WHICH, HOWEVER, SHOULD NOT
BE SKIPPED 384
XXXVIII IN WHICH IS AN ARMISTICE WITH FATE 395
XXXIX IN WHICH ARE SEALED ORDERS 400
XL IN WHICH LAND SHOWS IN THE OFFING 414
XLI IN WHICH IS MUCH ROMANCE, AND SOME TREASURE, ALSO
VERY MUCH HAPPINESS 426
THE LADY AND THE PIRATE
CHAPTER I
IN WHICH I AM A CAITIFF
I was sitting at one of my favorite spots engaged in looking through
my fly-book for some lure that might, perhaps, mend my luck in the
afternoon's fishing. At least, I had within the moment been so
engaged; although the truth is that the evening was so exceptionally
fine, and the spot always so extraordinarily attractive to me--this
particular angle of the stream, where the tall birches stand, being to
my mind the most beautiful bit on my whole estate--that I had
forgotten all about angling and was sitting with rod laid by upon the
bank, the fly-book scarce noted in my hand. Moreover, a peculiarly
fine specimen of Anopheles, (as I took it to be) was at that very
moment hovering over my hand, and I was anxious to confirm my judgment
as well as to enlarge my collection of mosquitoes. I had my other hand
in a pocket feeling for the little phial in which I purposed to
enclose Anopheles, if I could coax him to alight. Indeed, I say, I
was at that very moment as happy as a man need be; or, at least, as
happy as I ever expected to be. Imagine my surprise, therefore, at
that moment to hear a voice, apparently intended for me, exclaim,
"Halt! Caitiff!"
I looked up, more annoyed than displeased or startled. It is not often
one sees so fine a specimen of Anopheles; and one could have sworn
that, but for my slight involuntary movement of the hand, he must have
settled; after which--_crede experto!_--he would have been the same as
in my phial, and doomed to the chloroform within the next hour.
Besides, no matter who one may be or how engaged, it is not wholly
seemly to be accosted as a caitiff, when one is on one's own land,
offending no man on earth, owing no debt and paying no tribute,
feudal, commercial, military or personal, to any man on earth.
The situation seemed to me singular. Had the time been some centuries
earlier, the place somewhere in the old world, such speech might have
had better fitting. But the time was less than a year ago, the place
was in America. I was on my own lands, in this one of our middle
states. This was my own river; or at least, I owned the broad acres on
both sides of it for some miles. And I was a man of no slinking habit,
no repulsive mien, of that I was assured, but a successful American
of means; lately a professional man and now a man of leisure, and not
so far past thirty years of age. My fly-rod was the best that money
can buy, and the pages of the adjacent book were handsomely stocked by
the best makers of this country and each of the three divisions of
Great Britain; in each of which--as well as in Norway, Germany, or for
the matter of that, India, New Zealand, Alaska, Japan or other
lands--I had more than once wet a line. My garb was not of leather
jerkin, my buskins not of thonged straw, but on the contrary I was
turned out in good tweeds, well cut by my London tailor. To be called
offhand, and with no more reason than there was provocation, a
"caitiff," even by a voice somewhat treble and a trifle trembling,
left me every reason in the world to be surprised, annoyed and
grieved. For now Anopheles had flown away; and had I not been thus
startled, I should certainly have had him. Yet more, no fish would
rise in that pool the rest of that evening, for no trout in my little
stream thereabout ever had seen a boat or been frightened by the plash
of an oar since the time, three years back, when I had bought the
place.
I looked up. Just at the bend, arrested now by hand anchorage to the
overhanging alders, lay a small boat, occupied by two boys, neither
of more than fourteen years, the younger seemingly not more than
twelve. It was the latter who was clinging with one hand to the
drooping bushes. His companion, apparently the leader in their present
enterprise, was half crouching in the bow of the boat and he,
evidently, was the one who had accosted me.
A second glance gave me even more surprise, for it showed that the
boat, though not precisely long, low and rakish of build, evidently
was of piratical intent. At least she was piratical in decoration. On
each side of her bow there was painted--and the evening sun, shining
through my larches, showed the paint still fresh--in more or less
accurate design in black, the emblem of a skull and cross-bones. Above
her, supported by a short staff, perhaps cut from my own willows, flew
a black flag, and whatever may have been her stern-chaser equipment,
her broadside batteries, or her deck carronades--none of which I could
well make out, as her hull lay half concealed among the alders--her
bow-chaser was certainly in commission and manned for action. The
pirate captain, himself, was at the lanyard; and I perceived that he
now rested an extraordinarily large six-shooter in the fork of a short
staff, which was fixed in the bow. Along this, with a three-cornered
gray eye, he now sighted at the lower button of my waistcoat, and in a
fashion that gave me goose-flesh underneath the button, in spite of
all my mingled emotions. Had I not "halted," as ordered, to the extent
of sitting on quietly as I was, he no doubt would have pulled the
lanyard, with consequences such as I do not care to contemplate, and
mayhap to the effect that this somewhat singular story would never
have been written.
"Halt, Sirrah!" began the pirate leader again, "or I will blow you out
of the water!"
I sat for a moment regarding him, my chin in my hand.
"No," said I at last; "I already am out of the water, my friend. But,
prithee, have a care of yonder lanyard, else, gadzooks! you may belike
blow me off the bank and into the water."
This speech of mine seemed as much to disconcert the pirate chieftain
as had his me. He stood erect, shifting his Long Tom, to the great
ease of my waistcoat button.
"Won't you heave to, and put off a small boat for a parley?" I
inquired.
CHAPTER II
IN WHICH I HOLD A PARLEY
The two pirates turned to each other for consultation, irresolute, but
evidently impressed by the fact that their prize did not purpose to
hoist sail and make a run for it.
"What ho! mates?" demanded the captain, in as gruff a voice as he
could compass: "Ye've heard his speech, and he has struck his flag."
"Suppose the villain plays us false," rejoined the "mates" or rather,
the mate, in a voice so high or quavering that for a moment it was
difficult for me to repress a smile; although these three years past I
rarely had smiled at all.
The captain turned to one side, so that now I could see both him and
his crew. The leader was as fine a specimen of boy as you could have
asked, sturdy of bare legs, brown of face, red of hair, ragged and
tumbled of garb. His crew was active though slightly less robust, a
fair-haired, light-skinned chap, blue-eyed, and somewhat better clad
than his companion. There was something winning about his face. At a
glance I knew his soul. He was a dreamer, an idealist, an artist, in
the bud. My heart leaped out to him instinctively in a great impulse
of sympathy and understanding. Indeed, suddenly, I felt the blood
tingle through my hair. I looked upon life as I had not these three
years. The imagination of Youth, the glamour of Adventure, lay here
before me; things I cruelly had missed these last few years, it seemed
to me.
"How, now, shipmates?" I remarked mildly. "Wouldst doubt the faith of
one who himself hath flown the Jolly Rover? Cease your fears and come
aboard--that is to say, come ashore."
"Git out, Jimmy," I heard the captain say in a low voice, after a
moment of indecision. "Keep him covered till I tie her up."
Jimmy, the fair-haired pirate, hauled in on the alders and flung a
grappling iron aboard my bank, which presently he ascended. As he
stood free from the screening fringe of bushes, I saw that he was
slender, and not very tall, one not wholly suited by nature to his
stern calling. His once white jacket now was soiled, and one leg of
his knickers was loose, from his scramble up the bank. He was belted
beyond all earl-like need; wore indeed two belts, which supported two
long hunting knives and a Malay kris, such as we now get from the
Philippines; as well as a revolver large beyond all proportion to his
own size. A second revolver of like dimensions now trembled in his
hand, and even though its direction toward me was no more than
general, I resumed the goose-flesh underneath my waistcoat, for no man
could tell what might happen. In none of my works with dangerous big
game have I felt a similar uneasiness; no, nor even in the little
affair in China where the Boxers held us up, did I ever really
consider the issue more in doubt. It pleased me, however, to make no
movement of offense or defense; and luckily the revolver was not
discharged.
When the two had topped the bank, and had approached me--taking cover
behind trees in a way which made me suspect Boy Scout training,
mingled with bandit literature--to a point where we could see each
other's features plainly, I moved over to one side of my bank, and
motioned them to approach.
"Come alongside, brothers," said I, pushing my fly-rod to one side;
"make fast and come aboard. And tell me, what cheer?"
They drew up to me, stern of mien, bold of bearing, dauntless of
purpose. At least, so I was convinced, each wished and imagined
himself to seem; and since they wished so to be seen thus, seized by
some sudden whim, I resolved to see them. How I envied them! Theirs
all the splendor of youth, of daring, of adventure, of romance;
things gone by from me, or for the most part, never known.
Frowning sternly, they seated themselves reluctantly on the grassy
bank beside me, and gazed out in the dignity of an imagined manhood
across my river, which now was lighted bravely by the retiring sun.
Had I not felt with them, longed with them, they could never so
splendidly have maintained their pretense. But between us, there in
the evening on my stream with only the birds and the sun to see, it
was not pretense. Upon the contrary, all cloaks were off, all masks
removed, and we were face to face in the strong light of reality. As
clearly as though I always had known them, I saw into the hearts of
these; and what I saw made my own heart ache and yearn for something
it had ever missed.
"What cheer, comrades?" I repeated at length. "Whither away, and upon
what errand?"
Now a strange thing happened, which I do not explain, for that I can
not. In plain fact, these two were obviously runaway boys, not the
first, nor perhaps the last of runaway boys; and I was a man of means,
a retired man, supposedly somewhat of a hermit, although really
nothing of the sort; lately a lawyer, hard-headed and disillusioned,
always a man of calm reason, as I prided myself; subject to no
fancies, a student and a lover of science, a mocker at all
superstition and all weak-mindedness. (Pardon me, that I must say all
these things of myself.) Yet, let me be believed who say it, some
spell, whether of this presence of Youth, whether of the evening and
the sun, or whether of the inner and struggling soul of Man, so fell
upon us all then and there, that we were not man and boys, but bold
adventurers, all three of like kidney! This was not a modern land that
lay about us. Yonder was not the copse beyond the birches, where my
woodcock sometimes found cover. This was not my trout-stream. Those
yonder were not my elms and larches moving in the evening air. No,
before us lay the picture of the rolling deep, its long green swells
breaking high in white spindrift. The keen wind of other days sounded
in our ears, and yonder pressed the galleons of Spain! Youth, Youth
and Adventure, were ours.
We smiled not at all, therefore, as, with some thoughtful effort, it
is true, we held to fitting manner of speech. "We seek for treasure,"
piped the thin voice of him I had heard called Jimmy. "Let none dare
lift hand against us!"
"And whither away, my hearties?"
"Spang! to the Spanish Main." This also from the blue-eyed boy; who,
now, with some difficulty, managed to let down the hammer of his
six-shooter without damage to himself or others.
"We didn't know but youse would try to stop us," exclaimed the
red-haired leader. "We come around the bend and seen you settin'
there; an' we was resolved--to--to----"
"To sell our lives dearly!" supplemented Jimmy. "He who would seek to
stop us does so at his peril." And Jimmy made so fell a movement
toward his side-arms that I hastened to restrain him.
"Yes," said I; "you are quite right, my hearties."
"But, gee!" ventured the red-haired pirate, "what was you thinkin'
about?"
"You ask me to tell truth, good Sire," I made reply, "and I shall do
no less. At the very moment you trained your bow-chaser on me, I was
thinking of two things."
"Speak on, caitiff!" demanded Jimmy fiercely.
"Nay, call me not so, good Sir," I rejoined, "for such, in good-sooth,
I am not, but honest faithful man. Ye have but now asked what I
pondered, and I fain would speak truth, an' it please ye, my
hearties."
"What's he givin' us, Jimmy?" whispered the pirate captain dubiously,
aside.
"Speak on!" again commanded he of the blue eyes. "But your life blood
dyes the deck if you seek to deceive Jean Lafitte, or Henry
L'Olonnois!"
(So then, thought I, at last I knew their names.)
In reply I reached to my belt and drew out quickly--so quickly that
they both flinched away--the long handled knife which, usually, I
carried with me for cutting down alders or other growth which
sometimes entangled my flies as I fished along the stream. "Listen,"
said I, "I swear the pirates' oath. On the point of my blade," and I
touched it with my right forefinger, "I swear that I pondered on two
things when you surprised me."
"Name them!" demanded Jimmy L'Olonnois fiercely.
"First, then," I answered, "I was wondering what I could use as a cork
to my phial, when once I had yonder Anopheles in it----"
"Who's he?" demanded Jean Lafitte.
"Anopheles? A friend of mine," I replied; "a mosquito, in short."
"Jimmy, he's crazy!" ejaculated Jean Lafitte uneasily.
"Say on, caitiff!" commanded L'Olonnois, ignoring him; "what else?"
"In the second place," said I--and again I placed my right forefinger
on the point of my blade, "I was thinking of Helena."
"Is she your little girl," hesitatingly inquired Jimmy L'Olonnois, for
the instant forgetting his part.
"No," said I sadly, "she is not my little girl."
"Where is she?" vaguely.
"Regarding the whereabouts of either Anopheles or Helena, at this
moment," said I still sadly, "I am indeed all at sea, as any good
pirate should be."
I tried to jest, but fared ill at it. I felt my face flush at hearing
her name spoken aloud. And sadly true was it that, on that afternoon
and many another, I had found myself, time and again, adream with
Helena's face before me. I saw it now--a face I had not seen these
three years, since the time when first I had come hither with the
purpose of forgetting.
Jimmy was back in his part again, and doing nobly. "Ha!" said he. "So,
fellow, pondering on a fair one, didst not hear the approach of our
good ship, the _Sea Rover_?"
"In good sooth, I did not," I answered; "and as for these other
matters, I swear on my blade's point I have spoken the truth."
Our conversation languished for the moment. Illusion lay in the
balance. The old melancholy impended above me ominously.
CHAPTER III
IN WHICH I AM A CAPTIVE
"What ho! Jean Lafitte," said I at length, rousing myself from the old
habit of reverie, of which I had chiefest dread; "and you, Henri
L'Olonnois, scourges of the main, both of you, listen! I have a plan
to put before you, my hearties."
"Say on, Sirrah!" rejoined the younger pirate, so promptly and so
gravely that again I had much to do to refrain from sudden mirth.
"Why then, look ye," I continued. "The sun is sinking beneath the
wave, and the good ship rides steady at her anchor. Meantime men must
eat! and yonder castle amid the forest offers booty. What say ye if we
pass within the wood, and see what we may find of worth to souls bold
as ours?"
"'Tis well!" answered L'Olonnois; and I could see assent in Lafitte's
eyes. In truth I could discover no great preparations for a long
voyage in the open hold of the _Sea Rover_, and doubted not that both
captain and crew by this time were hungry. Odd crumbs of crackers and
an empty sardine can might be all very well at the edge of the
village of Pausaukee (I judged they could have come no greater
distance, some twelve or fifteen miles); but they do not serve for so
long a journey as lies between Pausaukee and the Spanish Main.
They rose as I did, and we passed beyond the clump of tall birches,
along the edge of my mowing meadow, and through the gate which closes
my woodland path--to me the loveliest of all wood-trails, so gentle
and so silent is it always, and so fringed, seasonably, with ferns and
flowers. Thus, presently, we saw the blue smoke rising above my lodge,
betokening to me that my Japanese factotum, Hiroshimi, now had my
dinner under way.
To me, it was my customary abode, my home these three years; but they
beside me saw not the rambling expanse of my leisurely log mansion.
They noted not the overhanging gables, the lattices of native wood. To
them, yonder lay a castle in a foreign land. Here was moat and wall,
then a portcullis, and gratings warded these narrow portals against
fire of musketoon. My pet swallows' nest, demure above my door, to
them offered the aspect of a culverin's mouth; and, as now, I made my
customary approach-call, by which I heralded my return from any
excursion on the stream of an evening, I could swear these invaders
looked for naught less than a swarm of archers springing to the
walls, and the hoarse answer of my men-at-arms back of each guarded
portal. Such is the power of youthful dreaming, such the residuary
heritage of days of high emprise, when life was full of blood and wine
and love, and savored not so wholly of dull commonplace!
But indeed, (or so I presume; for at the moment my own imagination
swept on with theirs) none manned the walls or rattled the chains of
gate and bridge. The saffron Hiroshimi opened the screen door before
us, showing no surprise or interest in my strange companions. Thus we
made easy conquest of our castle. As we entered, there lay before us,
lighted softly by the subdued twilight which filtered through the
surrounding grove, the interior of that home which in three years I
had learned much to love, lonely as it was. Here I now dwelt most of
the time, leaving behind me, as though shut off by a closed door, the
busy scenes of an active and successful life. (I presume I may fairly
speak thus of myself, since there is no one else to speak.)
My pirate companions, suddenly grown shy, stood silent for a moment,
for the time rather at a loss to carry on the play which had been
easier in the open. I heard Jimmy draw a long breath. He was first to
remove his hat. But his companion was quicker to regain his poise,
although for a moment he forgot his pirate speech. "Gee!" said he.
"Ain't this great!"
I doubt if any praise I ever heard in my life pleased me more than
this frank comment; no, not even the kind word and hand-clasp of old
Judge Henderson, what time I won my first cause at law. For this that
lay about me was what I had chosen for my life to-day. I had preferred
this to the career into which my father's restless ambition had
plunged me almost as soon as I had emerged from my college and my
law-school--a career which my own restless ambition had found
sufficient until that final break with Helena Emory, which occurred
soon after the time when my father died; when the news went out that
I, his heir, was left with but a shrunken fortune, and with many debts
to pay; news which I, myself, had promulgated for reasons of my own.
After that, called foolish by all my friends, lamented by members of
my family, forgotten, as I fancy, by most who knew me, I had retired
to this lodge in the wilderness. Here, grown suddenly resentful of a
life hitherto wasted in money-getting alone, I had resolved to spend
the remainder of my days, as beseemed a student and a philosopher.
Having read Weininger and other philosophers, I was convinced that
woman was the lowest and most unworthy thing in the scale of created
things, a thing quite beneath the attention of a thinking man.
I have said that I was scarce beyond thirty years of age. Even so, I
found myself already old; and like any true philosopher, I resolved to
make myself young. As hitherto I had had no boyhood, I determined to
achieve a boyhood for myself. Studying myself, I discovered that I had
rarely smiled; so I resolved to find somewhat to make me smile. The
great realm of knowledge, widest and sweetest of all empires for a
man, lay before me alluringly when I entered upon my business career;
and so interested was I in my business and my books that only by
chance had I met the woman who drove me out of both. A boy I had never
been; nay, nor even a youth. I had always been old. True, like others
of my station, I had owned my auto cars, my matched teams--owned them
now, indeed--but I had never owned a dog. So, when I came hither with
ample leisure, perhaps my chief ambition was a deliberate purpose to
encompass my deferred boyhood. Thus I had built this house of logs
which now--with a surprised and gratifying throb of my heart I learned
it--appealed to the souls of real boys. It was the castle where I
dreamed; and now it was the palace of their dreams also. I felt, at
least, that I had succeeded. My heart throbbed in a new way, very
foolish, yet for some reason suddenly enjoyable.
My house was all of logs and had no decorations of paint or tapestry
within. Its only arras was of the skins of wild beasts--of the African
lion and leopard, the zebra, many antelopes. The walls were hung with
mounted heads--those of the moose, the elk, the bighorn, most of the
main trophies of my own land and to these, through my foreign hunting,
I had added heads of all the great trophies of Africa and Asia as
well. A splendid pair of elephant tusks stood in a corner. A fine head
of the sheep of Tibet, _ovus poli_--and I prize none of my trophies
more, unless it be the fine robe of the Chinese mountain tiger--looked
full front at us from above the fireplace. My rod racks, and those
which supported my guns and rifles, were here and there about the
room. The whole gave a jaunty atmosphere to my home. I had gone
soberly about the business of sport; and in these days, that can be
practised most successfully by a man with much leisure and unstinted
means.
My books lay about everywhere, also, books which perhaps would not
have appealed to all. My copies of the Vedas, many works on the
Buddhist faith, and translations from Confucius, lay side by side
with that Bible which we Christians have almost forgot. Here, too,
stood my desk with its cases of preserved mosquitoes--for this year I
was studying mosquitoes as an amusement. I had collected all the
mosquito literature of the world, and my books, in French, German and
English, lay near my great microscope. I had passed many happy hours
here in the oblivion of mental concentration, always a delight with
me, now grown almost a necessity if I were to escape the worst of all
habits, that of introspection and self-pity.
My piano and my violins also were in full sight; for the world of
music, as well as the world of sport and youth, I was deliberately
opening for myself, also in exchange for that closed world of affairs
which I had abandoned. Indeed, all manners of the impedimenta of a
well-to-do Japanese-cared-for bachelor were in evidence. To me, each
object was familiar and was cherished. I had never felt need to
apologize to any gentleman for my quarters or their contents--or to
any woman, for no woman had ever seen my home. I may admit that,
contrary to the belief of some, I was a rich man, far richer that I
had need or care to be; and since it was not due to my own ability
altogether nor in response to any real ambition of my own, I know I
will be pardoned for simply stating the truth. My one great ambition
in life was to forget; but if that might be best obtained in sport, in
study, or amid the gentle evidences of good living, so much the
better. Many men had called my father, stern and masterful man that he
was, a robber, a thief, a pirate--in great part, I suspect, in envy
that they themselves had not attained a like stature in similar
achievement. But no one had ever called his son a pirate--until now!
It made me oddly happy.
I ought to have been happy here all these years, able to do precisely
what I liked; but sometimes I felt myself strangely alone in the
world. I was always silent and apparently cold--though really, let me
whisper--only shy. Sometimes, even here, I found myself a trifle sad.
It is difficult to be a boy when one starts at thirty; especially
difficult if one has always been rather old and staid.
I tell all these things to explain that keen pleasure, that swift
exultation, that rush of the blood to my cheeks, which I felt when I
saw that my house and my way of life met the approval of real boys.
Pirates, too!
Swift, therefore, fell once more the magic curtain of romance. I heard
a strange voice, my own voice, saying: "Enter then, my bold mates, and
let us explore this castle which we have conquered." Yes, illusion
floated in through the windows on the pale light of the evening. This
was a castle we had taken; and the detail that I chanced to own it was
neither here nor there.
"Prisoner," began L'Olonnois sternly--he was usually spokesman, if not
always leader--"Prisoner, your life is spared for the time. Lead on!
Attempt to play us false, and your blood shall be spilled upon the
deck!"
"It shall be so," I answered. "And if I do not give you the best meal
you have had to-day, then indeed let my life's blood stain the deck."
So saying, I nodded to Hiroshimi to serve the dinner.
CHAPTER IV
IN WHICH I AM A PIRATE
With my own hands I have trained that prize, Hiroshimi, to cook and to
serve; but only Providence could give Hiroshimi his super-humanly
disinterested calm. He fitted perfectly into the picture of our dream.
'Twas no ordinary log house in which we sat, indeed no house at all.
Beneath us rose and fell a stanch vessel, responsive to the long lift
of the southern seas. It was not a rustle of the leaves we heard
through the open windows, but the low ripple of waves along our
strakes came to our ears through the open ports. Hiroshimi did not
depart to the kitchen; but high aloft our lookout swept the sea for
sail that might offer us a prize.
If any say that this manner of illusion may not exist between two boys
and a man, I answer that we did not thus classify it. By the new
pleasure in my soul, by the new blood in my cheek, I swear we were
three boys together, and all in quest of adventure.
True, at times our speech smacked less of nautical and piratical
phrase, at times, indeed, halted. It is difficult for a
twelve-year-old pirate, exceeding hungry, to ask for a third helping
of grilled chicken in a voice at once stern and ingratiating.
Moreover, it is difficult for a discreet and law-abiding citizen, with
a full sense of duty, deliberately to aid and abet two youthful
runaways. But whenever illusion wavered, L'Olonnois saved the day by
resuming his stern scowl, even above a chicken-bone. His facility in
rolling speech I discovered to be, in part, attributable to a volume
which I saw protruding from his pocket. At my request he passed it to
me, and I saw its title; _The Pirate's Own Book_. I knew it well.
Indeed, I now arose, and passing to my bookshelves, drew down a
duplicate copy of that rare volume, recounting the deeds of the old
buccaneers. The eyes of L'Olonnois widened as I laid the two side by
side.
"You've got it, too!" he exclaimed.
I nodded.
"That explains it," said Jean Lafitte.
"Explains what?"
"Why, how you--why now--how you could be a pirate, too, just as
natural as us."
"I have read it many a time," said I.
"Wasn't you never a pirate?" asked Jean Lafitte.
"No," said I, smiling, "although many have said my father was. He was
very rich."
"Well, you can talk just like us," said Jean Lafitte admiringly, "even
if you have lost all."
"Of course," said I exultingly. "Why not? I think as you do. As much
as you I am disgusted with the dulness of life. I, too, wish to seek
my fortune. Well then, why not, John Saunders? Why not, James
Henderson?"
Ah, now indeed illusion halted! Both boys, abashed, fell back in their
chairs. "How did you know our names?" asked the older of the two at
length.
"Nay, fear not," said I. "I do but seek to prove my fitness to join
the jolly brotherhood, good mates."
"Aw, honest!" rejoined Jimmy; "you got to tell us how you knew."
"Well, then, let me go on. In your book, here, I saw your father's
name, Jimmy. I know your father. He is Judge Willard Henderson of the
Appellate Court in the city. I was admitted to the bar under him. He
has a summer place at the lake above here, as I know, although I have
never visited him there. I know your mother, too, Jimmy,--so well I
should not like to cause her even a moment's uneasiness about you."
"Do you know my auntie, Helena Emory?" demanded Jimmy suddenly. I felt
the blood surge into my face.
"Don't misunderstand me," I rejoined, "I only have some gift of the
second sight, as I shall now prove to you. For instance, Jean Lafitte,
I know your earlier name was John Saunders, although I never saw or
heard of you before."
"Well, now, how'd you know that?" demanded the elder boy.
"I did not promise to tell the secrets of my art," I smiled. I did not
tell him that I had seen the name of Saunders on the tag of a shirt
somewhat soiled.
"Your father's name was John before you," I added at a venture. He
assented, half-frightened, although I had only guessed at this,
supposing John Saunders to be a somewhat continuous family name in a
family of auburn Highlanders.
"He sells farm stuff at the hotel above," I ventured. And again my
guess was truth.
"You take the wagon there, sometimes, with vegetables and milk and
eggs; and so you met Jimmy, here, and you went fishing together; and
he told you stories out of his book. I fear, John, that your father
licks you because you go fishing on Sunday. That was why you resolved
to run away. You led Jimmy into that with you. Yesterday you took a
boat from the lake near the hotel, and you painted her up and rigged
her for a pirate ship. You rowed across the lake to the marsh where
the little stream makes out--my trout-stream here. You followed that
stream down, with no more trouble than ducking under a wire fence
once in a while, until you came to my land, and until you saw me. You
were afraid I might tell on you; and besides, you were pirates now;
and so you took me prisoner. Marry, good Sirs, 'tis not the first time
a prisoner has joined a pirate band!"
"That's wonderful!" gasped Jean T. Lafitte Saunders. "And you say you
have never been up to our lake!"
"No," said I, "but I have a map, and I know my river heads in your
lake, and that very probably it runs out of the low marshy side.
Besides, being a boy myself, I know precisely what boys would do. Tell
me, do you think I would betray two of the brotherhood?"
"You won't give us away?" The elder pirate's face was eager.
"On the contrary, I'll see that you don't get into any trouble."
"That's a good scout!" ejaculated he fervently, his freckled face
flushing.
"We wasn't--that is, we hadn't--well, you see?" began Jimmy. "Maybe
we'd just have camped down here and gone back to-morrow. I was afraid
about taking the boat. Besides, I've only got about six dollars,
anyhow." He spread his wealth out upon the table before me frankly.
"Have no fear," said I. "To-night I shall write a few letters that
will clear up every trouble back home, and allow us to continue our
journey to the Spanish Main."
"Oh, will you?" cried Jimmy, much relieved. "That'll be a good scout,"
he added.
Suddenly I found myself smiling at him, I who had smiled so rarely
these years, whether in the Selkirks or the Himalayas, in Uganda or
here in my own little wilderness--because Helena had left me so sad.
"But if I promise, you, also, must promise in turn."
Used as I was, already, to the astounding changes in Jimmy from boy to
buccaneer and back again, I was now interested at the fell scowl which
he summoned to his features, as soon as he felt relieved as to the
domestic situation. "Speak, fellow!" he demanded; and folding his
arms, presented so threatening a front that I saw my man Hiroshimi
covertly lay hold upon a carving knife.
"Why, then, my hearties," said I, "'tis thus. I'll sign on as
sea-lawyer and scrivener, as well as purser for the ship. Yes, I'll
sign articles and voyage with you for a week or a month, or two
months, or three. I'll provender the ship and pay all bills of libel
or demurrage in any port of call; and by my fateful gift of second
sight, which ye have seen well proven here to-night, not only will I
see ye safe for what ye already have done, but will keep ye safe
against any enemy we may meet, be he whom he may!"
"'Tis well," said L'Olonnois. "Say on!"
"And in return I ask a boon."
"Name it, fellow!"
"Already I have named it--that I, too, shall be accepted as one of the
brotherhood. Oh, listen"--I broke out impulsively--"I have never been
a pirate, and I have never been a boy. I have had everything in the
world I wanted and it made me awfully lonesome, because when you have
everything you have nothing. I have nothing to do but eat and sleep,
and hunt and fish, and read and write, and study and think, and play
my music, here. I do not want to do these things any more. Especially
I do not want to think. Boys do not think, and I want to be a boy. I
want to be a pirate with you. I want to seek my fortune with you."
We sat silent, almost solemn for a moment, so sincere was my speech
and so startling to them. But thanks to L'Olonnois and his saving
book, illusion came to us once more in time.
"Will ye be good brother and true pirate?" demanded L'Olonnois. "And
will ye take the oath of blood?"
"That I will!" said I.
"Brothers and good shipmates all"--broke in Jean Lafitte in a deep
voice--"what say ye? Shall we put him to the oath?"
"Aye, aye, Sir!" responded the deep chorus of scores of full-chested
voices. Or, at least, so it seemed to us, though, mayhap, 'twas no
more than Jimmy who spoke.
"Swear him, then!" commanded Jean Lafitte. "Swear him by the oath of
blood."
"We--we haven't any blood!" whispered L'Olonnois, aside, somewhat
troubled.
"That have we, mates," said I, "and the ceremony shall have full
solemnity."
I took up my keen hunting knife and deliberately and slowly opened the
side of my thumb, more to the pain of Jimmy, I fancy, than to myself,
as I could see by the twitch of his features.
"By this blood I swear!" said I: "and on the point of my blade I swear
to be a true pirate; to fight the fight of all; to divulge no plans of
the company; and to share with my brothers share and share alike of
all booty we may take."
"'Tis well!" said L'Olonnois, much impressed and delighted, as also
was his mate, very evidently.
"And now, my brothers," said I, "you, also, must swear to divulge no
secret of mine that you may learn, to tell nothing of my plans, or my
name, or the name of the port where I signed on the rolls."
"We don't know your name," said Jimmy, "but neither of us will give
you away."
Jean Lafitte was all for opening up his own thumb for blood, but I
stopped him. "This will do," said I, and stained his fingers and those
of L'Olonnois--who grew pale at sight of it to his evident disgust.
So, thus, I became a pirate, and we three were brother rovers of the
deep. I fancied my associates would be loyal. I was thinking of a
certain cousin of the younger pirate. Not for worlds would I seek to
pursue her now; but there had arisen in my soul, already, a sort of
strange wonder whether some intent of fate had sent this youngster
here to remind me once more of her, whom I would forget.
"Now," said I at last, "let us seek what fare the castle offers for
the night." I could see they were tired and sleepy, and so found for
them bath and clean pajamas--somewhat too large to be sure--and good
beds in the wing of my log house. And never, as I be a true pirate,
never have I seen so many and so various single-fire and revolving
short arms, in my life, as these two buccaneers disclosed when they
unbelted and laid aside their jackets! Even thus equipped, I found
them looking enviously at my walls, where hung weapons of many lands.
I sent them to bed happier by telling them that, in the morning, they
should select such as they chose for the equipment of our vessel.
"Gee!" said Jean Lafitte again. "Gee! _Gee!_" He was so happy that I,
too, was happy. It was L'Olonnois who changed that.
"Methinks," said he, regarding me sternly, "that in yonder ivy-clad
halls might dwell some lady fair! Tell me, is it not so?"
He stretched a thin arm out, in the sleeve of my smallest pajamas, and
pointed a slender finger at the interior of my castle of dreams. Alas,
after all it was empty! My old melancholy came back to me.
"No, my brothers," said I, "no maid has ever passed yon door. No, nor
ever will."
L'Olonnois bent his flaxen head in dignified and manly sympathy. "I
see," said he, "our brother in his youth has, perhaps, been deceived
by some fair one!"
Upon which I left them for my own room.
If two buccaneers in my castle slept well that night, a third did not.
Anopheles might go hang. I did not fancy my new microscope. I doubted
if my last violin were a real Strad. I did not like the last music my
dealers had sent out to me. My studies of Confucius and Buddha might
go hang, and my new book as well. For now, before me, came the face of
a certain pirate's aunt, and she was indeed a lady fair. And I knew
full well--as I had known all these years, although I had tried to
deceive myself into believing otherwise--that gladly as I had
exchanged the city for the wilderness, with equal gladness would I
exchange my leisure, all my wealth, all my belongings, for a moment's
touch of her hand, a half-hour of talk heart-to-heart with her, so
that, indeed, I might know the truth; so that, at least, I might have
it direct from her, bitter though the truth might be.
CHAPTER V
IN WHICH WE SAIL FOR THE SPANISH MAIN
When, in the morning, I passed from my quarters toward the main room
which served me both as living-room and dining hall, I found that my
pirate guests were also early risers. I could hear them arguing over
some matter, which proved to be no more serious than the question of a
cold bath of mornings, Jimmy maintaining that everybody had a cold
bath every morning, whereas John insisted with equal heat that nobody
ever bathed ("washed," I think he called it), oftener than once a
week, to wit, on Saturdays only. They engaged in a pillow fight to
settle it, and as Jimmy had John fairly well smothered by his rapid
fire, I voted that the ayes appeared to have it when they referred the
point to me.
As we are very remote and never visited in my wilderness home, it is
not infrequent that I take my morning meal very much indeed in mufti,
although Hiroshimi is always most exact himself. On this morning it
occurred to us all that pajamas made a garb more piratical and more
nautical than anything else obtainable, so we took breakfast--and I
think Hiroshimi never served me a breakfast more delicate and
tempting--clad as perhaps the Romans were, if they had pajamas in
those times. All went well until the keen eyes of Jimmy, wandering
about my place, noted a certain photograph which rested on the top of
my piano--where I was much comforted always to have it, especially of
an evening, when sometimes I played Mendelssohn's _Spring Song_, or
other music of the like. It was the picture of the woman who did not
know and very likely did not care where, or how, I lived--Helena
Emory, to my mind one of the most beautiful women of her day; and I
have seen the world's portraits of the world's beauties of all
recorded days in beauty. Toward this Jimmy ran excitedly--I, with
equal speed, endeavoring to divert him from his purpose.
"But it's my Auntie Helen!" he protested, when I recovered it and
placed it in my pocket.
"It is your Auntie fiddlesticks, Jimmy," said I hastily, hoping my
color was not heightened. "It is your grandmother! Finish your
breakfast."
"I guess I ought to know--" he began.
"What!" I rejoined. "Wouldst pit your wisdom against one who has the
second sight; have a care, shipmate."
"It was!" he reiterated. "I know ain't anybody pretty as she is, so it
was."
"Jimmy L'Olonnois," said I, "let us reason about this. I----"
"Lemme see it, then. I can tell in a minute. Why don't you lemme see
it, then?" He was eager.
"Shipmate," I replied to him, "the hand is sometimes quicker than the
eye, and the mind slower than the heart. For that reason I can not
agree to your request."
"But what'd _he_ be doing with Miss Emory's picture, Jimmy?" argued
Lafitte.
"That's what I'd like to know," I added. "It may be that, in your
haste, you have confused in your mind, Jimmy, some portrait with that
of the Princess Amèlie Louise, of Furstenburg." (I had indeed
sometimes commented on the likeness of Helena Emory to that
light-hearted old-world beauty.) Jimmy did not know that a photograph
of the princess herself, also, stood upon the piano top, nor did he
fully grasp the truth of that old saying that the hand is quicker than
the eye. At least, he gazed somewhat confused at the portrait which I
now produced before his eyes.
"Who was she?" he inquired.
"A very charming young lady of rank, who eloped with a young man not
of rank. In short, although she did not marry a chauffeur, she did
marry an automobile agent. And surely, Jimmy, your Auntie
Helen--whoever she may be--would do no such thing as that and still
claim to be a cousin of a L'Olonnois?"
"I don't know. You can't always tell what a girl's going to do," said
Jimmy sagely. "But I don't think Auntie Helen's going to marry a auto
man."
"Why, Jimmy?" (I found pleasure and dread alike in this conversation.)
"Because everybody says she's going to get married to Mr. Davidson,
and he's a commission man."
Now, I am sure, my face did not flush. It may have paled. I tried to
be composed. I reached for the melon dish and remarked, "Yes? And who
is he? And really, who is your Auntie Helena, Jimmy, and what does she
look like?" I spoke with a fine air of carelessness.
"She looks like the princess, you said," replied Jimmy. "And Mr.
Davidson's rich. He's got a house on our lake, this summer, and he
lives in New York and has offices in Chicago, and travels a good deal.
He has some sort of factory, too, and he's awful rich. I like him
pretty well. He knows how all the ball clubs stand, both leagues,
every day in the year. You ought to know him, because then you might
get to know my Auntie Helena. If they got married, like as not, I
could take you up to their house. I thought everybody knew Mr.
Davidson, and my Auntie Helena, too."
Everybody did. Why should I not know Cal Davidson, one of the
decentest chaps in the world? Why not, since we belonged to half a
dozen of the same clubs in New York and other cities? Why not, since
this very summer I had put my private yacht (named oddly enough, the
_Belle Helène_) in commission for the first season in three years, and
chartered her for the summer around Mackinaw, and a cruise down the
Mississippi to the Gulf that fall? Why not, since I had still unbanked
the handsome check Davidson had insisted on my taking as charter money
for the last quarter?
Davidson! Of all men I had counted him my friend. And now here was he,
reputed to be about to marry the girl who, as he knew, must have
known, ought to have known, was all the world to me! Even if she would
have none of me, and even though I had no shadow of claim on her--even
though we had parted not once but a dozen times, and at last in a
final parting--Davidson ought to have known, must have known! And my
own yacht! Why, no man may know what may go forward in a yachting
party. And, if perchance that fall he could persuade to accompany him
Helena and her chaperon (I made no doubt that would be her Aunt
Lucinda; for Helena's mother died when she was a child, and she was
somewhat alone, although in rather comfortable circumstances) what
could not so clever a man as Davidson, I repeat, one with so much of a
way with women, accomplish in a journey so long as that, with no other
man as his rival? It would be just like Cal Davidson to go ashore at
St. Louis long enough to find a chaplain, and then go on ahead for a
honeymoon around the world--on my boat, with my.... No, she was not
mine ... but then....
All my life I have tried to be fair, even with my own interests at
stake. I tried now to be fair; and I failed! I could see but one side
to this case. Davidson must be found at once, must be halted in
mid-career.
It was about this time that Hiroshimi came in with the morning's mail
and telegrams, all of which at my place come in from the railway, ten
miles or so, by rural free delivery. I paid small attention to him,
most of my mail, these days, having to do with gasoline pumps or
patent hay rakes and lists from my gun and tackle dealers and such
like.
Hiroshimi coughed. "Supposing Honorable like to see these yellow wire
envelopings."
I glanced down and idly opened the telegram. It was from Cal Davidson
himself, and read:
"Name best price outright sale bill Helen to me answer
Chicago."
So then, the scoundrel actually was on his way down the lakes, headed
for the South, even thus early in the season! I knew, of course, that
Bill Helen meant _Belle Helène_. As though I would sell my boat to
him, of all men! It might almost as well have been a sale of Helena
herself outright, as this cursed telegram stated. I crumpled the sheet
in my hand.
"If Honorable contemplates some answering of mail this morning, it
will be one ow-wore till the miserable pony mail carry all man comes,"
ventured Hiroshimi.
"Nothing this morning, Hiro," I managed to choke out, "and, Hiro, make
ready my bag, the small one, for a journey."
"S-s-s-s!" hissed Hiroshimi, which was his way of saying, "Yes, sir,
very well, sir." Surprise he neither showed now nor at any time; and
since he never could tell at what hour I might conclude to start for
his country or Europe or Africa or some other land for a stay of weeks
or months, there was perhaps some warrant for his calm. He had less to
do when I was away; although I always suspected him of poaching my
trout with his infernal Japanese methods of angling.
At this moment L'Olonnois saw, through the open door, a red squirrel
which scampered up a tree. At once he forgot all about his Auntie
Helen and scampered off in pursuit, followed presently by Lafitte.
This gave me time to decide upon a plan.... At last, I lifted my head
again.... Why not, then?
When L'Olonnois returned from the chase of the squirrel, he was all
L'Olonnois and none Jimmy Henderson. The spell of his drama was upon
him once more.
"What ho, mate," he began, scowling most vilely at me, "the sun is
high in the heavens, yet we linger here. Let us up anchor, hoist the
top-gallant mast and set sail for the enemy."
Jimmy's nautical terms might have been open to criticism, but there
was no denying the bold and manly import of his speech. My own heart
jumped well enough with it now.
"'Tis well, shipmate," said I. "Come, get ready your togs and your
weapons, and let us away. As you say, the good ship tugs at her anchor
chains this morning."
I managed to better the wardrobe of both boys by certain ducks and
linens from my own store, albeit a world too large. Lafitte, none too
happy at being thus uncongenially clean, was delight itself when set
to selecting an armament from my collection. He chose three bright
and clean Japanese swords, special blades of the Samurai armorers,
forged long before Mutsuhito's grandfather was a boy--I had paid a
rare price for them in Japan. To these he added three basket-handled
cutlasses, which I had obtained in London, each almost old enough to
have belonged to the crew of Drake himself. A short-barreled magazine
pistol for each of us was his concession to the present unromantic
age. As for Jimmy, he insisted on a small bore rifle as well as a
shotgun. "We might see something," he remarked laconically.
Thus equipped, I persuaded my associates to lay aside most of their
somewhat archaic artillery. Neither had taken any thought of other
supplies. Hiroshimi, however, now appeared, bearing, in addition to my
hand luggage, two hampers, a roll of blankets and a silk tent in its
canvas wrapper.
"Honorable is embarked in those small-going boat that is made tied to
the bank?" inquired Hiroshimi. He had said nothing to me about my
guests, or asked how they came; but as I knew he would find out all
about it, anyhow, after his own fashion, I had not mentioned anything
to him, or told him what to do. I only nodded now, relying on his
efficiency. He now approached my young pirates, and rather against
their will, removed from them some of their burden of weapons,
slinging about himself bundles, baskets, bags and cutlery, until he
almost disappeared from view. He cast on me a reproachful gaze,
however, as he took from Lafitte's hand the bared blade of the old
Samurai sword, and noted the ancient inscription on blade and scabbard
as he sheathed it reverently.
"What does it say, Hiro?" I asked of him.
"Very old talk, Honorable," answered Hiroshimi. "It say, 'Oh,
Honorable Gentleman who carry me, I invite you to make high and noble
adventurings.'"
"Let me carry it, Hiro," said I; and I tucked it under my own arm.
"Good!" exclaimed L'Olonnois. "Then you are going with us? And did you
write the letters that you promised us?"
"I always keep my word."
"And it'll be all right back home about mother and the boat? I'll give
you my six dollars!"
"There is no need. I told you, if you would make me one of the crew of
the _Sea Rover_ and let me seek my fortune with you, I would gladly
pay all the reckoning of our journey."
"And how long will we be gone?"
"Till after your school begins, I fear."
"And how far are you going with us?"
"Spang! to the Spanish Main!" I answered.
So then we set forth down my woodland path.
CHAPTER VI
IN WHICH I ACQUIRE A FRIEND
We proceeded, therefore, through the wood, sweet in the dew of
morning, among many twittering birds, and so came, presently, to the
end of my path, where the little gate shuts it off from my mowing
meadow; at the upper end of which, it may be remembered, the good ship
_Sea Rover_ lay anchored. The grass stood waist-high and wet in the
dew as we turned along the meadow side, and L'Olonnois flinched a bit,
although Lafitte waded along carelessly.
I observed that each boy had now thrust into his hat band a turkey
feather, picked up, en route, along my field's edge. Jimmy was not
sure of the correctness of this; and admitted that, sometimes, he had
read literature having to do with Indian fighting, as well as
piratical enterprises. I suggested that, to my mind, nothing quite
took the place of the regulation red kerchief bound about the head;
whereat, gravely, both L'Olonnois and Lafitte discarded their hats and
feathers, for the bandannas which I proffered them. Having bound these
about their foreheads, a great courage and confidence came to them.
L'Olonnois drew his sword, and with some care placed the blade
between his teeth. "Hist!" exclaimed Lafitte, himself swept by his
friend's imagination, and preparing to place his cutlass in his mouth
also. "Let us approach the vessel with care, lest the enemy be about."
So saying, each pirate with a mouthful of cold steel, and a hand
shading his red-kerchiefed brow, stole through my clump of birches
toward the bend, where the boat had first surprised me; myself
following, somewhat put to it to refrain from laughter, although one
rarely laughs in the young hours of the day, and myself rarely, at
all.
We were greeted by no hostile shot, and found our vessel quite as we
had left her, as I could see at a glance when we neared the bank; but,
none the less, something stirred in the bushes. A growl and a sudden
barking, greeted Hiroshimi as he approached the boat in advance.
"You, Tige!" called out Lafitte. The dog--a dog none too beautiful,
and now just a bit forlorn--approached us, alternately wagging in
friendship and retreating in alarm.
"Well, what do you think of that!" said Jimmy. "We left him back at
the lake--sent him home half a dozen times. How'd he get here, and
how'd he know where we was?"
"He couldn't a-swum the lake," assented John. "And it was more'n ten
miles around; and how could he smell where we went, on the water? Come
here, Tige, you blame fool!"
"Nay," said I, "he is no fool, this dog, but a creature of great
reason, else he never could have found you. And I'll be bound he is as
keen for adventure as any of us."
"He is coming here last night two ow-wore after dinner," said the
omniscient Hiroshimi. "Also he bite me on leg. He, also, is
malefactor."
"He has allotted to himself the duty of caring for the property of his
masters, Hiro," I said, "and hence is not really a malefactor.
Besides, since he would not leave the boat and follow our trail, he is
by this time hungry. Feed him, Hiro."
But Hiroshimi was not eager to approach the piratical canine again; so
I, myself, fished something from a hamper and called the dog to me. He
ate gladly and most gratefully.
Now, it is a strange thing to say, but it is the truth, I had never
before in my life fed a dog! I had won many knotty suits at law, had
solved many hard problems dealing with human nature--and had found
human nature for the most part rarely glad or grateful--but I have
never owned or even fed a dog. A strange new feeling came in my throat
now. Suddenly I swallowed some invisible intangible thing.
"John," said I, "what breed of dog is this?" Indeed, it was hard to
tell offhand, although he had the keen head of a collie.
"I guess he's just one o' them partial dogs," answered John, "mostly
shepherd, maybe; I dunno."
"Very well, Partial shall be his name. And is he yours?"
"He runs round on the farm. He goes with Jimmy an' me."
"John, will you sell me Partial?" I asked this suddenly, realizing
that my voice might sound odd.
"What'd ye want him fer?" he replied. "He'd be a nuisance."
"I think not. See how faithful he has been, see how grateful he is;
and how wise. He reasoned where you were as well as I reasoned who you
were. He knows now that we are talking about him, and knows that I am
his friend--see him look at me; see him come over and stand by me.
John, do you think--do you believe a dog, this dog, would learn to
like me, ever? Would he understand me?"
"Well," said John judicially, standing sword in hand, "I dunno.
Someways, maybe dogs and boys understands quicker. But you understand
us. Maybe he'd understand you."
"Well reasoned, Jean Lafitte," said I, "perhaps your logic is better
than you know, at least, I hope so. And now I offer you yonder
magazine pistol as your own in fee, if you will sign over to me all
your right, title and interest, in Partial, here. Evidently he belongs
with us. He seems to care for us. And I experience some odd sort of
feeling, which I can not quite describe. Perhaps it is only that I
feel like a boy, and one that is going to own a dog. Is it a bargain?"
"Sure! You c'n have him for nuthin'," said Lafitte. "He ain't worth
nothin'. Besides, I can't charge a brother of the flag anything;
anyhow, not you." I inferred that Jean Lafitte, also, was going to
grow up into one of those men like myself, cursed with a reticence and
shyness in some matters, and so winning a reputation of oddness or
coldness, against all the real and passionate protest of his own soul.
"No, brother," I said to him: "I'll not offer you trade, but gift. Let
it be that if I can win the dog, and if he will take me as his master
and friend, he shall be mine. And you take the pistol, and have a care
of it."
"That's all right!" said Lafitte shyly, yet delightedly, as I could
see.
"Here, Partial!" I called to the dog; and being young and friendly,
and attached to neither in particular, and only in general worshiping
the creature Boy, he came to me! I fed him, stroked him, looked into
his eyes. And in a few moments he put his feet on my shoulders, and
licked at my ear, and began to talk to me in low eager whines, and
rubbed his muzzle against my cheek, and said all that a dog could say
in oath of feudal service, pledging loyalty of life and limb. At which
I felt very odd indeed; and began to see the world had many things in
it of which I had never known; but which, now, I was resolved to know.
"Honorable is embarking those malefactor canine thing with so much
impediments in this small-going boat?" inquired Hiroshimi.
"Yes," I answered. "At once. All four of us. Put the stuff aboard,
Hiro."
So, somewhat crowded as the _Sea Rover_ was, with three boys and a
dog, not to mention our supplies and our armament, at last we were
afloat with crew and cargo aboard. Hiro was not surprised, and asked
no questions. With the salaam with which he announced dinner, he now
announced his own departure for his duties at my deserted house; and
as he walked he never turned around for curious gaze. Often, often
have I, in my readings in the Eastern philosophy, endeavored to
analyze and to emulate this Oriental calm, this dismissal from the
soul of things small, things unessential and things unavoidable. An
enviable character, my boy Hiroshimi.
Now all was bustle and confusion aboard the good ship _Sea Rover_.
"Stand by the main braces!" roared Lafitte.
"Aye, aye, Sir!" replied the crew, that is to say, Jimmy L'Olonnois.
"Hard a lee!"
"Hard a lee it is, Sir!"
"Hoist the top-gallant mainsail an' clew all alow an' aloft!"
"Aye, aye, Sir!"
"Man the capstan! All hands to the starboard mizzen chains! Heave
away!"
"Heave away!" rejoined our gallant crew, never for a moment in doubt
as to the captain's meaning. And, indeed, he gave a push with an oar
at the bank, which thrust us into the smart current of my little
river.
We were afloat! We were off to seek our fortune!
[Illustration: I, too, stood, shading my eyes with my hand]
Ah, what a fine new world was this which lay before us! But for one
thing, this had no doubt been the happiest moment in my life. For,
always, the attaining of knowledge, the growth of a man's mind and
soul, had to me seemed the one ambition worth a man's while; and now,
as I might well be assured, I had learned more and grown more,
these last twelve hours or so, than I had in any twelve years of my
life before. Before me, indeed, had opened a vast and wonderful world.
That morning, as we swept around curve after curve of the swift
trout-stream that I loved so well, among my alders, through my bits of
wood, along my hills--with Lafitte and L'Olonnois standing, each
alert, silent, peering ahead under his flat hand to see what might lie
ahead (I astern with Partial's head on my knee), I felt rise in my
soul the same sweet grateful feeling that I had when the new world of
music opened to me, what time I first caught the real meaning of the
_Frühlingslied_. My heart leaped anew in my bosom, for the time
forgetting its sadness. I saw that the world after all does hold faith
and loyalty and friendship and perpetual, self-renewing Youth.... I
also rose, cast my hat aside, and with one hand reaching down to touch
my friend's head, I, too, stood, shading my eyes with my edged hand,
peering ahead into this strange new world that lay ahead of me.
CHAPTER VII
IN WHICH I ACHIEVE A NAME
So winding is my trout river, and so extensive are my lands along it,
that it was not until nearly noon that our progress, sometimes halted
by shallows, again swift in the deeper reaches, brought the _Sea
Rover_ to the lower edge of my estate. Here, the river was deeper and
more silent, the waters were not quite so cold, but as we passed a
high hardwood bridge from which issued a cool spring of water, I
suggested a halt in our voyage, to which my companions, readily
enough, agreed. We, therefore, disembarked and prepared to have our
luncheon.
It was obvious to me that Jean Lafitte and Henri L'Olonnois were not
on their first expedition out-of-doors, for they set about gathering
wood and water in workmanlike fashion. They did not yet fully classify
me, so, in boyish shyness, left me largely ignored, or waited till I
should demonstrate myself to them. It was, therefore, with delicacy
that I ventured any suggestions from the place where Partial and I sat
in the shade watching them.
I have mentioned the fact that I had been a hunter and traveler, and
had met success in the field; yet the truth is, I began all that late
in life, and deliberately. To me, used to exact habit of thought in
all things, and accustomed to be governed by trained reason alone, it
was never enough to say that a thing was partly done, or well enough
done to pass: only the best possible way had any appeal to me. I
brought my reason to bear on every situation in life. Thus, I studied
an investment carefully, and before going into it, I knew what the
result would be. My investments, therefore, always have prospered,
because they were not based on guess or chance, as nine-tenths of all
the public's business ventures are. In the same way, I had gone
deliberately about the matter of winning the regard of the only woman
I ever saw who seemed to me much worth while. I argued and reasoned
with Helena Emory that she should marry me, proving to her by every
rule of logic that, not only was she the most lovable woman in all the
records of the world, but, also, that love such as mine never had
before been known in the world. Sometimes, as I logically proved the
fitness of our union, and grew warm at my own accuracy, she wavered,
relented, warmed: and then again, forgetting my argument, she would
relapse into womanlike frivolity once more.... I did not like to think
of this, as I sat in the shade with Partial. It cost me much in
self-respect, irritated me.
But, having studied sport and outdoor living deliberately as I had
studied the law and business and Helena, I had rather a thorough
grounding, on life in the open, for I had read every authority
obtainable; whereas my young associates had read none. So cautiously,
now and then, I suggested little things to them, as that the fire need
not be so large, and would do better if confined between two green
side logs. I taught them how to boil the kettle quickly, how to make
tea, and also, more difficult, how to make coffee; how to cook bacon
just enough, and how to cook fish--for I had taken a few trout earlier
in the day--and how to make toast without charring it to cinders.
Again, I delighted them by telling them of little camping devices, and
quite won their hearts when I found among Hiroshimi's packages, a
small camp griddle with folding legs, of my own devising. It was quite
clean and new, but it performed as I felt quite sure it would. In
fact, reason will govern all things--except a woman.
We ate _al fresco_, as true buccaneers of the main, and grew better
and better acquainted. It occurred to me that mayhap the nautical
education of my associates was, after all, somewhat superficial, so I
set about mending it by explaining something of the rigging of the
ship; and I gave them, by means of the _Sea Rover's_ bowline, some
lessons in sailorman splices and knots. The bow-line-in-a-bight, the
sheet-bend, the clinch-knot, the jam-knot, the fisherman's water-knot,
the stevedore's slip-knot, the dock-hand's round-turns and
half-hitches for cable makefast, the magnus-hitch, the fool's-knot,
the cat's-cradle, the sheep-shank, the dog-shank, and many others--all
of which I had learned in books and in practise--I did for them over
and over again; just as I could have done for them a half-dozen
different ways of throwing the diamond-hitch in a pack-train, or the
stirrup-hitch in a cow camp, or many other of the devices of men who
live in the open; for beginning late in life in these things, I had
studied them hard and faithfully.
I could see--and I noted it with much gratification--that I was rising
in the estimation of my pirates. It pleased me not at all to show that
I knew more than they of these things, for I was older and my mind was
long my trained servant; but I had monstrous delight in seeing myself
accepted as one fit to associate with them. Once or twice, I saw the
two draw apart in some debate which I knew had to do with me. "Well,
now," Lafitte would begin; and L'Olonnois would demur. "No, I don't
just like that one," he would say. By nightfall--and I presume I do
not need to recall all the incidents of our afternoon, or of our
pitching camp by the riverside an hour before sundown--I learned what
was the subject of their argument. I had been admitted to the pirates'
band, but the question was over my name.
We sat by our fireside, before our little tent, after a pleasant meal
which I know was well cooked because I cooked it myself--trout, a
young squirrel, and toast, and real coffee--and Partial was close at
my knee, having obviously adopted me. We were fifteen or twenty miles
from my house, nearly twice that from their homes, but the world,
itself, seemed very remote from us. We reveled in a new luxurious
world of rare deeds, rare dreams all our own. I was conjuring up some
new argument to put before Helena should I ever see her again--as of
course I never should--when Lafitte rolled over on the grass and
looked up at us.
"We was just saying," he remarked, "that you didn't have no name."
"That is true. I have not told you my name, nor have you asked it. Had
you been impolite, you might have learned it by prying about my
place." I spoke gravely and with approval.
"No, we didn't know who you was."
"Let it be so. Let me be a man of no name. A name is of no
consequence, and neither am I."
"Sho, now, that ain't so. I never seen a better--now, I never seen--"
Jean Lafitte's reticence in friendship, again, was getting the better
of him.
"So we said we'd call you Black Bart," added L'Olonnois.
"That is a most excellent name," said I after some thought. "At
present, I can find no objection to it, except that I wear no beard at
all and would have a red or brown one if I did; and that Black Bart
was rather a pirate of the land than of the sea."
"Was he?" queried L'Olonnois. "Wasn't he a pirate, too, never?"
"There was a famous pirate chief known as Bluebeard or Blackbeard, and
it may be, sometimes, they called him Black Bart."
"Wasn't he a awful desper't sort of pirate?"
"He is said to have been."
"It sounds like a awful desper't name," said Jimmy: "like as though
he'd fill up his ship with captured maidens, an' put all rivals to the
sword."
"Such, indeed, shipmate," said I, "was his reputation."
"Well," concluded L'Olonnois, "we couldn't think o' any better name'n
that, because we know that is just what you would do."
(So, then, my reputation was advancing!)
"Wasn't you never a pirate before, honest?" queried Lafitte at this
juncture. "Because, you seem like a real pirate to us. We been, lots
of times, over on the lake."
"It may be because my father was always called a pirate," I replied.
"You see, in these days, there are not so many pirates who really
scuttle ships and cut throats."
"But you would?"
"Certainly. 'Tis in my blood, my bold shipmate."
"We knew it," concluded L'Olonnois calmly. "So, after now, we'll call
you Black Bart. You can let your whiskers grow, you know."
"True," said I. "Well, we will at least take the whiskers under
advisement, as the court would say."
"We must be an awful long ways from home," ventured L'Olonnois, after
a time.
"Hundreds of miles our good ship has ploughed the deep, and as yet has
raised no sail above the horizon," I admitted.
"Do you--now--do you--well, anyhow, do you have any idea of where we
are going?" demanded Lafitte, shamefacedly.
"Not in the slightest."
"But now--well--now then----"
In answer I drew from my pocket a map and a compass; the latter mostly
for effect, since I knew very well the bed of our river must shape
our course for many a mile. On the map I pointed out how, presently,
our river would run into a lake, into which, also, ran another river;
and would emerge on the other side much larger. I showed them that
down that other river, as, indeed, down mine, logs used to float from
the pine forests--many of my father's logs, of ownership said to have
been piratical--and I showed how, presently, this stream would carry
us into one of the ancient waterways down which millions of wealth in
timber have come; and explained about the wild crews of river runners
who once ran the rafts down that great highway, and into the greater
highway of the Mississippi; whence men might in due time arrive upon
the Spanish Main.
"Is there any way a fellow can get across from Lake Michigan into the
Mississippi River?" demanded Lafitte, who was of a practical turn of
mind: and on the map I showed him all the old trails of the fur
traders, explorers and adventurers, French and English, who had
discovered our America long ago; whereat their eyes kindled and their
tongues went dumb.
At last, I told them we must to our hammocks; and soon our bloody band
was deep in sleep. At least, so much might have been said for Lafitte
and L'Olonnois. Alone of the band of sea rovers myself, Black Bart,
sat musing by the fire, the head of my friend, Partial, in my lap.
CHAPTER VIII
IN WHICH WE HAVE AN ADVENTURE
Our band of hardy adventurers arose with the sun on the morning
following our first night in bivouac, and by noon of that day, thanks,
perhaps, in some measure to my own work at the oars, and a sail which
we rigged from a corner of the tent, we had passed into and through
the lake which our map had showed us. Now we were below the edge of
the pine woods, and our stream ran more sluggishly, between banks of
cattails or of waving marsh grasses. We put out a trolling line, and
took a bass or so; and once Lafitte, firing chance-medley into a
passing flock of plover, knocked down a half-dozen, so that we bade
fair to have enough for dinner that night. It was all a new world for
us. No one might tell what lay around the next bend of our widening
waterway. We were explorers. A virgin world lay before us. The nature
of the country along the stream kept the settlements back a distance;
so that to us, now, in reality, retracing one of the ancient
fur-trading routes, we might almost have been the first to break these
silences.
Toward nightfall we came into a more rolling and more park-like
region; our prow was now heading to the westward, for the general
course of the great river beyond. I had no notion to visit the city of
Chicago, and our route lay far above that which must be taken by any
large craft bound for the Mississippi route to the Gulf.
Farms now came down to the water's edge in places, villages offered
mill-pond dams--around which, in scowling reticence, we portaged the
_Sea Rover_, unmindful alike of queries and of jeers. I found time to
post additional letters now. Indeed, I was preparing for a long and
determined enterprise. It was the _Sea Rover_ against the _Belle
Helène_; and, did the skipper of the latter loll along in flanneled
ease and luxury, not so with the hardy band of cutthroats who manned
our smaller and more mobile craft, men used to hardships, content to
drink spring water instead of sparkling wines, and to eat the product
of their own weapons.
We were I do not know how far from our first encampment, perhaps
thirty miles or more, when toward five o'clock of the evening we
concluded to land at a wooded grassy bank which offered a good camping
place. We made all fast, and in a few moments had our tent up and a
little fire going, Lafitte and L'Olonnois, at this, happy as any two
pirates I ever have seen; and were on the point of spreading our
canvas table cover upon the grass, when we heard a gruff voice hail
us.
"Heh! What're you doin' there?"
We turned, expecting to meet some irate farmer on whose land perhaps
we innocently were trespassing; but the figure which now emerged from
the screening bushes was rougher, bolder, and in some indescribable
way wilder, than that of a farmer. I could not, at first, assign the
fellow a place, for I knew this was an old and well settled country,
and not supposed to be overrun with tramps or campers. He was a stout
man nearly of middle age, dirty and ill clad, his coarse shirt open at
the neck, his legs clad in old overalls, his hat and shoes very much
the worse for wear. His face was covered with a rough beard, and so
brown and so begrimed that, at once, I guessed this must be some
dweller in the open. Yet he seemed no tramp; and even if he were, he
had no right to hail us in this fashion.
I only looked at him, and made no answer, feeling none due. He came
out into the open, followed by a nondescript dog, which had the lack
of decency--and also of discretion--to attack my dog Partial with no
parley or preliminary. I wot not of what stock Partial came, but
somewhere in his ancestry must have been stark fighting strain. Mutely
and sternly, as became a gentleman, he joined issue; and so well had
he learned the art of war that in the space of a few moments, in spite
of the loud outcry of the owner of the invading cur, he had him on his
back in a throat grip which was the end of the battle and bade fair
soon to be the end of the enemy.
The man who had accosted us caught up a club and made toward Partial
with intent to kill him. Then, indeed, we all sprang into action. In
two strides I was before him.
"Drop that!" I said to him quickly, but I hope not angrily. "Call him
off, Jack!" I cried to Lafitte at the same time.
The sound of conflict ceased as Partial was persuaded to release his
fallen foe, and the latter disappeared, with more wisdom as to
attacking a band of pirates. His owner, however, was not so easily
daunted. He still advanced toward Partial, and as I still intervened,
he made a vicious side blow at me with his club.
It all happened, almost, in the twinkling of an eye. Here, then, was
an adventure, and before the end of our second day!
There was not time to learn or to ask the reason for this man's
animosity toward us, and, indeed, no thought of that came to my mind.
A man may lay tongue to one--within certain bounds--and one will only
walk away from him; but the touch of another man's hand or weapon is
quite another matter. That arouses the unthinking blood, and follows
then, no matter the issue, the _gaudium certaminis_, with no care as
to odds or evens. Wherefore, even as the club whizzed by to my side
step, I came back from the other foot and smote the hostile stranger
on the side of the neck so stiffly that he faltered and almost
dropped. Then seeing that I was so much lighter than himself and
perhaps valuing himself against me purely on a basis of avoirdupois,
pound for pound, he gathered and came at me, roaring out blasphemy and
obscenity which I had rather Lafitte and L'Olonnois had not heard.
I had not often fought in fact, but knew that, sometimes, a gentleman
must fight. What astonished me now was the fact that fighting
contained no manner of repugnance to me. With a certain joy I met my
foe, circled with him, exchanged blows with him--unequally it is true,
for I was cool as though trying a cause at law, and he was very angry:
so that he got most of my leads, and I but few of his, albeit jarring
me enough to make my ears sing and my eyes blur somewhat, although of
pain I was no more conscious than a fighting dog. The turf was soft
underfoot, and the space wide, so that we fought very happily and
comfortably over perhaps a hundred feet of country, first one and then
the other coming in; until at last I had him so well blown that he
stood, and I knew we must now end it toe to toe. I bethought me of a
trick of my old boxing teacher, and stood before him with arms curved
wide apart, inviting him to come into what seemed an opening. He
rushed, and my left fist caught him on the neck. He straightened to
finish me, but I stooped and brought my right in a round-arm blow,
full and hard into the small of his back and at one side. It sickened
him, and before he could rally, I stepped behind him, and having no
ethics save the necessity of subduing him, I caught up his arm by the
wrist, and slipping under it with my shoulder, pulled it down till he
howled: a trick, only one of very many, which Hiroshimi patiently had
taught me.
That very naturally ended our contest, and it was near to ending our
war-like neighbor as well. During this warfare, which was short or
long, I knew not, my associates, stunned and perhaps fearful, had sat
silent; at least, I neither heard nor saw them. But now, all at once,
over my shoulder I saw both Lafitte and L'Olonnois running in to my
assistance. Each held in hand a bared blade of the samurai, and had I
not shouted out to them to refrain, I have small doubt that in the
most piratical and unsamuraic fashion they mayhap would have
disemboweled my captive; for the old swords were keen as razors, and
my friends were as red of eyesight as myself.
"No! No!" I called to them, even as our victim writhed and roared in
terror. "Drop your weapons--that isn't fair." They obeyed,
shamefacedly and with regret, as I am convinced: for illusion with
them, at times, indeed overleaped the centuries, and they were back in
a time of blood: even as I was in a stone-age wrath for my own part.
"Come here, Jack," I ordered, "and you, too, Jimmy. Do you see how I
have him?"
They agreed. "It's a peach," said Lafitte. "Make him holler!"
"No," I replied, easing off the strain on the wrenched arm, "he has
already 'hollered.'"
"Yes, sure, 'nuff, 'nuff!----ye!" cried our captive, who, now, was in
mortal terror and much contrition, seeing both flesh and blood and
cold steel had all the best of him. "Lemme go!"
"Certainly," I assented; "we did not ask you to come, and do not want
you to stay. But, first, I must use you in a few demonstrations to my
young friends. Jack,"--and I motioned to him with my head--"get behind
him."
Eagerly, his three-cornered gray eyes narrowed, Lafitte skipped back
of my man, and with no word from me he fastened on the other wrist so
suddenly the man had no warning, and with a strong heave of all his
body he doubled that arm up also. Much roaring now, and many
protestations, for when our prisoner began with abuse, we could change
it into supplication by raising his bent arms no more than one inch or
two.
"Now, Jimmy," said I, "go in front of him, and put a thumb in the
corner of his jaw, on each side. Press up until he begs our pardon."
And, faith, my blue-eyed pirate, so far from shuddering at the task,
at last managed to find those certain nerve centers known to all
efficient policemen; and very promptly, the man made signs he would
like to beg the boy's pardon and did so.
"Now, give me that arm, Jack," I resumed calmly, since our subject had
no more fight left in him than a sack of meal. "So. Now go around and
put your thumbs in his eyes--no, not really in his eyes, but in the
middle of the bone above his eyes. So. Now, ask this boy's pardon, or
I'll twist your arms off." And he asked it.
"You couldn't do it if you'd fight fair!" he bellowed.
"Could I not?" I asked. And cast him free. "Come on again, then."
"I'm afraid of them kids," said he. "They'd stick me."
"No, they would not," said I; but still he would not come on. Then I
made a quick catch at his wrist, edgewise, and rolled my thumb along
it at a certain place where the nerves lie close to the edge of the
bone, as any policeman knows; and he would follow me, then. So I led
him to our little camp-fire.
"Now," said I to him, "be seated," and he sat. I asked him if he would
shake hands with me and my boys and make up. He was very sullen, but,
at last, did so, not cheerfully, I fear, for he was not of good blood.
"Tell me," I demanded then, seeing that the triumph of calm reason had
been sufficient in his case, "why did you come here, and why do you
try to drive us off, who are only on a peaceful journey as pirates,
seeking our fortune?"
"Pirates!" he exclaimed. "Just what I thought. What's the use my
leasin' the pearl fer a mile along here if anybody can come and camp,
and go to work, right alongside o' me? If old farmer Snider, that owns
this land, hadn't gone to town I'd have the law on ye. Me payin' my
money in and gettin' no protection. Fishin's rotten, too!"
I now perceived that we had encountered one of those half-nomad
characters, a fresh-water pearl fisherman, such as those who, for some
years, with varying fortune, have combed the sand-bars of our inland
river for the fresh-water mussels which sometimes, like oysters,
secrete valuable pearls or nacreous bits known as slugs. This
explained much to me.
"I know the law," said I. "Farmer Snider can not lease the highway of
yonder river where the _Sea Rover_ passes. But I know also the law of
the wilderness. One trapper does not intrude on another who has first
located his country. We will pass on to-morrow. Meantime, if you don't
mind, we will go with you to your camp and see how you do your work.
Please forget that we have had any trouble. Had you but spoken thus at
first, and not borne war against these bold pirates, all would have
been well."
He looked at me oddly, evidently thinking my mind touched.
"Come!" I said, wiping the blood from my face, and passing him also a
basin of water, "you fought well and the wonder is you did not kill me
with one of those swings or swipes of yours. They were crooked and
awkward, but they came hard."
He grinned and saved his face further by saying: "Well, you was three
to one ag'in me." I smiled and let it stand so: and after a while, he
arose stiffly and we all passed back into the wood.
We found that we were upon a little island, between two shallow arms
of the stream. The camp of the pearl fisher lay at the lower end; and
never have I seen or smelled so foul a place for human habitation. The
one large tent served as shelter, and a rude awning sheltered the
ruder table in the open air. But directly about the tent, and all
around it in every direction, lay heaps of clam shells, most of them
opened, some not yet ready for opening. I had smelled the same
odor--and had not learned to like it--in far-off Ceylon, at the great
pearl fisheries of the Orient. The "clammer" seemed immune.
Presently, he introduced to us a woman, very old, extraordinarily
forbidding of visage, and unspeakably profane of speech, who emerged
from the tent; his mother, he said. It seemed that they made their
living in this way, clamming, as they called it, all the way from
Arkansas to the upper waters of the Mississippi. They had made this
side expedition up a tributary, in search of country not so thoroughly
exploited; without much success in their venture, it seemed. The old
lady, her head wrapped in a dirty shawl, sat down on an empty box, and
stroked a large and dirty Angora cat, another member of the family,
the while she bitterly and profanely complained. It was now dusk, and
she did not notice anything out of the way in her son's rather swollen
nose and lips.
I explained to Lafitte and L'Olonnois that we were now come into the
neighborhood of possible treasure, and the sight of a few pearls, none
of very great worth, which the old crone produced from a cracker box,
was enough to set off Jimmy L'Olonnois, who was all for raiding the
place.
"What!" he hissed to me in an aside. "Did we not spare his life? Then
the treasure should be ours!"
"Wait, brother," said I. "We shall see what we shall see." And I
quieted Lafitte also, who was war-like at the very sound of the word
pearl. "Them's what they take from the Spanish ships," said he.
"Pearls is fitten for ladies fair. An' here is pearls."
"Wait, brother," I demanded of him. For I was revolving something in
my mind. I presently accosted the clammers.
"Listen," said I, "you say business is bad."
"It certainly and shorely is," assented the old dame, fishing a black
pipe out of her pocket, and proceeding to feed it from another pocket,
to the discomfort of the soiled Angora cat.
"Well, now, let me make you a proposition," said I, taking a glance at
the heap of fresh shell which lay beyond the racks of trolling lines
and their twisted wire hooks, by means of which dragging apparatus the
mussels are taken--shutting hard on the wire when it touches them as
they lie feeding with open mouths--"you've quite a lot of shell
there, now."
"Yes, but what's in it? Button factories all shut down with a strike,
and no market: and as for pearls, they ain't none. Blame me for
carryin' a grouch?"
"Not in the least. But what will you take for your shells, and agree
to open them for us, at wages of five dollars a day?"
"Both of us?" he demanded shrewdly. I smiled and nodded. "It's more
than you average, twice over," said I, "and you say the stream is no
good. Now I, too, am a student of the great law of averages, because I
am or was a director in a great life insurance company. You say the
luck is bad. Like other adventurers, I say that under the law of
averages, it is time for the luck to change."
"The luck's with you," growled the clammer, "it's ag'in me."
Unconsciously, he put a finger to his swollen nose. "What'll you
gimme?" he demanded.
"One hundred dollars bonus and ten dollars a day," said I promptly;
and he seemed to know I would not better that.
"Who are ye?" he queried: "a buyer?"
"No, a pirate."
"I believe ye. I never saw such a outfit."
"Will you trade?" I asked; "and how long will it take to open the
lot?"
"Nigh all day, even if we set up all night and roasted." He nodded to
a wide grating; and the ashes underneath showed that in this way the
poor clams, like the Incas of old, were sometimes forced to give up
their treasures by the persuasion of a fire under them.
"Very well," I said. "We'll call it a day. That's a hundred and ten
dollars for you by this time to-morrow. I invoke the aid of capital
and of chance, both, against you. You will very likely lose: but if
so, it would not be the first time the producer of wealth has lost it.
But I make the wager fair, as my reason tells me I should."
"Ye're a crazy bunch, and I think ye're out of the state asylum over
yonder," broke in the old woman, "but what the hell do we care whether
ye're crazy or not? Ye look like ye had the money. Jake, we'll take
him up."
"All right," said Jake. "We'll go ye."
"To-morrow morning, then," said I; and our party rose to return to our
camp, where Partial greeted us with warmth; he having assigned to
himself the duty of guard. And so, as Pepys would say, to bed;
although Lafitte and L'Olonnois scarce could sleep.
"Let him attempt to make a run for it, after we have hove him to, and
we will board him and give no quarter!" This was almost the last of
the direful speech I heard from L'Olonnois, as at last I turned myself
to a night of deep and peaceful slumber.
CHAPTER IX
IN WHICH WE TAKE MUCH TREASURE
"You must be awful rich, Black Bart," said L'Olonnois to me as we sat
on the grass, at breakfast, the following morning.
"No, Jimmy," I replied, putting down my coffee cup, "on the contrary,
I am very poor."
"But you have all sorts of things, back there where you live; and last
night you said you would pay that man a hundred dollars, just to open
a lot of clam shells. Now, a hundred dollars is a awful sight of
money."
"That depends, Jimmy," I said.
"'N' we'd ought to _take_ them pearls," broke in Lafitte. "Didn't we
lick him?"
"We did, yes; twice." And in my assent I felt, again, a fierce
satisfaction in the first conquest of our invader, that of body to
body, eye to eye; rather than in the one where I brought intellect to
aid in war. "But there are two ways of being a pirate. Let us see if
we can not win treasure by taking a chance in logic, and so be modern
pirates."
They did not understand me, and went mute, but at last Jimmy resumed
his catechism. "Who owns the place where you live, Black Bart?"
"I do."
"But how much?"
"Some five or six miles."
"Gee! That must be over a hundred acres. I didn't know anybody owned
that much land. Where'd you get it?"
"In part from my father."
"What business was he in?"
"He was a pirate, Jimmy, or at least, they said he was. But my mother
was not.--I will tell you," I added suddenly: "my father owned a great
deal of timber land long ago, and iron, and oil, and copper, when
nobody cared much for them. They say, now, he stole some of them, I
don't know. In those days people weren't so particular. The more he
got, the more he wanted. He never was a boy like you and me. He
educated me as a lawyer, so that I could take care of his business and
his property, and he trained me in the pirate business the best he
could, and I made money too, all I wanted. You see, my father could
never get enough, but I did; perhaps, because my mother wasn't a
pirate, you see. So, when I got enough, my father and mother both died,
and when I began to see that, maybe, my father had taken a little more
than our share, I began trying to do something for people ... but I
can't talk about that, of course."
"Well, why not?" demanded Lafitte. "Go on."
"A fellow doesn't like to."
"But what did you do?"
"Very little. I found I could not do very much. I gave some buildings
to schools, that sort of thing. No one thanked me much. A good many
called me a Socialist."
"What's that--a Socialist?"
"I can't tell you. Nobody knows. But really, I suppose, a Socialist is
a man born before the world got used to steam and electricity. Those
things made a lot of changes, you see, and in the confusion some
people didn't get quite as square a deal as they deserved; or at
least, they didn't think they had. It takes time, really, as I
suppose, to settle down after any great change. It's like moving a
house."
"I see," said Jimmy sagely. "But, Black Bart, you always seemed to me
like as if, now, well, like you was studyin' or something, somehow.
Ain't you never had no good times before?"
"No. This is about the first really good time I ever had in all my
life. You see, you can't really understand things that you look at
from a long way off--you've got to get right in with folks to know
what folks are. Don't you think so?"
"I know it!" answered Jimmy, with conviction. And I recalled, though
he did not, the fact that he bathed daily, Lafitte weekly, yet no
gulf was fixed between their portions of the general humanity.
"It must be nice to be rich," ventured Lafitte presently. "I'm going
to be, some day."
"Is that why you go a-pirating?" I smiled.
"Maybe. But mostly, because I like it."
"It's a sort of game," said L'Olonnois.
"All life is a sort of game, my hearties," said I. "What you two just
have said covers most of the noble trade of piracy and nearly all of
the pretty game of life. You are wise as I am, wise as any man,
indeed."
"What I like about you, Black Bart," resumed L'Olonnois, naively, "is,
you seem always fair."
I flushed at this, suddenly, and pushed back my plate. "Jimmy," said I
at last, "I would rather have heard that, from you, than to hear I had
made a million dollars from pearls or anything else. For that has
always been my great hope and wish--that some day I could teach myself
always to be fair--not to deceive anybody, most of all not myself; in
short, to be fair. Brother, I thank you, if you really believe I have
succeeded to some extent."
"Why ain't you always jolly, like you was havin' a good time, then?"
demanded my blue-eyed inquisitor. "Honor bright!"
"Must it be honor bright?"
"Yes."
"Then I will tell you. It is because of the first chapter of Genesis,
Jimmy."
"What's that?"
"Fie! Fie! Jimmy, haven't you read that?" He shook his head.
"I've read a little about the fights," he said, "when Saul 'n' David
'n' a lot of 'em slew them tens of thousands. But Genesis was dry."
"Do you remember any place where it says 'Male and female created He
them'?"
"Oh, yes; but what of it? That's dry."
"Is it, though?" I exclaimed. "And you with an Auntie Helena, and a
brother Black Bart. Jimmy L'Olonnois, little do you know what you
say!"
"Well, now," interrupted the ruthless soul of Jean Lafitte, "how about
them pearls?"
"That's so," assented Jimmy. "Pearls is booty."
"Very well, then, shipmates," I assented, "as soon as we have washed
the dishes, we will see what can be done with the enemy yonder."
We found our two clammers, the young man and his crone of a mother, up
betimes and hard at work, as evil-looking a pair as ever I saw. The
man's face was still puffed and discolored, where my fists had
punished him, and his disposition had not improved overnight. His
hag-like dam also regarded us with suspicion and disfavor, I could
note, and I saw her glance from me to her son, making mental
comparisons; and guessed she had heard explanations regarding black
eyes which did not wholly satisfy her.
They had already roasted open and examined quite a heap of shells by
the time we arrived, and I inquired, pleasantly, if they had found
anything. The man answered surlily that they had not; but something
made me feel suspicious, since they had made so early a start. I saw
him now and then wipe his hands on his overalls, and several times
noted that as he did so, his middle finger projected down below the
others, as though he were touching for something inside his pocket,
which lay in front, the overalls being made for a carpenter, with a
narrow pocket devised for carrying a folded foot-rule. But I could see
nothing suggested in the pocket.
"That's too bad," I said pleasantly. "It looks as though I were going
to lose my hundred, doesn't it? Still, the day is long."
I busied myself in watching the deft work of the two as they opened
the shells started by the heat, sweeping out the fetid contents, and
feeling in one swift motion of a thumb for any hidden secretion of the
nacre. Nothing was found while I was watching, and as I did not much
like the odor, I drew to one side. I found L'Olonnois and Lafitte
standing apart, in full character, arms folded and scowling heavily.
"If yonder villain plays us false," said Lafitte between his clenched
teeth, "he shall feel the vengeance of Jean Lafitte! And I wouldn't
put it a blame bit a-past him, neither," he added, slightly out of
drawing for the time.
"You are well named, Lafitte," I smiled. "You are a good business man.
But the day is long."
It was, indeed, long, and I put in part of it wandering about with
Partial, hunting for squirrels, which he took much delight in chasing
up trees. Again, I lay for a time reading one of my favorite authors,
the wise stoic, Epictetus, tarrying over one of my favorite passages:
"Remember that you are an actor of just such a part as is assigned you
by the Poet of the play; of a short part, if the part be short, of a
long part if the part be long. Should He wish you to act the part of a
beggar, ('or of a pirate,' I interpolated, aloud to myself, and
smiling) take care to act it naturally and nobly; and the same if it
be the part of a lame man, or a ruler, or a private man. For this is
in your power--to act well the part assigned to you; but to choose
that part is the function of another."
I lay thoughtful, querying. Was I a rich man, or a poor man? Was I a
ruler, or a private man, or a lame man?... I asked myself many
questions, concluding that all my life I had, like most of us all,
been more or less a lame man and a private man after all, and much
like my fellow.... It was a great day for me; since each day I seek to
learn something. And here now was I, blessed by the printed wisdom of
age and philosophy, and yet more blessed by the spoken philosophy of
unthinking Youth.... I lay flat, my arms out on the grass, and looked
up at the leaves. I felt myself a part of the eternal changeless
scheme, and was well content. It has always been impossible for me to
care for the little things of life--such as the amassing of
money--when I am alone in the woods. I pondered now on the wisdom of
my teachers, Epictetus, Jimmy, John and the author of the Book of
Genesis.
I arose at last with less of melancholy and more of resolve than I had
known for years. The world swam true on its axis all around me; and I,
who all my life had been in some way out of balance in the world, now
walked with a strange feeling of poise and certainty.... No, I said to
myself, I would argue no more with Helena. And meantime since the Poet
of the play had assigned me the double rôle of pirate and boy, I was
resolved to act both "naturally and nobly."
I could not have called either of my associates less than natural and
noble in his part, viewed as I found them when at length I sought them
to partake of a cold luncheon. They stood apart, gloom and stern
dignity themselves, offering no speech to the laboring clammers, who,
by this time, were but masses of evil odors and ill-temper in equal
parts.
"I think he's holdin' out on us!" hissed Jean Lafitte, as I
approached. "Time and again I seen the varlet make false moves. Let
him have a care! The eye of Jean Lafitte is upon him!"
For my own part, I cared little for anything beyond the sport in my
pearl venture, but no man likes to be "done," so I joined the guard
over the pearl fishing. I could see little indication of success on
the part of the two clammers, who went on in their work steadily,
exchanging no more than a monosyllable now and then, but who were
animated, it seemed to us, by the same excitement which governs the
miner washing gravel in his pan. They scarce could rest, but went on
from shell to shell, opening each as eagerly as though it meant a
fortune. This of itself seemed to me both natural and yet not wholly
natural; for it was now late in the day's work. Why should they go on
quite so eagerly in what six hours of stooping in the sun should have
made monotonous routine?
They showed me a few pieces they had saved, splinters and slugs of
nacre, misshapen and of no luster, and sneered at the net results,
worth, at most, not so much as the day's wages I was paying either. I
cared nothing for the results, and smiled and nodded as I took them.
Thus the day wore on till mid-afternoon, when, such had been the zeal
of the clammers, the heap of bivalves was exhausted. They stood erect,
straightening their stiffened backs, and grinned as they looked at me.
"Well," said the old hag, "I reckon ye're satisfied now that we know
this business better'n you do. He told ye there wasn't no pearl in
this river."
"No;" added her hopeful son, "an' come to think of it, how'd I ever
know you had a hundred dollars? I ain't seen it yet. But we've done,
so let's see it now."
I quietly opened my pocketbook and took several bills of that
yellow-backed denomination, and selected one for him. He took it at
first suspiciously, then greedily, and I saw his eyes go to my wallet.
"I forgot," said I, and took out two bills of five dollars each, which
I handed to him.
"By golly!" said he, "so'd I forgot!"
"Why did you forget about your wages?" I asked, and looked at him
keenly. He turned his eyes aside.
"This fresh-water pearl fishing," said I, "has many points of
likeness to the ocean pearl fishing in Ceylon."
"You been there?" he queried. "And why is it like them?"
"In several ways. It is, in the first place, all a gamble. The pearl
merchants buy the oysters as I bought my mussels, by the lump and as a
chance, based on the law of average product. They rot the oysters as
you do the mussels. The smell is the same: and many other things are
the same. For instance, it is almost impossible to keep the diver from
stealing pearls, just as it is hard to keep the Kafirs from stealing
the diamonds they find in the mines."
I still was looking at him closely, and now I said to him mildly, and
in a low tone of voice, "It would be of no use--I should only beat you
again; and I would rather spare your mother. You see," I added in a
louder tone of voice, "the natives put pearls in their hair, between
their toes, in their mouths--although they do not chew tobacco as you
do. One who merely put one in the pocket of his overalls--if he wore
overalls--would be called very clumsy, indeed, especially if he had
been seen to do it."
Involuntarily, he clapped a hand on his pocket. What would have been
his next act I do not know, for at that moment I heard a voice call
out sharply, "Halt! villain. Throw up your hands, or by heavens you
die!" Turning swiftly, I saw Lafitte, his pistol barrel rested in very
serviceable fashion in the crotch of a staff, the same as when he
first accosted me on my stream, glancing along the barrel with an
ominous gray eye again gone three-cornered.
Before I could even cry out to him his warning was effective. I saw my
clam fisher go white and put his hands over his head, the while his
dam ran screaming toward the tent--Jimmy L'Olonnois at her heels,
sword in hand, and warning her not to get a gun, else her life's blood
would dye the strand.
Here, now, was a pretty pickle for a sworn servant of the law to aid
in making! A wrong move might mean murder done by these imaginative
youths, and I no less than accessory, to boot; for, surely, I had
given them aid and violent counsel in this drama which we all were
playing so naturally, if not so nobly. I hastened over to Lafitte and
called loudly to L'Olonnois, and commanded Partial to drop the renewed
encounter with the clammers' dog, which now, also, swiftly threatened
us. So, in a moment or two, I restored peace.
I held out my hand to the clammer. "I didn't know you seen me," said
he simply; and placed in my hand three pearls, either of them worth
more than all I had paid him, and one of them the largest and best I
had ever seen--it is the pearl famous as the "_Belle Helène_," the
finest ever taken in fresh waters in America, so it is said by
Tiffany's.
I looked at him quietly, and handed him back all but the one pearl. "I
am sorry you were not a better sport," said I, "very sorry. Didn't I
play fair with you?"
"No," said he. "Some folks have all the luck. You come along here,
rich, with all sorts of things, you and them d----d kids, and you'd
rob a man like me out of what little he can make."
I was opening my wallet again. "I am sorry to hear you say that," said
I, handing him two bills of a hundred dollars each. "Sorry, because it
has cost you twenty-eight hundred dollars."
"My God, man, what do you mean?" he gasped, even his fingers slow to
take both money and contempt.
"That the pearl is worth to me that much, since I have purpose for it.
I have more money than I want, and fewer pearls like this than I want.
It would have given me the keenest sort of pleasure to give you and
your mother a few thousand dollars, two or three, to set you up with a
little launch and an outfit enough to give you a good start--and,
perhaps, a good partner. As it is, you are lucky my pirate brother has
not blown a hole through you, and that my other brother has not shed
the blood of your parent, if she have any. You had a good chance, and
like many another man who isn't good enough to deserve success, you
lost it. Do you know why you failed?"
"It's the luck," said he. "I never had none."
"No," said I, "it is not that. So far as luck goes, you are lucky you
are alive. Little do you know our desperate band. Little do you know
you have escaped the wrath of Lafitte, of L'Olonnois, of Black Bart.
Luck! No, that is not why you failed."
"What then?" he demanded, still covetous, albeit rueful, too, at what
he vaguely knew was lost opportunity.
"It was because you did not play the part of a clammer naturally and
nobly," I replied. "My friend, I counsel you to read Epictetus--and
while you are at that," I added, "I suggest you read also that other
classic, the one known as _The Pirate's Own Book_."
So saying, since he stood stupefied, and really not seeing my hand,
which I reached out to him in farewell, I called to Partial, and
followed by the two stern and relentless figures, made our way back to
the spot where the good ship _Sea Rover_ lay straining at her hawser.
"What ho! messmates!" I cried. "Fortune has been kind to our bold
band this day. We have taken large booty. Let us up anchor and set
sail. Before yon sun has sunk into the deep we shall be far away, and
our swift craft is able to shake off all pursuit."
"Whither away, Black Bart,--Captain, I mean!" said Jean Lafitte (and I
blushed at this title and this hard-won rank, as one of the proudest
of my swiftly-following accomplishments in happiness).
"Spang! to the Spanish Main," was my reply.
A moment later, the waves were rippling merrily along the sides of the
_Sea Rover_ as she headed out boldly into the high seas.
CHAPTER X
IN WHICH I SHOW MY TRUE COLORS
There were many lesser adventures in which Lafitte, L'Olonnois and I
shared on our voyage through the long waterways leading down to the
great river, but of these I make small mention, for, in truth, one
boasts little of one's deeds in piracy after the fact, or of inciting
piracy and making accessories before the fact, the more especially if
such accessories be small but bloodthirsty boys. These latter, let me
plead in extenuation of my own sins, already were pirates, and set
upon rapine. For my own part, seeing their resolution to take green
corn and other vegetables, aye, even fowls, as part of the natural
returns of their stern calling, I made no remonstrances, not the first
leader unable to restrain his ruthless band, but I eased my own
conscience by leaving--quite unknown to them,--sundry silver coins in
cleft sticks, prominently displayed, in the hope that irate farmers
might find them when, after our departure, they visited the scenes of
our marauding. And to such an extent did this marauding obtain that,
by the time we had reached the Mississippi River, I was almost wholly
barren of further silver coins.
Many things I learned as we voyaged; as that my dog Partial would,
when asked, roll over and over upon the ground, or sit up and
bark--things taught him by no man known in his history, so far as
Lafitte could recall it. And things I learned regarding birds and
small animals of which my law books had told me nothing. As to
mosquitoes, I learned that, whereas they do not hurt a young pirate,
they do an old one; and I half resolved to discontinue my book
regarding them. Perhaps it was not of first importance.
But two things grew on me in conviction. First, I loved Helena Emory
more and more each day of my life; and second, that I must see her at
the first moment possible--in spite of all my resolutions to put her
out of my life forever! And, these two things being assured, when we
saw the rolling yellowish flood of the Father of the Waters at last
sweeping before us, I realized that, bound as I was in honor to hold
on with my faithful band, our craft, the _Sea Rover_--sixteen feet
long she was, and well equipped with Long Toms and deck
cannonades--would have no chance to overtake the _Belle Helène_,
fastest yacht on the Great Lakes, who might, so far as I could tell,
at that very moment be cleaving through the Chicago canal, to enter
the great river hundreds of miles ahead of us.
Wherefore, leaving my bold mates in bivouac one day, I made journey
to the nearest town. There, I sent certain messages to anxious
parents, and left for them our probable itinerary as tourists
traveling by private conveyance. I could not set our future dates and
ports more closely together; for, before I left town, I had purchased
a sturdy power boat of our own, capable of doing her ten or twelve
miles under her own petrol. I was in no mind to fall farther and
farther back of the _Belle Helène_ each day; and I counted upon our
piratical energy to keep us going more hours a day than Cal
Davidson--curses on him!--would be apt to travel.
I gave orders for immediate fitting of my new craft, and delivery on
the spot; and within the hour, although regarded with much suspicion
by the town marshal and many leading citizens, I set out for our
bivouac, with the aid of the late owner of the boat, to whom I gave
assurance that no evil should befall him. When we chugged along the
shore, and slackened opposite our camp, I heard the stern voice of
Lafitte hail us: "Ship ahoy!" (Perhaps he saw me at the stern sheets.)
"Aye! Aye! mate!" I answered, through my cupped hands. "Bear a hand
with our landing line." Whereat my hardy band came running and made us
fast.
"What has gone wrong, Black Bart?" demanded L'Olonnois, uncertain of
my status. "Hast met mishap and struck colors?"
"By no means!" I rejoined. "This is a prize, our first capture. And
since she has struck her colors, let us mount our own at her foremast
and ship our band to a bigger and faster craft."
The late owner, who bore the name of Robinson, looked on much
perplexed, and, I think, in some apprehension, for he must have
thought us dangerous, whether sane or mad.
"Who'll run her?" he at length demanded of me, looking from me to my
two associates. Then forth and stood Jean Lafitte; and answered a
question I confess I had not yet myself asked: "Ho! I guess a fellow
who can run a gasoline pump in a creamery can handle one of them
things. So think not, fellow, to escape us!"
I reassured Robinson, who was apparently ready to make a run for it;
and I explained to Lafitte and L'Olonnois my plan.
"We'll by no means discard our brig, the original _Sea Rover_," said
I, "and we'll tow her along as our tender. But we'll christen the
prize the _Sea Rover_ instead, and hoist our flag over her--and paint
on her name at the first point of call we make. Now, let us hasten,
for two thousand miles of sea lie before us, and Robinson is also five
miles from home."
But Robinson became more and more alarmed each moment. He had my
money, I his bill of sale, but ride back to town with us he would not.
Instead, he washed his hands of us and started back afoot--to get the
town marshal, I was well convinced. It mattered little to us; for once
more did sturdy Jean Lafitte more than make good his boast. With one
look at the gasoline tank to assure himself that all was well, he made
fast the painter of the old _Sea Rover_, and even as L'Olonnois with
grim determination planted the Jolly Rover above our bows, and as I
tossed aboard the cargo of our former craft, Lafitte cranked her up
with master hand, threw in the gear, and with a steady eye headed her
for midstream, where town marshals may not come.
I looked at my mates in admiration. They could do things I could not
do, and they faced the future with no trace of hesitation. I caught
from them a part of this resolution I so long had lacked. I added this
to my determination to see Helena Emory once more and soon as wind and
wave would allow. So that, believe me, the blood rose quickly in my
veins as I saw now we had faster travel ahead of us.
"Square away the main braces, my hearties!" I called. "Break out the
spinnaker and set the jibs. It's a wet sheet and a flowing sea, and
let any stop us at their peril!"
"Aye! Aye! Sir," came the response of Jean Lafitte in a voice almost
bass, and "Aye! Aye! Sir," piped the blue-eyed Lieutenant L'Olonnois.
The stanch craft leaped ahead, wallowing in cross seas till we reached
the mid-current of the Mississippi's heavy flood, then riding and
rising gamely as she met wave after wave that came up-stream with the
head wind. The eyes of Lafitte gleamed. L'Olonnois, hand over eyes,
stood in our bows. "Four bells, and all's well!" he intoned in a
vigorous voice.
It was my own heart made answer, in the sweetest challenge it ever had
given to the world: "All's well!" And far ahead I, too, peered across
the wave, seeking to make out the hull of fleeing craft that bore
treasure I was resolved should yet be mine.
"More sail, Officer!" I called to Jean Lafitte. He grinned in answer.
"You're in a hurry, Black Bart. What makes you?" And even L'Olonnois
turned a searching gaze upon me.
"Then I'll show you my true colors," said I. "I am more careless of
taking treasure than of capturing a certain maiden who flees before us
yonder on a swift craft, speedier than our own. Lay me alongside of
her, this week, next month, this winter, and my share of the other
booty shall be yours!"
"Black Bart," said Lafitte, "I knew something was sort of botherin'
you. So, it's you for the fair captive, huh?"
CHAPTER XI
IN WHICH MY PLOT THICKENS
We sped on now steadily, day by delightful day, and ever arose in my
soul new wonders at the joy of life itself, things that had escaped me
in my plodding business life. Now and again, I took from my pocket the
little volume which always went with me on the stream when I angled,
and which I confess sometimes charmed me away from the stream to some
shaded nook where I might read old Omar undisturbed--as now I might,
with L'Olonnois at the masthead and Lafitte at the wheel. And always
these wise, reckless, joyous pages of the old philosopher spelled to
me "Haste! Haste!"
"Whether at Naishápúr or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop.
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one."
"Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing!"
What truth, what absolute truth of the red-hot spur lay in those
words, lesson direst to me! What had my life been, plodding in books
to learn to keep by forms of law the booty my father had stolen? Away
with it, then, for now the Bird of Time was on the wing! Let me forget
the wasted years, spent in adding dollar to dollar; for what could the
highest pile of dollars mean to a man who had missed what Lafitte and
L'Olonnois and Omar had in their teaching? The booty of the world, the
pearls of price, the casks of the Wine of Life, are his only who takes
them. They can not be bought, can not be given. "Oh, haste! Jean
Lafitte, for my new knowledge indeed eats at my soul. Hasten, for the
Bird of Life is on the wing, L'Olonnois." So I spoke to them; and
they, feeling it all a part of the play, gravely answered in kind, to
what end that any who sought to stay Black Bart and his crew did so at
peril of their blood.
We came, I knew not after how many days forgotten in detail--after
passing, each avoided as a pestilence, many cities prosperous in
commerce--alongside the river port of the city of St. Louis, crowded
with motley and misfit shipping of one sort or other, where our craft
might moor without fear of exciting any suspicion, in spite of our
ominous name; for I had the precaution to lower our flag of the skull
and cross-bones.
I sought out the man most apt to know of any considerable vessels
docking there, and made inquiry for any power yacht one hundred and
twenty-five feet long, white and black ventilators, white hull with
blue line, flying the burgee _Belle Helène_, or some such name. None
could advise me for a time, and I looked in vain, as I had in every
dock in six hundred miles, for the trim hull of my yacht. At last one
old mariner, in rubber boots, himself skipper of a house-boat
south-bound for a winter's trapping, admitted that he had seen such a
craft three days before!
"Did she dock?" I demanded.
"Sure she did, and lay over night. I remember it well enough, for I
saw her tie up; and that evening her owner went ashore and up-town,
and with him his bride, I reckon--handsomest girl in all the town.
They must have been married, for he was lookin' like he owned her.
That was lemme see, two days ago or maybe four. They came aboard her
next morning, all three--there was a old party along, girl's mother
likely--around eleven o'clock, and in a little while cast off and went
on down-river. As fine a boat as ever made the river run--still as a
mouse she was, but quick as a cat, and around Ste. Genevieve, I
reckon, before I got back to my own scow after helping them off here.
No wonder her owner was proud. He stood on the quarter-deck like a
lord. Why shouldn't he, ownin' a boat an' a girl like that?"
"He doesn't own either!" I retorted hotly.
"Why, how do you know he don't?" demanded my sea-going man.
"Who should know, if not myself?"
"Sho! You talk like you owned her!"
"I do own her!"
"It looks like it. Which do you mean--her the yacht, or her the girl?"
"Both--no! That is, well at least I own the boat."
"That may all be, or it all mayn't," he replied, openly scoffing; "at
least so far's the boat goes. Anybody kin buy anything that has the
price. But as to the girl, you'd have to prove it, if I was him. And
if he didn't look like he owned her, or was goin' to, I'll eat your
own gas tank there, an' them two kids in it fer good measure."
Of course I could not argue or explain, and therefore turned away. But
all the answer of my soul came from the lips of L'Olonnois, who,
propped up against the cockpit combing, was reading aloud to Lafitte
from _The Pirate's Own Book_ as I approached. "Hah! my good man!"
exclaimed the pirate chieftain as he looked at his blade, "unhand the
maid, or by Heaven! your life's blood shall dye the deck where you
stand!"
"Ah, ha! Cal Davidson," said I to myself through my set teeth; "little
do you think that you are discovered in your sins, and little do you
know that the avenger is on your track. But have a care, for Black
Bart and his band pursues you!"
And, seeing that we had now laid in abundance of ship's stores,
including four drums of gasoline; and since the trail of Cal Davidson
was, at least, no wider than the banks of the river down which he had
fled, it looked ill enough for the chances of that robber when the
stanch _Sea Rover_, her flag again aloft and promising no quarter,
chugged out into midstream and took up a pursuit which was to know no
faltering until at last I had learned the truth about the fair captive
of the _Belle Helène_. For indeed, indeed, Omar, and you, too, stout
Lafitte and hardy L'Olonnois, the Bird of Life was on the wing.
CHAPTER XII
IN WHICH WE CLOSE WITH THE ENEMY
Cal Davidson took on five drums of petrol at Cairo, and a like amount
of champagne at Memphis, and no man may tell what other supplies at
this or that other point along the river. He evidently suspected no
pursuit, or, if he did, was a swaggering varlet enough, for, according
to all accounts which we could get, he loitered and lingered along,
altogether at his leisure, with due attention to social matters at
every port; for if he had not a wife at every port, at least, he had
an acquaintance of business or social sort, so that, one might be
sure, there were few dull moments for him and his party, whether
afloat or ashore. He must have attended a dinner-party and two
theaters at Memphis, and have sailed only after making three thousand
dollars out of a combination in champagne present and cotton future,
whose disgusting details I did not seek to learn. Trust Davidson to
make money, and to make the most of life also as he went along. He
always had the best of everything; and surely now he had, for the
leisurely, ease-seeking _Belle Helène_, not actuated by any vast
motive beyond that of the bee and the honey flower, slipped on down
and ahead with perfect ease, while we, grimy, slow, determined, plowed
on in her wake losing miles each hour the graceful _Belle Helène_
chose to show us her light disdainful heels, serenely indifferent
because wholly ignorant of our existence.
But we held to the chase as true pirates, not loitering at any port,
and--since now I, also, had learned something of the intricacies of
our engine, and could take a trick while the others slept--running
twice the hours daily the haughty yacht would deign to log. I knew
that Cal Davidson would stop to shoot and to visit, and knew that he
could, by no human means, be induced to pass any telegraph point where
the daily standing of the baseball clubs could be learned--he counted
that day lost in which he did not learn the scores. As for myself, I
have never been able to understand how any grown man or any one
ungrown can take any interest whatever in the deeds of hired
ball-playing Hessians, who have back of them neither patriotism nor
even a municipal pride. But, for once, I was joyed that the organized
business sense of a few men had put an otherwise able citizen under
tribute, because now, though the _Belle Helène_ must pause at least
daily, the _Sea Rover_ need do no such thing.
Nor did we. We were hot on the trail of the enemy as he flew south
along the Chickasha Bluffs, hot as he left Memphis behind, and taking
the widening waters which now wandered through low forest lands,
reached out for the next city of size, historic Vicksburg on her
seventy hills. And hot and eager, more than ever, were we when,
chugging around the head of that vast arm of the river, where it
curves like a boy of some southern sea, with its heights rising beyond
and afar, we saw what caused me to exclaim aloud, "At last! There she
lies, my hearties!"
I pointed on ahead. To my eyes, who had designed her, every line of
that long, graceful, white hull was familiar. The jaunty rake of her
air-shafts, like stacks of a liner, the sweep of her clean freeboard
up to her shining rail, the ease of her bows, the graceful boldness of
her overhang--all were familiar enough to me. She was my boat, and
once I was wont to enjoy her. And on board her now was the woman who
had taken away from me all desire to keep a yacht in commission, to
keep open a house in town, or an office, or to frequent my clubs, or
to meet my friends. Was she there, this woman; and was she still?--but
I dared not ask that question.
"Full speed ahead, Jean!" I called. "That's the _Belle Helène_! Yonder
lies the enemy!"
And then the inevitable happened. Perhaps it was too much gas,
perhaps too much lubricant, perhaps a spark plug was carrying too much
carbon. At any rate, the engine of the _Sea Rover_ chose that time to
chug and cease to revolve!
It was more than a mile to the foot of that vast curve; and even as I
leaped at the grimy oily motor, I saw a white dingey with blue trim
make out from the wharf and leisurely pull alongside the landing stair
of the yacht. It held two figures only, that of the deck-hand who
rowed, and that of the large white-flanneled man who now disembarked
from the dingey and went aboard the yacht. He was waving a paper over
his head, so that I inferred the Giants must have won that day. And
then, as we tugged and hurried with our arbitrary motor, I saw the
_Belle Helène_, with a slight smiling salute to friends ashore, swing
daintily about and head out and down the river! The faint and
infallible rhythm of her perfect enginery came throbbing to us across
the water ... I stood up. I hailed, I waved, I shouted, and I fear
even cursed. Perhaps they thought some drunken fisherman was
disporting himself; but certainly, a few moments later, we were
rocking on the roll of the river, and the yacht was out of sight and
sound around the next great bend.
"It shall go hard but we overhaul yon varlet yet," said L'Olonnois
grimly.
"Aye," assented Lafitte; "we've busted a plug, an' he has showed us a
clean pair of heels, but it's a long chase if the _Sea Rover_ does not
overhaul him. We'll have to overhaul our engine first, though," he
added thoughtfully.
But the overhauling of our engine meant a voyage under sweeps to a
precarious landing among divers packets, house-boats and launches, on
Vicksburg waterside, and a later visit to a specialist in diseases of
the carburetor; so that, when at last the _Sea Rover_ was ready for
the sea again, her chase might have been a hundred miles ahead an she
liked.
"Gee!" exclaimed Jean Lafitte, as we were about to cast off. "Looky
here, de Cubs licked de G'ints five to one to-day." He pointed to
figures in a newspaper which he had obtained. So then it might have
been excitement of rage, and not of joy, which had animated Cal
Davidson when he went aboard.
"Never mind then," said I, "for that gives us a day's start."
"How do you mean?" demanded Jean.
"It means that yonder varlet will not leave Natchez to-morrow until
late evening, after the wires are in from the northern ball games," I
replied. "Of course he'll stop there next." I felt now that the Lord
had, by implanting this insane lust of petty baseball news in his
soul, delivered my enemy into my hand.
Now I wist not how or at what dignified speed the _Belle Helène_ swept
on down that mighty river through the rich southern lands; nor do I
scarce half remember the painstaking persistent run we made with the
grimy _Sea Rover_ in pursuit, hour after hour, night or day. We had no
licensed pilot or licensed engineer, we bore no lights as prescribed
by law, and heeded no channels as prescribed by government engineers.
Pirates, indeed, we might have been as we plowed on down in the wake
of our quarry, along the ancient highway famous in fast packet days.
We cared nothing for law, order, custom, conventions, precedents--the
very things which had enslaved me all my life I now cast aside.
Through bend after bend, along willow-lined flats and bluffs crowned
with stately, moss-draped live-oaks, we swept on and on; and always I
strained my eyes to see, my ears to hear, on ahead some sign of the
_Belle Helène_; always strained my heart for some sign from her. Why,
even I looked in the water for some bottle bearing a memory from yon
captive maid to me. Captive? Why, certainly she must be captive; and
certainly she must know that I, Black Bart the Avenger, was upon the
trail.
We made the pleasant city of Natchez in the evening of the sweetest
day on which, as I thought, the sun had ever set. Her lofty hills--for
here the great eastern fence of hills which bound the Vermont Delta on
the eastward sweep in to close the foot of the Delta's V, and run
sheer to the river's brink--rose upon our left. The low tree-covered
lands on the Louisiana side lay at our right, and over them hung,
center of a most radiant evening curtain, painted in a thousand colors
by the mighty brush of nature, the round red orb of day, now sinking
to his rest.
I did not begrudge the sun his rest that day. For now, just at the
edge of this beautiful picture there hung, at the dry point where the
old keel boats used to land at old Natchez, under the hill where the
pirates of those days sought relaxation from labors in the joys of
combat or of wine, I caught sight of the long, low, graceful hull of
the _Belle Helène_!
"Avast! Jean Lafitte," I cried. "Shorten all sail, and bear across,
west-by-west."
"Aye! Aye! Sir," came the response from my bold crew.
"Why don't we run in and board her?" demanded L'Olonnois. However,
seeing that I had laid hold of the steering line where I sat, and was
heading the _Sea Rover_ across the Louisiana side, away from the
city's water-front, he subsided.
"We'll cast anchor yonder where the holding ground is good," I
explained. "To-night we'll send off the long boat with a boarding
party. And marry!" I added, "it shall go hard, but we'll hold yon
varlet to his accounting!"
CHAPTER XIII
IN WHICH WE BOARD THE ENEMY
Slowly the vast painting of the sky softened and faded until, at
length, its edges blended with the shadows of the forest. There came
into relief against the sky-line the etched outlines of the trees
crowning the bluff on the eastern side of the great river. The
oncoming darkness promised safety for a craft unimportant as ours as
we now lay in the shadows of the western shore. Meantime, as well as
the failing light allowed, we let nothing on board the _Belle Helène_
go unobserved.
The yacht lay--with an audacity of carelessness which I did not like
to note--hardly inside the edge of the regular shipping channel, but
swung securely and gracefully at her cable, held by an anchor which I
had devised myself, heavy enough for twice her tonnage. On the deck I
could see an occasional figure, but though I plied my binoculars
carefully, not the figure which I sought. A man leaned against the
rail, idly, smoking, but this I made out to be the engineer, Williams,
come up to get the evening air. Billy, the deck-hand, John, my Chinese
cook, and Peterson, the boat-master, were at the time out of sight,
as well as Cal Davidson, who had her under charter.
We lay thus, separated by some distance of the river's flood, each
craft at anchor, only one observed by the other. But to my impatient
gaze matters seemed strangely slow on board the _Belle Helène_. I was
relieved when at last the rather portly but well groomed figure of my
friend Davidson appeared on deck. He made his way aft along the rail,
and I could see him bend over and call down the companionway of the
after staterooms. Then, an instant later, he was joined on the after
deck by two ladies. The sight of one of these caused my heart to
bound.
They stood for a moment, no more than dimly outlined, but I could see
them well enough. The older lady, with the scarf about her head, was
Aunt Lucinda. The slighter figure in white and wearing no head
covering, was she, Helena Emory! It was Helena! It was Helena!
She turned toward Davidson. I could hear across the water the sound of
laughter. A sudden feeling of anger came into my soul. I shifted my
position in the _Sea Rover_, and stepped on Partial's tail, causing
him to give a sharp bark and to come and lick my hand in swift
repentance. I feared for the time that his sound might attract
attention to our boat, which, if examined closely, might seem a
trifle suspicious. True pirates, and oblivious of all law, we had not
yet hoisted our riding lights, though for all I know our black flag
still was flying.
The three figures passed forward along the deck slowly and disappeared
down the front companion-stair which led to the cozy dining-room. I
could see them all sitting there, about my own table, using the very
silver and linen which I had had made for the _Belle Helène_, attended
by John, my Chinese cook and factotum, whom I had especially imported,
selected from among a thousand other Chinese by myself at Hankow. I
knew that Davidson would have champagne and a dozen other wines in
abundance, everything the market offered. A pleasant party, this of
three, which was seating itself at my table over yonder, while I, in a
grimy, dingy, little tub lay looking at them, helpless in the gloom!
Ah, villain, shrewd enough you were when you planned this trip for
Aunt Lucinda's health! Well enough you knew that of all places in the
world none equals a well equipped private yacht for the courting of a
maid. Why, if it be propinquity that does it, what chance had any man
on earth against this man, enjoying the privilege of propinquity of
propinquities, and adding thereto the weapons of every courtesy, every
little pleasure a man may show a maid? Trust Cal Davidson for all
that! I well-nigh gnashed my teeth in anger.
I scarce know how the time passed, until at last I saw them, in the
illumination of the deck lights, at length come on deck again. They
stood looking out over the river, or toward the lights of
Natchez-under-the-Hill, and at length idly walked aft once more. The
two ladies seated themselves on deck chairs under the awning of the
rear deck. I could not see them now, but heard the tinkle and throb of
a guitar come across the water, touched lightly with long pauses, as
under some suspended melody not yet offered in fulness. Now and again
I could hear a word or so, the rather deep voice of Aunt Lucinda, the
bass tones of Davidson, but strain my ears as I might, I could not
hear the sound of that other voice, low and sweet, an excellent thing
in woman.
At length the little party seemed to be breaking up. I saw Davidson,
half in shadow, outlined by the deck lights as he rose, and passed
forward. Then I heard the falls run, and a soft splash as the dingey
was launched overside. Cal Davidson was going ashore. He could no
longer resist his anxiety over the baseball score! A moment later I
heard the dip of the oars. Some one turned on the search-light, so
that a wide shaft of light swung along the foot of Natchez Hill,
toward which the dingey was headed. The shadows on the deck of the
_Belle Helène_ seemed darker now, by contrast, but I believed that
Williams, the engineer, now had left the rail on which he was leaning
over his folded arms.
I turned now to my wondering companions, who, seeing me so much
interested, had remained for a long time practically silent. Fall now,
curtain of romance, for we be but three pirates here! Up anchor, then,
and back across the stream toward our quarry quickly, my bold mates,
for now there lies at hand a dangerous work of the boarding party!
Thus I might have spoken aloud; for, at least, I hardly needed to do
more than motion to Jean Lafitte, and as we resumed our softly
chugging progress, having broken out our shallow anchorage, he steered
the boat to the motion of my hand. We passed close alongside the
_Belle Helène_ and I examined her keenly as we did so. Then,
apparently unnoticed, we dropped down-stream a bit, and found another
anchorage.
"Clear away the long boat for the boarding party," I now whispered
hoarsely. I spoke to companions now in full character. Belted and
armed, Lafitte and L'Olonnois rose ready for any bold emprise, each
with red kerchief pulled about his brow. And now, to my interest, I
observed that each had resumed the black mask which they had worn
earlier in our long voyage, sign of the desperate character of each
wearer.
"Whither away, Black Bart?" demanded L'Olonnois fiercely. "Lead, and
we follow."
"You had better put on a mask, Black Bart," added Jean Lafitte, and
handed me a spare one of his own manufacture. I hesitated, but then,
seeing that part of my success lay in our all remaining somewhat
piratical of character, I hastily slipped it above my eyes, and pulled
down my hat brim. "She will not know me now," said I to myself. And
truly enough we seemed desperate folk, fierce as any who ever lay in
keel boat off the foot of Natchez bluff, even in the bloodiest times
of Mike Fink the Keel-boatman or of Murrell the southern bandit king.
Partial, without invitation, climbed into the skiff with us. "Cast
off," I ordered. "Oars!" And my young men--whom by this time I had
trained in many ways nautical--obeyed in good seaman fashion. A moment
later we lay almost under the rail of the _Belle Helène_. No one
hailed us. We seemed taken only for some passing skiff.
"Listen!" I whispered, "there is risk in what we are going to do."
I looked at my blue-eyed pirate, L'Olonnois, who sat closer to me. On
his face was simple and complete happiness. At last, his adventure
had come to him and he was meeting it like a man.
"What is it, Black Bart?" I heard Jean Lafitte whisper hoarsely.
"We are to board and take yonder ship," I replied softly. "If we are
to succeed, you must do precisely as I tell you. Leave the main risk
to me, that of the law. I'll take possession on the ground that she is
my boat, that her charter money is not paid, and that yonder varlet is
making away with her out of the country. She holds much treasure, let
me assure you of that, my men--the greatest treasure that ever came
down this river.
"Now, listen. You, Lafitte, as soon as we get aboard, are to run and
close the hatch of the engine-room. That will pen Williams, the
engineer, below, where he can make no resistance. As soon as that is
done, run to those doors forward which lead down to the dining-room
companionway and shut those doors and latch them. That will take care
of John, the cook. The deck-hand is away with the varlet. That leaves
only the shipmaster and the women captives.
"While you are busy in this way, Lafitte, I will hunt for Peterson,
the master, who very likely is sitting quiet on the forward deck
somewhere. The main danger lies with him. While I attend to him, you,
L'Olonnois, run aft. You will find there two ladies, one very old and
ugly, the other very young and very beautiful. See that they do not
escape, and hold them there until I come aft to meet you.
"All this must go through as we have planned. Once the maiden is in
our power, and the ship our own, we will head down-stream for the open
sea. Are you with me, my bold mates?"
"Lead on, Black Bart!" I heard L'Olonnois hiss; and I saw Jean Lafitte
tighten his belt.
"All ready, then," said I. "I'll go forward and make fast the painter
when we reach the landing stair. Follow me quickly. Leave Partial in
the boat. Gently now."
Swiftly but silently, we swept in under the lee of the _Belle Helène_.
The landing ladder had not been drawn up after Davidson's departure,
so that the boarding party had easy work ahead.
I sprang upon the deck, my footfalls deadened by the rubber matting
which lay along all the decks. I turned. Above the rail behind me rose
the face of Lafitte, masked. The long blade of a Malay kris was in his
teeth. In one hand he held a pistol, using the other as he climbed. He
scraped out of his belt as he came aboard I know not how many pistols
which fell into the water, but still, God wot! had abundant remaining.
Nor did L'Olonnois, close behind him, his Samurai sword between his
teeth, present a spectacle less awesome. I breathed a sudden prayer
that these might meet with no resistance, else I could only fear the
direst consequences!
I made a quick motion with my hand, even as I sprang forward in search
of Peterson. The dull thud of the engine-room hatch, an instant later,
assured me that Lafitte had performed the most important part of the
work assigned to him. Forsooth, ere long, he had done all his work as
laid out for him. It chanced that, as he sprang to the doors of the
forward saloon, he met John, the Chinaman. Reaching for him with one
hand, he closed the doors with the other, with such promptness and
precision that the cue of John was caught in the door and he was
imprisoned below, where he howled in much grief and perturbation,
unable to escape without the sacrifice of his cue.
Meantime, I found Peterson, my old skipper, much as I had expected. He
was a middle-aged, placid, well-poised man, a pessimist in speech, but
a bold man in soul. He was fond of an evening pipe, and he sat now
smoking and looking down the illuminated lane made by our
search-light. He turned toward me, a sudden curiosity upon his face as
he saw that I was a stranger on the boat, though not a stranger to
himself.
"Sir--Mr. Harry--" he began, half rising.
I reached out my left hand and caught him by the shoulder. In my
right hand I held a pistol, and this, somewhat gaily, I waved before
Peterson's face. "Halt," said I, "or I will blow you out of the
water"--a phrase which I had found sufficient in earlier
circumstances.
The old man smiled pleasantly and in mock fashion put up both his
hands. Had it been anyone else, he probably would have knocked me
down. "All right, Mr. Harry," said he, "you will have your joke. But
tell me, what's up? We weren't expecting you here. Mr. Davidson's gone
ashore."
"Just a lark, Peterson," said I. I had slipped down the mask so that
he could see me plainly. "By George, sir!" said he, "I am glad to see
you, back on the old boat again. Where have you been?"
"Just come on board, Peterson," said I. "I am going to run her now
myself.
"Money not paid over, Peterson," said I. It stretched my conscience a
bit, although the truth was I had Davidson's uncashed check in my
pocket at the time.
"We've all had our pay regular," he rejoined. "Why, what's wrong?"
"But I haven't had mine, Peterson," said I. "When the charter money
isn't paid and an owner has reason to suppose that his boat is going
to be run out of the country, he has to act promptly, you understand.
So I have taken my own way. The _Belle Helène_ is in my charge now,
and you will report to me for orders."
"What's that squalling?" demanded Peterson, who was a trifle hard of
hearing.
"Something seems wrong with John, the cook," I answered. "I only hope
he has not made any resistance to my men, who, I promise you, are the
most desperate lot that ever cut a throat. For instance, they have
locked Williams down in the engine-room. Go over there, Peterson, and
quiet him. But tell him that, if he shows a head above the hatch, he
is apt to have his brains blown out. Keep quiet now, all of you, until
I get this thing in hand."
"But the boat's under charter to Mr. Davidson," demurred Peterson.
"Charter or no charter, Peterson," said I, "I'm in command here, and
it's no time to argue."
At this time we heard cries of a feminine sort from the after deck, so
I knew that L'Olonnois, as well, had performed the duty assigned to
him.
"Stay here, Peterson," said I. "It's all right, and I'll take care of
you in every regard. Wait a moment."
[Illustration: "Who are you?" she demanded]
I hurried aft. L'Olonnois stood in the shadow, his back against the
saloon door, facing his two prisoners. I also faced them now. The deck
lights gave ample illumination, so that I could see her--Helena--face
to face and fairly. She turned to me; but now I had pulled up my mask
again, and she could have no more than a suspicion as to my identity.
"Who are you?" she demanded. "What right have you here?"
For half a moment I paused. Then I felt a sense of relief as I heard
at my elbow the piping voice of L'Olonnois in reply.
"Lady," said he, standing with folded arms, his bared blade gripped in
his good right hand and showing at a short up-cast angle, "it ill
beseems a gentleman to give pain to one so fair, but prithee have a
care, for, by heavens! resistance is useless here."
CHAPTER XIV
IN WHICH IS ABOUNDING TROUBLE
I looked at Helena Emory, glad that she did not at first sight
recognize the intruder who had elicited her wrath,--for she seemed
almost more angry than perturbed, such being her nature. I thought she
had never been half so beautiful as now, never more alive, more
vibrantly and dynamically feminine than now. She had not even a scarf
about her head, so that all its Greek clarity of line, all its
tight-curling dark hair--almost breaking into four ringlets, two at
each white temple--were distinct to me as I looked at her, even in the
half light. Her face, with its wondrous dark eyes, was full toward me,
meeting this danger for such as it might be; so that, again, I saw the
sweet full oval of her brow and cheek and chin, with just these two
dark incipient curls above. I could not see the twin dark tendrils at
the white nape of her neck, but I knew they were there, as beautiful
as ever. Her mouth was always the sweetest God ever gave any
woman--and I repeat, I have seen and studied all the great portraits,
and found none so wholly good as that of Helena, done by Sargent in
his happiest vein. Now the red bow of her lips parted, as she stood,
one slender hand across her bosom, panting, but not in the least
afraid, or, at least, meeting her fear boldly, as one high-born
should.
She was all in white, with not the slightest jewel or ornament of any
kind. I saw that even the buckle at her waist was covered in white.
Her boots and her hair were dark; for Helena knew the real art of
dressing. She stood fairly between me and the deck light, so that all
her white figure was frank in its gentle curves; erect now, and
bravely drawn to all her five feet five, so that she might meet my
gaze--albeit through a mask--as fully as a lady should when she has
met affront.
I always loved Helena, always, from the first time I met her. I had
bidden adieu to life when, after many efforts to have her see me as I
saw her, I turned away to the long hard endeavor to forget her. But
now I saw my attempts had all been in vain. If absence had made my
heart more fond, the presence of her made it more poignantly, more
imperiously, fonder than before. My whole body, my whole soul,
unified, arose. I stretched out my arms, craving, demanding. "Helena!"
I cried.
My voice was hoarse. Perhaps she did not know me, even yet. Her answer
was a long clear call for help.
"Ahoy!" she sang. "On shore, there--Help!"
Her call was a signal for present trouble. Partial, my dog, abandoned
in the long boat, began barking furiously. There came an answering
hail which assured me that yon varlet, Davidson, had heard. I was
conscious of the sound of a scuffle somewhere forward. Below, at my
side, Aunt Lucinda gave voice to a long shrill wail of terror. John,
my Chinaman, his cue still held fast in the jammed edges of the door,
chimed in dismally. Midships I heard a muffled knocking at Williams',
the engineer's, hatch.
I forgot I was standing masked, with a naked weapon in my hand. I
dropped my mask, dropped my weapon, and turned quickly toward Helena.
"Be silent!" I commanded her.
She stood for one instant, her hands at her cheeks. Then, "Ahoy!" rang
out her voice once more in sheer disobedience, and "You!" she said to
me, furious.
"Yes, I," was my answer, and my own fury was now as cold as hers. "Go
below," I ordered her. "I am in command of this boat. Quick!"
I had never spoken thus to her in all my life, but almost to my
surprise she changed now. As though half in doubt, she turned toward
the stair leading down to the ladies' cabin where Aunt Lucinda was
shrieking in terror.
"Guard the door," I called to L'Olonnois as I turned away. I heard it
slam shut and the click of the lock told me my prisoners were safe, so
I hastened forward.
"Good Lord, Mr. Harry!" cried my skipper, Peterson, when he saw me.
"Come here, take this little devil--away--I'm afraid he'll knife me."
I hurried to him for he struggled in the dark with Jean Lafitte.
"To the rescue, Black Bart!" called Jean Lafitte. "Catch his other
arm. I've got this one, and if he moves, by Heaven I'll run him
through."
"Run me through, you varmint--what do you mean?" roared Peterson.
"Ain't it enough you pull a gun on me and try to poke out my eye, and
twist off my arm, without sticking me with that bread-slicer you got?
Mr. Harry--for Heaven's sake----"
"There now, Jean Lafitte," I said, "enough. He has begged for
quarter."
"No, I ha'int," asserted Peterson venomously. "I'll spank the life
outen him if I ever get the chance--" I raised a hand.
"Enough of all this noise," I said. "I am in charge now, Peterson. Go
to the wheel. Break out the anchor and get under way. At once, man! I
have no time to argue."
Peterson had never in his life heard me speak in this way before, but
now, for what reason I do not know--perhaps from force of habit,
perhaps because he knew I was owner of the boat, perhaps in awe of the
naked kris of Jean Lafitte, still presented menacingly at his
abdomen--the old skipper obeyed.
I heard the faint jangle of bells in the engine-room below. Obviously,
Williams, the engineer, was responsive to his sense of duty and
routine. The power came pulsing through the veins of the _Belle
Helène_ and I heard her screws revolve. I, myself, threw in the donkey
winch as she forged ahead, and so broke out the anchor. It still
swung, clogging her bows as she turned in the current. The bells again
jangled as she got more speed and as the anchor came home. Our
search-light swept a wide arc along the foot of Natchez Hill, as our
bows circled about and headed down the great river. And now we picked
in full view, hardly sixty fathoms distant, the dingey, pulled
furiously toward us. My friend, the varlet Cal Davidson, half stood in
the stern of the stubby craft and waved at us an excited hand.
"Ahoy there, Peterson!" he cried. "Stop! Hold on there! Wait! Where
are you going there!"
Peterson turned toward me an inquiring gaze, but I only pointed a hand
down-stream, and he obeyed me! I reached my hand to the cord and gave
Peterson, Davidson, Natchez and all the world, the salute of a long
and vibrant whistle of defiance. It came back to us in echoes from the
giant bluffs, swept across the lowlands on the opposite side.
"Full speed ahead, Peterson," said I quietly.
"Where are we going, Mr. Harry?" he demanded anxiously.
"I don't know," said I. "It all depends--maybe around the world. I
don't know and I don't care."
"I'm scared about this--it don't look right. What's come into you, Mr.
Harry?" asked the old man solicitously.
"Nothing, Peterson," said I, "except that the bird of time is on the
wing. I am a pirate, Peterson----"
"I never knew you so far gone in drink before, Mr. Harry," said he, as
he threw over the wheel to pick up the first starboard channel light.
"Yes, I have been drinking, Peterson," said I. "I have been drinking
the wine of life. It oozes drop by drop, and is all, too soon, gone if
we delay. Full speed ahead, Peterson. I am in command."
"Jean!" I called to my able lieutenant. "Reach over into the long boat
and bring Partial on board. He is my friend. And bring also our flag.
Run it aloft above our prize."
"Aye, aye, Sir," came the reply of Jean Lafitte. And a few moments
later our long boat was riding astern more easily. Jean Lafitte on his
return busied himself with our burgee. And at that moment, Partial,
overjoyed at also having a hand in these affairs, barked joyously at
his discovery of the neglected end of the cook's cue projecting
through the hinges of the door. On this he laid hold cheerfully,
worrying it until poor John shrieked anew in terror; and until I freed
him; and ordered tea.
I next went over to the hatches of the engine-room, and having opened
them, bent over to speak to Williams, the engineer.
"It's all right, Williams," said I. "I am going to take her over now
and run her perhaps to the Gulf. We hadn't time to tell you at first.
There has been a legal difficulty. Peterson is on deck, of course."
"All right, Mr. Harry," said Williams, who recognized me as he leaned
out from his levers to look up through the open hatch. "At first I
didn't know what in hell was up. It sounded like a mutiny----"
"It was a mutiny, Williams," said I, "and I am the head mutineer. But
you're sure of your pay, so let her go."
He did let her go, smoothly and brilliantly, so that before long she
was at her top speed, around fifteen knots an hour. I was familiar
with every detail of the _Belle Helène_, and now I looked in both the
generating plant and the storage batteries, so that four thousand
candle-power of electric light blazed over her from bow to fantail.
The steady purr of the _Belle Helène's_ double sixties--engines I had
had made under my own care--came to me with a soothing rhythm where I
stood near by the wheel. Her search-light made a vast illumination far
ahead. Brilliant enough must have seemed the passing spectacle of our
stanch little ship to any observer, as we now swept on down the tawny
flood of the great river. Who would deny me the feeling of exultation
which came to me? Was I not captor and captain of my own ship?
I turned to meet L'Olonnois, my blue-eyed pirate. He stood at my side
as one glorified. The full swing of romance had him, the full illusion
of this,--imagination's most ardent desire--now gripped him fully. He
was no boy, but a human being possessed of all his dreams. His second
self, once oppressed, now free, stood before me wholly satisfied. I
needed not to ask whether he had been faithful to his trust.
"I locked the door on 'em, Black Bart," said he, "and bade them cease
a idle remonstrancing. 'Little do you know,' say I to them, 'that
Black Bart the Avenger is now on the trail. Let any oppose him at
their peril,' says I to them. She give me candy, the fair captive did,
but I spurned her bribe. 'Beware,' says I to her. 'Little do you know
what lies before you.'"
CHAPTER XV
IN WHICH IS CONVERSATION WITH THE CAPTIVE MAIDEN
Jean Lafitte, who had so well executed the work assigned him in the
boarding party's plans, proved himself neither inefficient nor
unobservant. He approached me now, with a salute, which probably he
copied from Peterson.
"How now, good leftenant?" said I.
"If you please, Black Bart," he began, "how are we headed, and what
are our plans?"
"Our course on this river, Jean Lafitte, will box the compass, indeed
box an entire box of compasses, for no river is more winding. Yet in
time we shall reach its end, no doubt, since others have."
"And what about our good ship, the _Sea Rover_, that we have left
behind?"
"By Jove! Jean Lafitte," I exclaimed, "that is, indeed, a true word.
What, indeed? We left her riding at anchor just off the channel edge,
and so far as I recall, she had not her lights up, in accordance with
the law."
"Shall we put about and take her in tow, Black Bart?"
"By no means. That is the very last of my intentions."
"What'll become of her, then?"
"That is no concern of mine."
"But nobody'll know whose she is, and nobody can tell what may happen
to her----"
"Quite true. She may be stolen, or sunk. Why not?"
"But she cost a lot of money."
"On the contrary, she cost only twelve hundred dollars."
"Twelve hundred dollars!" Jean drew a long deep breath. "I didn't know
anybody had that much money in the world. Besides, look what you spent
for them pearls. Ain't you poor, then, Black Bart?"
"On the contrary, I have that much more money left, very likely. And I
do not, to say truth, care a jot, a rap or a stiver, what becomes of
the derelict _Sea Rover_ now. Have we not taken a better ship for our
own?"
"Yes, but suppose yon varlet boards the _Sea Rover_, an' chases us the
way we done him?"
"Again, by Jove! Jean Lafitte; an idea. But suppose he does? Much good
it will do him. For, look you, good leftenant, the _Belle Helène_ will
not stop to send any man ashore for baseball scores. Such was not the
practise of the old buccaneers, nor shall it be ours; whereas, no
matter what the haste, yon varlet could in nowise refrain from that
same folly which hath lost him his ship to us. Each hour will only
widen the gap between us. Let him take our tub if he likes, and do as
he likes, for 'twill be a long day before he picks up our masts over
his horizon, Jean Lafitte."
"Aye, aye, Sir!" rejoined my lieutenant, and withdrew. I could see he
was not overjoyed at the abandonment of our earlier ship that had
brought us so far in safety. All this luxury of the _Belle Helène_ had
the effect of oppressing a pirate who so short a time ago had started
out on the high seas in a sixteen foot yawl, and who had seen that
yawl, in a manner of speaking, grown into a schooner, the schooner
comparatively grown into a full-fledged four-decker, richly fitted as
any ship of the royal navy.
But these, all, were lesser things to me, for on my soul was a more
insistent concern. I turned now, seeing that Peterson, wholly
reconciled to the new order of affairs, was speeding the boat onward
as though I never had left her; so that I knew she was safe in his
hands, although I set Lafitte to watch him. Followed by my faithful
friend Partial, who expressed every evidence of having enjoyed a most
interesting evening, I presently made my way aft.
As I approached the door of the after-cabin suite, occupied by the
ladies, I made my presence known at first discreetly, then more
pointedly, and, at length, by a knocking on the door.
"Below, there!" I called, boldly as I could; for eager as I was to
see Helena Emory, there were certain things about the interview which
might be difficult. Lovers who have parted, finally, approach each
other, even by accident, thereafter, with a certain reluctance.
(Lovers, did I say? Nay, never had she said she loved me. She had only
said she wished she did, wished she could.)
No answer came at first. Then, "Who is it?" in the voice of Aunt
Lucinda.
"It is I, Mr. Henry--" but I paused: "--It is I, Black Bart the
Avenger," I concluded. "May I come in?"
Silently the door opened, and I entered the little reception-room
which lay between the two staterooms of this cabin. Before me stood
Helena! And now I was close to her, I could see the little curls at
her temples, could see the double curves of her lips, the color in her
cheek. Ah! she was the same, the same! I loved her--I loved her not
the same, but more and more, more!
She held her peace; and all I could do was to stand and stare and then
hold out my hand. She took it formally, though her color heightened. I
saluted Aunt Lucinda also, who glared at me. "How do you do?" I said
to them both, with much originality and daring.
"Black Bart!" snorted Aunt Lucinda. "Black Bart! It might be, from
these goings on. What does it all mean?"
"It means, my dear Mrs. Daniver," said I, "that I have taken charge of
the boat myself."
"But how?" demanded Helena. "We did not hear you were coming. And I
don't understand. Why, that rascally little nephew of mine, in the
mask, frightened auntie nearly to death. And he said the most
extraordinary _things_!
"Where is Mr. Davidson?" she added. "He didn't tell us a word of
this."
"He didn't know a word of it himself," I answered. "Let me tell you,
no self-respecting pirate--and as you see, I am a pirate--is in the
habit of telling his plans in advance."
"A pirate!"
I bowed politely. "At your service. Black Bart--my visiting cards are
mislaid, but I intend ordering some new ones. The ship's cook, John,
will soon be here with tea. These events may have been wearying.
Meantime, allow me to present my friend Partial."
Partial certainly understood human speech. He now approached Helena
slowly and stood looking up into her face in adoration. Then, without
any command, he lay down deliberately and rolled over; sat up, barked;
and so, having done all his repertory for her whom he now--as had his
master before him--loved at first sight, he stood again and
worshiped.
"Nice doggie!" said Helena courteously.
"Have a care, Helena!" said I. "Love my dog, love me! And all the
world loves Partial."
The color heightened in her cheeks. I had never spoken so boldly to
her before, but had rather dealt in argument than in assertion; which
I, later, was to learn is no way to make love to any woman.
"When do we get back to Natchez?" she demanded.
"We do not get back to Natchez."
"Oh? Then I suppose Mr. Davidson picks us up at Baton Rouge?"
"Yon varlet," said I, "does not pick us up at Baton Rouge."
"New Orleans?"
"Or at New Orleans--unless he is luckier than I ever knew even Cal to
be."
"Whatever do you mean?" inquired Aunt Lucinda in tones ominously deep.
"That the _Belle Helène_ is much faster than the tug we left behind at
Natchez, even did he find it. He will have hard work to catch us."
"To _catch us_?"
"Yes, Helena, to catch us. Of course he'll follow in some way. I have,
all the way from above Dubuque. Why should not he?"
The ladies looked from me to each other, doubting my sanity, perhaps.
"I don't just understand all this," began Helena. "But since we travel
only as we like, and only with guests whom we invite or who are
invited by the boat's owner, I shall ask you to put us ashore."
"On a sand-bar, Helena? Among the alligators?"
"Of course I mean at the nearest town."
"There is none where we are going, my dear Miss Emory. Little do you
know what lies before you! Black Bart heads for the open sea. Let yon
varlet follow at his peril. Believe me, 'twill cost him a very
considerable amount of gasoline."
"What right have you on this boat?" she demanded fiercely.
"The right of any pirate."
"Why do you intrude--how dare you--at least, I don't understand----"
"I have taken this ship, Helena," said I, "because it carries
treasure--more than you know of, more than I dreamed. My father was a
pirate, I am well assured by the public prints. So am I. 'Tis in the
blood. But do not anger me. Rather, have a cup of tea." John, my cook,
was now at the door with the tray.
"Thank you," rejoined Helena icily. "It would hardly be courteous to
Mr. Davidson--to use his servants and his table in this way in his
absence. Besides----"
"Besides, I recalled that your Aunt Lucinda's neuralgia is always
benefited by a glass or so of ninety-three at about ten thirty of the
evening. John!"
"Lessah!"
"Go to the left-hand locker in B; and bring me a bottle of the
ninety-three. I think you will find that better than this absurd
German champagne which I see yon varlet has been offering you, my dear
Mrs. Daniver. But--excuse me----"
Helena looked up, innocently.
"--A moment before there were six empty bottles on the table there.
And I saw you writing. How many have you thrown overboard through the
port-hole?"
"I didn't know you were so observant," replied Helena demurely. "But
only three."
"It is not enough," said I. "Go on, and write your other messages for
succor. Use each bottle, and we shall have more emptied for you, if
you like. You shall have oil bottles, vinegar bottles, water bottles,
wine bottles, all you like. Yon varlet might run across one, floating,
it is true. I hope he will. Methinks 'twould bid him speed. But all in
vain would be your appeal, for swift must be the craft that can come
up with Black Bart now. And desperate, indeed, must be the man would
dispute his right to tread these decks."
"I hope you are enjoying yourself," said Helena scornfully. "Don't be
silly."
"Will you have tea, Helena?" I asked.
"Poor, dear Mr. Davidson!" sniffed Aunt Lucinda, taking a glance out
the port into the black night. "I wonder where he is, and what he will
say."
"I can tell you what he will say, my dear Mrs. Daniver," said I; "but
I would rather not."
"Well, I'll tell you what _I_ say," snorted Aunt Lucinda. "I think
this joke has gone far enough."
"It is no joke, madam. I was never so desperately in earnest in all my
life."
"Then put us ashore at Baton Rouge."
"I can not. I shall not."
"What do you mean? Do you know what this looks like, the way you are
acting, running off with Mr. Davidson's yacht, and this----"
"Yes, madam?"
"Why, it's robbery, and it's, it's, why it's abduction, too. You ought
to know the law."
"I do know the law. It is piracy. Have we not told you that resistance
would be worse than useless? Haven't I told you I've captured this
ship? Little do you know the fate that lies before you, madam, at the
hands of my ruthless men if I should prove unable to restrain them!
And have a care not to offend Black Bart the Avenger, himself! If you
do, Aunt Lucinda, he may cut off your evening champagne."
I heard a sudden suppressed sound, wondrous like a giggle; but when I
turned, Helena was sitting there as sober as Portia, albeit I thought
her eyes suspiciously bright.
"Well," said she, at length, "we can't sit here all night and talk
about it, and I've used up all my note-paper and bottles. I'll tell
you what I suggest, since you have seen fit to intrude on two women in
this way. We will hold a parley."
"When?"
"To-morrow."
"At what hour?"
"After breakfast."
"Why not at breakfast?"
"Because we shall eat alone, here,--auntie and I--in our cabin."
"Very well then, if it seems you are so bitter against the new
commander of the ship that you will not sit at the captain's table--as
we did the second time we went to Europe together, we three--don't you
remember, Helena?"
"Never--at your table, sir!" said Helena Emory, her voice like a stab.
And when I bethought me what that had meant before now, what it would
mean all my life, if this woman might never sit at board of mine,
never eat the fruit of my bow and spear, never share with me the bread
of life, for one instant I felt the cold thrust of fate's steel once
more in my bowels. But the next instant a new manner of feeling took
its place, an emotion I never had felt toward her before--anger, rage!
"It is well," said I, pulling together the best I could. "And now, by
my halidom! or by George! or by anything! you shall be taken at your
word. You breakfast here. Be glad if it is more than bread and
water--until you learn a better way of speech with me."
Again I saw that same sudden change on her face, surprise, almost
fright; and I swear she shrank from me as though in terror, her hand
plucking at Aunt Lucinda's sleeve; whereas, all Aunt Lucinda could do
was to pluck at her niece's sleeve in turn.
"As to the parley, then," said I, pulling, by mistake, my mask from my
pocket instead of my kerchief, "we shall hold it, to-morrow, at what
time and in what place I please. It ill beseems a gentleman to pain
one so fair, as we may again remark; but by heaven! Helena, no
resistance!"
"Wait! What do you really mean?" She raised a hand. "I've told you I
just can't understand all this. I always thought you were
a--a--gentleman."
"A much misused word," was my answer. "You never understood me at
all. I am not a gentleman. I'm a poor, miserable, unhappy, drifting,
aimless and useless failure--at least, I was, until I resolved upon
this way to recoup my fortunes, and went in for pirating. What chance
has a man who has lost his fortune in the game to-day--what chance
with a woman? You ask me, who am I? I am a pirate. You ask what I
intend to do? What pirate can answer that? It all depends."
"On what?"
"On you!" I answered furiously. "What right had you to ruin me, to
throw me over----"
She turned a frightened glance to Aunt Lucinda, whom I had entirely
forgotten. It was my turn to blush. To hide my confusion I drew on my
mask as I bowed.
I met John coming down with the ninety-three. As he returned on deck a
moment later, I pushed shut the doors and sprung the outside latches;
so that those within now were prisoners, indeed. And then I stood
looking up at the stars, slowly beginning to see why God made the
world.
CHAPTER XVI
IN WHICH IS FURTHER PARLEY WITH THE CAPTIVE MAIDEN
Cal Davidson's taste in neckwear was a trifle vivid as compared with
my own, yet I rather liked his shirts, and I found a morning waistcoat
of his which I could classify as possible; beside which I obtained
from John the cook a suit of flannels I had given him four years ago,
and which he was saving against the day of his funeral and shipment
back to China. So that, on the whole, I did rather well, and I was not
ill content with life as I sat, with the _Pirate's Own Book_ in my
lap, and Partial's head on my knee, looking out over the passing
panorama of the river. The banks now were low, the swamps, at times,
showing their fan-topped cypresses close to where we passed; and all
the live oaks carried their funereal Spanish moss, gray and ghostlike.
We sometimes passed river craft, going up or down, nondescript, dingy
and slow, for the most part. Sometimes we were hailed gaily by
monkey-like deck-hands, sometimes saluted by the pilot of a larger
boat. At times we swept by busy plantation landings where the levees
screened the white-pillared mansion houses so that we could only see
the upper galleries. And now at these landings, we began to see the
freight, made up as much of barrels as of bales. We were passing from
cotton to cane. But though it still was early in the fall, the weather
was not oppressive, and the breeze on the deck was cool. I had very
much enjoyed my breakfast, and so had my shipmates L'Olonnois and
Lafitte, to whom each moment now was a taste of paradise revealed. I
envied them, for theirs, now, was that rare, fleeting and most
delectable of all human states, the full realization of every
cherished earthly dream. It made me quite happy that they were thus
happy; and as to the right or wrong of it, I put that all aside for
later explanation to them.
I looked up to see Peterson, who touched his cap.
"Yes, Peterson?"
"We're on our last drum of gasoline, Mr. Harry," said he. "Where'll we
put in--Baton Rouge?"
"No, we can't do that, Peterson," I answered. "Can't we make it to New
Orleans?"
"Hardly. But they carry gas at most of these landings now--so many
power boats and autos nowadays, you see."
"Very well. We'll pass Bayou Sara and Baton Rouge, and then you can
run in at any landing you like, say twenty miles or so below. Can you
make it that far?"
"Oh, yes, but you see, at Baton Rouge----"
"You may lay to long enough to mail these letters," said I, frowning;
"but the custom of getting the baseball scores is now suspended. And
send John here."
The old man touched his cap again, a trifle puzzled. I wondered if he
recognized Davidson's waistcoat--he asked no more questions.
"John," said I to my Chinaman, "carry this to the ladies;" and handed
him a card on which I had inscribed: "Black Bart's compliments; and he
desires the attendance of the ladies on deck for a parley. At once."
John came back in a few moments and stood on one foot. "She say, she
say, Misal Hally, she say no come."
"Letter have got, John?"
"Lessah have got."
"Take it back. Say, at once."
"Lessah. At wullunce."
"Lessah," he added two moments later. "Catchee lettah, them lady, and
she say, she say, go to hellee!"
"What! What's that, John? She said nothing of the sort!"
"Lessah, said them. No catchee word, that what she mean. Lady, one
time she say, she say, go topside when have got plenty leady for
come."
"Go back to your work, John," said I. And I waited with much dignity,
for perhaps ten minutes or so, before I heard any signs of life from
the after suite. Then I heard the door pushed back, and saw a head
come out, a head with dark tendrils of hair at the white neck's nape,
and two curls at the temple, and as clean and thoroughbred a sweep of
jaw and chin as the bows of the _Belle Helène_ herself. She did not
look at me, but studiously gazed across the river, pretended to yawn,
idly looked back to see if she were followed; as she knew she was not
to be.
At length, she turned as she stepped out on the deck. She was fresh as
the dew itself, and like a rose. All color of rose was the soft skirt
she wore, and the little bolero above, blue, with gold buttons,
covered a soft rose-colored waist, light and subtle as a spider's web,
stretched from one grass stalk to another of a dewy morning. She was
round and slender, and her neck was tall and round, and in the close
fashion of dress which women of late have devised, to remind man once
more of the ancient Garden, she seemed to me Eve herself, sweet,
virginal, as yet in a garden dew-sweet in the morning of the world.
She turned, I say, and by mere chance and in great surprise,
discovered me, now cap in hand, and bowing.
"Oh," she remarked; very much surprised.
"Good morning, Eve," said I. "Have you used Somebody's Soap; or what
is it that you have used? It is excellent."
A faint color came to her cheek, the corners of her bowed lips
twitched. "For a pirate, or a person of no culture, you do pretty
well. As though a girl could sleep after all this hullabaloo."
"You have slept very well," said I. "You never looked better in all
your life, Helena. And that is saying the whole litany."
"You are absurd," said she. "You must not begin it all again. We
settled it once."
"We settled it twenty times, or to be exact, thirteen times, Helena.
The only trouble is, it would not stay settled. Tell me, is there any
one else yet, Helena?"
"It is not any question for you to ask, or for me to answer." She was
cold at once. "I've not tried to hear of you or your plans, and I
suppose the same is true of you. It is long since I have had a
heartache over you--a headache is all you can give me now, or ever
could. That is why I can not in the least understand why you are here
now. Auntie is almost crazy, she is so frightened. She thinks you are
entirely crazy, and believes you have murdered Mr. Davidson."
"I have not yet done so, although it is true I am wearing his shoes;
or at least his waistcoat. How do you like it?"
"I like the one with pink stripes better," she replied demurely.
"So then--so then!" I began; but choked in anger at her familiarity
with Cal Davidson's waistcoats. And my anger grew when I saw her
smile.
"Tell me, are you engaged to him, Helena?" I demanded. "But I can see;
you are." She drew herself up as she stood, her hands behind her back.
"A fine question to ask, isn't it? Especially in view of what we both
know."
"But you haven't told me."
"And am not going to."
"Why not?"
"Because it is the right of a middle-aged woman like myself----"
"--Twenty-four," said I.
"--To do as she likes in such matters. And she doesn't need make any
confidences with a man she hasn't seen for years. And for whom she
never--she _never_----"
"Helena," said I, and I felt pale, whether or not I looked it, "be
careful. That hurts."
"Oh, is it so?" she blazed. "I am glad if it does hurt."
I bowed to her. "I am glad if it gives you pleasure to see me hurt. I
am. _Habeo!_"
"But it was not so as to me," I added presently. "Yes, I said good-by
to you, that last time, and I meant it. I had tried for years, I
believe, with every argument in my power, to explain to you that I
loved you, to explain that in every human likelihood we would make a
good match of it, that we--we--well, that we'd hit it off fine
together, very likely. And then, I was well enough off--at first, at
least----"
"Oh, don't!" she protested. "It is like opening a grave. We buried it
all, Harry. It's over. Can't you spare a girl, a middle-aged girl of
twenty-four, this resurrection? We ended it. Why, Harry, we have to
make out some sort of life for ourselves, don't we? We can't just sit
down and--and----"
"No," said I. "I tried it. I got me a little place, far up in the
wilderness with what remained of my shattered fortunes--a few acres.
And I sat down there and tried that 'and--and' business. It didn't
seem to work. But we don't get on much in our parley, do we?"
"No. The most charitable thing I can think of is that you are crazy.
Aunt Lucinda must be right. But what do you intend to do with us? We
can't get off the boat, and we can't get any answer to our signals for
help."
"So you have signaled?"
"Of course. Waved things, you know."
"Delightful! The passing steamers no doubt thought you a dissipated
lot of northern joy-riders, bound south on some rich man's yacht."
"Instead of two troubled women on a stolen boat."
"Are you engaged to Cal Davidson, Helena?"
"What earthly difference?"
"True, none at all. As you say, I have stolen his boat, stolen his
wine, stolen his fried potatoes, stolen his waistcoats. But, bear
witness, I drew the line at his neckties. Nowhere else, however!" And
as I added this I looked at her narrowly.
"Will you put us ashore?" she asked, her color rising.
"No."
"We're coming to a town."
"Baton Rouge. The capital of Louisiana. A quaint and delightful city
of some sixty thousand inhabitants. The surrounding country is largely
devoted to the sugar industry. But we do not stop. Tell me, are you
engaged?"
But, suddenly, I saw her face, and on it was something of outraged
dignity. I bent toward her eagerly. "Forgive me! I never wanted to
give you pain, Helena. Forget my improper question."
"Indeed!"
"I've been fair with you. And that's hard for a man. Always,
always,--let me tell you something women don't understand--there's the
fight in a man's soul to be both a gentleman and a brute, because a
woman won't love him till he's a brute, and he hates himself when he
isn't a gentleman. It's hard, sometimes, to be both. But I tried. I've
been a gentleman--was once, at least. I told you the truth. When they
investigated my father, and found that, acting under the standard of
his day, he hadn't run plumb with the standards of to-day, I came and
told you of it. I released you then, although you never had promised
me, because I knew you mightn't want an alliance with--well, with a
front page family, you know. It blew over, yes; but I was fair with
you. You knew I had lost my money, and then you----"
"I remained 'released'."
"Yes, it is true."
"And am free, have been, to do as I liked."
"Yes, true."
"And what earthly right has a man to try both rôles with a woman--that
of discarded and accepted? You chose the first; and I never gave you
the last. It is horrible, this sort of talk. It is abominable. For
three years we have not met or spoken. I've not had a heartache since
I told you. Don't give me a headache now. And it would make my head
ache, to follow these crazy notions. Put us ashore!"
"Not till I know the truth," said I.
"About what?"
"Well, for instance, about the waistcoat with pink stripes."
"You are silly."
"Yes. How do you like my suit?"
"I never saw Mr. Davidson wear that one," said she.
"For good reasons. It is my own, and four years old. You see, a poor
man has to economize. And you know, since I lost my fortune, I've been
living almost from hand to mouth. Honestly, Helena, many is the time
when I've gone out fishing, trying to catch me a fish for my supper!"
"So does a poor girl have to economize," said she.
"You are most sparing of the truth this morning, Helena, my dear," I
said.
"How dare you!" she blazed now at the tender phrase. "Fine, isn't it,
when I can't get away? If I could, I'd go where I'd never see or hear
of you again. I thought I had."
"But you have not. You shall hear and see me daily till I know from
your own lips the truth about you and--and every and any other man on
earth who--well, who wears waistcoats with pink stripes."
"We'll have a long ride then," said she calmly, and rose.
I rose also and bowed.
CHAPTER XVII
IN WHICH IS HUE AND CRY
We ran by the river-front of Baton Rouge, and lay to on the opposite
side while our dingey ran in with mail. I sent Peterson and Lafitte
ashore for the purpose, and meantime paced the deck in several frames
of mind. I was arrested in this at length by L'Olonnois, who was
standing forward, glasses in hand.
"Here they come," said he, "and a humpin' it up, too. Look, Jean
Lafitte is standin' up, wavin' at us. Something's up, sure. Mayhap, we
are pursued by the enemy. Methinks 'tis hue and cry, good Sir."
"It jolly well does look like it, mate," said I, taking his glasses.
"Something's up."
I could see the stubby dingey forced half out the water by Peterson's
oars, though she made little speed enough. And I saw men hurrying on
the wharf, as though about to put out a boat.
"What's wrong, Peterson?" I shouted as he came in range at last.
"Hurry up!" It was Lafitte who answered. "Clear the decks for action.
Yon varlet has wired on ahead to have us stopped! They're after us!"
So came his call through cupped hands.
I ran to the falls and lowered away the blocks to hoist them aboard,
even as I ordered speed and began to break out the anchor. We hardly
were under way before a small power boat, bearing a bluecoated man,
puffed alongside.
"What boat is this?" he called. "_Belle Helène_, of Mackinaw?"
In answer--without order from me,--my bloodthirsty mate, L'Olonnois,
brought out the black burgee of the Jolly Rover, bearing a skull and
cross-bones. "Have a look at that!" he piped. "Shall we clear the
stern-chaser, Black Bart?"
"Hold on there, wait! I've got papers for you," called the officer,
still hanging at our rail, for I had not yet ordered full speed.
"He hollered to me he was going to arrest us, Mr. Harry," explained
Peterson, much out of breath. "What's it all about? What papers does
he mean?"
"The morning papers, very likely, Peterson," said I. "The baseball
scores."
"Will you halt, now?" called the officer.
"No," I answered, through the megaphone. "You have no authority to
halt us. What's your paper, and who is it for?"
"Wire from Calvin Davidson, Natchez, charging John Doe with running
off with his boat."
"This is not his boat," I answered, "but my own, and I am not John
Doe. We are on our way to the coast, and not under any jurisdiction
of yours."
He stood up and drew a paper from his pocket, and began to read. In
reply I pulled the whistle cord and drowned his voice; while at the
same time I gave the engineer orders for full speed. Shaking his fist,
he fell astern.
None the less, I was a bit thoughtful. After all, the Mississippi
River, wide as it was, ran within certain well defined banks from
which was no escaping. We were three hundred miles or more from the
high seas, and passing between points of continuous telegraphic
communication; so that a hue and cry down the river might indeed mean
trouble for us. Moreover, even as I turned to pick up the course--for
I had myself taken the wheel--I saw the figure of Aunt Lucinda on the
after deck. She was on the point of heaving overboard a bottle--I
heard it splash, saw it bob astern. "Now, the devil will be to pay,"
thought I. But, on second thought, I slowed down, so that distinctly I
saw the officer, also slowing down, stoop over and take the bottle
aboard his launch.
"Ahoy, the launch!" I hailed. He put a hand at his ear as I megaphoned
him. "Take this message for Mr. Calvin Davidson," I hailed. He nodded
that he heard. "--That to-night John Doe will wear his waistcoat, the
one with the pink stripes. Do you get me?"
Apparently he did not get me, for he sat down suddenly and mopped his
face. We left him so. And for aught I could know, he took back ashore
material for a newspaper story, which bade fair to be better for the
newspapers than for us on board the _Belle Helène_; for, up and down
the river, the wires might carry the news that a crazy man had been
guilty of piracy, highway robbery, abduction, I know not how many
other crimes; and to arrest him on his mad career they might enlist
all the authorities, municipal, county, state and even national. "John
Doe," said I to myself, "if I really were you, methinks I should make
haste." None the less I smiled; for, if I were John Doe only, then
Calvin Davidson had no idea who had stolen his chartered yacht, and
who was about to disport in his most cherished waistcoat! The
situation pleased me very much. "L'Olonnois," said I, "come hither, my
hearty."
"Aye, aye, Sir," replied that worthy. "What is it, Black Bart?"
"Nothing, except I was just going to say that I enjoy it very much,
this being a pirate."
"So do I," said he. "An' let any pursue us at their peril!"
CHAPTER XVIII
IN WHICH IS DISCUSSION OF TWO AUNTIES
L'Olonnois was still all for training the stern-chaser Long Tom (the
_Belle Helène's_ brass yacht cannon) on the enemy, and came to me
presently breathing defiance. "'F I only had any chain shot in the
locker," said he, "beshrew me, but I would pay him well for this! He's
got my Auntie Helen's auntie scared silly."
"And how about your Auntie Helena herself?" I asked of him. Thus far,
he had been guilty of no nepotism whatever, and had treated his auntie
as any other captive maiden, perchance fallen into his ruthless hands.
"Well, she ain't so scared as she is mad, near's I can see," was his
reply. "She sat there when I first drove 'em down-stairs, lookin' at
me, an' she says, 'Jimmy,' says she, 'what's all this foolishness?'
An' she reaches out her hand, an' she offers me candy--she makes awful
nice fudges, too. She knew that wasn't fair! But I says to her.
'Woman, cease all blandishments, for now you are in our power!' An' I
liked that, fer I been in her power long enough. Then she set down,
an' near's I can tell, she got to thinking things over. I know
her--she'll try to get away."
"She has tried to do so, my good leftenant, is trying now. She and
her Auntie Lucinda have thrown over I know not how many bottles
carrying messages. It were only by mere chance yon varlet could escape
coming over some of them. Add this to the fact that yon varlet has got
the king's navy after us, and marry! methinks we have full work cut
out for us. Not that stout heart should falter, good leftenant, eh?"
"We follow Black Bart the Avenger," said L'Olonnois, folding his arms
and frowning heavily. "But say," he added, "what seems funny to me is,
you and my Auntie Helen must of known each other before now."
"Not at all, not at all--that is, but casually, and long years since.
It had long since escaped my mind." I felt myself flushing sadly.
"I'll tell her that--I knew she was mistaken. I was sure she was."
"No! No! Jimmy, you'll tell her nothing of the kind. I only meant----"
"Well, she remembers you, I'm almost sure, an' so does Aunt Lucinda.
Aunt Lucinda, why I've heard her back home tell Auntie Helena about as
good fish in the sea, an' she mustn't bother over a man that's poor.
Was it you, Black Bart? And are you poor?"
"As I stand before you now, Jimmy L'Olonnois, I'm the poorest beggar
in the world," said I. "I have risked my all on one hazard. If I win,
I shall be rich beyond compare. If I fail, I shall be poor indeed."
"She knows that. She knows you're poor, all right. I heard Aunt
Lucinda tell her often. She said you was rich once, an' lost it all,
speculatin' in a mine or something; an' what was the use marryin' a
man who hadn't anything? I don't know, but I think that was why Aunt
Lucinda worked up this trip with Mr. Davidson. He's got money to
burn--look at this yacht, an' everything--an' I know him and Auntie
Lucinda, anyhow, have got it doped out that him an' Auntie Helen's
goin' to get married--even if they ain't now, so far's I know. Anyhow,
our takin' the ship has broke up something. But say, now, Black
Bart----"
"Well, my good leftenant----"
"_I_ got a idea!"
"Indeed?"
"Yep. Looka here, now--why don't _you_ just do like the pirate book
says?"
"How is that?"
"Marry the captive maid your own self?"
I felt my color rise yet more.
"Why, now, that happened right along in them days--pirate chief, he
takes a beautiful maiden captive, an' after makin' all his prisoners
walk the plank but just her, he offers his hand an' fortune. An' lots
of times, somehow, the beautiful maiden she married the ruthless
pirate chief, an' they lived happy ever after. Why don't you?"
"I hadn't thought of that, Jimmy," I said, most mendaciously; "but the
idea has some merit. In fact, we've already started in by taking the
beautiful maiden captive, and, mayhap, yon varlet yet shall walk the
plank, or swear a solemn oath never to wear such waistcoats as these
again. But one thing lacks."
"What?"
"The maiden's consent!"
"No, it don't! They never ast 'em--they just married 'em, that was
all. An' every time, they lived happy ever after. An' they founded
families that----"
"Jimmy!" I raised a hand. "That will do."
"Well, anyhow, I wouldn't pay any attention to Aunt Lucinda about it.
She's strong for yon varlet, for he's got the dough."
"And isn't your Auntie Helena also--but no, on second thought, I will
not ask you that----"
"Why no, sure not--it's better to demand it of her own fair lips, an'
not take no for a answer. They always live happy ever after."
--"Of course, Jimmy."
--"And so would you."
"I know it! I know it!"
"Well, then, why just don't you?"
"Good leftenant, Black Bart will take your counsel into full
advisement. Later, we shall see. Meantime, we must have a care for our
good ship's safety, for none may tell what plans yon varlet may be
laying to circumvent us."
So saying, I sought out Peterson and asked him for his maps and
charts.
There was, as I found by consulting these, a deep bayou, an old river
bed, that ran inland some thirty miles, apparently tapping a rich
plantation country which was not served by the regular river boats.
"Do you know anything about this old channel, Peterson?" I inquired.
"Nothing at all except from hearsay and what you see here," he
replied. "I don't know whether or not it has a bar at either end, but
likely enough it has at both, though we might crowd through."
"And how about the gasoline supply?"
"Enough to get us in, at least. And, I say, here's a sort of
plantation post-office marked. There's just a bare chance we could get
a drum or so in there. I don't think we can, though."
"What's she drawing now as she runs, Peterson?"
"Four feet two inches. She's a shade low by the stern. We've quite a
lot of supplies aboard, this early in the cruise. But I don't suppose
we've got enough."
"Well, Peterson," said I, "water leaves no trail. If there's no one
watching when we open up this next bend, run for the bayou, and we'll
see if we can get under cover. Of course, it's all a mistake about Mr.
Davidson's wiring on to have us stopped--though we can't blame him,
since he hasn't any idea who it is that has run away with the boat.
But now, it suits me better to double in here, and let the chase try
to find us on the main river; if there is any chase. You see, I don't
want to disturb the ladies unduly, and they might not understand it
all if we were overhauled and asked to explain our change in the
ownership."
"Quite right, sir, and very good. I catch the idea. But, sir----"
He hesitated.
"Yes?"
"Well, sir, if I might be so bold, what are your plans about the two
ladies?"
"I have none which will effect your navigation of the boat, Peterson."
The old man flushed a shade. "Excuse me, Mr. Harry. I know you'll do
nothing out of the way. But the old hen--I beg pardon----"
"You mean the revered aunt, Peterson."
"Yes, sir, the revered aunt. Well, sir, the revered aunt, dash
her!----"
"Yes, dash her starry toplights, Peterson; and even if need be, shiver
her timbers! Go on----"
"Why, she's been tryin' to pull off a weddin' on this boat ever since
we left Mackinaw."
"Why not? You mean that Mr. Davidson and the revered aunt were getting
on well?"
"Oh, no, bless your heart, no! It was the young lady, Miss Emory. And
she----"
I raised my hand. "Never mind, Peterson. We can't discuss that at all.
But now, I'm minded to give my friend Mr. Davidson a little game of
follow-my-leader. And just to show how we'll do that, we'll begin with
a preliminary go at hide-and-seek. Take the chance, Peterson, and run
into the bayou. I'll put off the small boat for soundings. If we can
get gas, and can get in, and can get out unnoticed, maybe we can run
by New Orleans in the night, and none the wiser."
"And where then, Mr. Harry?"
"Peterson, the high seas have no bridges, and if they had, I should
not cross them yet. Perhaps if I did, I then should burn them behind
me."
"She's a mortal fine young woman, Mr. Harry, a mortal fine one. I'll
be sworn he makes a hard run for her. But so can we--eh, Mr. Harry?
He'll like enough pocket us in here, though."
I made no answer to this. The old man left me to take the wheel, and
I noted his head wag from side to side.
CHAPTER XIX
IN WHICH I ESTABLISH A MODUS VIVENDI
As good fortune would have it, we swung in, opposite the screened
mouth of Henry's Bayou, at a time when the stream was free of all
craft that might have observed us, although far across the forest we
could see a black column of smoke, marking a river steamer coming up.
"Quick with that long boat, Lafitte," I ordered; and he drew our old
craft alongside as we slowed down. "Get over yonder and sound for a
bar. Take the boat hook. If you get four feet, we'll try it."
My hardy young ruffian was nothing if not prompt, nor was he less
efficient than the average deck-hand. It was he who did the sounding
while Willie, our factotum, pulled slowly in toward the mouth of the
old river bed. I watched them through the glasses, noting that rarely
could Lafitte find any bottom at all with the long shaft of the boat
hook. "She's all right, Peterson," said I. "Follow on in, slowly--I
don't want that steamer yonder to catch us."
"_Why_ don't you?" A voice I should know, to which all my body would
thrill, did I hear it in any corner of the world, spoke at my elbow.
I started for a half instant before I made reply, looking into her
dark eyes, sensible again of the perfume most delirium-producing for a
man: the scent of a woman's hair.
"Because, Helena," said I, "I wish our boat to lie unnoticed for a
time, till the hue and cry has lulled a bit."
"And then?" She bent on me her gaze, so difficult to resist, and
smiled at me with the corners of her lips, so subtly irresistible. I
felt a rush of fire sweep through all my being, and something she must
have noted, for she gave back a bit and stood more aloof along the
rail.
"And then," said I savagely, "this boat runs by all the towns, till we
reach the Gulf, and the open sea."
"And then?"
"And then, Helena, we sail the ocean blue, you and I."
"For how long?"
"Forever, Helena. Or, at least, until----"
"Until when?"
"Until you say you will marry me, Helena."
She made no answer now at all beyond a scornful shrug of her
shoulders. "Suppose I can not?" she said at last.
"If you can not, all the same you must and shall!" said I. "You shall
be prisoner until you do."
"Is there no law for such as you?"
"No. None on the high sea. None in my heart. Only one law I know any
more, Helena--I who have upheld the law, obeyed it, reverenced it."
"And that?"
"The law of the centuries, of the forest, of the sea. The law of love,
Helena."
"Ah, you go about it handsomely! If you wished me to despise you, to
hate you, this would be very fit, what you say."
"You may hate me, despise me, Helena. Let it be so. But you shall not
ignore me, as you have these three years."
"It was your fault; your wish--as well as my wish. We agreed to that.
Why bring it up again? When the news came that you had quit your
profession, and just at the time you had lost all your father's
fortune and your own, had turned your back and run away, when you
should have stayed and fought--well, do you think a girl cares for
that sort of man? No. A man must do something in this world. He
mustn't quit. He's got to _fight_."
"Not even if he has nothing to work for?"
"No, not even then. There are plenty of girls in the world----"
"One."
--"And a man mustn't throw away his life for any one woman. That isn't
right. He has his work to do, his place to make and hold. That's what
a woman wants in a man. But you didn't. Now, you come and say we must
forget all the years of off-and-on, all the time we--we--wasted, don't
you know? And because I am, for a little while, in your hands, you
talk to me in a way of which you ought to be ashamed. You threaten me,
a woman. You even almost compromise me. This will make talk. You speak
to me as though, indeed, you were a buccaneer, and I, indeed, in your
power absolutely. If I did not know you----"
"You do not. Forget the man you knew. I am not he."
She spread out her hands mockingly, and yet more I felt my anger rise.
"I am another man. I am my father, and his great grandfather, and all
his ancestors, pirates all. I know what I covet, and by the Lord!
nothing shall stop me, least of all the law. I shall take my own where
I find it."
"And now listen!" I concluded. "I am master on this ship, no matter
how I got it. Late poor, as you say, I shall be richer soon, for I
shall take, law or no law, consent or no consent, what I want, what I
will have. And that is you!
"Each day, at eleven, Helena," I concluded, "I shall meet you on the
after deck, and shall try to be kind, try to be courteous----"
"Why, Harry----"
"Try to be calm, too. I want to give you time to think. And I, too,
must think. For a time, I wondered what was right, in case you had
really pledged yourself to another man."
"Suppose I had?" she asked, sphinx-like.
"I will try to discover that. Not that it would make any difference in
my plans."
"You would take what was another's?" She still gazed at me,
sphinx-like.
"Yes! By the Lord, Helena, my father did, and his, and so would I! So
would I, if that were you! Let him fend for himself."
She turned from the rail, her color a little heightened, affected to
yawn, stretched her arms.
We were now passing over the bar, slowly, feeling our way, our skiff
alongside, and the shelter of the curving, tree-covered bayou banks
now beginning to hide us from view, though the bellowing steamer below
had not yet entered our bend.
"Who is that boy?" she inquired lazily.
"That, madam, is no less than the celebrated freebooter, Jean Lafitte,
who so long made this lower coast his rendezvous."
"Nonsense! And you're filling his head with wild ideas."
"Say not so; 'twas he and your blessed blue-eyed pirate nephew, the
cutthroat L'Olonnois, who filled my head with wild ideas."
"How, then?"
"They took me prisoner, on my own--I mean, at the little place where I
stop, up in the country. And not till by stern deeds I had won their
confidence, did they accept me as comrade, and, at last, as leader--as
I may modestly claim to be. And do not think that you can wheedle
either of them away from Black Bart. L'Olonnois remembers you spanked
him once, and has sworn a bitter vengeance."
"Why did you happen to start sailing down this way?"
"Because I learned Cal Davidson had started--with you."
"And all that way you had it in mind to overtake us?"
"Yes; and have done so; and have taken his ship away from him, and for
all I know his bride."
"He was your friend."
"I thought so. I suppose he never knew that you and I used to--well,
to know each other, before I lost my money."
"He never spoke of that."
"No difference, unless all for the better, for I shall, now, never
give you up to any man on earth."
"And I thought you the best product of our civilization, a man of
education, of breeding."
"No, not breeding, unless savagery gives it. I'm civilized no longer.
When you stand near me, and your hair--go below, Helena! Go at once!"
She turned, moved slowly toward her door.
I finished calmly as I could. "To-morrow, at eleven, I shall give you
an audience here on the deck. We shall have time. This is a
wilderness. You can not get away, and I hope no one will find you.
That is my risk. And oh! Helena," I added, suddenly, feeling my heart
soften at the pallor of her face--"Oh, Helena, Helena, try to think
gently of me as you can, for all these miles I have followed after
you; and all these years I have thought of you. You do not know--you
do not know! It has been one long agony. Now go, please. I promise to
keep myself as courteous as I can. You and I and Aunt Lucinda will
just have a pleasant voyage together until--until that time. Try to be
kind to me, Helena, as I shall try to be with you."
Silent, unsmiling, she disappeared beyond her cabin door, nor would
she eat dinner even in her cabin, although Aunt Lucinda did; and found
the ninety-three was helping her neuralgia.
I know not if they slept, but I slept not at all. The shadows hung
black about us as we lay at anchor four miles inland, silent, and with
no lights burning to betray us. Now and again, I could hear faint
voices of the night, betimes croakings, splashings in the black water
about us. It was as though the jungle had enclosed us, deep and
secret-keeping. And in my heart the fierce fever of the jungle's
teachings burned, so that I might not sleep.
But in the morning Helena was fresh, all in white, and with no more
than a faint blue of shadow beneath her eyes. She honored us at
breakfast, and made no manner of reference to what had gone on the
evening before. This, then, I saw, was to be our _modus vivendi_;
convention, the social customs we all had known, the art, the gloss,
the veneer of life, as life runs on in society as we have organized
it! Ah, she fought cunningly!
"Black Bart," said L'Olonnois, after breakfast as we all stood on
deck--Helena, Auntie Lucinda and all--"what's all them things floatin'
around in the water?"
"They look like bottles, leftenant," said I; "perhaps they may have
floated in here. How do you suppose they came here, Mrs. Daniver?" I
asked.
"How should I know?" sniffed that lady.
"Well, good leftenant, go overside, you and Jean, and gather up all
those bottles, and carry them with my compliments to the ladies at
their cabin. You can have the satisfaction of throwing them all
overboard later on, Mrs. Daniver. Only, remember, that there is no
current in the bayou, and they will stay where they fall for weeks,
unless for the wind."
"And where shall we be, then?" demanded Auntie Lucinda, who had eaten
a hearty breakfast, and I must say was looking uncommon fit for one so
afflicted with neuralgia.
"Oh, very likely here, in the same place, my dear Mrs. Daniver," said
I, "unless war should break out meantime. At present we all seem to
have a very good _modus vivendi_, and as I have no pressing
engagements, I can conceive of nothing more charming than passing the
winter here in your society." Saying which I bowed, and turning to
Helena, "At eleven, then, if you please?"
CHAPTER XX
IN WHICH I HAVE POLITE CONVERSATION, BUT LITTLE ELSE
I had myself quite forgotten my appointed hour of eleven, feeling so
sure that it would not be remembered, as of covenant, by the party of
the second part, so to speak, and was sitting on the forward deck
looking out over the interesting pictures of the landscape that lay
about us. It was the morning of a Sabbath, and a Sabbath calm lay all
about us--silence, and hush, and arrested action. The sun itself, warm
at a time when soon the breezes must have been chill at my northern
home, was veiled in a soft and tender mist, which brought into yet
lower tones the pale greens and grays of the southern forest which
came close to the bayou's edge. The forest about us not yet fallen
before the devastating northern lumbermen--men such as my father had
been, who cared nothing for a tree or a country save as it might come
to cash--was in part cypress, in part cottonwood, but on the ridge
were many oaks, and over all hung the soft gray Spanish moss. The
bayou itself, once the river, but now released from all the river's
troubling duties, held its unceasing calm, fitted the complete
retirement of the spot, and scarce a ripple broke it anywhere. Over
it, on ahead, now and then passed a long-legged white crane, bound for
some distant and inaccessible swamp; all things fitting perfectly into
this quiet Sabbath picture.
My cigar was excellent, I had my copy of Epictetus at hand, and all
seemed well with the world save one thing. Here, at hand, was
everything man could ask, all comforts, many luxuries; and I knew,
though Helena did not, that the safe increase of my fortune--that
fortune which some had called tainted, and which I myself valued
little, soon as I had helped increase it by the exercise of my
profession--was quite enough to maintain equal comfort or luxury for
us all our lives. But she was obstinate, and so was I. She would not
say whether she loved Cal Davidson, and I would never undeceive her as
to my supposed poverty. Why, the very fact that she had dismissed me
when she thought my fortune gone--that, alone, should have proved her
unworthy of a man's second thought. Therefore, ergo, hence, and
consequently, I could not have been a man; for I swear I was giving
her a second thought, and a thousandth; until I rebelled at a weakness
that could not put a mere woman out of mind.
And then, I slowly turned my head, and saw her standing on the after
deck. Her footfall was not audible on the rubber deck-mats, and she
had not spoken. I resolved, as soon as I had leisure, to ask some
scientific friends to explain how it was possible that with no sound
or other appeal to any of the sensorial nerves, I could, at a distance
of seventy-five feet, become conscious of the presence of a person no
more than five feet five, who had not spoken a word, and was standing
idly looking out over the ship's rail, in quite the opposite direction
from that in which I sat. And then the ship's clock struck six bells,
and recalled the appointment at eleven. Hastily I dropped Epictetus
and my cigar, and hurried aft.
"Good morning again, Helena," said I.
She stood looking on out over the water for a time, but, at length,
turned toward me, just a finger up as to stifle a yawn. "Really," said
she, "while I am hardly so situated that I can well escape it or
resent it, it does seem to me that you might well be just a trifle
less familiar. Why not 'Miss Emory'?"
"Because, Helena, I like 'Helena' better."
A slow anger came into her eyes. She beat a swift foot on the deck.
"Don't," I said. "Don't stamp with your feet. It reminds me of a
Belgian hare, and I do not like them, potted or caged."
"I might as well be one," she broke out, "as well be one, caged here
as we are, and insulted by a--a----"
"A ruthless buccaneer----"
"Yes, a ruthless buccaneer, who has remembered only brutalities."
"And forgotten all amenities? Why, Helena, how could you! And after
all the cork-tipped cigarettes I have given you, and all the
ninety-three I have given your Auntie Lucinda--why look at the empty
message bottles she and you have thrown out into the helpless and
unhelping bayou--a perfect fleet of them, bobbing around. Shan't I
send the boys overboard to gather them in for you again?"
"A fine education you are giving those boys, aren't you, filling their
heads with lawless ideas! A fine debt we'll all owe you for ruining
the character of my nephew Jimmy. He was such a nice nephew, too."
"Your admiration is mutual, Miss Emory--I mean, Helena. He says you
are a very nice auntie, and your divinity fudges are not surpassed and
seldom equaled. It is an accomplishment, however, of no special use to
a poor pirate's bride; as I intend you shall be."
She had turned her back on me now.
"Besides, as to that," I went on, "I am only affording these young
gentlemen the same advantages offered by the advertisements of the
United States navy recruiting service--good wages, good fare, and an
opportunity to see the world. Come now, we'll all see the world
together. Shall we not, Miss Emory--I mean, Helena?"
"We can't live here forever, anyhow," said she.
"I could," was my swift answer. "Forever, in just this quiet scene.
Forever, with all the world forgot, and just you standing there as you
are, the most beautiful girl I ever saw; and once, I thought, the
kindest."
"That I am not."
"No. I was much mistaken in you, much disappointed. It grieved me to
see you fall below the standard I had set for you. I thought your
ideals high and fine. They were not, as I learned to my sorrow. You
were just like all the rest. You cared only for my money, because it
could give you ease, luxury, station. When that was gone, you cared
nothing for me."
I stood looking at her lovely shoulders for some time, but she made no
sign.
"And therefore, finding you so fallen," I resumed, "finding you only,
after all, like the other worthless, parasitic women of the day, Miss
Emory--Helena, I mean--I resolved to do what I could to educate you.
And so I offer you the same footing that I do your nephew--good
wages, good fare, and an opportunity to see the world."
No answer whatever.
"Do you remember the Bay of Naples, at sunset, as we saw it when we
first steamed in on the old _City of Berlin_, Helena?"
No answer.
"And do you recall Fuji-yama, with the white top--remember the
rickshaw rides together, Helena?"
No answer.
"And then, the fiords of Norway, and the mountains? Or the chalk
cliffs off Dover? And those sweet green fields of England--as we rode
up to London town? And the taxis there, just you and I, Helena, with
Aunt Lucinda happily evaded--just you and I? Yes, I am thinking of
forcing Aunt Lucinda to walk the plank ere long, Helena. I want a
world all my own, Helena, the world that was meant for us, Helena,
made for us--a world with no living thing in it but yonder
mocking-bird that's singing; and you, and me."
"Could you not dispense with the mocking-bird--and me?" she asked.
"No," (I winced at her thrust, however). "No, not with you. And you
know in your heart, in the bottom of your trifling and fickle and
worthless heart, Helena Emory, that if it came to the test, and if
life and all the world and all happiness were to be either all yours
or all mine, I'd go anywhere, do anything, and leave it all to you
rather than keep any for myself."
"Go, then!"
"If I might, I should. But male and female made He them. I spoke of us
as units human, but not as the unit _homo_. Much as I despise you,
Helena, I can not separate you from myself in my own thought. We seem
to me to be like old Webster's idea of the Union--'one and
indivisible.' And since I can not divide us in any thought, I, John
Doe, alias Black Bart, alias the man you once called Harry, have
resolved that we shall go undivided, sink or swim, survive or perish.
If the world were indeed my oyster, I should open it for us both; but
saying both, I should see only you. Isn't it odd, Helena?"
"It is eleven-thirty," said she.
"Almost time for luncheon. Do you think me a 'good provider,' Helena?"
"Humph! Mr. Davidson was. While your stolen stores last in your stolen
boat, I suppose we shall not be hungry."
"Or thirsty?" She shrugged.
"Or barren of cork-tips of the evening? Or devoid of guitar strings?"
"I shall need none."
"Ah, but you will! It belikes me much, fair maid, to disport me at
ease this very eve, here on the deck, under the moon, and to hear you
yourself and none other, fairest of all my captives, touch the lute,
or whatever you may call it, to that same air you and I, fair maid,
heard long ago together at a lattice under the Spanish moon. A swain
touched then his lute, or whatever you may call it, to his Dulcinea.
Here 'tis in the reverse. The fair maid, having no option, shall touch
the lute, or whatever you call it, to John Doe, Black Bart, or
whatever you may call him; who is her captor, who feels himself about
to love her beyond all reason; and who, if he find no relief,
presently, in music--which is better than drink--will go mad, go mad,
and be what he should not be, a cruel master; whereas all he asks of
fate is that he shall be only a kind captor and a gentle friend."
Her head held very high, she passed me without a word and threw open
the door of her suite.
[Illustration: It was a love song of old Spain]
... And that night, that very night, that very wondrous, silent,
throbbing night of the Sabbath and the South, when all the air was as
it seemed to me in saturation, in a suspense of ecstasy, to be broken,
to be precipitated by a word, a motion, a caress, a note ... that
night, I say, as I sat on the forward deck alone, I heard, far off and
faint as though indeed it were the lute of Andalusia, the low, slow,
deep throb of a guitar!... My whole heart stopped. I was no more
than a focused demand of life. Reason was gone from me, not intellect
but emotion--that is its basic thing after all, emotion born on earth
but reaching to the stars.... I listened, not hearing.... It was the
air we had heard long ago, a love song of old Spain, written, perhaps,
before DeSoto and his men perished in these very bayous and forests
that now shielded us against all tumult, all turmoil, all things
unhappy or unpleasant. The full tide of life and love swept through my
veins as I listened.
I rose, I hastened. At her door I paused. "Helena!" I called
raucously. "Helena." And she made no reply. "Helena," I called again.
"It was the same old air. This is Spain again! Ah, I thank you for
that same old air. Helena, forgive me. May I come in--will you come
out?"
I halted. A cold voice came from the companionway door. "You have a
poor ear for music, John Doe. It is not the same. Do you think I would
take orders from you, or any other man?"
I stood irresolute a moment, and then did what I should not have done.
I pulled open her door. "Come out," I demanded. But then I closed the
door and went away. She was sitting, her head bowed on the instrument
she had played. And when she looked up, startled at my rudeness, I saw
her eyes wet with tears.
CHAPTER XXI
IN WHICH WE MAKE A RUN FOR IT
"Gadzooks! Black Bart," remarked L'Olonnois at the breakfast table the
next morning, "and where is the captive maiden?"
"I do not know," was my answer. "Better go find out, Jimmy."
He departed, but presently, returned somewhat troubled.
"My Auntie Helen," said he, "I mean the captive maid, why, she says
she's got a headache and don't want no breakfast."
"Not even a grapefruit and a cup of coffee?" I demanded, anxiously
and, it must be admitted, somewhat guiltily; for I knew that the soul
of Helena was grieved and whatever the trouble, the fault was my own.
Surely I had placed the poor captive in a most difficult position, and
loving her as I did, how could I continue to give her discomfort? My
resolution almost weakened. I was considerably disturbed.
And yet as I faced the alternative of setting her free, and once more
taking up the aimless and unhappy life I had led these last three
years without sight of her, something--I suppose the great selfishness
which lies under love--rose up and said me nay; and I began to make
excuses in favor of my desire, as that, surely, soon she would come to
a more reasonable way of thought. And in one thing, at least, I was
honest with myself, deceitful as are lovers with themselves, and
arguing ever in their own favor--I did not know why Helena had wept,
and it was perhaps my right to know.
One selfishness with another, I resolved to go on with this matter,
though knowing full well how difficult would be my battle with her,
how unequal; for I was armed only with a great love, backed by no art
at all, whereas, she merely would continue to unmask against me new
batteries of defense--severe politeness, formality with me; laughter
and scornfulness of me; anger, pitifulness, at last even tears; and
always the dread assault of her eyes, and the scent of her hair and
the sweet wistfulness of her mouth,--all, all the charms of all women
united in her one self, to attack, to assail, to harass, and to make
wholly wretched the man who loved her more than anything in life, and
who was driven almost to using any means, so only that she might not
be away, not be out of sense and sight; as out of mind and out of
heart she never more might be. So that, all in all, it were, indeed,
hard question whether she or I were the more wretched. Surely
grapefruit and toast and coffee seemed to me but inventions of the
powers of darkness at that breakfast.
Not so my hardy mates, however, who ate with the keen appetite of
youth, from fruit through bacon and toast and back again, both talking
all the while. Nor, as the event proved, altogether unwisely. Indeed,
it was stout Jean Lafitte who resolved my doubts, and by suggesting
the simple medicine of action rather than meditation, sufficed for the
removal of one of my two minds.
"What ho! Black Bart," said he, after his third helping of bacon, "why
does our good ship lie here idle at her anchor?" Question direct, like
Jean himself, and demanding direct answer.
"Ask Captain Peterson," said I. "He perhaps can tell where we can get
more gasoline."
"No, he can't. I asked him this morning."
"Then 'twould seem we must lie here all winter, unless discovered by
some relief expedition."
"Why don't we start a relief expedition of our own?" demanded he.
"And how?"
"Why, me and Willy, the deck-hand, we'll take the long boat an' go out
an' explore this region roundabout. Somebody may have gasoline
somewhere, and if so, we can git it, can't we?"
"Your idea is excellent, Jean Lafitte," said I. "Within the hour you
shall set forth to see whether or not there is any settlement on this
bayou. And that you may not need use violence when secrecy is our
wish, here is a fat purse for our stores. And hasten, for of a truth,
Jean Lafitte, I am most aweary of this very morning, and I long to see
the white seas roll once more."
It was determined, therefore, that we should fare onward--in case we
could fare at all--with our ship's company as it now was; for, of
course, none but myself knew what was afoot between Black Bart and his
captive. And well enough I knew that in keeping Helena Emory thus
close to me, I was breeding sleepless nights and anxious days.
This day itself was anxious enough, nor could all of Epictetus teach
me calm philosophy, distracted as I was over this situation, complex
as it was. As to the fortune of the long boat, we knew nothing until,
at three of the afternoon, I saw a white speck of a sail round the
bend of our bayou, and saw that was hoisted, spirit fashion, over our
boat, which now, with following wind, rapidly drew in toward us.
"It's all right," called out Jean Lafitte, when he came within hail;
and I saw now that he, indeed, had a boat's load of gasoline in tanks,
cans and all manner of receptacles.
"Town and a store, down there five miles," he explained as I caught
his gunwale with boat hook. "You can git anything there. Now, the
Giants an' the Cubs, why, they tied in the 'leventh inning yesterday.
An' say----"
"Enough," said I, "let me hear nothing of the cursed Giants or the yet
more accursed Cubs, for I have more serious work afoot! Tell me, is
there a bar cutting off the other end of the bayou; and how long is
the bayou?"
"Sixteen miles," answered the useful Lafitte, "an' she seems like good
water all the way. They say there's seven foot on the bar, and the
wood boats run in and out."
"Good! And did you tell them who you were, and why you wanted
gasoline?"
"No. I only said our automobeel was broke down, an' we wanted the
baseball scores. That was all. They ast who was we. I said you was
John Doe--you see, I didn't want to tell your real name, so I didn't
say Black Bart."
"And you didn't mention our boat?"
"Of course not! Whose business is it what pirates does? They strike
hardest when least expected. To-night we can run in an' rob the store,
easy."
"Jean!" I cried, horrified, "what do you mean? Let me hear no more
such talk, or by my halidom! back you go to your home by first train.
I'll not be responsible for the ruin of any boy's morals in this way."
"Well what do you think about that, Jimmy!" said Jean, somewhat cast
down and much mystified. "Ain't we pirates, an' don't pirates live on
booty?"
"Booty enough you have in your boat, Jean," said I, "and let us get it
aboard and in our tanks, for to-night we sail."
"For to rob the store?" anxiously.
"No, once more for the Spanish Main, my hearties! I seek a greater
treasure; and plenty of danger, believe me, lies between here and
there."
"When'll we start?" queried L'Olonnois eagerly.
"To-night, at six bells. Make all ready," was my reply.
And that very night, with our search-light half covered, and at slow
speed and with the sounding lead going, Peterson felt his way out from
our moorings and along the full length of Henry's Bayou, silently as
he might. We saw few signs of life beyond now and then a distant light
in some negro cabin, and with all the lights doused we swept by like a
ghost in the night, along the front of the plantation at whose store
my men had got their gasoline. At last we broke open the lower end of
the bayou, which, coming in from the main stream in a long open reach,
showed like a lane of faint light in the forest; and to my great
relief presently, felt the current of the great stream pick us up,
and saw the channel lights ahead, so that we knew we might for a time,
at least, advance in safety.
In all this work, my two faithful lieutenants were awake and alert;
but I saw nothing of Helena that day, nor had message either from her
or her aunt in the full round of twenty-four hours since last we met.
Had she sought deliberately to repay me for the grief I caused her,
Helena could have devised no better plan than her silence and her
absence from my sight, after what time I had seen her weep.
Suddenly a thought of more practical sort came to my mind. "Jimmy," I
called.
"Aye, aye, Sir;" and L'Olonnois saluted.
"You remember all those bottles floating around in the bayou--did you
take them all up?"
"Aye, aye, Sir, an' she throwed a lot more in, out o' the cabin
window. I was shootin' at 'em with the twenty-two, an' busted some."
"But not all?"
"Oh, no, some was left."
"And we sailed away, leaving there, no doubt, the full story of our
voyage."
"Like enough," said L'Olonnois. "I didn't think of that."
"Nor I. For once, the vigilance of Black Bart faltered, L'Olonnois,
and he must yet, mayhap, make better amends for his fault. Full speed
ahead, now, Peterson," I added later as I went forward. "Run for New
Orleans and with all you can get out of her."
"Very good, Mr. Harry," said the old man; and I could feel the throb
of her whole superstructure, from stack to keelson, when he called on
the double-sixties of the _Belle Helène_ for all their power. Nor did
any seek to stay us in our swift rush down the river.
CHAPTER XXII
IN WHICH I WALK AND TALK WITH HELENA
It was nine of as fine a winter morning as the South ever saw when at
last, having passed without pause all intervening ports, we found
ourselves at the city of New Orleans. Rather, in the vicinity of that
city; for when we reached the railway ferry above the town, I ran
alongshore and we made fast the _Belle Helène_ at a somewhat
precarious landing place. I now called Peterson to me.
"It's a fine morning, Peterson," said I.
"Yes, sir, but I think 'tis going to rain." (Peterson was always
gloomy.)
"You must go down-town, Peterson," said I. "The through train from the
West is late and just now is coming into the ferry. You can take it
easily. We have got to have still more gasoline, for there is a long
trip ahead of us, and I am not sure what may be the chance for
supplies below the city."
"Are you going into the Gulf, Mr. Harry?"
"Yes, Peterson. You will continue to navigate the boat; and, meantime,
you may be quartermaster also. I shall be obliged to remain here until
you return."
The old man touched his cap. "Very good, sir, but I'm almost sure not
to return."
"Listen, Peterson," I went on, well used to his customary depression
of soul, "go to the ship's furnisher, Lavallier and Thibodeau, toward
the Old Market. Tell them to have all our supplies at slip K, below
the railway warehouses, not later than nine this evening. We want four
drums of gasoline. Also, get two thousand rounds of ammunition for the
twelve gages, ducking loads, for we may want to do some shooting. We
also want two or three cases of grapefruit and oranges, and any good
fresh vegetables in market. All these things must be ready on the
levee at nine, without fail. Here is my letter of credit, and a bank
draft, signed against it--I think you will find they know me still."
The old man touched his cap again but hesitated. "I'm sure to be asked
something," he said somewhat nervously.
"Say nothing about any change of ownership of this boat, Peterson, and
don't even give the boat's name, unless you must. Just say we will
meet their shipping clerk at slip K, this evening, at nine. Hurry
back, Peterson. And bring a newspaper, please."
"Is any one else going down-town?" asked Peterson. "I may run into
trouble."
"No, we shall all remain aboard."
He departed mournfully enough, seeing that the ferry boat now was
coming across with the railway train. I continued my own moody pacing
up and down the deck. Truth was, I had not seen Helena for more than
twenty-four hours, nor had any word come from the ladies' cabin to
give me hope I ever would see her again of her own will. My surprise,
therefore, was great enough when I heard the after cabin door close
gently as she came out upon the deck.
When last I saw her she had been in tears. Now she was all smiles and
radiant as the dawn! Her gown, moreover, was one I had never seen
before, and she, herself, seemed monstrous pleased with it, for, by
some miracle, fresh as though from the hands of her maid at home, she
knew herself fair and fit enough to make more trouble for mankind.
"Good morning," said she, casually, as though we had parted but lately
and that conventionally. "Isn't it fine?"
"It is a beautiful picture," said I, "and you fit into it. I am glad
to see you looking so well."
"I wish I could say as much for you," said she. "You look like a
forlorn hope."
"I am nothing better."
"And as though you had not slept."
"I have not, Helena."
"Why not?" her eyes wide open in surprise.
"Because I knew I had either hurt or offended you; and I would do
neither."
"You have done both so often that it should not cost you your sleep,"
said she slowly. "But if you really want to be kind, why can you not
have mercy on a girl who has been packed in a hat box for a month? Let
me go ashore."
"Can you not breathe quite as well where you are, Helena?"
"But I can't walk."
"Oh, yes, you can; and I will walk beside you here on deck."
"But I would like to pick flowers, over there by the embankment."
"The train is too close," said I, smiling grimly.
Her color heightened just a little, but she did not answer my
suspicions. "Please let me walk with you over there," she said. "I
used not to need ask twice."
"Our situation is now reversed, Helena."
"Please, let me walk with you, Sir!"
"I dare not. We might both forget ourselves and go off to New Orleans
for a lark without Aunt Lucinda."
"Oh, I am going to call Aunt Lucinda, too."
"Pardon, but you are going to do nothing of the kind. Even with her as
chaperon, did we get down there in the old city once more, like the
children we once were, Helena, we would forget our duty, would,
perhaps, forget our purpose here. Mademoiselle, I dare not take that
risk."
"Please, Sir, may I walk with you over yonder for just a little time?"
she said, as though it were her first request. She was tying her
quaint little white bonnet strings under her chin now. I raised a
hand.
"You ask a man to put himself into the power of the woman he loves
most in all the world. When a man needs resolution, dare he look into
the eyes of that woman, feel her hand on his arm, have her walk close
to him as they promenade?"
"Dear me! Is it so bad as that?"
"Worse, Helena."
"Then I am to continue a prisoner in that hat box?"
"Until you love me, Helena, as I do you."
"As I told you, that would be a long time."
"Yes! For never in the world can you love me as I do you. I had
forgotten that."
"If only you could forget everything and just be a nice young man,"
said she. "It is such fun. This dear old town, don't you know? Now,
with a nice young man to go about with Aunt Lucinda and me----"
"How would a man like Calvin Davidson do?" I demanded bitterly.
"Very well. He is nice enough."
"I suppose so. He is rich, able to have his horses and cars--even his
private yacht. He can order a dinner in any country in the world, or
tell you the standing of any club, in either league, at any minute of
the day or night. Could I say more for his education? He has two
country places and a city house and a business which nets him a
hundred thousand a year. How can he help being nice? I do not resemble
Mr. Davidson in any particular, except that I am wearing one of his
waistcoats. Also, Helena, I am wearing a suit of flannels which I have
borrowed from John, his Chinese cook. You can readily see I am a poor
man. How, then, can I be nice?"
"No one would see us here," said she, sublimely irrelevant, as usual.
"There are some little yellow flowers over there on the bank. Maybe I
could find some violets."
There was a wistfulness in her gaze which made appeal. I could not
resist. "Helena," said I suddenly, "give me your parole that you will
not try to escape, and I will walk with you among yonder flowers. You
look as though just from a Watteau fan, my dear. It is fall, but seems
spring, and the world seems made for flowers and shepherds and love,
my dear. Do you give me your word?"
"If I do, may I walk alone?"
"No, with me."
"I'll not try to take the train. On my honor, I will not."
I looked deep into her eyes and saw, as always, only truth there--her
deep brown eyes, filled with some deep liquid light whose color I
never could say--looked till my own senses swam. I could scarcely
speak.
"I take your parole, Helena," I said. "You never lied to me or any
other human being in the world."
"You don't know me," said she. "I used often to lie to mama, and
frequently do yet to Aunt Lucinda. But not if I say I give my word--my
real word."
"When will you give me your real word, Helena? You know what I
mean--when will you say that you love me and no one else?"
"Never!" said she promptly. "I hate you very much. You have been
presumptuous and overbearing."
"Why then should you promenade with me?"
"Fault of anything better, Sir!" But she took my hand lightly, smiling
as I assisted her down the landing way.
"But tell me," she added as we made our way slowly up the muddy slope,
"really, Harry, how long is this thing to last? When are we going back
home?"
"How can you ask? And how can I reply, save in one way, after taking
the advice of yonder pirate captain, your blue-eyed nephew? He says
they always live happy ever after. Listen, Helena. Gaze upon this
waistcoat! Forget its stripes, and imagine it to be sprigged silk of a
day long gone by. Let us play that romance is not yet dead. These are
not cuffs, but ruffles at my wrists--for all Cal Davidson's
extraordinary taste in shirts. All the world lies before us, and it is
yesterday once more. The Mediterranean, Helena, how blue it is--the
Bermudas, how fine they are of a winter day! And yonder lies motley
Egypt and her sands. Or Paris, Helena; or Vienna, the voluptuous, with
her gay ways of life. Or Nagasaki, Helena--little brown folks running
about, and all the world white in blossoms. All the world, Helena,
with only you and I in it, and with not a care until, at least, we
have eaten the last of our tinned goods of the ship's supplies; since
I am poor. But if I could give you all that, would I be nice?"
"Would that suit you, Harry?" she asked soberly; "just gallivanting?"
"You know it would not. You know I want no vacation lasting all my
life, nor does any real man. You know it was yourself that forced me
out of my man's place and robbed me of my greatest right."
"Yes," said she, "a man's place is to fight and to work. It's the
same to-day. But," she added, "you ran away; and you lost."
"But am I not trying to recoup my fortune, Helena? You see, I have
already acquired a yacht, although but a few weeks ago I started in
the world with scarcely more than my bare hands. Could Monte Cristo
have done more?"
"It isn't money a woman wants in a man."
"What is it, then?"
"I don't know," said she. "Oh, come, we mustn't go to arguing these
things all over again! I'm weary of it. And certainly Aunt Lucinda and
I both are weary of our hat box yonder. That's what I asked you, how
long?"
"As long as I like, Helena, you and your Aunt Lucinda shall dwell
there. What would you say to three years or so?"
She seemed not to hear. "I believe I've found a four leaf clover,"
said she.
"Much good fortune may it bring you."
"Let me try my fortune," said she, and began plucking off the leaves.
"He loves me, he loves me not; he loves me, he loves me not."
"There!" she said, holding up the naked stem triumphantly; "I knew
it."
"It would be a fairer test, had you a daisy, Helena," said I, "or
something with more leaves; not that I know whose has been this
ordeal. Suppose it were myself, and that you tried this one." I handed
her a trefoil, but she waved it aside.
"I will try to find you a four leaf clover for your own, after a
while," said she, and bobbed me a very pretty courtesy. Angered, I
caught at the stick I was carrying with so sudden a grip that I broke
it in two.
"I did not know your hands were so strong, Harry," said she.
"Would they were stronger!" was my retort. "And were I in charge of
the affairs of Providence, the first thing I would do would be to
wring the neck of every woman in the world."
"And then set out to put them together again, Harry? Don't be silly."
"Oh, yes, naturally. But you must admit, Helena, that women have no
sense of reason whatever. For instance, if you really were trying out
the fortune of some man on a daisy's head, you would not accept the
decree of fate, any more than you could tell why you loved him or
loved him not. Why does a woman love a man, Helena? You say I must not
be silly--should I then be wise?"
"No, you are much too wise, so that you often bore me."
"Nor should he be poor?"
"No."
"Nor rich?"
"Certainly not. Rich men also usually are bores--they talk about
themselves too much."
"Should he be a tall man?"
"Not too tall, for they're lanky, nor short, because they get fat. You
see, each girl has her own ideal about such matters. Then, she always
marries a man as different as possible from her ideal."
"Why does she marry a man at all, Helena?"
"She never knows. Why should she? But look--" she pointed out across
the water--"the train is leaving the ferry boat. Isn't that Captain
Peterson going aboard the train?"
"Yes, Helena, I've sent him down-town to get some light reading for
you and your Aunt Lucinda--_Fox's Book of Martyrs_, and the _Critique
of Pure Reason_--the latter especially recommended to yourself. I
would I had in print a copy of my _magnum opus_, my treatment on
native American _culicidæ_. My book on the mosquito is going to be
handsomely illustrated, Helena, believe me."
She turned upon me with a curious look. "Harry," said she, "you've
changed in some ways. If I were not so bored by life in yonder hat
box, I might even be interested in you for a few minutes. You used
always to be so sober, but now, sometimes, I wonder if I understand
you. Honestly, you were an awful stick, and no girl likes a stick
about her. What do girls care which dynasty it was that built the
pyramids?--it's Biskra they want to see. And we don't care when or why
Baron Haussmann built the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris--it's the
boulevard itself interests us."
"It is the fate of genius to be cast aside," said I. "No doubt even I
shall be forgotten--even after my book on the _culicidæ_ shall have
been completed."
"--So that," she went on, not noticing me, "there is that one point in
your favor."
"Then there is a chance?"
"Oh, yes, for me to study you as you once did me--as one of the
_culicidæ_, I presume. But if you would listen to reason, and end this
foolishness, and set us all ashore, why, I would be almost willing to
forgive you, and we might be friends again,--only friends, Harry, as
we once were. Why not, Harry?"
"You wheedle well," said I, "but you forget that what you ask is
impossible. I am Black Bart the Avenger, and the hand of every man is
against me. I am too deep in this adventure to end it here. Why? I did
not even dare go down-town for fear I might be arrested. Nothing
remains but further flight, and when you ask me to fly and leave you
here, you ask what is impossible."
She stood for a time silent, a trifle paler, her flowers fallen from
her hand, clearly unhappy, but clearly not yet beaten. "Come," said
she coldly, "we must not be brutal to Aunt Lucinda also. Let us go
back."
"Yes," said I, "now you have back your parole."
"I think I should like an artichoke for luncheon," said she.
"Vinaigrette, you know." And she passed aft, her head hidden by her
white parasol, but I knew with chin as high as though she were Marie
Antoinette herself. Nor did I feel much happier than had I been her
executioner.
CHAPTER XXIII
IN WHICH IS A PRETTY KETTLE OF FISH
Miss Helena Emory had her artichoke for luncheon, and judging from my
own, my boy John never had prepared a better, good as he was with
artichokes; but we ate apart, the ladies not coming to our table. It
was late afternoon before I saw Helena again, once more come on deck.
She was sitting in a steamer chair with her face leaning against her
hand, and looking out across the water at the passing shipping. She
sat motionless a long time, the whole droop of her figure, the poise
of her tender curved chin, wistful and unhappy, although she said no
word. For myself, I did not accost her. I, too, looked up and down the
great river, not knowing at what moment some discerning eye might spy
us out, and I longed for nothing so much as that night or Peterson
would come.
He did come at last, late in the afternoon, on an outbound train, and
he hurried aboard as rapidly as he might. The first thing he did was
to hand me a copy of an afternoon paper. I opened it eagerly enough,
already well assured of what news it might carry.
On the front page, under a large, black head, was a despatch from
Baton Rouge relaying other despatches received at that point, from
many points between Plaquimine and Bayou Sara. These, in short, told
the story of the most high-handed attempt at river piracy known in
recent years. The private yacht of Calvin Davidson, a wealthy northern
business man, on his way South for the winter, had been seized by a
band of masked ruffians, who boarded her while the yacht's owner was
temporarily absent on important business in the city of Natchez. These
ruffians, abandoning their own boat, had at once gone on down-stream.
They had been hailed by officers of Baton Rouge, acting under advice
by wire from Mr. Davidson, on his way down from Natchez. The robber
band had paid no attention to the officers of the law, but had
continued their course. In some way the stolen craft had mysteriously
disappeared that afternoon and night, nor had any word of her yet been
received from points as far south as Plaquimine. A bottle thrown
overboard by one of the prisoners taken on the yacht contained a
message to Mr. Davidson, with the request that he should meet the
sender at New Orleans; but there was no signature to the note.
Many mysterious circumstances surrounded this sensational piece of
piracy, according to the journalistic view-point. On board the _Belle
Helène_ were two ladies, the beautiful young heiress, Miss Helena
Emory, well known in northern social circles, and her aunt, Mrs.
Lucinda Daniver, widow of the late Commodore Daniver, United States
Navy. Mr. Davidson himself was unable to assign any reason for this
bold act of this abduction, although he feared the worst for the
comfort or even the safety of the two ladies, whose fate at this
writing remained unknown. The greatest mystery surrounded the identity
of the leader of this bold deed, whose name Mr. Davidson could not
imagine. He was reported to suspect that these same river pirates,
earlier in the day, attacked and perhaps made away with a friend of
his whose name is not yet given. A cigarette case was found in the
abandoned boat, which Mr. Davidson thought looked somewhat familiar to
him, although he could not say as to its ownership. He could and did
aver positively, however, that a photograph in a leather case on the
abandoned boat was a portrait of none other than Miss Helena Emory,
one of the captives made away with by the river ruffians. Mr. Davidson
could assign no explanation of these circumstances.
Later despatches received at Baton Rouge, so the New Orleans journal
said, might or might not clear up the mystery of the stolen yacht's
disappearance, although the senders seemed much excited. One story
from a down-river point, brought in by an excited negro, told of a
dozen bottles found floating in the bayou. The negro, however, had
broken them all open, and declared they had contained nothing but bits
of paper, which he had thrown away. He also told a wild story that the
plantation store at Hamlin's Landing, on Bayou Henry, had been looted
in broad daylight, by a young man and a boy, apparently members of the
pirate crew. The younger of the two ruffians was masked, and on being
asked for pay for gasoline, refused it at the point of his weapons,
declaring that pirates never paid.
While no attention should be paid to rumors such as the latter, the
despatches went on to say, it was obvious that a most high-handed
outrage had been perpetrated. It was supposed that the swift yacht had
been hurried forward, and had passed New Orleans in the night. Once
out of the river, and among the shallow bays of the Gulf Coast, the
ruffians might, perhaps, for some time evade pursuit, just as did the
craft of Jean Lafitte, himself, a century ago. Meantime, only the
greatest anxiety could pervade the hearts of the friends of these
ladies thus placed in the power of ruthless bandits. Such an outrage
upon civilization could, of course, occur only under the
administration of the Republican party. The journal therefore
hoped:--and so forth, and so forth.
"Peterson," said I, after digesting this interesting information,
"you've read this. What have you to say?"
Peterson was more despondent even than was his wont. "It looks mighty
bad, Mr. Harry," said he, "and I don't profess to understand it."
"Did you order the supplies?"
"Oh, yes, but they may forget to send them after all."
"It is your intention to stick by me, Peterson?"
"Well, there must be some mistake," he said, "but I don't see what
else I can do."
"There is a mistake, Peterson," said I. "This is more newspaper
sensation. Mr. Davidson is excited over something he doesn't
understand. If I had him here now I could explain it all easily. But,
before the matter can be explained in this way, we must wait until
this excitement dies down. Why, at this gait, it would hardly be safe
for either of us to be recognized here in town. We might be arrested
and put to a lot of trouble. The best thing we can do is to run on
down the river and wait until Davidson gets down and until we get this
thing adjusted. That is why I wanted the supplies to-night."
"But suppose we are discovered to-night?"
"We take that chance, but I fancy that I have certain legal rights,
after all, and I own this boat. Fortune favors the bold. I shall make
no attempt to hide, either now or then, Peterson. At the same time,
while we will not run away from plain sight, there is no need to take
unnecessary chances. Drop some white sail-cloth over the yacht's name
on her bows, and on the fantail. Have one or two of the boys go
overboard in slings and seem to be painting her sides. That will give
the look that we are safe to lie here some time--which is the last
thing the _Belle Helène_ really would do, or will do. They think we've
run past the city already, and they'll be watching at Quarantine, and
along the Lake Borgne Canal. Most of the yachts go out that way,
headed for Florida. We'll go the other way. It's an adventure,
Peterson, and one which any viking, like yourself, ought to relish."
"So I do, Mr. Harry," said he, "but I hardly knew which course to
lay."
"Blood will tell, Peterson," said I. "Your ancestors were Danish
pirates; mine were English pirates."
"For God's sake, Mr. Harry, don't talk that way. We mustn't go against
the law."
"I'm not sure that we have as yet, Peterson, for the law says nothing
about abduction of ladies in pairs, or for purposes truly honorable.
Frankly, Peterson--and because you've been long in my employ--I'll
tell you something. I intend to marry that young lady if she's not
already married to Mr. Davidson."
"Lord, Mr. Harry, she ain't--at least not since she come aboard the
boat."
"In that case," said I, drawing a long breath, "this is not such a bad
world after all."
"Not at all, Mr. Harry. I was going to say, as well be hung for a
sheep as a lamb, but of course I don't know about what she'll say. She
looks to me like one of these girls that's been petted a good deal,
and Mr. Harry, believe me, I always fight shy of a pet horse, or a pet
boat, or a pet woman--they're always hard to handle, and they raise
the devil when they get a chance. I hope you'll pardon me, sir."
"On the contrary, Peterson, I am grateful to you. You are on double
pay from the time I took command. Moreover, I promise you the best
cruise we ever had together. Once among the shallow bays on the coast
down there, we can take care of ourselves while this chase cools down.
We're faster than anything on the Gulf, and draw less water than most
of them of anything like our speed. You take care of the boat and I'll
take care of the girl--or try to. I have attachment papers all made
out, to file on the boat if need be--and I also have an attachment
for the girl, when it comes to that."
The old man shook his head. "I've got the easiest job," said he.
CHAPTER XXIV
IN WHICH WE HAVE A SENSATION
With no more than these slight precautions which I have indicated, we
lay all that afternoon in plain view of the world; and because all the
world could not suspect us of such hardihood, all the world went by
without suspecting that the stolen _Belle Helène_ and her ruthless
pirate crew were there in full sight and apparently inviting or
defying apprehension. Sometimes a passing craft would salute us as we
lay, and we returned the courtesy without fail. I know not whether
more bottles were cast overboard by Aunt Lucinda, but if so, we heard
of none. At last, after what seemed days to me, though no more than
hours, the shade of twilight fell across the river, the outlines of
the passing boats grew less distinct. Now and again we could hear the
wail of railway whistle, or see the curved snake of the lighted train
dashing across the alluvial lands toward the ferry. Here and there,
beyond, pin points of red lights shone. At last the night fell full,
and, gladly enough, I gave the order for the continuance of our
journey.
We slipped down-stream gently and silently, yet speedily withal,
seeking to time our arrival, as nearly as we might, to the hour
assigned for the delivery of our supplies at the dock.
"I'm none too easy in my mind," said my old skipper to me, as we stood
together forward.
"Why not, Peterson?"
"It's them two boys," said he. "You talk of pirates--there's the
bloodiest pair of pirates as ever was. I hardly know whether my own
life's safe or not, to hear them talk."
"Never do you mind, Peterson," said I. "Those boys may be useful to us
yet. The one with blue eyes has proved himself able to keep the ladies
in their cabin, and as for the one who was going to run you through
when we took the boat, he still may have to work to keep Williams down
in the engine-room when we make our landing."
"It may come out all right," said the old man gloomily, "but sometimes
I fear for the worst."
"You always do, Peterson, and that is no frame of mind for a healthy
pirate. But here we are below the railway warehouse district, and I
think nearly opposite slip K, where we land. Port your helm, and run
in slow. We've got to have gasoline, although I must say my two
bullies took aboard quite a store up there at the Bayou."
"Port it is, sir," said Peterson gloomily, still smoking. And he made
as neat a landing as ever in his life.
A shadowy form arose amidst the blackness of the dock and came
directly forward to take our line.
"Who's that?" I demanded. "Are you from Lavallier and Thibodeau?"
"Yes, M'sieu," came the answer. "Those supply is here."
"All right. Help him get the stuff aboard, Peterson."
They went about their work. Just as turning I saw standing at my
elbow, the slight form of L'Olonnois, his arms folded and hat drawn
upon his brow.
"Bid the varlets hasten," he hissed to me. "Time passes."
"Back to your post, L'Olonnois," I rejoined. "See that the captives
remain in their room."
Jean Lafitte, too, proved unable to restrain his curiosity, and this
time his habit of close observation was of benefit in an unexpected
way.
"Hist, Black Bart!" he whispered distinctly, clutching my arm. "What
boat is that?"
He pointed in the dim light to a low lying, battered power boat moored
in the same slip with us. Something in her look seemed familiar.
"I can't see her name," said Jean Lafitte, "but she looks a lot like
our own old boat."
I hastily stepped on the wharf and got a closer look in the wavering
beams of an arc light at the name on the boat's bows. There, in
indistinct and shaky, but unmistakable characters, was the title
painted by my young ruffians, weeks earlier--_Sea Rover!_
"Jean Lafitte," I whispered, "you are right, and now indeed we must
have a care. Yon varlet has beaten us into New Orleans."
"Let's board her and take her," hissed Jean Lafitte. "We can do it
easy."
"No, wait," said I. "Perhaps we can think of a better plan. Wait till
we get two drums of gasoline aboard. Then we'll make a run for it, if
yon varlet is here on the _Sea Rover_. Probably not, for every one
seems gone to bed."
"I'll find out," said Jean Lafitte boldly, and before I could stop him
was gone, springing lightly on the deck of the _Sea Rover_.
"Hello in there," he hailed. "Are you all asleep?"
A voice muttered something from the shallow cabin, I could not tell
what. "We got a barrel of rum for you from Thibodeau's," said Jean
Lafitte.
"No, you ain't. Must be some mistake," said a sleepy voice; and now a
tousled head appeared, indistinct in the gloom. "Anyhow, I don't know
anything about it, and it'll have to stay on the dock until morning.
I'm only the engineer, I come from Natchez. Mr. Davidson, he's
up-town."
"Oh, all right," said Jean Lafitte, apparently mollified, and soon was
at my side again. So then, we had the information we sought. I was
sure my own engineer, Williams, was busy as usual below, oiling and
polishing his double sixties.
"Hurry now," I whispered to Peterson. "Get that stuff aboard quick.
Don't forget the crates of fruit and vegetables."
We were nearly done with this work, when for a moment all seemed on
the point of going wrong with us. I heard shufflings and door
slammings from the after cabin. "Help! Help!" sounded the voice of
Aunt Lucinda, somewhat muffled. It chanced that my engineer, Williams,
at that moment poked his head up his ladder to get a breath of fresh
air.
"What's that?" he demanded of me as I passed. "I thought I heard some
one calling."
"Oh, you did, Williams," said I. "It was Mrs. Daniver. She suffers
much with neuralgia and is in great pain. I shouldn't wonder if I
should have to go up-town and get a physician for her even yet. But,
Williams, in any case we'll be sailing soon, and I want you to
overhaul the screen of the intake pipe for that port boiler. We're
getting into very sandy waters, and of course you don't want anything
to happen to your engines. Can you attend to that at once?"
"Surely, sir," said he, and went below again. I closed the hatch on
him. Meantime I hurried aft, to see what could be done toward quelling
any possible uproar. My blue-eyed lieutenant, L'Olonnois, had been as
efficient in his way as Jean Lafitte. Now, in full character, he was
enjoying himself immensely. When I saw him, he was standing with his
feet spread wide apart in the center of the cabin floor, with drawn
sword in his hand.
"Lady," said he, addressing himself to Aunt Lucinda, "it irks me as a
gentleman to be rude with one so fair, but let me hear one more word
from you, and your life's blood shall dye the deck, and you shall walk
the plank at the morning sun. You deal with L'Olonnois, who knows no
fear!"
Deep silence, broken presently by a little laugh; and I heard Helena's
voice in remonstrance. "Don't be so silly, Jimmie!"
"Silly, indeed," boomed the deep voice of Aunt Lucinda, catching sight
of me at the door. "Yonder is the villain who put him up to this."
"Oh, is that you?" said Helena, coming toward me. "Where are we,
Harry?"
"In the port of New Orleans, Miss Helena," was my answer, "a city of
some three hundred thousand souls, noted for its manufacture of sugar,
and its large shipments abroad of the staple cotton."
"May I come on deck?" she queried after a while.
"We are alongside the levee, and there is little to see. We shall be
sailing now in a few moments."
"But mayn't I come up and see New Orleans, even for a minute as we
pass by? I'll be good."
"You may come up under parole," said I, throwing open the door. "But
you must bring your aunt's parole also. You must give no alarm, for we
have every reason here for silence."
She turned back and held some converse with Auntie Lucinda, and by
what spell I know not, won the promise of the latter to remain silent
and make no attempt at escape. A little later she was at my side in
the dim light cast by a flickering and distant arc light at the
street.
"I have your word, then?" I demanded of her.
"Yes. You can't blame me for wanting to get out, to see what is going
on."
"A great deal may be going on here any moment," said I. "In fact, if I
could show you the evening newspapers--which I purpose doing to-morrow
morning--it might seem to you that a great deal already has gone on.
For one thing, Cal Davidson is in town ahead of us. That's his boat
yonder, rubbing sides with us. He doesn't know we're here. He himself
is off up-town, at the Boston Club, probably, or perhaps some of the
cafés--he knows a thousand people here."
"So do I, Harry," said she. "To think of going by in this plight! And
to think of leaving New Orleans without even one little supper at
Luigi's, Harry--it breaks my heart."
"We are almost ready to sail, Helena. Suppose we see Luigi's some
other time. Things are getting pretty close about us here."
"Any pirate should be a man of courage," said she; "he should be ever
willing to take a chance."
"Very well; have I not taken several chances already?"
"And again, a pirate ought to be kind toward all women, oughtn't he,
Harry? I asked you this afternoon, why couldn't we be friends again
and stop all this foolishness. Let's forget everything and just be
friends."
"What! Again, Helena? Have I not tried that and found it a failure?"
"You have no courage. You are no pirate. I challenge you to a test."
"What is it, Helena?"
"Let us go up-town and have a little supper at Luigi's, the way we
used to, Harry, when we really were friends."
"What, with Cal Davidson loose in the town and his boat lying here?"
"That is the adventure!"
"You would turn me over to the authorities?"
"No, but I would sell my parole for a mess of woodcock, Harry." She
laid a hand upon my arm. "I can't tell you how much I want a little
supper at Luigi's, Harry. I like the Chianti there. Between us we
could afford thirty cents a bottle, could we not? Now, if I gave my
parole--and of course, every one would be here at the boat just the
same--But of course, I did not expect you would."
"Why did you not?"
"Because it is an adventure, because it will take something of real
courage, I fancy, to meet a risk like that!"
"There would be some risk for us all," said I truly.
"There you go, balancing and not deciding. You are no pirate."
"What will you give me if I go, Helena?" said I.
"Nothing beyond thanking you. One thing, you must not think that I
would trick or trap you."
"Many a criminal has been trapped by a woman whom he loves," said I
slowly. "But you would not do that if I had your word, even though you
hated me. And you do hate me very much, do you not?"
"Yes, very much. But if you took me by New Orleans without a supper at
Luigi's, I should hate you even more."
"Jean--Jean Lafitte," I called out in a low tone of voice.
"Aye, aye, Sir!" he saluted, as he came to the place where we stood,
like some seasoned sailorman, regardless of youthful hours of sleep.
"I am going up-town with the captive maiden. Do you stand here on
watch. We shall be gone about three hours."
"Hully gee!" ejaculated Jean Lafitte, but at once he saluted again.
"'Tis well, Black Bart," said he.
"Tell Captain Peterson to let no one come on board this boat under any
pretense; nor must any one leave it until I get back. If any one asks
for me, say I'm up-town."
"Isn't Aunt Lucinda going, too?" demanded Helena.
"She certainly is not!"
"Is it--is it quite correct for me to go alone with you?"
"That is your part of the adventure, Helena," said I calmly. An
instant later I had led her across the dingy warehouse dock, over
dusty streets, to a crooked street-car line over which I could hear
approaching one of the infrequent cars.
CHAPTER XXV
IN WHICH WE MEET THE OTHER MAN, ALSO ANOTHER WOMAN
Luigi's place, as all men know, is situated upon a small, crooked and
very dirty street, yet none the less, it is an abode of contentment
for those who know good living. When Helena and I entered the door I
felt as one again at home. Here were the sanded floors, the old
water-bottles, the large chandelier with its cut glasses in the middle
of the room, the small tables with their coarse clean linen. The same
old French waiters stood here and there about, each with impeccable
apron and very peccable shoes, as is the wont of all waiters. But the
waiters at Luigi's are more than waiters; they are friends, and they
never forget a face. Therefore, as always, I had no occasion for
surprise when Jean, my waiter these many years at Luigi's, stepped
forward as though it had been but last week and not three years ago
when he had seen me. He called me by name, greeted me again to his
city, and gently aided Helena with her wraps and gloves.
"And M'sieu can not long remain away from us, forever?" said he.
"It has been three years, Jean," said I, "more is the pity. But now,
I can remain three hours--will that serve? At the end of that time we
must away."
Jean was human, yet discreet. He knew that when last he saw me I was a
single man. Now he had doubts. He stood hovering about, a question on
his tongue, smitten of admiration much as had been my dog, Partial, at
his first sight of Helena. At last he made excuse to step close behind
my chair under pretense of finding my napkin.
"_Enfin, M'sieu?_" said he, smiling.
"_Pas encore_, Jean!" I replied.
I saw a slow flush on Helena's cheek, but she gave no other sign that
she had overheard. So I began forthwith making much ado about ordering
our supper, which as usual really was much a matter of Jean's taste.
"We have to-night in the ice-boxes, M'sieu," said that artist, "some
cock oysters which are dreams. Moreover, I have laid aside two
canvasbacks, the best I ever saw--it was in the hope that some really
good friend of mine would come in. Behold, I am happy--I must have
been expecting you. Believe me, we have never had better birds than
these. They are excellent."
"Perhaps the oysters, Jean," said I, "very small and dark. I presume
possibly a very small _fillet_ of trout this evening, and the
sauce--you still can make it, Jean? Such _entrées_ as you like, of
course. But, since Mademoiselle--" and here I smiled--"and I, also,
are very hungry this evening, we wish a woodcock after the canvasback,
if you do not mind. Perhaps it is not too much?"
"_Mais non!_" replied Jean. "You are of those who know well that to
eat too much is not to dine well. But I shall bring you two oysters,
_marinière_--a sauce my own wife invented. And yes, some small bird,
_beccasine_, broiled lightly--perhaps you will enjoy it after the
canvasback, although I assure you those are excellent indeed. We have
few sweets here, as M'sieu knows, but cheese, if you like, and of
course coffee; and always we have the red wine which I remember M'sieu
liked so much."
"It is with you, Jean," said I. And Helena, turning, smiled upon him
swiftly, in such fashion that he scarce touched the floor at all as he
walked out for his radishes and olives.
"Isn't it nice?" said Helena. "Isn't it like the old times? I always
loved this old town. It seems so homelike."
"Please do not use that word, Helena," said I. "I wish to be entirely
happy to-night, in the belief that some time I shall know what home
is."
"Do you think Jean knew me also?" she demanded. "Certainly, I have
been here also before."
"No one who has ever seen you, Helena, ever forgets you. But Jean is,
of course, discreet."
"Suppose he knew that I was here to-night against my free will, and
only under parole?"
"Jean is wise; he knows such things ought not to be, even if they are.
And he understood me when I said, 'not yet.'"
"Yes," said she; "quite right. _Pas encore!_"
Jean returned, and as a special favor to an old patron asked us
politely if we would enjoy a look through the kitchen and the
ice-boxes. As usual, we accepted this invitation, and passed back
through the green swing doors, following our guide along the row of
charcoal fires, through a dingy room decorated with shining coppers
and bits of glass and silver. These ice-boxes were such as to offer
continual delight to any epicure, what with their rows of fat clean
fishes and crabs and oysters, the birds nicely plucked, all the
dainties which this rich market of the South could afford, from
papabotte to terrapin. Helena herself selected two woodcock and
approved the judgment of Jean in canvasback. Presently she turned to
me, a flush of embarrassment upon her face.
"Harry," she said, "I don't like to say anything, but you know--you've
been telling me you were so poor. Now, a girl doesn't want to make it
difficult----"
"Mademoiselle," said I, bowing, "I am quite able to foot the bill
to-night. I had just sold some hay before I started from home."
"Well, I'm awfully hungry," she admitted; "besides, it's such a lark."
"Yes," said I; and presently, as we reached our table again, I showed
her the afternoon papers, which as yet she had not seen. She read
through the account of our escapade, her lips compressed; but
presently she folded the paper and laid it down without comment.
"At any minute, you see," said I, "I may be apprehended and our little
supper brought to an end. That is why I hastened with the order. I do
not wish to hurry you in any way, however, and we shall use the full
three hours. Although, of course, you see that the bird of time indeed
is on the wing to-night, as well as those other birds on the
broilers."
She only looked at me steadily and made no comment. "Once suspected
here," said I, "all is over for me, and you are free again. It would
be entirely easy for you to make some sign or movement which I,
perhaps, could not detect. Perhaps, at any moment, some one may enter
who knows you--as I've said, no one can look at you and forget you,
Helena. But please let none of this affect your appetite. Our little
supper is our little adventure. I hope you will enjoy both, my dear."
"You did take some chance, did you not?" she said slowly.
"It might be a chance."
"But you will be so nervous you can't enjoy your spread."
"Not in the least, Helena. A nervous man has no business in the trade
of piracy;--but, ah! the _fillet_ of trout, Helena."
Jean was proud of his art, the chef proud also, and the chef knew we
were here. A general air of comfort seemed to settle down upon our
little corner of the restaurant, a quiet contentment. For the most
part, folk came here who had no hurry and no anxiety, and it was a
sort of club for many persons who knew how to eat and to live and to
enjoy life quietly, as life should be enjoyed. None dreamed, of
course, that aught but equal leisure existed for our little table,
where sat a rather lank and shabby man in flannels, and a very
especially beautiful young woman in half evening dress. At Luigi's,
every one is polite to every one else, and the curiosity is but that
of fraternity. Perhaps, some eyes were cast our way, I could not tell.
Jean, in slow solemnity and pleasant ease, brought on many things not
nominated in the bond. At length he arranged his duck-press on his
little table near us, and having squeezed the elixir from the two
dissected fowls, began to stir the juices into a sauce of his own,
made with sherry wine and a touch of _filé_, many things which Jean
knows best. He was just in the act of pouring this most delectable
sauce over the two bits of tender fowl upon our hot plates, when,
happening to look up, I saw some one entering the door.
"Jean, if you please," said I, deliberately pulling the coat-rack in
front of our table, "Mademoiselle perhaps feels a slight draft. Would
you fetch a screen?"
He turned. "Helena," said I, after a moment, "now our adventure has
come."
"What do you mean?" said she. "Why do you do that?"--she nodded at the
screen. "Why, I say?"
"I have your parole?"
"Yes."
"I am glad it is yes!" said I. "You could break it now and escape so
easily. One little move on your part and my punishment is at hand."
"Who was it?" she asked, suspecting.
"No one much," said I, "only our esteemed friend, Mr. Calvin Davidson,
whose waistcoat I am now wearing. Some one is with him, I don't know
who it is. A very nice-looking lady, next to the most beautiful woman
in this room, I must say."
"Let me see," said she; and I allowed her to look through the crack in
the screen.
"She certainly is very stunning," said I, "is she not? Tall, dark, a
trifle superb--I wonder--I wonder sometimes, Helena, if Cal Davidson
is true to Poll?"
"Nonsense!" was her retort. "But as you say, here is our adventure, or
at least yours. How do you propose to get out of it?"
"I don't know yet," said I. "Just at present I do not wish this
canvasback to get cold. We have remaining before us two hours or more,
ample time to make any plan which may be needed. Coffee, I have found,
is excellent for plans. Let us make no plans until we have had our
coffee, after our little dinner. That will be an hour or so yet.
Plenty of time to plan, Helena," said I. "And please do not slight
this bird--it is delicious."
Her eyes still were sparkling. "I'm rather glad I came," said she.
"So am I, and I shall be glad when we are back. But meantime I trust
you, Helena, absolutely. I will even tell you more. Davidson's boat,
the one which we left him instead of the _Belle Helène_, is lying in
the same slip with ours, rubbing noses with our yacht yonder, as I
showed you. Our men have talked with his. They do not yet suspect that
we are the vessel which everybody wants to find. I am very thankful
their engineer was so sleepy. I learned there at the wharf that Cal
Davidson was down-town at his club. He seems to have departed long
enough to find excellent company, as usual. I am glad that he has done
so, for in all likelihood he will not return to his own boat before
to-morrow morning. He will prefer his room at the club to his bunk on
the _Sea Rover_, if I know Cal Davidson. And by that time I hope to be
far away."
"Does he know who you are--does he know who it was that took the
_Belle Helène_?"
"I think not. But, very stupidly--being so anxious to see the
original--I left a photograph of yourself on our old boat, the _Sea
Rover_. Item, one cigarette case with my initials. Of course, Cal
Davidson may guess the simple truth, or he may make a mystery of
these things. It seems he prefers to make a mystery; and I am sure
that suits me much better."
"But knowing these things--knowing that his boat was lying right at
the dock alongside of us--why did you stop?"
"I thought it was you, Helena, who suggested this little adventure at
Luigi's! And I promise you I am enjoying it very much. It seems so
much like old times."
"But that can't ever be over again, Harry."
"Naturally not. But often new times are quite as good as old ones. I
can conceive of such a thing in our case. No, I shall use this
privilege of your society to the limit, Helena, fearing I may not see
you soon again, after once I have put you back in your hat box. You
coaxed me to leave the boat, and I shall tell you when to return."
"Why not now?"
"No, at twelve o'clock. Not earlier."
"And you propose sitting here with me till then?"
"I could imagine no better pastime, were I condemned to die at
sunrise. Tell me, do you wish me to call Mr. Davidson?"
"Of course I do not, since I gave you my word. Besides, I know that
girl with him. It's Sally Byington. Some call her good-looking, but I
am sure I don't know why."
"Fie upon you! She is superb. In short, Helena, I am not sure but she
is finer-looking than yourself!"
"Indeed!"
"Yes. Cal Davidson, whatever may be his taste in neckties or
waistcoats, seems to me excellent in this other regard. Perhaps just a
trifle flamboyant for Luigi's, but certainly stunning."
"Our relations are not such as to lead me to discuss our friends," she
rejoined haughtily. "And, as you say, our duck is getting cold. I
adore these canvasbacks. I would like to come back to-morrow and have
another." She cut savagely into her fowl.
"Alas, Helena, to-morrow you will be far away. In time I hope to
reconcile you to the simple life of piracy. Indeed, unless all plans
go wrong, we may very likely have canvasbacks on the boat; although I
can not promise you that John will be as good a chef as our friend
here at Luigi's. All good buccaneers use their fair captives well."
"Indeed! And why do you not ask Sally Byington into your list of
prisoners, since you fancy her so much."
"Nay, say not so, Helena. I trust I am somewhat catholic in taste
regarding ladies, as any gentleman should be, yet after all, I am
gentler in my preferences. Quite aside from that, I find one fair
captive quite enough to make me abundant trouble."
At about this time Jean approached behind the screen, bearing a copy
of a late edition of an evening paper, which fortunately he seemed not
closely to have scanned. I took it quickly and placed it with the
front page down.
"Monsieur no doubt has heard of the great sensation?" commented Jean.
"No, what is that, Jean?"
"The papers have been full of nothing else. It seems a band of
cutthroat river pirates have stolen a gentleman's yacht, and so far as
can be told, have escaped with it down the river, perhaps entirely to
the Gulf."
"That, Jean," said I, "is a most extraordinary thing. Are you sure of
the facts?"
"Naturally--is it not all in the paper? This gentleman then has his
yacht anchored at Natchez, and he goes ashore on important business.
Comes then this band of river ruffians in the dark, and as though
pirates of a hundred years ago, and led by Jean Lafitte himself, they
capture the vessel!"
"_Mon Dieu!_ Jean you do not say so?"
"But assuredly I say so; nor is that all, Monsieur. On board this
yacht was a young and beautiful lady of great wealth and beauty, as
well--the fiancée, so it is said, of this gentleman who owns the
yacht. What is the action of these pirates in regard to this beautiful
young lady and her aunt, who also is upon the yacht for the cruise? Do
they place these ladies ashore? No, they imprison them upon the boat,
and so, _pouf!_ off for the gulf. Nor has any trace of them been found
from that time till now. A rumor goes that the gentleman who owns the
yacht is at this time in New Orleans, but as for that unfortunate
young lady, where is she to-night? I demand that, Monsieur. Ah! And
she is beautiful."
"Now, is not this a most extraordinary tale you bring, Jean? Let us
hope it is not true. Why, if it were true, that ruffian might escape
and hide for days or weeks in the bayous around Barataria, even as
Jean Lafitte did a hundred years ago."
"Assuredly he might. Ah, I know it well, that country. But Jean
Lafitte was no pirate, simply a merchant who did not pay duties. And
he sold silks and laces cheap to the people hereabout--I could show
you the very causeway they built across the marsh, to reach the place
where he landed his boats at the heads of one of the great bays--it is
not far from the plantation of Monsieur Edouard Manning, below New
Iberia. Believe me, Monsieur, the country folk hunt yet for the buried
treasure of Jean Lafitte; and sometimes they find it."
"You please me, Jean. Tell me more of that extraordinary person."
"Extraordinary, you may call him, Monsieur. And he had a way with
women, so it is said--even his captives came to admire him in time, so
generous and bold was he."
"A daredevil fellow I doubt not, Jean?"
"You may say that. But of great good and many kindnesses to all the
folk in the lower parts of this state in times gone by. Now--say it
not aloud, Monsieur--scarce a family in all Acadia but has map and key
to some buried treasure of Jean Lafitte. Why, Monsieur, here in this
very café, once worked a negro boy. He, being sick, I help him as a
gentleman does those negro, to be sure, and he was of heart enough to
thank me for that. So one day he came to me and told me a story of a
treasure of a descendant of Lafitte. He himself, this negro, had
helped his master to bury that same treasure."
"And does he know the place now? Could he point it out?"
"Assuredly, and the master who buried it now is dead."
"Then why does not the negro boy go and dig it up again, very
naturally?"
"Ah, for the best reasons. That old Frenchman, descendant of Jean
Lafitte, was no fool. What does he in this burial of treasure? Ah! He
takes him a white parrot, a black cat and a live monkey, and these
three, all of them, he buries on top of the treasure-box and covers
all with earth and grass above the earth. And then above the grave he
says such a malediction upon any who may disturb it as would alone
frighten to the death any person coming there and braving such a
curse. I suggested to the negro boy that he should show me the spot.
Monsieur, he grew pale in terror. Not for a million pounds of solid
gold would he go near that place, him."
"That also is a most extraordinary story, Jean. Taken with this other
fairy tale which you have told me to-night, you almost make me feel
that we are back in the great old days which this country once saw.
But alas!"
"As you say, Monsieur, alas!"
"Now as to that ruffian who stole the gentleman's yacht," I resumed.
"Has he reflected? Has he indeed made his way to the Gulf? Why, he
might even be hiding here in the city somewhere."
"Ah, hardly that, and if so, he well may look out for the law."
"I think a sherbet would be excellent for the lady now, Jean," I
ventured, whereat he departed. I turned over the paper and showed
Helena her own portrait on the front page, four columns deep and set
in such framing of blackfaced scare type as made me blush for my own
sins.
"It is an adventure, Helena!" said I. "Had you not been far the most
beautiful woman in this restaurant to-night, and had not Jean been all
eyes for you, he otherwise would have looked at this paper rather than
at you. Then he would have looked at us both and must have seen the
truth."
"It is an adventure," said she slowly, her color heightening; and
later, "You carried it off well, Harry."
I bowed to her across the table. "Need was to act quickly, for even
this vile newspaper cut is a likeness of you. One glance from Jean,
which may come at any moment later, Helena, and your parole will be
needless further."
"I confess I wished to test you. It was wrong, foolish of me, Harry."
"You have been tested no less, Helena, to-night. And I have found you
a gentle high-born lady, as I had always known you to be. _Noblesse
oblige_, my dear, and you have proved it so to-night. Any time from
now until twelve you need no more than raise a finger--I might not
even see you do so--and you might go free. Why do you not?"
"If the woodcock is as good as the canvasback," was her somewhat
irrelevant reply, "I shall call the evening a success, after all."
But Helena scarcely more than tasted her bird, and pushed back after a
time the broiled mushroom which Jean offered her gently.
"Does not your appetite remain?" I inquired. "Come, you must not break
Jean's heart doubly."
She only pushed back her chair. "I am sorry," said she, "but I want to
go back to the boat."
"Back to the boat! You astonish me. I thought escape from the _Belle
Helène_ was the one wish of your heart these days."
"And so it is."
"Then, Helena, why not escape here and now?"
"What do you mean?"
"I do not mean for you to break your parole--I know you too well for
that. But give me additional parole, my dear girl. Give me your word.
Say that one word. Then we can rise here and announce to Mr. Davidson
and all the world and its newspapers that no crime has been done and
only a honeymoon has been begun. Come, Helena, all the world loves a
lover. All New Orleans will love us if you will raise your finger and
say the word."
I looked toward her. Her head was bent and tears were dropping from
her eyes, tears faithfully concealed by her kerchief. But she said no
word to me, and at her silence my own heart sank--sank until my
courage was quite gone, until I felt the return of a cold brutality.
Still I endeavored to be gentle with one who deserved naught of
gentleness.
"Do not hurry, Helena," I said. "We can return when you like. But the
salad--and the coffee! And see, you have not touched your wine."
"Take me back," she said, her voice low. "I hate you. Till the end of
the world I'll hate you."
"If I could believe that, Helena, it would matter nothing to me to go
a mile farther on any voyage, a foot farther to shield myself or you."
"Take me back," she said to me again. "I want to go to Aunt Lucinda."
"Jean," said I, a moment later when he reappeared. "Mademoiselle
wishes to see one more ice-box in the kitchen. We are in search of
something. May we go again?"
Jean spread out his arms in surprise, but pushed open the green door.
We thus passed, shielded by our screen and unobserved. Once within, I
grasped Jean firmly by the shoulder and pressed a ten dollar bill into
his hand, with other money for the reckoning.
"Take this, Jean, for yourself. We do not care to pass out at the
front, for certain reasons--do you comprehend? It is of Mademoiselle."
"It is of Mademoiselle? Ah, depend upon me. What can I do?"
"This. Leave us here, and we will walk about. Meantime go out the back
way to the alley, Jean, and have a taxicab ready at the mouth of the
alley. Come quick when it is arranged and let us go, because we must
go at once. At another time, Jean, we will return, I trust more
happily. Then we shall order such a dinner as will take Luigi himself
a day to prepare, my friend!"
"For Mademoiselle?"
"For Madame, Jean, as I hope." And now I showed him the portrait on
the front page of the newspaper he had brought me. "Quick," I said,
"and since you have been faithful, some day I will explain all this to
you--with Madame, as I hope."
CHAPTER XXVI
IN WHICH WE BURN ALL BRIDGES
"But, Monsieur," began Jean, a few moments later, as he entered from
the alley door.
"_Eh bien?_ What then, Jean?" I demanded hastily, already leading
Helena toward the door.
"This! This!" And he waved in my face a copy of the same paper which
had lain on our table. "The streets are full of it. And I see, I
behold--I recognize! It is Mademoiselle--that is to be Madame!"
My face flushed hotly. "As I hope, Jean." That was all I said. "Now,
please, out of our way. Is the taxi there?"
He stepped aside. I heard his voice, eager, apologetic, but knew that
now no time must be lost. Vague sounds of voices came to us from the
main room of the café, ordinarily so quiet. I felt, rather than knew,
that soon the news would be about town. The throb of the taxi was
music to my ears when I found it in the dark.
"Stop for nothing," said I to the driver, as I closed the door. "Slip
K, on the river-front, below the warehouses. Stop at the car tracks
where they turn. And go fast--I must catch a boat that is just
leaving."
"What boat--from there--are you sure, sir?" asked he, touching his
cap.
"Of course I'm sure. Go on! Don't stop to talk, man!"
He made no answer to this, but turned to his wheel. We shot out into
Royal Street, turned down it, spun into a narrow way past the old
Cathedral, crossed Jackson Square in the full moonlight, passed the
Old Market, and threaded dark and dirty thoroughfares parallel to the
river. None sought to stay us, though many paused in the gently
squalid life of that section, to look after our churning car, a thing
not usual there so far from depot or usual landing place.
Helena sat silent, looking fixedly ahead through the glass at the
driver's back; nor did I find words myself. In truth, I was as one now
carried forward on the wings of adventure itself, with small plans,
and no duty beyond taking each situation as it might later come. A
dull feeling that I had sinned beyond forgiveness came upon me, a
conviction that my brutality to one thus innocent and tender had
passed all limits of atonement. She could never forgive me now, I
felt; and what was almost as intolerable in the reflection, I could
not forgive myself, could not find any specious argument longer to
justify myself in thus harrying the sensibilities of a woman such as
this one who now sat beside me in this mad midnight errand, proud,
pale and silent. Slowly I sought to adjust myself to the thought of
defeat, to the feeling that my presumption now had o'er-leaped itself.
Yes, I must say good-by to her, must release her; and this time, as I
well knew, forever.
But, though I turned toward her half a dozen times in these few
minutes, she made no response to what she must have known was my
demand upon her attention. I gathered her gloves for her, and her
flowers, but she only took them, her lips parting in courtesy, not in
warmth, and no sound came to my ears, straining always to hear her
voice, a pleasant sound in a world of discords ever. I even touched
her arm, suddenly, impulsively. "Helena!" But she, not knowing that I
meant to give her liberty, though over a dead heart, shrank as though
I had added physical insult to my verbal taunts. Anyway I turned, I
was fast in the net of circumstance, fanged by the springs of
misapprehension.... Well, then, but one thing remained. She had said
it was a man's place to fight, and so now it would be! I must go on,
and take my punishment until justice had been done. Justice and my own
success I no longer confused in my own mind; but in my soul was the
grim resolution that justice should first be done to one human soul,
even though that chanced to be my own. After that, I should get her
again in the hands of her friends and myself; indeed, disappear beyond
all seeking, in parts of the world best known to myself. If I myself
were fair, why should not fairness as well be given to me?
And with no more than this established, and nothing definite in plan,
either, for the present, I mechanically opened the door of the taxi
for her when the driver pulled up and bent a querying face about to
ask whether or not we now were opposite Slip K. I noted that he did
not at once drive away. Evidently he sat for some moments gazing after
us as we disappeared in the gloom of the river-front. His tale, as I
afterward learned, enabled the morning papers to print a conclusive
story describing the abduction of Miss Emory and her undoubted
retention on the stolen yacht, which, after lying at or near New
Orleans, some time that night, once more mysteriously had
disappeared.
No doubt remained, according to this new story, that the supplies put
aboard at Slip K by Lavallier and Thibodeau had gone to this very
craft, the stolen yacht! With this came many wild and confusing
accounts and descriptions, including a passionate interview with Mr.
Calvin Davidson, of New York, who had announced his intention of
overhauling these ruffians, at any cost whatsoever; and much counsel
to the city officials, mingled with the bosom-beating of one
enterprising journal which declared it had put in commission a yacht
of its own, under charge of two of its ablest reporters, who had
instructions to take up the chase and to remain out until the mystery
had been solved and this beautiful young woman had been rescued from
her horrible situation and restored again to her home. There were more
portraits of Helena--furnished, most like, from Cal Davidson's
collection; one also of Aunt Lucinda (from a photograph of far earlier
days); and lastly, a half-page portrait of myself, the unnamed ruffian
who was the undoubted leader in this abduction--the portrait being
drawn by a staff artist "from description of eye-witnesses." As I
later saw this portrait I rejoiced that I was long ignorant of its
existence: and had I known that night that yonder chauffeur to whom I
had given undue largess had such treason as that portrait in his soul,
I know not what I might have done with him.
But of this misinformation, of course, I was at the time ignorant, as
was all the city ignorant of the truth. What happened was otherwise,
nor was the truth learned even by the great metropolitan journals of
the North, which now recognized the existence of a "big story", and
added their keener noses to the trail. The great fact overlooked by
them all was that they pursued no criminal, but a man of education, I
may fairly say of brains.
In my law practise many baffling cases came to me, because I most
liked, precisely, that sort of case. Once, for instance, a family of
my town well-nigh was disrupted by a series of anonymous letters, done
in typewriting, accusing an honorable man of dishonorable conduct. The
letters left the man's wife in an agony of loyalty and suspicion
alike. He brought me the letters, and to me the case was simple from
the start. I got the repair slips of a certain typewriter house, and
compared them until I found a machine with a bent letter M--knowing
as I did that each machine has its own individuality as ineradicable
and as inescapable as any personal handwriting. So at last I went to a
small outlying city, and going into a business house there asked to
see the stenographer in private. "My dear Miss ----," I said to her,
"why do you persist in sending these letters to Mr. ----?" I laid them
before her, and she wept and confessed, very naturally.
That was merely jealousy of a discharged employee; and it was easy as
a case--easier I always thought, than the probate case I won over a
contested signature charge filed by certain heirs under a will. In
this case I merely went to the dead man's earlier home and learned his
history. Time out of mind he, a thrifty and respected German, had held
some petty county office or other; and by going over old county
warrants and receipts signed in forty years by my man, I discovered
what I already knew--that a man's signature changes many times during
his life, especially if he begins life as an uncultured immigrant and
advances to a fair business success later in his life: so that his
later signatures on records proved his signature in his will.
Again, liking these simple mysteries, I had long ago learned to laugh
at the old and foolish assertion that murder will out, that not the
most skilful criminal can long conceal a capital crime. It is not
true. No one knows how many murders and other crimes go unsolved or
even unknown. The trouble with murderers, as I knew well enough, was
that they lacked mentality. And often I said to myself that were it in
my heart to kill a man, I assuredly could do so, and all my life
escape unsuspected of the crime.
It may be that my fondness for these less obvious things in the law
had rendered me a trifle different from my fellow men. I could never
approach any question in life without wanting to go all about it and
to the bottom and top, like a cooper with his barrel. I was thus
actuated, without doubt, in my relations years since with Helena
Emory--I knew the shrewdness and accuracy of my own trained mind. I
confess I exulted in the infallible, relentless logic of my mind, a
mind able and well trained, especially well trained in reason and
argument. So, when I put the one great brief of all my life before
Helena, my splendid argument why should she love me, I did so, at
first, in the conviction that it must be convincing. Had I not myself
worked it out in each detail, had not my calm, cool, accurate reason
guarded each portal? Was it, indeed, not a perfect brief--that one I
held in my first lost case--the lost case which sent me out of my
profession, left me a stranded hulk of a man?
But then, when these two pirate youngsters had found me and touched me
with the living point of some new flame of life, so that I knew a vast
world existed beyond the nature of the intellect, the old ways clung
to me, after all. Even as I swore to lay hold on youth and on
adventure (and on love, if, in sooth, that might be for me now), I
could not fight as yet wholly bare of the old weapons that had so long
fitted my hand. So, even on that very morning when we set forth from
my farm to be pirates, my mind ran back to its old cunning, and I
recalled my earlier boast to myself that if I ever cared to be a
criminal I knew I could be able to cover my tracks.
Those writing-folk, therefore, who now wasted thousands of dollars in
pursuit of trace and trail of Black Bart, wealthy ex-lawyer, knew
nothing of their man, and guessed nothing of his caliber or of his
methods. They even failed to look in plain sight for their trail
maker. And having done so, they forgot that water leaves no trail. Yet
that simple thought had come to my mind as I had sat at breakfast in
my own house, some weeks before this time! Even then I had planned all
this.
Absorbed as I had been in this pursuit of Helena, baffled as I had
been by her, unhappy as I now was over her own unhappiness, fierce as
was my love for her, still and notwithstanding, some trace of my old
self clung to me even now when, her hand on my arm, I guided Helena in
silence over the creaking planks of the dock, and saw, at last, dim
beyond the edge, the boom of the Mississippi's tawny flood, rolling on
and onward to the sea. Here was a task, a problem, a chase, an
endeavor, an adventure! To it, I was impelled by my old training; into
it I was thrust by all these fevers of the blood. Even though she did
not love me, she was woman ... in the dark air of night, it seemed to
me, I could smell the faint maddening fragrance of her hair.... No. It
was too late! I would not release her. I would go on, now!
And with this resolution, formed when I caught sight of the passing
flood, I found a sudden peace and calm, and so knew that I was fit for
my adventure as yon other boy, L'Olonnois, was for his.
I paused at the edge of the wharf, at the side of our boat. We still
were arm in arm, still silent, though she must have felt the beating
of my heart.
"Helena," I whispered, "yonder, one step, and your parole is over.
Here it is not. That boat, just astern, is the one in which Cal
Davidson chased us all the way from Natchez, in which I chased him all
the way from Dubuque. His men do not know we are here, nor does he as
yet. Now, what is it that you wish to do?"
She stood silent for some time, tightening her wrap at the throat
against the river damp, and made no answer, though her gaze took in
the dark hull of the low-lying craft made fast below us. When at last:
"One thing," she began, "I will not do."
"What is it?" I asked. We spoke low, but I well knew my men were aware
of our coming.
"I shall ask no favor of you." And as she spoke, she stepped lightly
on the rubbered deck of the _Belle Helène_.
"Halt! Who goes there?" called the hoarse voice of Jean Lafitte, the
faithful: and I knew the joy of the commander feeling that loyalty is
his.
"'Tis I, Black Bart," I answered, full and clear. "Cast off, my
friends!"
At once the _Belle Helène_ was full of activity. Peterson I met at
the wheel. I heard the bells jangle below. I saw Jean, active as a
cat, ready at the mooring-stub, waiting for the line to ease. Then
with my own hand I threw on every light of the _Belle Helène_, so that
she blazed, in the power of six thousand candles, search-light and
all: so that what had been a passing web of gloom now became a
rippling river. The warehouses started into light and shade, the
shadows of the wharf fled, the decks of the grimy craft alongside
became open of all their secrets.
And now, revealed full in the flood of light as she stood at the side
portal, Helena did what I had not planned. Freed of her parole she
was--and she had asked no favor of me--so she had right to make
attempt to escape; and I gently stepped before her even as Jean cast
off and sprang aboard: and as I heard L'Olonnois' voice imperatively
demanding silence of the pounding at the after cabin door. All at
once, I heard what Helena heard--the rattle of wheels on the stone
flagging of the street beyond. And then I saw her fling back her cloak
and stand with cupped hands. Her voice was high, clear and unwavering,
such voice as a pirate's bride should have, fearless and bold.
"Ahoy, there! Help! Help!" she cried.
Some sort of shout came from the street, we knew not from whom. A
noise of an opening hatch came from the _Sea Rover_ at our stern, and
a man's tousled head came into view.
"What's goin' on here," he demanded, as quaveringly as querulously.
I made no answer, but saw our bows crawl out and away, felt the sob of
the screws, the arm of the river also, and knew a vast and pleasing
content with life.
"L'Olonnois!" I called through the megaphone.
"Aye, aye, Sir!" I heard his piping rejoinder.
"Cast loose the stern-chaser and fire her at yon varlet if he makes a
move." I knew our deck cannon was loaded with nothing more deadly than
newspapers, but I also knew that valor feeds on action. Not that I had
given orders to fire on the world in general. So, I confess, I was
somewhat surprised, soon after the shout of approval which greeted my
command, to hear the air rent by the astonishing reverberation of our
Long Tom, which rolled like thunder all along the river-front,
breaking into a thousand echoes in the night.
I heard the patter of feet along the deck, and had sight of Jean
Lafitte tugging at a halyard. Not content with our defiance of law and
order, he must needs break out the Jolly Rover with its skull and
cross-bones. And as we swung swiftly out into midstream, ablaze in
light from bow to stern, ghostlike in our swiftness and the silence of
our splendid engines, I had reason to understand all the descriptive
writing which, as I later learned, greeted the defiant departure of
this pirate craft and its ruffian crew. Thus I bade all the world come
and take from me what I had taken for my own.
I stepped to the wheel with Peterson, expecting to find him pale in
consternation. To my surprise he was calm, save for a new glitter in
his eye.
"There's nothing on the river can touch her," said he, as he picked up
his first channel light and called for more speed. "Let 'em come!"
A sudden recklessness had caught us all, it seemed, the old spirit of
lawless man breaking the leash of custom. I shared it--with exultation
I knew I shared it with these others. The lust of youth for adventure
held us all, and the years were as naught.
I turned now to find Helena, and met L'Olonnois, his face beaming.
"Wasn't that a peach of a shot?" said he. "It would of blew yon varlet
out of the water, if I'd had anything to load with except just them
marbles. Are you looking for Auntie Helen? She has just went below."
CHAPTER XXVII
IN WHICH WE REACH THE SPANISH MAIN
It was as Peterson had said--nothing on the river could touch the
_Belle Helène_. And it also was as I had not said but had thought--the
water left no trail. By daylight we were far below the old
battle-field, far below the old forts, far below La Hache, and among
the channels of the great estuary whose marshes spread for scores of
miles on either hand impenetrably. Quarantine lay yonder, the
Southwest Passage opened here; and on beyond, a stone's throw now for
a vessel logging our smooth speed, rolled the open sea. And still
there rose behind us the smoke of no pursuing craft, nor did any seek
to bar our way. So far as I knew, the country had not been warned by
any wire down-stream from the city. We saw to it that no calling
points were passed in daylight. As for the chance market shooter
paddling his log pirogue to his shooting ground in the dawn, or the
occasional sportsman of some ducking club likewise engaged, they
saluted us gaily enough, but without suspicion. Even had they known, I
doubt whether they would have informed on us, for all the world loves
a lover, and these Southerners themselves now traveled waters long
known to adventure and romance.
So at last, as the sun rose, we saw the last low marshy points widen,
flatten and recede, and beyond the outlying towers of the lights
caught sight of lazy liners crawling in, and felt the long throb of
the great Gulf's pulse, and sniffed the salt of the open sea.
I had not slept, nor had Peterson, nor had Williams, my engineer. My
men never demurred when hard duty was asked of them, but put manly
pride above union hours, I fancy, resolved to show me they could
endure as long as I. And I asked none to endure more. Moreover, even
my pirate crew was seized of some new zest. I question whether either
Jean Lafitte or Henri L'Olonnois slept, save in his day clothing, that
night of our run from New Orleans; for now, just as we swept free of
the last point, so that we might call that gulf which but now had been
river, I heard a sound at my elbow as I bent over a chart, and turned
to see both my associates, the collars of their sweaters turned up
against the damp chill of the morning.
"Where are we now, Black Bart?" asked Jean Lafitte. I could see on
his face the mystic emotion of youth, could see his face glorified in
the uplifting thrill of this mystery of the sea and the dawn and the
unknown which now enveloped us. "Where are we now?" he asked; but it
was as though he feared he slept and dreamed, and that this wondrous
dream of the dawn might rudely be broken by some command summoning him
back to life's routine.
"Surely your soul should tell you, Jean Lafitte," said I, "for yonder,
as I may say, now rolls the Spanish Main. Its lift is now beneath our
feel. You are home again, Jean Lafitte. Yonder are the bays and bayous
and channels in the marshes, where your boats used to hide. And there,
L'Olonnois, my hearty, with you, I was used to ride the open sea,
toward the Isles of Spain, waiting for the galleons to come."
"I know, I know!" said my blue-eyed pirate softly and reverently; and
so true was all his note to that inner struggling soul that lay both
in his bosom and my own, that I ceased to lament for my sin in so
allowing modern youth to be misled, and turned to him with open hand,
myself also young with the undying youth of the world.
"Many a time, Black Bart," said L'Olonnois solemnly, "have we crowded
on full sail when the lookout gave the word of a prize a-comin', while
we laid to in some hidden channel over yonder."
"Aye, aye, many a time, many a time, my hearty."
"--An' loosed the bow-chaser an' shot away her foremast."
"--At almost the first shot, L'Olonnois."
"--So that her top hamper came down in a run an' swung her broadside
to our batteries."
"--And we poured in a hail of chain-shot and set her hull afire."
"--And then launched the boats for the boardin' parties," broke in
Jean Lafitte, standing on one leg in his excitement; "--an' so made
her a prize. An' then we made 'em walk the plank amid scenes of
wassail--all but the fair captives."
I fell silent. But L'Olonnois' blue eyes were glowing. "An' them we
surrounded with every rude luxury," said he, "finally retiring to the
fortresses of the hidden channels of the coast, where we defied all
pursuit. This looks like one of them places, though I may be mistook,"
he added judiciously. I shuddered to see how Jimmy's grammar had
deteriorated under my care.
"Yes," said I, "we are now near to several of those places, scenes of
our bold deeds. The south coast of Louisiana lies on our right, cut by
a thousand bays and channels deep enough for hiding a pinnace or even
a stout schooner. Yonder, Jean, is Barataria Bay, your old home. Here,
under my finger, is Côte Blanche. Here comes the Chafalay, through its
new channel--all this floating hyacinth, all this red water, comes
from Texas soil, from the Red River, now discharging in new mouths.
Yonder, west of the main boat channels that make toward the railways
far inland, lie the salt reefs and the live-oak islands. Here is the
long key they now call Marsh Island. It was not an island until you,
stout Jean Lafitte, ordered the Yankee Morrison to take a hundred
black slaves with spades and cut a channel across the neck, so that
you could get through more quickly from the Spanish Main to the hidden
bayous where your boats lay concealed--until the wagons from Iberia
could come and traffic at the causeway for your wares. Do you not
remember it well?"
"Aye, that I do, Black Bart!" said he; and I was sure he did.
"And yonder channel, once just wide enough for a yawl, is to-day
washed out wide enough for a fleet to pass through--though not deep
enough. In that fact now lies our safety."
"How do you mean, Black Bart?" demanded he.
"Why, that all this water over yonder west of us is so shallow that it
takes a wise oyster boat to get through to Morgan City. The shrimpers
who reap these waters, even the market shooting schooners who carry
canvasbacks out of these feeding beds in the marshes, have to know the
tides and the winds as well, and if one be wrong the boat goes aground
on these wide shoals. Less than a fathom here and here and here on the
chart soundings--less than that if an offshore wind blows."
"You mean we'll go aground?"
"No, I mean that any pursuer very likely would. The glass is falling
now. Soon the wind will rise. If it comes offshore for five hours--and
it will wait for five hours before it does come offshore--we shall be
safe, inside, at one of your old haunts, Jean Lafitte; and back of us
will lie fifty miles of barrier--yon varlet may well have a care."
"Yon varlet don't know where we have went," commented L'Olonnois in
his alarming grammar.
"No, that is true. The water leaves no trail. Most Northerners go to
Florida for the winter, and not to these marshes. Methinks they will
have a long chase."
"An' here," said Jean Lafitte, with much enthusiasm, "we kin lie
concealed an' dart out on passin' craft that strike our fancy as
prizes."
"We could," said I, "but we will not."
"Why not?" He seemed chilled by my reply.
"Oh, we shall not need to," I hastened to explain. "We have everything
we need for a long stay here. We can live chiefly by hunting and
fishing for a month or so, until----"
"Until the fair captive has gave her consent," broke in L'Olonnois,
also with enthusiasm.
"Yes," said I, endeavoring a like enthusiasm. "Or, at least, until we
find it needful to go inland to one of the live-oak islands. There are
houses there. I know some of the planters over yonder."
"Let's make them places scenes of rapeen!" suggested Jean Lafitte
anxiously. "They must have gold and jewels. Besides, I bear it well in
mind, many a time have I and my stout crew buried chests of treasure
on them islands. We c'd dig 'em up. Maybe them folks has a'ready dug
'em up. Then why not search their strongholds with a stout party of
our own hardy bullies, Black Bart?"
"No," said I mildly; "for several reasons I think it best for my
hardy bullies to go and eat some breakfast and then go to sleep. If we
go into the live-oak heights above Côte Blanche, I think we'll only
ask for salt. I am almost sure, for instance, that my friend Edouard
Manning, of Bon Secours plantation, would give me salt if I asked it.
He has done so before. Beshrew me, it should go hard with him if he
refused."
"There's a barrel an' eight boxes o' sacks o' salt aboard," said the
practical Jean Lafitte. "What'd you want so much salt for?"
"'Twas yon varlet's idea," said I, "when he laid in the ship's stores.
But I had a mind that, to my taste, no salt is better than that made
by the Manning plantation mines. But now," I added, "to your
breakfast, after you have bathed."
"Peterson," said I, after they had left me, and pointing to the chart,
"lay her west by south. I want to run inside the Timbalier Shoals."
"Very shallow there, Mr. Harry--just look at the soundings, sir."
"That's why I want to go. Hold on till you get the light at this
channel here, southeast of the Côte Blanche. You'll get a lot of
floating hyacinth, but do what you can. I'll take my trick, as soon as
I get a bite to eat. By night we'll be over our hurry and we can all
arrange for better sleep."
"And then--I--ahem! Mr. Harry, what are your plans?" He was just a
trifle troubled over all this.
"My plans, Peterson," said I, "are to anchor off Timbalier to-night,
to anchor in this channel of Côte Blanche to-morrow--and to eat
breakfast now." Saying which I left him gloomily shaking his head, but
laying her now west by south as I had made the course.
"The glass is falling mighty fast, Mr. Harry," he called over his
shoulder to me by way of encouragement.
CHAPTER XXVIII
IN WHICH IS CERTAIN POLITE CONVERSATION
My boy had ironed my trousers, that is to say, the trousers I had
given him the year previous, and which he now had loaned to me, my
extremity being greater than his own. He had laundered my collars--a
most useful boy, my China boy. I had, moreover, delving in Cal
Davidson's wardrobe, discovered yet another waistcoat, if possible
more radiant even than the one with pink stripes, for that it was
cross hatched with bars of pale pea green and mauve--I know not from
what looms he obtained these wondrous fabrics. Thus bravely attired
after breakfast, just before luncheon, indeed, it was, I felt
emboldened to call upon the captive ladies once more. With much shame
I owned that I had not seen Auntie Lucinda for nearly two days--and
with much trepidation, also, for I knew not what new bitterness her
soul, meantime, might have distilled into venom against my coming.
I knocked at the door of the ladies' cabin, the aftermost suite on the
boat, and, at first, had no answer. The door, naturally, on a boat of
this size, would be low, the roof rising above decks no higher than
one's waist; and as I bent to knock again, the door of the companion
stairs was suddenly thrust open against my face, and framed in the
opening thus made, there appeared the august visage of Auntie Lucinda
herself.
"Well, sir-r-r-r!" said she, after a time, regarding me sternly. I can
by no means reproduce the awfulness of her "r's."
"Yes, madam?" I replied mildly, holding my nose, which had been
smitten by the door.
She made no answer, but stood, a basilisk in mien.
"I just came, my dear Mrs. Daniver," I began, "to ask you----"
"And time you did, sir-r-r-r! I was just coming to ask _you_----"
"And time you did, my dear Mrs. Daniver--I have missed you so much,
these several days. So I just called to ask for your health."
"You need not trouble about my health!"
"But I do, I do, madam! I give you my word, I was awake all night,
thinking of--of your neuralgia. Neuralgia is something--something
fierce, in a manner of speech--if one has it in the morning, my dear
Mrs. Daniver."
"Don't 'dear Mrs. Daniver' me! I'm not your dear Mrs. Daniver at all."
"Then whose dear Mrs. Daniver are you, my dear Mrs. Daniver?" I
rejoined most impudently.
"If the poor dear Admiral were alive," said she, sniffing, "you should
repent those words!"
"I wish the poor dear Admiral were here," said I. "I should like to
ask an abler sailorman than Peterson what to do, with the glass
falling as it is, and the holding ground none too good for an anchor.
I thought it just as well to come and tell you to prepare for the
worst."
"The worst--what do you mean?" She now advanced three steps upward, so
that her shoulders were above the cabin door. Almost mechanically she
took my hand.
"The worst just now is nothing worse than an orange with ice, my dear
Mrs. Daniver. And I only wanted you to come out on deck with--Miss
Emory--and see how blue the sea is."
She advanced another step, being fond of an iced orange at
eleven-thirty. But now she paused. "My niece is resting," said she,
feeling her way.
"No, I am not," I heard a voice say. Inadvertently I turned and almost
perforce glanced down the cabin stair. Helena, in a loose morning wrap
of pink, was lying on the couch. She now cast aside the covering of
eider-down, and shaking herself once, sprang up the stairs, so that
her dark hair appeared under Auntie Lucinda's own. Slowly that
obstacle yielded, and both finally stood on the after deck. The soft
wind caught the dark tendrils of Helena's hair. With one hand she
pushed at them. The other caught her loose robe about her softly
outlined figure.
"Helena!" remarked her aunt, frowning.
"I want an orange," remarked Miss Emory, addressing the impartial
universe, and looking about for John.
"And shall have it. But," said I, finding a soft rug at the cabin-top,
"I think perhaps you may find the air cool. Allow me." I handed them
chairs, and with a hand that trembled a bit put the soft covering over
Helena's shoulders. She drew it close about her with one hand, and her
dark hair flowing about her cheeks, found her orange with the other
when John came with his tray.
It was a wondrous morning in early fall. Never had a southern sky been
more blue, never the little curling waves saucier on the Gulf. The air
was mild, just fresh enough for zest. Around us circled many great
white gulls. Across the flats sailed a long slow line of pelicans;
and out yonder, tossing up now and then like a black floating blanket,
I could see a great raft of wild duck, taking their midday rest in
safety. All the world seemed a million miles away. Care did not exist.
And--so intimate and swiftly comprehensive is the human soul,
especially the more primal soul of woman--already and without words,
this young woman seemed to feel the less need of conversation, to
recognize the slackening rein of custom. So that a rug and a
wrapper--granted always also an aunt--seemed to her not amiss as full
equipment for reception of a morning caller.
"A very good orange," said she at last.
"Yes," said her aunt promptly; "I'm sure we ought to thank Mr.
Davidson for them. He was _such_ a good provider."
"Except in waistcoats," I protested, casually indicating his latest
contribution to my wardrobe. "Quantity, yes, I grant that, but as to
quality, never! But why speak ill of the absent, especially regarding
matters of an earlier and bygone day? Yon varlet no longer exists for
us--we no longer exist for him. We have passed, as two ships pass
yonder in the channel. I know not what he may be doing now, unless
carrying roses to Miss Sally Byington. Certainly he can not know that
I, his hated rival, am safe from all pursuit behind the Timbalier
Shoals, and carrying oranges to a young lady in my belief almost as
beautiful as the beautiful Sally."
Aunt Lucinda turned upon me a baleful eye. "You grow flippant as well
as rude, sir! As though you knew anything of that Byington girl. I
doubt if you ever saw her."
"Oh, yes--last night. Miss Emory and I both saw her, last night, at
Luigi's. As for yon varlet's providing, while I would not too much
criticize a man whose waistcoats I wear even under protest, it is but
fair to say that these oranges and all the fresh things taken on at
New Orleans, are of my providing, and not his. He was so busy
providing other things for Miss Sally Byington."
"I don't think she is so beautiful," said Helena, ceasing with her
orange. "Her color is so full. Very likely she'll be blowsy in a few
years."
"How can you say so!" I rebuked, with much virtuous indignation. But
at the time I felt my heart leap at sight of Helena herself, the lines
of her slim graceful figure defined even under the rug she had drawn
about her neck, the wind-blown little neck curls and the long fuller
lock now plain against her fresh face, blown pale by the cool salt air
that sang above us gently. I could no longer even feign an interest in
any other woman in the world. So very unconsciously I chuckled to
myself, and Helena heard me.
"You don't think so yourself!" she remarked.
"Think what?"
"That she is so beautiful."
"No, I do not. Not as beautiful as----"
"Look at the funny bird!" said Helena suddenly. Yet I could see
nothing out of the ordinary in the sea-bird she pointed out, skimming
and skipping close by.
"Sir," demanded Aunt Lucinda, also suddenly, "how long is this to
last?"
"You mean the orange-dish, Mrs. Daniver?" I queried politely. "As long
as you like. I also am a good provider, although to no credit, as it
seems."
"You know I do not mean the oranges, sir. I mean this whole foolish
business. You are putting yourself liable to the law."
"So did Jean Lafitte, over yonder in Barataria," said I, "but he lived
to a ripe old age and became famous. Why not I as well?"
"--You are ruining those two boys. I weep to think of our poor
Jimmy--why, he lords it about as though he owned the boat. And such
language!"
"He shall own a part of her if he likes, if all comes out well," said
I. "And as for Jean Lafitte, Junior, rarely have I seen a boy of
better judgment, cooler mind, or more talent in machinery. He shall
have an education, if he likes; and I know he will like."
"It is wonderful what a waistcoat will do for the imagination,"
remarked Helena, wholly casually. I turned to her.
"I presume it is Mr. Davidson who is to be the fairy prince," added
Aunt Lucinda.
"No, myself," I spoke quietly. Aunt Lucinda for once was almost too
unmistakable in her sniff of scorn.
"I admit it seems unlikely," said I. "Still, this is a wonderful age.
Who can say what may be gained by the successful pirate!"
"You act one!" commented Aunt Lucinda. "It is brutal. It is
outrageous. It is abominable. No gentleman would be guilty of such
conduct."
"I grant you," said I, but flushed under the thrust. "But I am no
longer a gentleman where that conflicts with the purpose of my piracy.
I come of a family, after all, madam, who often have had their way in
piracy."
"And left a good useful business to go away to idleness! And now
speak of doing large things! With whose money, pray?"
"You are very direct, my dear Mrs. Daniver," said I mildly, "but the
catechism is not yet so far along as that."
"But why did you do this crazy thing?"
"To marry Helena, and with your free consent as her next friend," said
I, swiftly turning to her. "Since I must be equally frank. Please
don't go!" I said to Helena, for now, very pale, she was starting
toward the cabin door. But she paid no heed to me, and passed.
"So now you have it, plainly," said I to Mrs. Daniver.
She turned on me a face full of surprise and anger mingled. "How dare
you, after all that has passed? You left the girl years ago. You have
no business, no fortune, not even the girl's consent. I'll not have
it! I love her." The good woman's lips trembled.
"So do I," said I gently. "That is why we all are here. It is because
of this madness called love. Ah, Mrs. Daniver, if you only knew! If I
could make you know! But surely you do know, you, too, have loved.
Come, may you not love a lover, even one like myself? I'll be good to
Helena. Believe me, she is my one sacred charge in life. I love her.
Not worthy of her, no--but I love her."
"That's too late." But I saw her face relent at what she heard. "I
have other plans. And you should have told her what you have told me."
"Ah, have I not?" But then I suddenly remembered that, by some
reversal of my logical mind, here I was, making love to Auntie
Lucinda, whom I did not love, whereas in the past I had spent much
time in mere arguing with Helena, whom I did love.
"I'm not sure that I've ever made it plain enough to her, that's
true," said I slowly. "But if she gives me the chance, I'll spend all
my life telling her that very thing. That, since you ask me, is why we
all are here--so that I may tell Helena, and you, and all the world,
that very thing. I love her, very much."
"But suppose she does not love you?" demanded Mrs. Daniver. "I'll say
frankly, I've advised her against you all along. She ought to marry a
man of some station in the world."
"With money?"
"You put it baldly, but--yes."
"Would that be enough--money?" I asked.
"No. That is not fair----"
"--Only honor between us now."
"It would go for to-day. Because, after all, money means power, and
all of us worship power, you know--success."
"And is that success--to have money, and then more money--and to go
on, piling up more money--to have more summer places, and more yachts
like this, and more city houses, and more money, money, money--yes,
yes, that's American, but is it all, is it right, is it the real
ambition for a man! And does that bring a woman happiness?"
"What would you do if you had your money back?" asked Mrs. Daniver.
"You had a fortune from your father."
"What would I do?" I rejoined hotly. "What I did do--settle every
claim against his honor as much as against his estate--judge his honor
by my own standards, and not his. Pay my debts--pay all my debts. It's
independence, madam, and not money that I want. It's freedom, Mrs.
Daniver, that I want, and not money. So far as it would be the usual
money, buying almost nothing that is worth owning, I give you my
solemn oath I don't care enough for it to work for it! So far as it
would help me be a man, help me to build my own character, help me
build manhood and character in my country--yes, I'd like it for that.
But if money were the price of Helena herself, I'd not ask for it.
The man who would court a girl with his money and not his manhood--the
woman who marries for money, or the man who does--what use has God
Almighty got for either of them? It's men and women and things worth
doing who make this world, Mrs. Daniver. I love her, so much, so
clearly, so wholly, that I think it must be right. And since you've
asked me, I've taken my man's chance, just to get you two alone, where
I could talk it over with you both."
"It's been talked over, Harry," said she, rather uncomfortably. "Why
not let the poor child alone? Has it occurred to you how terribly hard
this is for her?"
"Yes. But she can end it easily. Tell me, is she engaged to Davidson?"
"What difference?"
"None."
"Why ask, then?"
"Tell me!"
"Well then, no, not so far as I know."
"You are sorry?"
"I had hope for it. It was all coming on so handsomely. At Natchez he
was--he was, well, you know----"
"Almost upon the point?"
"Quite so. I thought, I believed that between there and----"
"Say between there and Baton Rouge----"
"Well, yes----"
"He would come to the main point?"
"Yes."
"And he did not?"
"You can best answer. It was at Natchez that you and those ruffianly
boys ran off with Mr. Davidson's boat!"
"That's all, your Honor," I remarked. "Take the witness, Mr.
Davidson!"
"But what right you have to cross-question me, I don't know!"
commented Mrs. Daniver, addressing a passing sea-gull, and pulling
down the corners of her mouth most forbiddingly.
"My disused and forgotten art comes back to me once in a while, my
dear Mrs. Daniver," I answered exultantly. "Pray, do you notice how
beautiful all the world is this morning? The sky is so wonderful, the
sea so adorable, don't you see?"
"I see that we are a long way from home. Tell me, are these sharks
here?"
"Oodles," said I, "and very large. No use trying to swim away. And
yonder coast is inhabited only by hostile cannibals. Barataria itself,
over yonder, is to-day no more than a shrimp-fishing village, part
Chinese, part Greek and part Sicilian. The railway runs far to the
north, and the ship channel is far to the east. No one comes here. It
is days to Galveston, westward, and between lies a maze of
interlocking channels, lakes and bayous, where boats once hid and may
hide again. Once we unship our flag mast, and we shall lie so saucy
and close that behind a bank of rushes we never would be seen. And we
do not burn coal, and so make no smoke. Here is my chosen hiding
ground. In short, madam, you are in my power!"
"But really, how far----"
"Since you ask, I will answer. Yonder, to the westward, a bayou comes
into Côte Blanche. Follow that bayou, eighty miles from here, and you
come to the house of my friend, Edouard Manning, the kindest man in
Louisiana, which is to say much. I had planned to have the wedding
there."
"Your effrontery amazes me--I doubt your sanity!" said Aunt Lucinda,
horrified. "But what good will all this do you?"
She had a certain bravery all her own, after all. Almost, I was on the
point of telling her the truth; which was that I had during the long
night resolved once more to offer my hand to Helena, and if she now
refused me, to accept my fate. I would torture her no more. No, if now
she were still resolute, it was my purpose to sail up yonder bayou, to
land at the Manning plantation, and there to part forever from Helena
and all my friends. I knew corners of the world far enough that none
might find me.
But I did not tell Aunt Lucinda this. Instead, I made no answer; and
we both sat looking out over the rippling gulf, silent for some time.
I noted now a faint haze on the horizon inshore, like distant
cloud-banks, not yet distinct but advancing. Aunt Lucinda, it seemed,
was watching something else through the ship's glasses which she had
picked up near by.
"What is that, over yonder?" asked she--"it looks like a wreck of some
kind."
"It is a wreck--that of a lighthouse," I told her. "It is lying flat
on its side, a poor attitude for a lighthouse. The great tidal wave of
the gulf storm, four years ago, destroyed it. We are now, to tell the
truth, at the edge of that district which causes the Weather Bureau
much uncertainty--a breeding ground of the tropical cyclones that
break between the Indies and this coast."
"And you bring us here?"
"Only to pass to the inner channels, madam, where we should be safer
in case of storm. To-night, we shall anchor in the lee of a long
island, where the lighthouse is still standing, in its proper
position, and where we shall be safe as a church."
"Sharks! Storms! Shipwrecks!" moaned she.
--"And pirates," added I gently, "and cannibals. Yes, madam, your
plight is serious, and I know not what may come of it all--I wish I
did."
"Well, no good will come of it, one thing sure," said Aunt Lucinda,
preparing to weep.
And indeed, an instant later, my mournful skipper seemed to bear her
out. I saw Peterson standing expectant, a little forward, now.
"Well, Peterson?" I rose and went to him.
"I beg pardon, sir, Mr. Harry," said he somewhat anxiously, "but we've
bent her port shaft on a cursed oyster reef."
"Very well, Peterson. Suppose we run with the starboard screw."
"And the intake's clogged again with this cursed fine sand we've
picked up."
"After I warned Williams?"
"Yes, sir. And that's not the worst, sir."
"Indeed? You must be happy, Peterson!"
"We can't log over eight knots now, and it's sixty miles to our light
back of the big key."
"Excellent, Peterson!"
"And the glass is falling mighty fast."
"In that case, Peterson," said I, "the best thing you can do is to
hold your course, and the best thing I can do is to get ready for
lunch."
"The best thing either of us can do is to get some sleep," said he,
"for we may not get much to-night. She'll break somewhere after sunset
to-night, very likely."
"Peterson," said I, "let us hope for the worst."
All the same, I did not wholly like the look of things, for I had seen
these swift gulf storms before. A sudden sinking of the heart came
over me. What if my madness, indeed, should come to mean peril to her?
Swiftly I stepped back to the door of the ladies' cabin, where Mrs.
Daniver now disappeared. "Helena!" I cried.
"Yes?" I heard her answer as she stepped toward the little stair.
"Did you say 'Yes'?" I rejoined suddenly.
"No, I did not! I only meant to ask what you wanted."
"As though you did not know! I wanted only to call you to get ready
for luncheon. One of the owners of this waistcoat has provided a
pompano, not to mention some excellent endive. And the weather is
fine, isn't it?"
CHAPTER XXIX
IN WHICH IS SHIPWRECK
It must be understood that our party on the _Belle Helène_ was divided
into two, or rather, indeed, three camps, each somewhat sharply
defined and each somewhat ignorant of the other's doings in detail.
The combination of either two against the other, in organized mutiny,
might very well prove successful, wherefore it was my task to keep all
apart by virtue of the authority which I had myself usurped. The
midship's cabin suite, of three rooms, was occupied by myself and my
two bold young mates--when the latter were not elsewhere engaged. We
made what might be called the ruling classes. Forward of our cabin,
and accessible only from the deck, was the engine-room where Williams
worked, and off this were two bunks, well ventilated and very
comfortable, occupied by Williams and Peterson. Forward of this, and
also accessible only from the deck, lay the dining saloon, with its
fixed table, its cupboards, dish racks and wine-room. In her bows and
below the saloon was the cook's gallery, a dumb-waiter running
between; and the sleeping quarters of John, the cook, and Willy, the
deck-hand, were in the forecastle below. This left the two captives
all the after part of the ship pretty much to themselves, and as the
after-suite of cabins was roomy and fitted with every modern nautical
luxury, they lacked neither freedom nor comfort, so far as these may
obtain on shipboard. Obviously, I said little to the ship's crew,
except to Peterson, and my two mates had orders to keep to their own
part of the ship, under my eye.
Thus, like ancient Gaul, divided into three parts, we sailed on our
wholly indefinite voyage; and all I could do was to live from day to
day, or hour to hour. I was content, for Helena was there. Indeed, I
question if, these last three years, her image had not been always
present in my consciousness; such are the fevers of our unreasoning
blood, such the power of that madness known as love.
But, thus divided as was our company, I had none such excellent
opportunity for often seeing Helena, as might at first be supposed.
She and her aunt refused to join us at any meal in the dining saloon;
although, now and then, they came for breakfast to what Auntie Lucinda
with scorn called the "second table". It was not feasible for me,
often, to do more than call of a morning to inquire if all was well
with them; and conversation through a lead-glass transom is not what
one would call intimate. Helena could bar her door if she liked in
more ways than one; and against the fences that she raised against me
one way or another, what with headaches, whims or Aunt Lucinda, I had
now no chance to meet her alone save as she herself might dictate. So
that, after all, though now I stood as commander of the _Belle Helène_
in place of yon varlet, Cal Davidson, although I ate his ship's
stores, wore, indeed, his waistcoats and his neckties when that was
humanly possible, I was his successor only and not his equal. He
could--nay, had done so--meet Helena as he liked, at meals, on deck,
on a thousand errands, whereas I was helpless to do so. He could talk
with her all over the ship, take her alone on deck of a moonlit night,
listen to her sing, gaze--oh, curse him!--on the little curls on
Helena's neck--but no! I could not endure that thought. The round
white neck, the white shoulders, the soft curves beneath the
peignoir's careless irreverences--why, it was an intolerable thought
that any man should raise eye or heart or thought to Helena, save
myself. So, this morning, after that rare and unconventional meeting
on the after deck, one easily may see how much I wished all Gaul were
divided into but two parts, and that the occupants of the reserved
after cabin would come to lunch in the saloon with their captors,
Black Bart, Jean Lafitte and Henri L'Olonnois.
Now, 'tis an odd thing, but one of my superstitions, that when we wish
much and fervently and cleanly for any certain thing, one day that
thing is ours. Some day, some time, some hour or instant, our dear
desire, our coveted thing, our wish, comes and flutters and alights at
our side; if really we have deserved it and have wished long and
deeply and honestly and purposefully. You ask proof? Well, then,
hardly had we three, Black Bart, Jean Lafitte and Henri L'Olonnois,
seated ourselves at table for luncheon that day before I became
sensible of a faint shadow at the saloon stair. I saw a trim boot and
a substantial ankle which I knew belonged to Aunt Lucinda; and then I
looked up and saw on the deck Helena also, stooped, her clean-cut
head, with its blown dark hair, visible against the blue sky.
"May I come in?" she asked gaily enough. And I reached up next to her
to hand her down, and smooth down her skirt for her at the rather
awkward narrow stair.
"You are always invited," said I, and perhaps I flushed in my
pleasure. "John," I called down the tube, "two more--the ladies." And
I heard his calm "All lite."
My young gentlemen had risen, politely, but Helena gently pushed them
down into their places. "Be seated here, ladies," said I. "These
places are, as you see, always spread for you. Your covers wait. And
all the ship's silver shall see duty now. L'Olonnois, my hearty, you
and I shall serve, eh? I am, indeed, delighted--greatly delighted--I
shall not inquire, I shall only hope."
"Well," boomed the deep voice of Auntie Lucinda, "we came because we
did not like the look of things."
"To be sure, things are not looking bully," I assented vaguely.
"I mean the weather. It's getting black, and it's colder. And after
what you told me about the storms, and that lighthouse being blown
down----"
"My dear Mrs. Daniver," said I, helping her to her chair while
L'Olonnois served his Auntie Helena in like fashion, "you really must
not take one too seriously. That lighthouse fell over of its own
weight--the contractor's work was done shamefully."
"But you said it blew," ventured Helena.
"It blows, a little, now and then, to be sure, but never very much,
only enough to enable the oyster boats and shrimpers to get in. How
could we have oysters without a sailing breeze?"
"It's more than a breeze," said Aunt Lucinda. "My neuralgia tells
me----"
"It is fortunate that you honored us, my dear Mrs. Daniver," said I,
"for I have here in the cooler a bottle of ninety-three. I had an
inspiration. I knew you would come, for nothing in the world could
have pleased me so much."
I was looking at Helena, whose eyes were cast down. I observed now
that she was in somewhat elegant morning costume, her bridge coat of
Vienna lace, caught with a wide bar of plain gold, covering some soft
and shimmering under-bodice which fitted closely enough to be formal.
And I saw she had on many rings, and that her throat sparkled under a
circlet of gems.
She must have caught my glance of surprise, for she said nervously,
"You think we are overplaying our return call? Well, the truth is,
we're afraid."
"So then?"--and I bowed.
"So then I fished out all my jewelry."
"We are honored."
"Well, I didn't know what might happen. If one should be
shipwrecked----" I caught her frightened gaze out an open port,
perfectly aware myself of the swift weather change.
"There is nothing like dressing the part of the shipwrecked," said I.
"For myself, these same flannels will do."
"Pshaw!" said young L'Olonnois, "suppose she does pitch a little--it
ain't any worse'n on the _Mauretania_ when we went across. I ain't
scared, are you, John?"
"No," replied Jean Lafitte shyly. He was almost overawed with the
ladies. But I liked the look of his eye now.
"She's not as big as the _Mauretania_," said Helena, fixing
L'Olonnois' collar for him.
"I'm sure she's going to roll horribly," added Aunt Lucinda. "And if I
should be seasick, with my neuralgia, I'm sure I don't know what I
should do."
"_I_ know!" remarked L'Olonnois; and Helena promptly dropped her hand
over his mouth.
"Let us not think of storm and shipwreck," said I, "at least until
they come. I want to ask your attention to John's imitation of Luigi's
oysters _à la marinière_. The oysters are of our own catching this
morning. For, you must know, the water hereabout is very shallow, and
is full of oysters."
"You said full of sharks," corrected Aunt Lucinda.
"Did I? I meant oysters." And I helped her to some from the
dumb-waiter and uncorked the very last bottle of the ninety-three left
in the case. "And as for this storm of which you speak, ladies," I
added as I poured, "I would there might come every day as ill a wind
if it would blow me as great a good as yourselves for luncheon."
"Yes," said L'Olonnois brightly, "you might blow in once in a while
an' see us fellers. I told Black Bart that captives----" but here I
kicked Jimmy under the table. Poor chap, what with his Auntie Helena's
hand at one extremity and my boot at the other, he was strained in his
conversation, and in disgust, joined Jean Lafitte in complete silence
and oysters.
"Really," and Helena raised her eyes, "isn't it growing colder?"
"Jean, close the port behind Miss Emory," said I. It was plain enough
to my mind that a blue norther was breaking, with its swift drop in
temperature and its possibly high wind.
"The table's actin' funny," commented Jean Lafitte presently. He had
never been at sea before.
"Yes," said Aunt Lucinda, with very much--too much--dignity. "If you
all will please excuse me, I think I shall go back to the cabin.
Helena!"
"Go with Mrs. Daniver at once, Jimmy," said I to L'Olonnois.
"Aye, aye, Sir!" saluted he joyously; and added aside as he passed me,
"Hope the old girl's going to be good an' sick!"
I could see Peterson standing near the saloon's door, and bethought me
to send Jean Lafitte up to aid him in making all shipshape. We were
beginning to roll; and I missed the smooth thrust of both our
propellors, although now the engines were purring smoothly enough.
Thus by mere chance, I found myself alone with Helena. I put out a
hand to steady her as she rose.
"Is it really going to be bad?" she inquired anxiously. "Auntie gets
_so_ sick."
"It will be rough, for three hours yet," I admitted. "She's not so big
as the _Mauretania_, but as well built for her tonnage. You couldn't
pound her apart, no matter what came--she's oak and cedar, through and
through, and every point----"
"You've studied her well, since you--since you came aboard?"
--"Yes, yes, to be sure I have. And she's worth her name. Don't you
think it was mighty fine of--of Mr. Davidson to name her after
you--the _Belle Helène_?"
"He never did. If he had, why?"
"Don't ask such questions, with the glass falling as it is," I said,
pulling up the racks to restrain the dancing tumblers.
"Oh, don't joke!" she said. "Harry!"
"Yes, Helena," said I.
"I'm afraid!"
"Why?"
"I don't know. But we seem so little and the sea so big. And it's
getting black, and the fog is coming. Look--you can't see the
shore-line any more now."
It was as she said. The swift bank of vapor had blotted out the
low-lying shores entirely. We sailed now in a narrowing circle of
mist. I saw thin points of moisture on the port lights. And now I
began to close the ports.
"There _is_ danger!" she reiterated.
"All horses can run away, all auto cars can blow up, all boats can
sink. But we have as good charts and compasses as the _Mauretania_,
and in three hours----"
"But much can happen in three hours."
"Much has happened in less time. It did not take me so long as that to
love you, Helena, and that I have not forgotten in more than five
years. Five years, Helena. And as to shipwreck, what does one more
matter? It is you who have made shipwreck of a man's life. Take shame
for that."
"Take shame yourself, to talk in this way to me, when I am helpless,
when I can't get away, when I'm troubled and frightened half to death?
Ah, fine of you to persecute a girl!" She sobbed, choking a little,
but her head high. "Let me out, I'm going to Auntie Lucinda. I hate
you more and more. If I were to drown, I'd not take aid from you."
"Do you mean that, Helena?" I asked, more than the chill of the
norther in my blood.
"Yes, I mean it. You are a _coward_!"
I stood for quite a time between her and the companion stair, my hand
still offering aid as she swayed in the boat's roll now. I was
thinking, and I was very sad.
"Helena," said I, "perhaps you have won. That's a hard word to take
from man or woman. If it is in any way true, you have won and I have
lost, and deserved to lose. But now, since little else remains, let me
arrange matters as simply as I can. I'll admit there's an element of
risk in our situation--one screw is out of commission, and one engine
might be better. If we missed the channel west of the shoals, we
might go aground--I hope not. Whether we do or not, I want to tell
you--over yonder, forty or fifty miles, is the channel running inland,
which was my objective point all along. I know this coast in the dark,
like a book. Now, I promise you, I'll take you in there to friends of
mine, people of your own class, and no one shall suspect one jot of
all this, other than that we were driven out of our course. And once
there, you are free. You never will see my face again. I will do this,
as a ship's man, for you, and if need comes, will give my life to keep
you safe. It's about all a coward can do for you. Now go, and if any
time of need comes for me to call you, you will be called. And you
will be cared for by the ship's men. And because I am head of the
ship's men, you will do as I say. But I hope no need for this will
come. Yonder is our course, where she heads now, and soon you will be
free from me. You have wrecked me. Now I am derelict, from this time
on. Good-by."
I heard footfalls above. "Mrs. Daniver's compliments to Captain Black
Bart," saluted L'Olonnois, "an' would he send my Auntie Helena back,
because she's offle sick."
"Take good care of your Auntie Helena, Jimmy," said I, "and help her
aft along the rail."
I followed up the companionway, and saw her going slowly, head down,
her coat of lace blown wide; her hand at her throat, and sobbing in
what Jimmy and I both knew was fear of the storm.
"Have they got everything they need there, Jimmy?" I asked, as he
returned.
"Sure. And the old girl's going to have a peach of a one this
time--she can't hardly rock in a rockin' chair 'thout gettin' seasick.
I think it's great, don't you? Look at her buck into 'em!"
Jimmy and his friend shared this immunity from _mal de mer_. I could
see Jean now helping haul down our burgee, and the deck boy, Willy, in
his hurried work about the boat. Williams, I could not see. But
Peterson was now calm and much in his element, for a better skipper
than he never sailed a craft on the Great Lakes.
"I think she's going to blow great guns," said he, "and like enough
the other engine'll pop any minute."
"Yes?" I answered, stepping to the wheel. "In which case we go to Davy
Jones about when, Peterson?"
"We don't go!" he rejoined. "She's the grandest little ship afloat,
and not a thing's the matter with her."
"Can we make the channel and run inside the long key below the Côte
Blanche Bayou?"
"Sure we can. You'd better get the covers off the boats, and see the
bottom plugs in and some water and supplies shipped aboard--but
there's not the slightest danger in the world for _this_ boat, let me
tell you that, sir. I've seen her perform before now, and there's not
a storm can blow on this coast she won't ride through."
CHAPTER XXX
IN WHICH IS SHIPWRECK OF OTHER SORT
After the fashion of these gulf storms, this one tarried not in its
coming, nor offered any clemency when it had arrived. Where but a
half-hour since the heavens had been fair, the sea rippling, suave and
kind, now the sky was not visible at all and the tumbling waves about
us rolled savagely as in a nature wholly changed. The wind sang
ominously overhead, as with lift and plunge we drove on into a bank of
mist. A chill as of doom swiftly had replaced the balm of the southern
sky; and forsooth, all the mercy of the world seemed lost and gone.
And as our craft, laboring, thrust forward blindly into this reek,
with naught of comfort on any hand, nor even the dimmest ray of hope
visible from any fixed thing on ahead, in like travail of going, in
like groaning to the very soul, the bark of my life now lay in the
welter, helpless, reft of storm and strife, blind, counseled by no
fixed ray ahead. I know not what purpose remained in me, that, like
the ship which bore us, I still, dumbly and without conscious
purpose, forged onward to some point fixed by reason or desire before
reason and desire had been engulfed by this final unkindness of the
world. For myself, I cared little or none at all. The plunge of the
boat, the shriek of the wind, the wild magic and mystery of it, would
have comported not ill with a strong man's tastes even in hours more
happy, and now, especially, they jumped with the wild protest of a
soul eager for some outlet of action or excitement. But for these
others, these women--this woman--these boys, all brought into this
danger by my own mad folly, ah! when the thought of these arose, a
swift remorse caught me; and though for myself I feared not at all,
for these I feared.
Needs must, therefore, use every cool skilled resource that lay at
hand. No time now for broken hearts to ask attention, the ship must be
sailed. Crippled or not, what she had of help for us must be got out
of her, used, fostered, nourished. All the art of the navigator must
be charged with this duty. We must win through. And, as many a man who
has seen danger will testify, the great need brought to us all a great
calm and a steady precision in that which needed doing.
I saw Peterson at the wheel, wet to the skin, as now and again a
seventh wave, slow, portentous, deadly-deliberate, showed ahead of us,
advanced, reared and pounded down on us with its tons of might. But he
only shook the brine from his eyes and held her up, waiting for the
slow pulse of our crippled engine to come on.
"Can't keep my pipe lit!" he called to me, as I stood beside him; and
at last, Peterson, in a real time of danger, seemed altogether happy
and altogether free of apprehension beyond that regarding his pipe.
At the first breaking of the storm I had, of course, ordered all ports
closed, and had sent both my young companions to the ladies' cabin
aft, as the driest part of the boat. Even there, the water that
sometimes fell upon our decks as the great waves broke, poured aft and
even broke about the cabin, drenching everything above deck. It was
man's work that was to be done now, yet none could bear a hand in it
save the engineer and the steersman. I was, therefore, ready sternly
to reprove Jean Lafitte when, presently, I saw him making the perilous
passage forward, clinging to the rail and wet to the skin before he
could reach the forward deck. But he protested so earnestly and seemed
withal so fit and keen, that I relented and allowed him to take his
place by us at the wheel, showing him as well as I could, on the
chart, the course we were trying to hold--the mouth of a long channel,
six miles or more, dredged by the government across a foot of the bay
and making through to deeper and more sheltered waters beyond.
"S'posin' we don't hit her, in this fog!" asked Jean Lafitte.
"It is our business to do that," was my reply. "In an hour or so more
we shall know. How did you leave the ladies, Jean?"
"Jimmy, he's sicker'n anything," was his reply, "except the old lady,
and she's sicker'n Jimmy! The young lady, Miss Emory, she's all right,
an' she's holdin' their heads. She says she don't get sick. Neither do
I--ain't that funny? But gee, this is rougher'n any waves ever was on
our lake. What're you goin' to do?"
"Hold straight ahead, Jean," I answered. "Now, wouldn't you better go
back to the others?"
"Naw, I ain't scared--much. I told Jimmy, I did, any pirate ought to
be ashamed to get sick. But they're all scared. So'm I, some," he
added frankly.
I might have made some confession of my own, had I liked, for I did
not, in the least, fancy the look of things; but after a time, I
compromised with sturdy Jean by sending him below into the dining
saloon, whence he could look out through the glass front and see the
tumbling sea ahead. Through the glazed housing I could see him
standing, hands in pockets, legs wide, gazing out in the simple
confidence that all was well, and enjoying the tumult and excitement
of it all in his boyish ignorance.
"He don't know!" grinned Peterson to me, and I only nodded in silence.
"Where are we, Peterson?" I asked, putting a finger on the wet chart
before us.
"I don't know," replied the old man. "It depends on the drift, which
we can't calculate. Soundings mean nothing, for she's shallow for
miles. If the fog would break, so we could see the light--there ain't
any fog-buoy on that channel mouth, and it's murder that there ain't.
It's this d----d fog that makes it bad."
I looked at my watch. It was now going on five o'clock, and in this
light, it soon would be night for us. Peterson caught the time, and
frowned. "Wish't we was in," said he. "No use trying to anchor unless
we must, anyhow--she'll ride mighty wet out here. Better buck on into
it."
So we bucked on in, till five, till five-thirty, till six, and all
the boat's lights revealed was a yellow circle of fog that traveled
with us. Wet and chilled, we two stood at the wheel together, in such
hard conditions that no navigator and no pilot could have done much
more than grope.
"We must have missed her!" admitted the old skipper at last. "I don't
fancy the open gulf, and I don't fancy piling her up on some shore in
here. What do you think we should do, Mr. Harry?"
"Listen!" said I, raising a hand.
"There's no bell-buoy," said he.
"No, but hark. Don't you hear the birds--there's a million geese and
swans and ducks calling over yonder."
"Right, by George!" said he. "But where?"
"They'd not be at sea, Peterson. They must be in some fresh-water lake
inside some key or island. On the Long Key there's such an inland
lake."
"It's beyond the channel, maybe?" said he. But he signaled Williams to
go slow, and that faithful unseen Cyclops, on whose precious engines
so much depended, obeyed and presently put out a head at his hatch,
quickly withdrawing it as a white sea came inboard.
"We'll crawl on in," said Peterson. "The light can't be a thousand
miles from here. If only there was a nigger man and a dinner bell
beside the light--that's the trouble. And now--good God! _There she
goes!_"
With a jar which shook the good boat to the core, we felt the bottom
come up from the depths and smite us. Our headway ceased, save for a
sickening crunching crawl. The waves piled clear across our port bow
as we swung. And so we hung, the gulf piling in on us in our yellow
rimmed world. And at the lift and hollow of the sea we rose and
pounded sullenly down, in such fashion as would have broken the back
of any boat less stanch than ours.
Here, in an eye's flash, was danger tangible and real. I heard a
shriek from the cabin aft, and called out for them all to keep below
and keep the ports closed. Peterson had the power off in an instant,
and swung her head as best he could with the dying headway; but it
only put her farther on the shoal.
"It's the Timbalier Shoals!" he screamed. "Oh, d---- it all! We'll
lose her, now." I recalled that his concern seemed rather for his boat
than the lives she carried.
Jean Lafitte came bounding up the companionway, his face pale, but
ready for ship's discipline. "Come," said I quickly, "help me with the
anchor." A moment later, we sprung the capstan clutch, and I heard the
brief growl of the anchor chain as the big hook ran free. Glad enough
I was to think of the extra size it had. We eased her down and made
fast under Peterson's orders now, and so swung into the head of the
sea, which mercilessly lifted us and flung us down like a monkey
seeking to crack a cocoanut shell. Williams joined us now, and Willie
and John, pale as Jean Lafitte, came up from the forecastle, all
shouting and jabbering. I ran aft as soon as might be, and only pulled
up at the cabin door to summon such air of calm as I might. I rapped,
but followed in, not waiting. Helena met me, pale, her eyes wide, her
hair disheveled, but none the less mistress of herself.
"What is it?" she demanded. "What makes it jolt?"
"We've gone aground," said I. "She does pound a little, doesn't she?"
She looked out into the wild night, across which the voices of the
confused wild fowl came like souls in torment.
"This is terrible!" said she simply. "Are we lost?"
"No," said I. "Let us hear no such talk. Go below, now, and keep
quiet. We may pass the night here, or we may conclude after a little
to go on ahead a little farther. We've just dropped the anchor. The
island's just over there a way." I did not care to be too specific.
"What is it, oh, what is it?" I heard the faint voice of Mrs. Daniver.
"Oh, this is awful. I--am--going--to--die, going to _die_!" The agony
of _mal de mer_ was hers now of full license, for the choppy sea was
sustained on the bosom of a long ground swell, coming we knew not
whence.
"Jimmy!" I called down. "Are you there?"
"Yes, Sir," answered L'Olonnois bravely, from his place on the floor.
"I'm feeling pretty funny, but I'll be all right--maybe."
"Stay right where you are--and you also, Miss Emory. I must go forward
now, and just came to tell you it's all right. If there should be any
need, we'll let you know. Now keep down, and keep the door shut."
"I'm--going--to--_die_!" moaned Mrs. Daniver as I left. Helena made no
outcry, but that horror possessed her I knew very well, for every
reason told us that our case was desperate. The boat might start her
seams or break her back, any instant, now.
I found the men trying to make soundings all about us as best they
could with boat hooks and a spare spar. But it came to little.
"Peterson," said I, "you're ship's master. What are your orders?"
"Unlash the boat covers," said he. "Get even the dingey ready.
Williams, close your hatch and bear a hand to swing the big boat out
in her davits. Set the bottom plugs in well. And Mr. Harry, you and
John, the Chink, had better get some stores and a case or so of
bottled water aboard the long boat. Have you got the slickers and rugs
ready, and plenty of clothes? We'll just be ready if it happens. I
don't know where that damned light or the damned channel is, but the
damned ducks maybe know where some damned thing is. We'll run for
them, if we can't ride her out."
We all hurried now, Jean Lafitte at my heels, silent and faithful as a
dog, aiding me as I piled blankets and coats and rugs from our cabin
into the ship's boat, which swayed and swung perilously at the davits.
What with the aid of John, the China boy, and Willy, the deck-hand, we
also got supplies aboard her, I scarce knew what, except that there
seemed abundance. And then we stood waiting for what might happen,
helpless in the hands of the offended elements, and silent all. I
held Jean's hand in my own. He was loyal to his mate, even now.
"Jimmy'd be here," he said. "'Course he would, only he's so awful
sick. I ain't sick--yet, but I feel funny, someway."
Peterson stood looking ahead, but was anxious. "She's coming up
stronger," said he, "and two points on the port quarter. We're going
on harder all the time. Anchor's dragging. Afraid we're going to lose
her, Mr. Harry."
"Hush!" said I, nodding to the boy. "And turn on the search-light. It
seems to me I hear breakers in there."
"That's so," said the old man. "Hook on the light's battery, Williams,
and let's see what we can see."
The strong beam, wavering from side to side, plowed a furry path into
the fog. It disclosed at first only the succession of angry incoming
waves, each, as it passed, thudding us down on the bar of shell and
mud and slime. But at last, off to starboard and well astern in our
new position, riding at anchor, we raised a faint white line of broken
water which seemed a constant feature; and now and then caught the low
boom of the surf.
"She ain't a half mile, over yonder," I heard Willy, the deck-hand,
say. "An' we could almost walk it if it wasn't for the sea."
"Yes, sir," said Williams, "we'd do fine in there now, with them
boats. When we hit that white water----"
"Shut up!" ordered Peterson. "Safe as a church, here or there, you
lubbers. Stand by your tackle, and keep your chin. Mr. Harry, tell the
ladies just to wrap up a bit, because--well, maybe, because----"
"Call me when it is time, Peterson," said I; and moved aft, holding
Jean Lafitte by the arm.
"Gee!" said he, as he dropped, wet and out of breath, into the cabin;
and "Gee!" remarked a very pale L'Olonnois in return, gamely as he
could. And Mrs. Daniver's moans went rhythmic with the pound of the
keel on the shoal.
"What shall we do?" asked Helena at last calmly. "Auntie is very sick.
I am beginning to fear for her, it is such a bad attack. This is as
rough as I ever saw it on the Channel."
"There is no danger," said I, "but Peterson and I just thought that if
she kept on pounding in this way, it might be better to go ashore."
I spoke lightly, but well enough I knew the risk of trying to launch a
boat in such a sea; and what the surf might be, none could say. Ah,
how I wished that my empty assurance might be the truth. For I knew
that, anyway we looked, only danger stared back at us now, on every
hand.
CHAPTER XXXI
IN WHICH WE TAKE TO THE BOATS
I looked at the woman I loved, and self-reproach was in my soul, as I
saw a shudder go across her form. She was pale, but beyond a swift
look at me made no sign connecting me, either with the wreck or the
rescue. I think she had even then abandoned all hope of safety; and in
my own heart, such, also, was the rising conviction which I concealed.
Under the inborn habit of self-preservation, under the cultivated
habit of the well born, to show no fear and to use the resources of a
calm mind to the last in time of danger, we stood now, at least, in
some human equality. And again I lied and said, "There is no danger,"
though I could see the white rollers and could hear their roar on the
shore.
The night grew wilder. The great gulf storm had not yet reached its
climax, and none could tell what pitch of fury that might mean. The
dull jar of the boat as she time and again was flung down by the
waves, the shiver and creak and groan of the sturdy craft, told us
that the end might come at any instant, though now the anchor held
firm and our crawl on to the shoal had ceased. All around us was water
only four or five feet deep, but water whose waves were twice as high.
Once the final crash came, and it would be too late to launch a boat,
and all of us, overboard in that welter, were gone.
Silently, I stepped on deck once more, and motioned to Willy, the
deck-hand, to bring me the life preservers. "Put them on," I said to
Helena.
"Oh, I can't. I can't!" moaned the older woman. "I'm dying--let me
alone."
"Stop this nonsense, madam," said I sternly--knowing that was the only
way--"put it on at once. You too, Miss Emory, and you, my boys. Quick.
Then throw on loose wraps--all you can. It will be cold."
In spite of all my efforts to seem calm, the air of panic ran swiftly.
Mrs. Daniver awoke to swift action as she tremblingly fastened the
belt about her. Pushing past me, she reached the deck, and so mad was
she that in all likelihood she would have sprung overboard. I caught
at her, and though my clutch brought away little more than a handful
of false hair, it seemed to restore her reason though it destroyed her
coiffure. "Enough of this!" I cried to her. "Take your place by the
boat, and do as you are told." And I saw Helena pass forward, also, as
we all reached the deck, herself pale as a wraith, but with no outcry
and no spoken word. So, at last, I ranged them all near the boat that
swung ready at the davits.
"We can't all get in that," said Jean Lafitte.
"No," said I: and I did not like to look at the tiny dingey which lay
on the cabin-top, squat and tub-like, or the small ducking skiff that
here on deck was half full of water from the breaking seas.
"Peterson," said I, "take charge of the big boat here. Take Williams
to run her motor for you. And the ladies will go with you."
I turned to the two boys, and my heart leaped in pride for them both;
for when I motioned to Jimmy to make ready for the large boat, with
the ladies, he stepped back, pale as he was. "Not unless John goes,
too," said he. And they stood side by side, simply and with no outcry,
their young faces grave.
"He must go with us--Jimmy," broke out Helena yearningly: "and so must
you."
"Shut up, Auntie," exclaimed Jimmy most irreverently. "Who's a-runnin'
this boat, like to know?" Which abashed his auntie very much.
"We'll take this one," said Jean Lafitte, and already was tipping the
duck boat. "It'll carry us three if it has to." And I allowed him and
his mate to stand by, not daring to look at its inadequate shell and
again at the breaking seas.
That left the dingey for Willy and the cook. I glanced at Willy.
"Which would you rather chance?" I asked him, "the dingey or the duck
boat?"
"The dingey," said he quickly,--and we both knew the cork-like quality
of this stubby craft.
"Very well," said I. "Call John, when the word comes to go."
"Aren't you going with us?" asked Helena now, suddenly, approaching
me. I took one long look into her eyes, then, "Obey orders," was all I
said, and pointed to the larger boat. I said good-by to her then. And,
in the swift intuitive justice that comes to us in moments of
extremity, I passed sentence upon these young boys and myself. Though
they had sinned in innocence, though I had sinned in love, it had been
our folly that had brought these others into this peril, and our
chance must be the least. Peterson and Williams would be a better team
in the big boat than any other we could afford. I saw Peterson step
toward us, and divined what was in his mind. "I'm owner of this boat,
my man," said I. "Go to your duty. You're needed in the big boat."
"I'm last to leave her," whispered the old man. "She's my boat, and
I've run her."
"Peterson," said I, taking him aside, "I'll buy us another boat. But
there is no woman on earth, nor ever will be, like that one yonder.
Save her. It is your first duty. I wanted that for myself, but she
thinks I'm a coward, and I would be, if I arranged our crews any other
way than just as we are. Take your boat through. We others will do the
best we can. And give the word for the boats when you're sure we can't
ride it out."
Silently, the old man touched his cap, and giving me one look, he went
to the bows of his boat. The _Belle Helène_, lashed by the storm,
rolled and pulled at her cable, rose, fell thuddingly. And at last,
came a giant swell that almost submerged us. I caught Helena to the
cabin-top to keep her drier from it, and the two boys also sprang to a
point of safety. Mrs. Daniver, less agile, was caught by Peterson and
Williams and held to the rail, wetted thoroughly. And by some freak of
the wind, at that instant came fully the roar of the surf. We of the
_Belle Helène_ seemed very small.
I looked now at Peterson. He raised his little megaphone, which hung
at his belt, and shouted loud and clear, as though we could not have
heard him at this distance of ten feet. "Get ready to lower away!"
Williams and the deck-hand sprang to the falls. "Get the women in the
boat, you, Williams," called the skipper, "and go in with them to
steady her when she floats. Take his place there, Mr. Harry. Lively
now!" And how we got the two women into the swinging boat I hardly
knew.
The old skipper cast one eye ahead as a big wave rolled astern. "Now!"
he shouted. "Lower away, there!"
The boat dropped into the cup of a sea, rose level with the rail the
next instant, and tossed perilously. I saw the two women huddled in
the bottom of her, their eyes covered, saw Williams climbing over them
and easing her at the bowline. Then, as we seized the next instant of
the rhythm, and hauled her alongside, Peterson made a leap and went
aboard her, and Williams scrambled back, once more, across the two
huddled forms. I saw him wrench at the engine crank, and heard the
spitting chug of the little motor. They fell off in the seaway,
Peterson holding her with an oar as he could till the screws caught.
Then I saw her answer the helm and they staggered off, passing out of
the beam of our search-light, so that it seemed to me I had said
good-by to Helena forever.
We who remained had no davits to aid us, and must launch by hand. For
a moment I stood and made my plans. First, I called to Willy, our
deck-hand, who had the dingey now astern, some fashion. "Are you
ready?" I demanded: but the next moment I heard his call astern and
knew that, monkey-like, he had got her over and was aboard her
somehow.
"Now, boys," said I, "come here and shake hands with Black Bart." They
came, their serious eyes turned up to me. And never has deeper emotion
seized me than as I felt their young hands in mine. We said nothing.
"Now, bear a hand there, you, Jean!" I pulled open the gate of the
rail, and ran out the landing stage, on which the flat-bottomed skiff
sat. With an oar I pushed it across at right angles as nearly as
possible when she cleared. "Quick! Get in, both of you," I called. I
was holding the inboard end of the plank under a wedged oar shaft,
thrust below the sill of the forward cabin door. They scrambled out
and in, Jean grasping the bight of the painter that I handed him, and
passing it over the rail.
"Now, look out," I called, and dropped the landing stage to meet the
swell of the next wave. They slid, tilted, righted, rose high--and
held. The next moment I sprang, fell into the sea, was caught by the
collar as my hand grasped the cockpit coaming, and so I slid in,
somehow, over the end deck, and caught the end of the painter from
John's hand and cast her free.
The drift carried us off at once, and the next wave almost hid the
hull of the _Belle Helène_. I knew at once we were powerless, and that
our one hope lay in drifting ashore. There is no worse sea boat than a
low, flat ducking boat, decked though she be, and of good coaming, for
she butts into and does not rise to a sea. But now, I thanked my star,
one thing only was in our favor. We rolled like a log, already half
full of water, but we floated, because in each end of our skiff was a
big empty tin air tank, put there in spite of the laughing protest of
the builder, who said no room was left for decoys under the decks.
Just now, those tin cans were worth more than many duck decoys.
"Keep down!" I ordered. "And hold on!" The boys obeyed me. I could
see their gaze bent on me, as the source of their hope, their
reliance. Jimmy was now free from the first violence of the
seasickness, but I saw Jean's hand on his arm.
"Gee!" I heard the latter mutter as the first sea crossed under us.
"Dat was a peach." I took heart myself, for we lived that one through.
"Bail!" I ordered, and they took their cups to it, while I did all I
could with the long punt paddle to make some sort of course. Now and
then the blazing trail of the _Belle Helène's_ search-light swung
across as we rolled, to leave us, the next instant, in blackness. As
the seas permitted, we could see her, riding and rocking, sometimes,
alight from stern to stern and making a gallant fight for her life, as
were we all.
So long as the rollers came in oily and black, we did well, but where
the top of one broke under us, we sank deep into the white foam that
had no carrying power, and our cockpit filled so that we all sat in
water. Only the tanks held us, log-like, and we bailed and paddled:
and after they saw we did not sink, my hardy bullies, perhaps in the
ignorance of youth and boy's confidence that a boy and water are
friends, began to shout aloud. We wallowed on.
No sound came to us from either of the other boats; and now, very
quickly it seemed, we came at the edge of the surf.
"I'm touching bottom, boys," I called, and cast the long punt pole
adrift as I took up the short paddle I had held under my leg.
Now we had under us two feet of water or ten, as the waves might say,
and any moment we might roll over; but we wallowed in, rolling, till I
knew the supreme moment had come. I waited, holding her head in well
as I could so unruly a hulk, and as a big roller came after us,
paddled as hard as I could. The wave chased us, caught us, pushed us,
carried us in. There was a lift of our loggish bows, a blinding crash
of white water about us. Our boat was overturned, but in some way,
since the beach was all sand and very gentle, the wave flattened so
that the back-tow did not pull us down. In some way, I do not know
how, I found myself standing, and dragging Jimmy by the hand. Jean
already was ahead, and I heard his shout and saw his hand as he stood,
knee-deep but safe. So we all made it ashore, and our boat also, which
now we hauled out of the spume. And the long white row of breakers,
less dangerous than I had feared, came in, white maned and bellowing.
I could still see the rocking lights of the yacht, and the shifting
stroke of the search-light on the sea, but I did not hear and see
aught else, at the time, and my heart sank.
It was Jimmy whose ear first got the sound which came in--the feverish
phut-phut of the motor skiff. Then the ray of the great light swung
and I saw the boat still outside the breakers--nor could I tell then
why we had beaten her in. It seemed Peterson was hunting for us
others.
"Stay back, boys!" I called to my companions. "You might get thrown
down by the waves--keep back." But now I was ready to rush in to meet
the long boat, whose keel I knew would leave her to overturn if she
caught bottom.
But Peterson knew about the keel as well as any, and he caught what he
thought was water enough before he yelled to Williams to drive her in.
She sped in like an arrow; and again the white wave reared high and
broke upon its prey. By then, I was in water to my waist. I caught
Helena out with one reach of my arms, just as I saw Williams and
Peterson stagger in with Mrs. Daniver between them. In some miraculous
way we got beyond danger, and met my pirates, dancing and shouting a
welcome to our desert isle. Their advent, thereon, gave the two
womenfolk a fervent wish to embrace, sob and weep extraordinarily. I
had said nothing to Helena and said nothing now.
"Where's the dingey, Peterson?" I called, as he came up, grinning.
"Coming in," said he; and forsooth that water-rat, Willy, made a
better landing of it than any of us, and calmly helped us now to haul
the heavy motor skiff up the beach, a few feet at a time as the waves
thrust it forward.
"Thank God!" I heard Helena exclaim. "Oh, thank God! We're safe, we're
all safe, after all."
I looked at my little group for a time, all soaked to the skin, all
huddled now close together. Peterson, Williams, Willy--all the crew,
yes. Auntie Lucinda and the woman who had called me a coward--the two
captives, yes, Jean Lafitte and Henri L'Olonnois and myself, Black
Bart--all the ship's owners. What lacked? For a moment I could not
tell why I had the vague feeling that something or some one was
missing.
"Willy," said I at last, "where's John, the cook?"
"Why, I don't know," said Willy. "Didn't he come with you?"
CHAPTER XXXII
IN WHICH I RESCUE THE COOK
"What's that?" said Peterson sharply--"you didn't obey orders?"
"Well, I thought he was in the other boat," explained Willy, hanging
his head.
"You'll get your time," said the old man quietly, "soon as we get to
the railroad--and you'll go home by rail."
"What are you trying to do, Mr. Harry?" he demanded of me, a moment
later. I was looking at the long boat.
"Well, he's part of the boat's company," said I, "and we've got to
save him, Peterson."
"What's that?" asked Helena now coming up--and then, "Why, John, our
cook, isn't here, is he?" She, too, looked at the long boat and at the
sea. "How horrible!" she said. "Horrible!"
"What does he mean to do?" she demanded now of Peterson in turn. The
old man only looked at her.
"Surely, you don't mean to go out there again," she said.
I turned to them both, half cold with anger. "Do you think I'd leave
him out there to die, perhaps? It was my own fault, not to see him in
the boat."
"It wasn't," reiterated Peterson. "It was Willy's fault--or mine."
"In either case it's likely to be equally serious for him. We can't
leave the poor devil helpless, that way."
"Mr. Harry," began Peterson again, "he's only a Chinaman."
"Take shame to yourself for that, Peterson," said I. "He's a part of
the boat's company--a good cook--yes, but more than a good cook----"
"Well, why didn't he come up with the rest of us?"
"Because he was at his place of duty, below, until ordered up," said
I.
Peterson pondered for a moment. "That's right," said he at length;
"I'll go out with you."
I felt Helena's hand on my arm. "It's awful out there," said she. But
I only turned to look at her in the half-darkness and shook off her
hand.
"You can't launch the big boat," said Peterson. "You'd only swamp her,
if you tried."
"That may be," said I, "but the real thing is to try."
"We might wait till the wind lulls," he argued.
"Yes, and if the wind should change she might drag her anchor and go
out to sea. Which boat is best to take, Peterson?"
A strange feeling of calm came over me, an odd feeling not easy to
explain, that I was not a young man of leisure, but some one else, one
of my ancestors of earlier days, used to encounters with adversity or
risk. Calmly and much to my own surprise, I stood and estimated the
chances as though I had been used to such things all my life.
"Which is the best boat, Peterson?" I repeated. "Hardly the duck boat,
I think--and you say not the big boat."
"The dingey is the safest," replied Peterson. "That little tub would
ride better; but no man could handle her out there."
"Very well," said I; "she'll get her second wetting, anyhow. Lend a
hand."
"She'll carry us both," commented the old man, stepping to the side of
the stubby little craft.
"But she'll be lighter and ride easier with but one," was my reply. "A
chip is dry on top only as long as it's a chip."
"Let me go along," said Jean Lafitte, stepping up at this time.
"You'll do nothing of the sort, my son," said I. "Go back to the
ladies and make a fire, and make a shelter," said I. "I'll be here
again before long."
The news of the new adventure now spread among our little party. Mrs.
Daniver began sniffling. "Helena," I heard her say, "this is
terrible." But meantime I was pulling off my sweater and fastening on
a life belt. Nodding to Peterson, we both picked up the dingey, and
when the next sea favored, made a swift run in the endeavor to break
through the surf.
"Let go!" I cried to him, as the water swirled about our waist. "Go
back!" And so I sprang in alone and left him.
For the time I could make small headway, indeed, had not time to get
at the oars, but pushing as I might with the first thing that came to
hand, I felt the bottom under me, felt again the lift of the sea carry
me out of touch. Then an incoming wave carried me back almost to the
point whence I had started. In such way as I could not explain, none
the less at length the little boat won through, no more than half
filled by the breaking comber. I worked first as best I might,
paddling, and so keeping her off the best I could. Then when I got the
oars, the stubby yawing little tub at first seemed scarce more than to
hold her own. I pulled hard--hard as I could. Slowly, the line of
white breakers passed astern. After that, saving my strength a trifle,
I edged out, now angling into the wind, now pulling full into the
teeth of the gale. Even my purpose was almost forgotten in the
intensity of the task of merely keeping away from the surf. Dully I
pulled, reasoning no more than that that was the thing for me to do.
It had seemed a mile, that short half-mile between the yacht and the
beach. It seemed a hundred miles now going back to the boat. I did not
dare ask myself how I could go aboard if even I won across so far as
the yacht. It was enough that I did not slip backward to the beach
once more. Yawing and jibbing in the wind which caught her stubby
freeboard, the little boat, none the less, held up under me, and once
she was bailed of the surf, rode fairly dry in spite of all, being far
more buoyant than either of the other craft. Once in the dark, I saw
something thrust up beside me and fancied it to be a stake, marking
the channel which pierced the key hereabout. This was confirmed in my
mind when, presently, as rain began to fall and the fog lessened for
the time, I saw the blurred yellow lighthouse eye answering the
wavering search-light of the _Belle Helène_, which swept from side to
side across the bay as she rolled heavily at her anchor. In spite of
the hard fight it had given me, I was glad the wind still held
inshore. I knew the point of the little island lay not far beyond the
light. Once adrift beyond that, not the _Belle Helène_ herself would
be safe, in this offshore wind, but must be carried out into the gulf
beyond.
Not reasoning much about this, however, and content with mere pulling,
I kept on until at length I saw the nodding lights of the _Belle
Helène_ lighting the gloom more definitely about me. Presently, I made
under her lee, so that the dingey was more manageable, and at last, I
edged up almost to her rail, planning how, perhaps, I might cast a
line and so make fast. But, first, I tried calling.
"Ahoy, there below, John!" I called through the dark. At first there
came no answer, and again I shouted. At this I saw the door of the
dining saloon pushed open, and John himself thrust out his hand.
"All litee," said he, merely greeting me casually. "You come?"
"Yes," said I, with equal sang-froid. "You makee quick jump now, John,
s'pose I come in."
"All litee," said he once more. I saw now that he stood there, a book
and a bundle in his arm. Perhaps he had been reading to pass the time!
Be that as it may, I cautiously pulled the dingey under the lee of the
_Belle Helène_. Timing his leap with a sagacity and agility combined
which I had not suspected of him, my China boy made a leap, stumbled,
righted himself, got his balance and so placed his bundle on the
bottom of the boat and his book upon the seat, where he covered it
carefully against the spray.
"All litee," said he once more. "I makee pull now. You come this
place."
I endeavored to emulate his Oriental calm. "John," said I, "I catchee
plenty wind this time."
"Yes, plenty wind," said he.
"You suppose we leave China boy?" I demanded.
"Oh, no, no!" he exclaimed with emphasis. "I know you come back allee
time bimeby, one time."
"What were you doing, John?"
"I leed plenty 'Melican book," said he calmly. "Now I makee pull." To
oblige him I made way for him, and we crawled past each other on the
floor of the heaving dingey. He took the oars and began pulling with
an odd chopping sort of a stroke, perhaps learned in his youth on some
sampan that rode the waters of his native land; but for my own part,
since Fate seemed to be kind to me after all, I trusted his skill,
such as it was, and was willing to rest for a time.
"No velly bad," said John judicially, after a time. "Pretty soon come
in." No doubt he saw the little fire, now beginning to light the
beach. At any rate, he headed straight in, the seas following, reeling
after us. They have their own ways, these people of the East. I fancy
John had run surf before. At any rate, I knew the water now was
shallow and that, perhaps, one could swim ashore if we were overset. I
trusted him to make the landing, however, and he did it like a
veteran. One plunge through the ultimate white crest, and we were
carried up high on the beach, to meet the shouts of my men and to feel
their hands grasp the gunwales of the sturdy little craft.
"All litee," remarked John amiably, and started for the fire, such
being his instinct, not with the purpose of getting warm, but of
cooking something. And in half an hour he had a cup of hot bouillon
all around.
"It's a commendable thing," remarked Mrs. Daniver, "that you, sir,
should go to the rescue of even a humble Chinaman. I find this
bouillon delicious."
"Have you quite recovered from your seasickness by this time, Mrs.
Daniver?" I asked politely.
"Seasickness?" She raised an eyebrow in protest. "I never was seasick
in my life--not even in the roughest crossings of the Channel, where
others were quite helpless."
"It is fortunate to be immune," said I. "People tell me it is a
terrible feeling--they even think they are going to die."
Jean Lafitte, I found, had made quite a serviceable shelter, throwing
a tarpaulin over one of the long boat's oars. We pushed our fire to
the front of this, and after a time induced the ladies to make
themselves more comfortable. Only with some protest did my hearty
pirates agree to share this shelter which made our sole protection
against the storm.
CHAPTER XXXIII
IN WHICH WE ARE CASTAWAYS
The rain came down dismally, and the chill of the night was very
considerable, as I learned soon after ceasing my own exertions. The
men made some sort of shelter for themselves by turning up the long
boat and the dingey on edge, crawling into the lee, and thus finding a
little protection. All but John, my cook. That calm personage, every
time I turned, was at my elbow in the dark, standing silent, waiting
for I knew not what. For the first time, I realized the virtue of his
waterproof silk shirt. He seemed not to mind the rain, although he
asked my consent to put his bundle and his book under the shelter. I
stooped down at the firelight, curious to see the title of his book.
It was familiar--_The Pirate's Own Book_!
"Where you catchee book, John?" I asked him.
"Litlee boy he give me; him 'Melican book. I lead him some. Plenty
good book."
"Yes," said I; "I see. That boy'll make pirates of us all, if we
aren't careful."
"That book, him tellee what do, sposee bad storm," said John proudly.
"I know."
I walked over to where Peterson lay, his pipe now lighted by some
magic all his own. We now could see more plainly the furred and yellow
gleam of the lighthouse lamp. Peterson's concern, however, was all for
the _Belle Helène_.
"I hate to think of her out there all by herself," said he.
"So do I, Peterson. I hate also to think of all that ninety-three we
left out there."
We were standing near the edge of the ladies' shelter, and I heard
Mrs. Daniver's voice as she put out her head at the edge of the
tarpaulin.
"I thought you said all the ninety-three was gone," said she with some
interest, as it appeared to me.
"No, we only had the last bottle of that case at luncheon, Mrs.
Daniver," said I. "There are yet other cases out yonder."
"It's a bad night for neuralgia," said she complainingly.
"It is, madam. But I don't think I'll pull out again. And I am
rejoiced that you are not troubled now with seasickness,--that you
never are." Which last resulted in her dignified silence.
Through the night, there came continually the clamoring of the wild
fowl in the lagoon back of us, and this seemed to make the boys
restless. It was Jean Lafitte, next, who poked his head out from under
the tarpaulin.
"I've got the gun all right," said he, "and a lot of shells. In the
morning we'll go out and get some of those ducks that are squawking."
"Yes, Jean," said I; "we're in one of the best ducking countries on
this whole coast."
"That's fine--we can live chiefly by huntin' and fishin', like it says
in the g'ographies."
"If the wind should shift," said I, "we may have to do that for quite
a time. I don't know whether the lighthouse keeper has a boat or not,
and the channel lies between us and the light--it makes out here
straight to the Gulf. But now, be quiet, my sons, and see if we can't
all get some sleep. I'll take care of the fire."
I passed a little apart to hunt for some driftwood, my shadow, John,
following close at hand. When I returned I found a muffled figure
standing at the feeble blaze. Helena raised her eyes, grave and
serious.
"It was splendid," said she in a low tone of voice, addressing not so
much myself as all the world, it seemed to me.
"Get back in there and go to sleep," said I. And, quietly she obeyed,
so far as I might tell.
For my own part, I did not seek the shelter of the other boat, but,
wrapped in sweater and slicker, stood in the rain, John at my side.
Once in a while we set out in the dark to find more wood for the
little fire. In some way the long night wore on. Toward morning the
rain ceased. It seemed to me that the rocking search-light of the
_Belle Helène_ made scarce so wide an arc across the bay. The
lighthouse ray shone less furry and yellow through the night. The wind
began to lull, coming in gusts, at times after some moments of calm.
The roll of the sea still came in, but sometimes I almost fancied that
the surf was bellowing not so loud. And so at length, the dawn came,
softening the gloom, and I could hear the roar of the great bodies of
wild fowl rising as they always do at dawn, the tumult of their wings
rivaling the heavy rhythm of the surf itself.
The advancing calm of nature seemed to quiet the senses of the
sleepers, even in their sleep. Gently making up the fire for the last
time, as the gray light began to come across the beach, I wandered
inland a little way in search of the fresh water lagoon. Its edge lay
not more than two or three hundred yards back of our bivouac. So, as
best I might, I bathed my face and hands, and regretted that such
things as soap and towels had been forgotten with many other things.
Not irremediable, our plight; for now I could see the _Belle Helène_
still rolling at her anchor, uneasy, but still afloat; and in the
daylight, and with a lessening sea, there would be no great difficulty
in boarding her as we liked.
Presently the others of the party were all afoot, standing stiffly,
sluggishly, in the chill of dawn; and such was the breakfast which my
boy John presently prepared for us, that I confess I began to make
comparisons not wholly to his discredit. Now, for instance, said I to
myself, had it been Mrs. Daniver who had been forgotten on board
ship--but, of course, that line of reasoning might not be followed
out. And as for Mrs. Daniver herself, it was only just to say that she
made a fair attempt at comradeship, considering that she had retired
without any aid whatever for her neuralgia. Helena seemed reticent.
The men, as usual, ate apart. I did not find myself loquacious. Only
my two young ruffians seemed full of the enjoyment possible in such a
situation.
"Gee! ain't this fine?" said L'Olonnois. "I never did think we'd be
really shipwrecked and cast away on a desert island. This is just
like it is in the books."
"Can we go huntin' now?" demanded Jean Lafitte, his mouth still full
of bacon. "And will you come along? There must be millions of them
ducks and geese. I didn't know there was so many in all the world."
"You may go, both of you, Jean Lafitte," said I, "if you'll be careful
not to shoot yourselves. As for me, I must go back once more to the
boat, I fancy."
Peterson and I now held a brief conference, and presently, leaving the
ladies in charge of Willy and the cook, we two, with Williams to run
the motor, with some difficulty launched the long boat and made off
through a sea none too amiable, to go aboard the _Belle Helène_ once
more--which so short a time before I had thought we never might do
again.
"This is easier than pulling out in the dingey," grinned Peterson, as
we approached the _Belle Helène_. "Confound that deck-hand, he might
have got you drowned! I'll fire him, sure!"
"No," said I; "I've been thinking that over. There was a great deal of
confusion, and after all, he may have thought that we had John with
us. Besides, he's only young, and he's human. I'll tell you what
we'll do, Peterson--I'll dock him a month's wages, and I'll send his
wages to his mother. Meantime, let him carry the wood and water for a
week."
We found it not difficult now to go aboard the _Belle Helène_, for, in
the lessening seaway, she rolled not so evilly. Peterson sprang to the
deck as the bow of our boat rose alongside on a wave, and made fast
our line. When Williams and I had followed, we took a general
inventory of the _Belle Helène_. All the deck gear was gone, spare
oars and spars, a canvas or so, and some coils of rope. Beyond that,
there seemed no serious damage, unless the hull had been injured by
its pounding during the night.
"It's a mud-bank here, I think, Mr. Harry," said Peterson. "She may
have ripped some of her copper on the oyster reefs, but she seems to
bed full length and maybe she's not strained, after all."
"There's the line of channel guides," said I, pointing to a row of
sticks driven into the mud a couple of miles in length.
"Yes," said the old man, "the channel's not more than a biscuit toss
from here. We came right across it--if it hadn't been in the dark,
we'd have gone through into the lee of the island and been all right.
Now as it is, we're all wrong."
"How do you mean?" I asked.
"How'll we get that anchor up?" grumbled he. "If we start the engines
and try to crawl up by the capstan, we couldn't pull her out of the
mud. If we put on a donkey engine we'd snatch the bow out of here
before we could lift the hook. And until we do, how are we going to
move her? There's the channel, but it's as far as ever. We can't sweep
her off, of course, and we can't pole her off."
"Well, Peterson," said I, "let us, by all means, hope for the worst."
I smiled, seeing that he now was possessed of his normal gloom.
"Well," said he, "we went on at full tide, and hard aground at that.
This wind is blowing all the water out of Côte Blanche. Of course, if
the wind should turn and drive in again, we might move her, if we
caught her at high tide once more. Until that happens, I guess we're
anchored here for sure."
"The glass is rising now, Peterson," said I, pleasantly.
"Oh, yes, it may rise a little," said he, "and of course the storm's
gone by for the time. But I don't think there's going to be any good
change of weather that'll hold, very soon. But now, Williams and I'll
go below and see if we can start a pump. I expect she's sprung a
leak, all right."
Shaking his head in much apprehension, the old man made his way with
Williams, first into the engine-room. For my own part, I turned toward
my cabin door. All at once as I did so it seemed to me I heard a
sound. It came again, a sort of a meek diffident sound, expectant
rather than complaining. And then I heard an unmistakable scraping at
the door. Hastening, I flung it open. I was greeted with a great whine
of joy and trust, a shaggy form leaped upon me, thrust its cold nose
into my face, gave me much greetings of whines, and at length of a
loud howl of joy.
"Partial!" I cried, and caught him by the paws as he put them on my
shoulders and rubbed his muzzle along my cheek, whimpering; "Partial!
Oh, my dear chap, I say now, I'm glad to see you!"
As a matter of fact, I had forgotten Partial these three days, other
things being on my mind. Once more our amateurishness in shipwreck had
nearly cost us a life. Partial, no doubt, had meekly waited at his
usual place until ordered to come out with the rest. We had closed the
doors and port-holes when we left the _Belle Helène_, and thus he had
been locked in.
I sat down on one of the bench lockers with Partial's head in my
hand, and almost my eyes became moist. "Partial," said I, "let me
confess the truth to you. The woman had maddened me. I forgot you--I
did, and will own it now. It was a grave fault, my friend. I do not
ask you to forgive me, and all I can do is to promise you such amend
as lies in my power. From now on, I promise you, you shall go with me
to all the ends of the earth. My people shall be your people, till
death do us part. Do you hear me, Partial?"
He answered by springing up again and licking my face and hands,
whimpering excitedly, glad that I had come at last. "Dear Partial,"
said I, "you're no gladder than I am. And what's more, you've nothing
to cost you penitence. Come, we'll go to the dining-room and see
whether there's anything left to eat."
He followed me now along the rolling deck, and happily I was able to
get him some scraps for his breakfast. Peterson heard me talking, and
thrust up a head above the engine-room hatch. He was as crestfallen as
myself when I showed him that, once more, we had been forgetful and
had left a friend while busy in saving ourselves.
I went once more to my cabin--Peterson having discovered, apparently
to his great regret, that so far as could be determined, we had not
started a seam or smashed a timber anywhere. I found a small tent
among other of my sporting equipment and tossed this out to go in the
long boat's cargo. Another fowling piece and ammunition, my canvas
hunting coat and wading boots, followed. Even, I caught down from a
nail the only other pair of trousers available in my wardrobe--for
Davidson's vast midship section comported ill with my own. I found my
watch in these other trousers, and putting a hand in a pocket, fished
out also my portemonnaie. It had certain bills in it--I presume two or
three thousand dollars in all, and I thrust these into my pocket. At
the bottom of the little purse,--among collar buttons and other hard
objects,--I found a little round white object, and once more bethought
me of my pearl which I had won on the far northern river, as it seemed
to me many years before--the pearl which, as I have said, was to be
known as the _Belle Helène_. I preserved it now.
Peterson and Williams, meantime, were busy in getting aboard a case or
so of water--not forgetting the ninety-three of which I reminded the
old man once more. Some additional stores of bacon and tea, and a
case of eggs, were also taken aboard. At length, with quite a little
cargo in the way of comforts, we embarked once more and started for
our rude encampment.
"We may be here for a month," said Peterson gloomily, looking at the
_Belle Helène_, now rolling just a little, her keel fast full length
in the mud-bar. "I don't think there's ever going to be any change of
wind--it'll blow steadily this way for a week, anyhow."
"I presume, Peterson," said I coolly, "that you don't see the sun
breaking through the clouds over there, at all. And I fancy that you
will not believe, either, that the sea is lulling now. Very well, I
don't want to make you unhappy, my friend."
I heard Williams chuckling as he stooped over his engine. Thus,
chugging on merrily with the long oily roll of the sea under us, we
presently once more ran our surf, and this time had small difficulty
in winning through, for, once we felt the ground under us, we simply
sprang overboard and waded in, dragging the boat with us, waist-deep
sometimes in the flood, but on the whole quite safe.
My two pirate mates came down to the beach joyously, and helped us
unload. It seemed that they had made something of a hunt already, for
with much pride Jean now displayed to me certain birds, proof of his
own prowess with his shotgun.
"Some of 'em's good to eat," said he. "Regular greenheads, like we get
up North." I looked at the string of birds, and saw that they were
mallards and teals, a couple of dozen at least.
"Fie, fie!" said I. "I fear you've been shooting on the water."
"Sure I did! And here's four things that I don't suppose are good to
eat--they got kind of snaky heads, and red-colored, too. Ain't no
ducks good to eat that ain't got green heads."
"Each man to his taste," said I, "but if you like, you may have the
green heads, and I'll take these with the auburn locks."
"Pshaw! What are they?" answered he.
"Only canvasbacks," said I, "and good fat ones, too. What luck have
you, Jimmy, my son?"
"Well, I went along and helped carry things," said L'Olonnois.
"What's that you've got on a string?" I asked him.
"Oh, that," said he, flushing. "It ain't nothing but a little turtle.
It had funny marks on its back. I caught it in the grass over there
by the lake."
Something about Jimmy's little turtle interested me, and I picked it
up in my hands.
"For amateur sportsmen, gentlemen," said I, "you're doing pretty well.
Your funny little turtle, Jimmy, is nothing but a diamond-back
terrapin. There are perhaps more of them on this coast than anywhere
else in the world to-day. And Partial, here--that friend of ours now
leaping excitedly and joyously before them, barking at this little
turtle of Jimmy's--will perhaps be able to help you find some more of
them in the grass--the market hunters here hunt them with dogs, as
perhaps you did not know."
"We got some oysters, Sir," said Willy, coming forward shyly and
shamefacedly; and showed me the cockpit of the duck boat pretty well
filled. The boy had, it seems, found a reef of these in a brackish arm
which made inland, and dug them by the simple process of stooping down
below the surface of the water, since he had no oyster tongs.
"Well," said I, "it looks as if we would fare pretty well for lunch.
John"--and I called my China boy--"again I find renewed cause for
felicitations on your rescue."
John stood looking at me blankly.
"You savee, John?" said I, showing him one of the canvasbacks, and he
remarked mildly, "All litee." If anything, his lunch was better than
his breakfast, and when I saw him take Jimmy's funny little turtle
from him and examine it with appraising eye, I felt fairly well
convinced that we should not suffer at the dinner hour.
But though a certain gaiety now came to others of the party as we sat
about our midday meal, warm now and well fed, and although the boys
excitedly made plans about putting up the tent and furnishing it and
going into camp for the winter, I could not share their eagerness.
There was one other reticent figure at our fireside. Helena sat
silent, the head of Partial in her lap. I felt resentment that she
should steal from me even my dog. At last, having nothing better to
do, I picked up my gun, and slipping on my coat, started down the
beach, telling the boys that I was going alone, perhaps too far for
them to follow, with the purpose of making some sort of an exploration
of the island.
Moody and depressed, not in the least well satisfied with life, even
with matters thus so far more fortunate than we had so recently had
reason to expect, I walked along the hard sand, sometimes looking at
the long lines of wild fowl streaming in above the fresh-water lagoon,
but in reality thinking but little of these. I did not at first hear
the light step which came behind me on the sand.
CHAPTER XXXIV
IN WHICH IS NO RAPPROCHEMENT WITH THE FAIR CAPTIVE
"Harry!" I heard her call, and turned quickly. "Harry, wait!"
She came hurrying up toward me. I felt my color rise. Awkwardly, I
stood waiting, and did not greet her. I cast a quick glance the other
way down the beach. It would be a hundred yards before the first bend
of the shore-line would carry us behind the tall rushes. Meantime, we
were in full sight of all.
Partial, who had followed me when I whistled, now greeted her more
joyously than did his master.
"Yes?" said I dully; "I suppose you came to take away my dog from me,
didn't you? It was all that was left."
"Of course," said she coloring. "I didn't know but what Partial might
be hungry."
"It is I who am hungry, Helena," said I. "I have long been hungry--for
a look, a word."
She did not smile, showed not any trace of coquetry in her mien, but
paced on with me now down the beach. I suppose she knew when we had
turned the point of rushes, for now she laid her hand on my rough
canvas sleeve. It must have cost her effort to do that.
"Harry, what's wrong with you?" said she after a time, since I still
remained moodily staring ahead. I did not answer, would not look at
her for a time, but at length she turned. She stood, I say, with her
hand on my arm, her chin raised fully, her serious eyes fixed on me.
The dark hair was blown all about her face. She had on over her long
white sweater a loose silk waterproof of some sort, which blew every
way, but did not disturb the lines of her tall figure, nor lessen the
pale red and white which the sea breeze had stung into her cheeks. She
did not smile, and her eyes, I say, looked steadily and seriously into
mine.
"What's wrong with you?" she asked, frowning slightly, as it seemed to
me.
"Everything in the world is wrong with me, as you know very well,"
said I. "Am I not a poor man? Am I not an unsuccessful lover? Am I not
a failure under every test which you can apply? Am I not a coward--did
you not tell me so yourself?"
Her eyes grew damp slowly. "I didn't mean it," said she.
"Then why did you say it?"
"It was long before--that was before last night, Harry. You forget."
"What if it was?" I demanded. "I was the same man then that I was last
night."
"I didn't mean it, Harry," said she, her voice low. Her hand was still
on my arm. Her eye now was cast down, the tip of her toe was tracing a
circle on the wet sand where we stood.
"I didn't think," said she, after a little while.
"I presume not," said I coldly. "Sometimes women do not stop to think.
You have not stopped to think that there is a limit even to what my
love would stand, Helena. Now, much as I love you--and I never loved
you so much as I do now--I'll never again ask you for what you can not
give me. I've been rubbed the wrong way all I can stand, and I'll not
have it any more. I've brought you here, yes, and I'm sorry enough for
it. But I'm going to fix all that now, soon as I can."
"What do you mean, Harry?" she asked quietly.
"Yonder, across the bay," said I, pointing, "runs a channel. That's
the Chenière. I presume the lighthouse boats come from in there. Maybe
there'll be one down after the storm in a day or so. He'll take out a
message, and get it on some boat bound for Morgan City, perhaps."
"And what then?"
"Why, I shall send out any message you like, beside my own message to
the parents of these boys of mine. And I'll send a message, too, to my
friend, Manning."
She turned her eyes where I pointed once more, this time seemingly
northward across the bay. "Yonder is still another channel," said I,
"not twenty miles from where we stand. It runs back to the live-oak
islands where my friend Manning has his plantation. If the tide serves
and we can get the yacht afloat, it won't take us long to get in
there. Once there, you are safe; and once there, I say good-by. Judge
for yourself whether or not this is the last time."
"And when will that be, Harry?" she demanded, still tracing some
figure on the sand with the toe of her little boot.
"That, I have said, is something I can not tell. But as soon as
possible, rest assured."
She was silent now, confused, a little abashed, a mood entirely new to
her in my recollection of her many moods. Her hand still lay upon my
coarse canvas sleeve as though she had forgotten it. I bent now and
kissed it. "Harry," said she in a whisper, "don't you care for me any
more?"
"Go back to the camp, Helena," said I; "you know I do, but I've done
enough for you, and I'll do no more. All a coward can do to keep you
safe I have done, but I'm no such coward as to follow you around now
and dangle at your apron strings. It's good-by once more. What are
you," I demanded fiercely, once more, "that you should walk over my
soul again and again? Hasn't there got to be an end to that sort of
thing some time, and don't you think there is an end for me? Go back
and tell your aunt that you have won. And much joy may you both have
in your winning."
I kissed her hand, flung it off, turned and went down the beach. She
did not look about, but presently as I saw, turned and went back
toward the camp, her head hanging. And, as I had said to her, I never
loved her so much in all my life, though never was I so little
disposed to go one step in her pursuit.
Partial sat, looking after her also, his heart torn in the division
between us, for he loved us both.
"Partial," I called to him harshly, and he came, his ears down and
very unhappy. Silently, the dog at my heels, I strode on down the
beach, and so I saw her no more for some time.
I found for myself a driftwood log at the edge of the sea-marsh, and
here for a time I sat down, moodily staring out across the bay, as
unhappy, I fancy, as man gets to be in this world. I scarce know how
long I sat here, in the wind which blew salt across the bay, and for
some time, I paid no attention to the clamoring fowl which passed and
repassed not far from my point.
At length, a long harrow of great Canadian geese passed so close to me
that without much thought about it, I raised the gun and fired. I
killed two birds, and as I picked them up I found they were not a
brace, but a pair. The report of my gun started a clamoring of all
manner of fowl beyond the edge of reeds which hid the reef. A cloud of
ducks passed before me, and slipping in the shells once more, I fired
right and left. Again I killed my brace, and again when I picked them
up they were a pair. The head of one was green, the other brown. "Male
and female made He them!" said I. "If I had not killed these birds, in
the spring they would have gone northward, to the edge of the world in
their own love-making, thousands of miles from here." I looked at my
quarry with remorse, and not caring to shoot more, at length picked up
the birds and slowly started back to camp, not looking forward with
any too great pleasure, it may be imagined, to further meetings with
the woman whom, of all the world, I most cared to meet.
I found all the others of the party amiably engaged in camp affairs.
The tent now was up, the fire was arranged in more practical fashion,
and John was busy with his pans. Lafitte, ever resourceful and ever
busy, was out with Willy after more oysters. L'Olonnois, his partner,
seemed engaged in some sort of argument with his Auntie Helena.
"Jimmy, I can't!" I heard her say. "There isn't any sugar."
"Aw!" said he, "there's plenty of sugar, ain't there, John?" And that
worthy smiled as he pointed toward an open canister of that dainty.
"But I haven't any pan."
"Yes, you have, too, got a pan. Here's one a-settin' right here in
front of you. Come on now, Auntie. We're goin' to have duck and
terrapin and oysters and everything--all a fellow would want, besides
that, is just fudges."
Helena stood preoccupied and hesitant, hardly hearing what he said, as
I fancy. At once L'Olonnois' attitude changed. Folding his arms, he
turned toward her sternly.
"Woman!" said he, "are you not a captive to our band? Then who gives
orders here? Either you make fudges, or your life's blood stains these
sands!"
"Oh, all right, Jimmy," she said listlessly. "I'll make them, if you
like."
"You'd better," remarked that worthy sententiously. "Of course," he
added, seeking to mollify his victim, over whom he thus domineered,
"it ain't just like it is back home on the stove, but you'll have to
get used to that, because we're going to live here forever. And," he
added, casting a glance of his stern blue eyes upon her, "it is the
part of the captive maid ever to live happily with the chief of the
pirate band."
Whereupon Helena and Jimmy both looked up and saw me standing,
unwilling listener to all that had been said. Helena moved away and
pretended to be busy with the material for her confections.
"Aw, shucks, Black Bart," said Jimmy, turning to me--"ain't that just
like a woman?--They won't never play the game."
CHAPTER XXXV
IN WHICH I FIND TWO ESTIMABLE FRIENDS, BUT LOSE ONE BELOVED
The weather now, moderating, after the fashion of weather on this
coast, as rapidly as it had become inclement, we passed a more
comfortable night on our desert island. No doubt the lighthouse tender
knew of our presence, for he easily could see our tent by day and our
fire by night, and he surely must have seen our good ship riding at
anchor under his nose at the edge of the channel; but no visit came
from that official--for the very good reason, as we later learned,
that the storm had stove in his boat at her mooring; so that all he
himself could do was to cross his Cajun bosom and pray that his supply
skiff might come from across the bay. So, as much alone as the Swiss
family by name of Robinson--an odd name for a Swiss family, it always
seemed to me--we remained on our desert island undisturbed, the ladies
now in the comfortable tent, my hardy pirates under the tarpaulin, and
the rest of us as we liked or might, all in beds of the sweet scented
grasses which grew along the lagoon where the great ranks of wild
fowl kept up their chatter day and night.
It was a land of plenty, and any but a man in my situation might well
have been content there for many days. Content was not in my own soul.
I was up by dawn and busy about the boats, before any sign of life was
visible around the tent or the canvas shelter. But since the sun rose
warm, it yet was early when we met at John's breakfast fire. I felt
myself a shabby figure, for in my haste I had forgotten my razors; and
by now my clothing was sadly soiled and stained, even the most famous
of the Davidson waistcoats being the worse for the salt-water
immersions it had known; and my ancient flannels were corkscrewing
about my limbs. But as for Helena, young and vital, she discarded her
sweater for breakfast, and appeared as she had before the shipwreck,
in lace bridge coat and wearing many gems! L'Olonnois, with the
intimacy of kin and the admiration of youth--and with youth's lack of
tact--saluted her now gaily. "Gee! Auntie," said he, at table on the
sand, "togged out that way, all them glitterin' gems, you shore look
fit for a pirate's bride!"
Poor Helena! She blushed red to the hair; and I fear I did no better
myself. "Jimmy!" reproved Aunt Lucinda.
"Don't call me 'Jimmy'!" rejoined that hopeful. "My name is
L'Olonnois, the Scourge of The Sea. Me an' Jean Lafitte, we follow
Black Bart the Avenger, to the Spanish Main. Auntie, pass me the
bacon, please. I'm just about starved."
Mrs. Daniver, as was her custom, ate a very substantial breakfast;
Helena, almost none at all; nor had I much taste for food. In some
way, our constraint insensibly extended to all the party, much to
L'Olonnois' disgust. "It's _her_ fault!" I overheard him say to his
mate. "Women can't play no games. An' we was havin' such a bully
chance! Now, like's not, we won't stay here longer'n it'll take to get
things back to the boat again. I don't want to go back home--I'd
rather be a pirate; an' so'd any fellow."
"Sure he would," assented Jean. They did not see me, behind the tent.
"Somethin's wrong," began L'Olonnois, portentously.
"What'd you guess?" queried Lafitte. "Looks to me like it was
somethin' between him an' the fair captive."
"That's just it--that's just what I said! Now, if Black Bart lets his
whiskers grow, an' Auntie Helena wears them rings, ain't it just like
in the book? Course it is! But here they go, don't eat nothin', don't
talk none to nobody."
"I'll tell you what!" began Lafitte.
"Uh-huh, what?" demanded L'Olonnois.
"A great wrong has been did our brave leader by yon heartless jade;
that's what!"
"You betcher life they has. He's on the square, an' look what he done
for us--look how he managed things all the way down to here. Anybody
else couldn't have got away with this. Anybody else'd never a' went
out there last night after John, just a Chink, thataway. An' her!"
Jimmy's disapproval of his auntie, as thus expressed, was extreme. I
was now about to step away, but feared detection, so unwillingly heard
on.
"But he can't see no one else but yon fickle jade!" commented Jean
Lafitte, "unworthy as she is of a bold chief's regard!"
"Nope. That's what's goin' to make all the trouble. I'll tell you
what!"
"What?"
"We'll have to fix it up, somehow."
"How'd you mean?"
"Why, reason it out with 'em both."
Jean apparently shook his head, or had some look of dubiousness, for
L'Olonnois went on.
"We _gotta_ do it, somehow. If we don't, we'll about have to go back
home; an' who wants to go back home from a good old desert island like
this here. _So_ now----"
"Uh, huh?"
"Why, I'll tell you, now. You see, I got some pull with her--the fair
captive. She used to lick me, but she don't dast to try it on here on
a desert island: so I got some pull. An' like enough you c'd talk it
over with Black Bart."
"Nuh--uh! I don't like to."
"Why?"
"Well, I don't. He's all right."
"Yes, but we got to get 'em _together_!"
"Shore. But, my idea, he's hard to _get_ together if he gets a notion
he ain't had a square deal nohow, someways."
"Well, he ain't. So that makes my part the hardest. But you just go to
him, and tell him not to hurry, because you are informed the fair
captive is goin' to relent, pretty soon, if we just don't get in too
big a hurry and run away from a place like this--where the duck
shootin' is immense!"
"But kin you work _her_, Jimmy?"
"Well, I dunno. She's pretty set, if she thinks she ain't had a square
deal, too."
"Well now," argued Lafitte, "if that's the way they both feel, either
they're both wrong an' ought to shake hands, or else one of 'em's
wrong, and they either ought to get together an' find out which it
was, or else they ought to leave it to some one else to say which one
_was_ wrong. Ain't that so?"
"O' course it's so. So now, thing fer us fellows to do, is just to put
it before 'em plain, an' get 'em both to leave it to us two fellers
what's right fer 'em both to do. Now, _I_ think they'd ought to get
married, both of 'em--I mean to each other, you know. Folks _does_ get
married."
"Black Bart would," said Jean Lafitte. "I'll bet anything. The fair
captive, she's a heartless jade, but I seen Black Bart lookin' at her,
an'----"
"An' I seen her lookin' at him--leastways a picture--an' says she,
'Jimmy----'"
"Jimmy!" It was I, myself, red and angry, who now broke from my
unwilling eavesdropping.
The two boys turned to me innocently. I found it difficult to say
anything at all, and wisest to say nothing. "I was just going to ask
if you two wouldn't like to take the guns and go out after some more
ducks--especially the kind with red heads and flat noses, such as we
had yesterday. And I'll lend you Partial, so you can try for some more
of those funny little turtles. I'll have to go out to the ship, and
also over to the lighthouse, before long. The tide will turn, perhaps,
and at least the wind is offshore from the island now."
"Sure, we'll go." Jean spoke for both at once.
"Very well, then. And be careful. And you'd--you'd better leave your
auntie and her auntie alone, Jimmy--they'll want to sleep."
"You didn't hear us sayin' nothin', did you, Black Bart?" asked
L'Olonnois, suspiciously.
"By Jove! I believe that's a boat beating down the bay," said I. "Sail
ho!" And so eager were they that they forgot my omission of direct
reply.
"It's very likely only the lighthouse supply boat coming in," said I.
"I'll find out over there. Better run along, or the morning flight of
the birds will be over." So they ran along.
As for myself, I called Peterson and Williams for another visit to our
disabled ship, which now lay on a level keel, white and glistening,
rocking gently in the bright wind. I left word for the ladies that we
might not be back for luncheon.
We found that the piling waters of Côte Blanche, erstwhile blown out
to sea, were now slowly settling back again after the offshore storm.
The _Belle Helène_ had risen from her bed in the mud now and rode
free. Our soundings showed us that it would be easy now to break out
the anchor and reach the channel, just ahead. So, finding no leak of
consequence, and the beloved engines not the worse for wear, Williams
went below to get up some power, while Peterson took the wheel and I
went forward to the capstan.
The donkey winch soon began its work, and I felt the great anchor at
length break away and come apeak. The current of the air swung us
before we had all made fast; and as I sounded with a long bow pike, I
presently called out to Peterson, "No bottom!" He nodded; and now,
slowly, we took the channel and moved on in opposite the light. We
could see the white-capped gulf rolling beyond.
"Water there!" said Peterson. "We can go on through, come around in
the Morrison cut-off, and so make the end of the Manning channel to
the mainland. But I wish we had a local pilot."
I nodded. "Drop her in alongside this fellow's wharf," I added. "The
ladies have sent some letters--to go out by the tender's boat,
yonder--I suppose he'll be going back to-day."
"Like enough," said Peterson; and so gently we moved on up the dredged
channel, and at last made fast at the tumble-down wharf of the
lighthouse; courteously waiting for the little craft of the tender to
make its landing.
We found the mooring none too good, what with the storm's work at the
wharf, and as we shifted our lines a time or two, the gaping,
jeans-clad Cajun who had come in with mail and supplies passed in to
the lighthouse ahead of us; and I wonder his head did not twist quite
off its neck, for though he walked forward, he ever looked behind him.
When at length we two, Peterson and myself, passed up the rickety walk
to the equally rickety gallery at the foot of the light, we found two
very badly frightened men instead of a single curious one. The keeper
in sooth had in hand a muzzle-loading shotgun of such extreme age,
connected with such extreme length of barrel, as might have led one to
suspect it had grown an inch or so annually for all of many decades.
He was too much frightened to make active resistance, however, and
only warned us away, himself, now, a pale saffron in color.
"Keep hout!" he commanded. "No, you'll didn't!"
"We'll didn't what, my friend?" began I mildly. "Don't you like my
looks? Not that I blame you if you do not. But has the boat brought
down any milk or eggs that you can spare?"
"No milluk--no haig!" muttered the light tender; and they would have
closed the door.
"Come, come now, my friends!" I rejoined testily. "Suppose you
haven't, you can at least be civil. I want to talk with you a minute.
This is the power yacht _Belle Helène_, of Mackinaw, cruising on the
Gulf. We went aground in the storm; and all we want now is to send out
a little mail by you to Morgan City, or wherever you go; and to pass
the time of day with you, as friends should. What's wrong--do you
think us a government revenue boat, and are you smuggling stuff from
Cuba through the light here?"
"We no make hany smug'," replied the keeper. "But we know you, who you
been!"
He smote now upon an open newspaper, whose wrapper still lay on the
floor. I glanced, and this time I saw a half-page cut of the _Belle
Helène_ herself, together with portraits of myself, Mrs. Daniver, Miss
Emory and two wholly imaginary and fearsome boys who very likely were
made up from newspaper portraits of the James Brothers! Moreover, my
hasty glance caught sight of a line in large letters, reading:
TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS REWARD!
"Peterson," said I calmly, handing him the paper, "they seem to be
after us, and to value us rather high."
He glanced, his eyes eager; but Peterson, while a professional
doubter, was personally a man of whose loyalty and whose courage I,
myself, had not the slightest doubt.
"Let 'em come!" said he. "We're on our own way and about our own
business; and outside the three mile zone, let 'em follow us on the
high seas if they like. She's sound as a bell, Mr. Harry, and once we
get her docked and her port shaft straight, there's nothing can touch
her on the Gulf. Let 'em come."
"But we can't dock here, my good Peterson."
"Well, we can beat 'em with one engine and one screw. Besides, what
have we done?"
"Haint you was 'hrobber, han ron hoff with those sheep?" demanded the
keeper excitedly.
"No, we are not ship thieves but gentlemen, my friend," I answered,
suddenly catching at his long gun and setting it behind me. "You
might let that go off," I explained. At which he went yellower than
ever, a thing I had thought impossible.
"Now, look here," said I. "Suppose we are robbers, pirates, what you
like, and suppose a price is put on our heads--a price which means a
jolly nice libel suit for each paper printing it, by the way, or a
jolly nice apology--none the less, we are a strong band and without
fear either of the law or of you. Here you are alone, and not a sail
is in sight. If any boat did come here, we could--well, we could blow
her out of the water, couldn't we, Peterson? We could blow you out of
the water, too, couldn't we, we and these ruffians of our crew?"--and
I pointed at the two low-browed pictures of Lafitte and L'Olonnois.
A shudder was my only answer. I think the two portraits of my young
bullies did the business.
"Very well, then," I resumed, "it is plain, Messieurs, that there is
many a slip between the reward and the pocket, _voyez vous_? _Bien!_
But here--" and I thrust a hand into my pocket--"is a reward much
closer home, and far easier to attain."
Their eyes bulged as they saw two or three thousand dollars in big
bills smoothed out.
"_Ecoutez, Messieurs!_" said I. "Behold here not enemies, but men of
like mind. I speak of men who live by the sea, men of the old home of
Jean Lafitte, that great merchant, that bold soldier, who did so much
to save his country at the Battle. Even now he has thousands of
friends and hundreds of relatives in this land. You yourself, I doubt
not, Messieurs, are distant cousins of Jean Lafitte? _N'est-ce pas?_"
They crossed themselves, but murmured "_Ba-oui!_" "Est ees the trut'!
How did Monsieur know?" asked the tender.
"I know many things. I know that any cousin descended from those brave
days loves the sea and its ways more than he loves the law. And if
money has come easy--as this did--what harm if a cousin should take
the price of a rat-skin or two and carry out a letter or so to the
railway, and keep a close mouth about it as well? To the good old
days, and Messieurs, my friends!" I had seen the neck of a flask in
Peterson's pocket, and now I took it forth, unscrewed the top, and
passed it, with two bills of one hundred dollars each.
They poured, grinned. I stood, waiting for their slow brains to act,
but there was only a foregone answer. The keeper drank first, as
ranking his tender; the other followed; and they handed the
flask--not the bills--back to Peterson and me.
"_Merci, mes amis!_" said I. "And I drink to Jean Lafitte and the old
days! Perhaps, you may buy a mass for your cousin's soul?"
"_Ah non!_" answered the keeper. "Hees soul she's hout of _Purgatoire_
long hago eef she'll goin' get hout. Me, I buy me some net for
s'rimp."
"An' me, two harpent more lan' for my farm," quoth the tender.
"Alas! poor Jean!" said I. "But he was so virtuous a man that he needs
no masses after a hundred years, perhaps. As you like. You will take
the letters; and this for the telegraph?"
"Certain'! I'll took it those," answered the tender. "You'll stayed
for dish coffee, yass?" inquired the keeper, with Cajun hospitality.
"No, I fear it is not possible, thank you," I replied. "We must be
going soon."
"An' where you'll goin', Monsieur?"
"Around the island, up the channel, up the old oyster-boat channel of
Monsieur Edouard. The letters are some of them for Monsieur Edouard
himself. And you know well, _mes amis_, that once we lie at the wharf
of Monsieur Edouard, not the government even of the state will touch
us yonder?"
"My faith, _non!_ I should say it--certain' not! No man he'll mawnkey
wit' Monsieur Edouard, heem! You'll was know him, Monsieur?"
"We went to school together. We smoked the same pipe."
"My faith! You'll know Monsieur Edouard!" The keeper shook my hand.
"H'I'll was work for Monsieur Edouard manny tam hon hees boat, hon
hees plantation, hon hees 'ouse. When I'll want some leetle money,
s'pose those hrat he'll wasn't been prime yet, hall H'I'll need was to
go non Monsieur Edouard, hask for those leetle monny. He'll han' it on
me, yass, heem, ten dollar, jus' like as heasy Monsieur has gave it me
hondred dollar now, yas, heem!"
"Yes? Well, I know that a cousin of Jean Lafitte--who no doubt has dug
for treasure all over the dooryard of Monsieur Edouard----"
"But not behin' the smoke-house--nevair on dose place yet, I'll swear
it!"
"--Very well, suppose you have not yet included the smoke-house of
Monsieur Edouard, at least you are his friend. And what Acadian lives
who is not a friend of the ladies?"
"Certain', Monsieur."
"Very well again. What you see in the paper is all false. The two
ladies whose pictures you see here, and here, are yonder at our camp.
You shall come and see that they are well and happy, both of them.
Moreover, if you like another fifty for the mass for Jean Lafitte's
soul, you, yourself, my friend, shall pilot us into the channel of
Monsieur Edouard. We'll tow your boat behind us across the bay. Is it
not?"
"Certain'! _oui!_" answered the tender. "But you'll had leetle dish
coffee quite plain?" once more demanded the lonesome keeper; and for
sake of his hospitable soul we now said yes; and very good coffee it
was, too: and the better since I knew it meant we now were friends.
Ah! pirate blood is far thicker than any water you may find.
"But if we take you on as pilot, my friend," said I to the pilot as at
length we arose, "how shall we get out our letters after all?"
"Thass hall right," replied he, "my cousin, Richard Barrière--she's
cousin of Jean Lafitte too, heem--she'll was my partner on the s'rimp,
an' she'll was come hon the light, here, heem, to-mor', yas, heem."
"And would you give the letters to Mr. Richard Barrière to-morrow?" I
inquired of the lighthouse keeper.
"_Oui, oui_, certain', _assurement_, wit' _plaisir, Monsieur_," he
replied. So I handed him the little packet.
It chanced that my eye caught sight of one of the two letters Mrs.
Daniver had handed me. The address was not in Mrs. Daniver's
handwriting, but one that I knew very well. And the letter, in this
handwriting that I knew very well, was addressed to Calvin Horace
Davidson, Esquire, The Boston Club, New Orleans, Louisiana: all
written out in full in Helena's own scrupulous fashion.
I gave the letter over to the messenger, but for a time I stood
silent, thinking. I knew now very well what that letter contained. But
yesterday, Helena Emory had finally decided, there on the beach, alone
with me, the salt air on her cheek, the salt tears in her eyes. She
had gone far as woman might to tell me that she was grieved over a
hasty word--she had given me a chance, my first chance, my only
chance, my last chance. And, I, pig-headed fool, had slighted her at
the very moment of moments of all my life--I who had prided myself on
my "psychology"--I who had thought myself wise--I had allowed that
woman to go away with her head drooping when at last she--oh, I saw it
all plainly enough now! And now indeed small psychology and small wit
were requisite to know the whole process of a woman's soul, thus
chilled. She had been hesitant, had been a little resentful of this
runaway situation, had not liked my domineering ways; but at last she
had relented and had asked my pardon. Then I had spurned her. And then
her mind swung to the other man. She had not yet given that man his
answer, but when I chilled her, rejected her timid little desire to
"make up" with me--why, then, her mind was made up for that other man
at once. She had written his answer. And now--oh! fiendlike cruelty of
woman's heart--she had chosen me as her messenger to carry out that
word which would cost me herself forever! She had done that
exquisitely well, as she did everything, not even advising me that I
was to be her errand boy on such an errand, trusting me to find out by
accident, as I had, that I was to be my own executioner, was to spring
my own guillotine. She knew that, none the less, though I understood
what the letter meant thus addressed, I sacredly must execute her
silent trust. Oh! Helena, yours was indeed an exquisite revenge for
that one hour of a dour man's hurt pride.
CHAPTER XXXVI
IN WHICH WE FOLD OUR TENTS
By consent of the lighthouse keeper, we left the _Belle Helène_ moored
at the wharf in the channel, with Williams in charge, while Peterson
and I, towing the tender's sailing skiff, its piratical lateen sail
lowered, started back for our encampment in our long boat. It was only
a half mile or so alongshore around the head of the island, although
we had to keep out a bit to avoid going aground on the flats where the
_Belle Helène_ had come to grief--and had, moreover, to wade ashore
some fifty yards or so, now that the sea was calm, since the keel of
the motor-boat would not admit a closer approach in the shallows.
We found our party all assembled, John having but now issued his
luncheon call; and, such had proved the swift spell of this care-free
life, none expressed much delight at the announcement of my decision
to strike camp and move toward civilization. Helena only looked up
swiftly, but made no comment; and Mrs. Daniver, to my surprise, openly
rebelled at leaving these flesh-pots, where canvasback and terrapin
might be had by shaking the bushes, and where the supply of
ninety-three seemed, after all, not exhausted. Of course, my men had
nothing to say about it, but when it came to my partners and
associates, Lafitte and L'Olonnois, there was open mutiny.
"Why, now," protested L'Olonnois, his lip quivering, "O' _course_ we
don't want to go home. Ain't our desert island all right? Where you
goin' to find any better place 'n this, like to know? Besides"--and
here he drew me to one side--"they's a good reason for not goin' just
yet, Black Bart!"
"What, Jimmy?" I inquired.
"Well, _I_ know somethin'."
"And what is it?"
"Well, Jean Lafitte knows it, too."
"What is it then?"
"Well, it ain't happened yet, but it's goin' to--or anyhow maybe."
"You interest me! Is it a matter of importance?"
"--Say it was!"
"To whom?"
"Why, to you--an' besides, to my Auntie Helena. 'N' you can't pull off
things like that just anywheres. Jean Lafitte an' me, we frame up how
to handle yon heartless jade, the fair captive, 'n' here you butt in
'n' spoil the whole works. It ain't right."
I bethought me now of the conversation I had unwillingly
overheard--and my heart was grateful to these my friends--but the next
instant I remembered the note to Cal Davidson.
"I thank you, Jimmy, my friend," said I, "and I believe I know what
you mean, but it can't be done."
"What can't, an' why can't it?"
"Why, the--the frame-up that you have just mentioned. In short--but,
Jimmy, go on and roll up the blankets."
"But why can't it, and what do you know about it? Tell me," he
demanded with sudden inspiration, "is yon varlet a suitor, too, for
yon heartless jade?"
"I decline to answer, Jimmy. Don't let's get into too deep water. Go
on and get your bundles ready."
"You're a fine pirate, ain't you, Black Bart!" he broke out. "Do you
hold yerself fit to head a band o' bold an' desprit men, when you let
yerself be bluffed by yon varlet, an' him a thousand miles away? You
try _me_, just you gimme a desert island, or even a pirut ship, a
week, like the chance you got, an' beshrew me, but any heartless jade
would be mine!"
"Oh, maybe not, Jimmy."
"--Or else she'd walk the plank."
"There isn't any plank to walk here, Jimmy," said I, pointing to our
boat, which lay in the shoals far out. "I rather wish there were."
"You'll have to carry my Auntie Helen out on yore strong right arm,
Black Bart."
"I'll do nothing of the sort, Jimmy."
"Don't you like her no more? An' if you don't, what're we here for?"
I could foresee embarrassments in further conversation with Jimmy in
his present truculent mood, so sought out others less mutinous, and
gave orders for the striking of the camp and the embarkment of all in
the small boats. I left Peterson and Willy to take the ladies and most
of the duffel in the large boat, assigned John the dingey for his cook
boat, and decided to pole the light draft duck boat over the shallows
direct to the yacht, taking my two associates with me. It was
necessary, of course, to carry our fair passengers out to the long
boat, which was some distance out on the flat beach. Peterson and I
made a cradle for Mrs. Daniver, with our locked hands, and so got her
substantial weight aboard. Helena mutely waited, but seeing her so,
and unwilling myself to be so near to her any more, I motioned her to
step into the flat duck boat, dry shod, and so poled her out to the
long boat; but I did so in silence, nor did she look up or speak to
me.
Our new pilot sat in his own boat, and was towed back, after rendering
some assistance with the cargoes; so now, at last, I was ready to
leave a spot which, in any other circumstances, would have offered
much charm for a man fond of the out-of-doors. As for my young
friends, they were almost in tears as they sat, looking back longingly
at the great flights of all manner of wild fowl continuously streaming
in and out of the lagoon. At any other time, I would have been
unwilling as any to depart, but, now, the whole taste and flavor of
life had left me, and no interest remained in any of my old
occupations or enjoyments. All that remained was the action necessary
to deliver Helena and her aunt back to the usual scenes of their
lives, to make their losses as light as possible, to take my own
losses, and so close the books of my life.
"There they come!" said Jean Lafitte, pointing to a vast gaggle of
clamoring wild geese coming in from the bay. "Right over our point,
Jimmy! Gee! I wisht I was under them fellers right now. Pow! Pow!"
"Aw, shut up!" was Jimmy's reply. "We won't never get no chance like
this again. Why, looky here, we was reg'lar castaways on a real desert
island, an' we had a abandoned ship, an' we c'd 'a' lived chiefly by
huntin' an' fishin'; and we had evaded all pursuit an' run off with
the fair captive to a place o' hidin'--why, it's all just like in the
book. An' what do _we_ do? Why, we go home! Wouldn't it frost you? An'
what's worse, we let the heartless jade get away with it, too! Ain't
that so?"
"Yes, that's true, Jimmy," I replied.
"Well, I was talkin' to Jean Lafitte--but it's so. We started out all
right as pirates, but now we let a girl bluff us."
"What would you do, Jimmy, in a case like that?" I inquired.
"I would wring the wench's slender neck, beshrew me! She couldn't put
over none o' that coarse work on me. No, curses on her fair face!"
"That will do, Jimmy!" said I, and pushed on in silence, Jean Lafitte
very grave, and Jimmy snuffling, now, in his grief at leaving the
enchanted island. So, all much about the same time, we reached the
_Belle Helène_ and went aboard. The ladies went at once to their
cabin, and I saw neither again that day, although I sent down duck,
terrapin and ninety-three for their dinner that night.
In half an hour we were under way; and in an hour and a half, having
circumvented our long desert island, we were passing through the
cut-off which led us back into Côte Blanche, some fifty miles, I
presume, from what was to be our voyage's end. We still were in the
vast marsh country, an inaccessible region teeming with wild life. The
sky now was clear, the air once more warm, the breeze gentle, and all
the country roundabout us had a charm quite its own. A thousand side
channels led back into the fortresses of the great sea-marsh, to this
or that of the many lakes, lagoons and pond holes where the wild fowl
found their feeding beds. Here was this refuge, where they fled to
escape persecution, the spot most remote, secluded, secret,
inaccessible. Here nature conspired to balk pursuit. The wide shallows
made a bar now to the average sailing craft, and as for a motor-yacht
like ours, the presence of a local pilot, acquainted with all the
oyster reefs and shallows, all the channels and cut-offs, made us feel
more easy, for we knew we could no longer sail merely by compass and
chart. A great sense of remoteness from all the world came over me. I
scarce could realize that yonder, so lately left behind, roared the
mad tumult of the northern cities. This wide expanse was broken by no
structure dedicated to commerce, not even the quiet spire of some
rural church arose among the lesser edifices of any village--not even
the blue smoke of some farmhouse marked the dwelling-place of man. It
was the wilderness, fit only for the nomad, fit only for the man
resentful of restraint and custom, longing only for the freedom of
adventure and romance. The cycles of Cathay lay here in these gray
silences, the leaf of the lotus pulsed on this lazy sea. Ah! here,
here indeed were surcease and calm.
And all this I was leaving. I was going back now to the vast tumult of
the roaring towns, to the lip of mockery, the eye of insincerity, the
hand of hypocrisy, where none may trust a neighbor. And moreover, I
was going back without one look, face to face, into the eyes and the
heart of the woman I had loved, and who, by force of these
extraordinary circumstances had, for a miraculous moment, been thus
set down with me, her lover, in the very surroundings built of
Providence for secrecy and love! Yonder, speeding to her summons, no
doubt hastened, ready to meet her, the man whom she had preferred
above me. And like a beast of burden, driven in the service of these
two, I was plodding on, in the work of leaving paradise and
opportunity, and delivering safe into the hands of another man the
woman whom I loved far more than all else in all the world.
CHAPTER XXXVII
IN WHICH IS PHILOSOPHY; WHICH, HOWEVER, SHOULD NOT BE SKIPPED
We passed on steadily to the northward until mid-afternoon, making no
great headway with one propellor missing, but leaving the main gulf
steadily, and at length, raising, a faint blue loom on the sky, the
long oak-crowned heights of those singular geological formations, the
heights known as "islands", that bound the head of this great bay.
Here the land, springing out of the level marshes and alluvial wet
prairies, thrusts up in long reefs, hundreds of feet above the sea
level. On the eminences grow ancient and mossy forest trees, as well
as much half-tropic brake in the lower levels. Here are wide and rich
acres also, owned as hereditary fees by old proud families, part of
whose wealth comes from their plantations, part from their bay
fisheries, and much from the ancient salt mines which lie under these
singular uplifts above the great alluvial plain. As of right, here
grow mansion homes, and here is lived life as nearly feudal and as
wholly dignified and cultured as any in any land. Ignorant of the
banal word "aristocracy," here, uncounting wealth, unsearching of self
and uncritical of others, simple and fine, folk live as the best
ambition of America might make one long to live, so far above the
vulgar northern scramble for money and display as might make angels
weep for the latter in the comparison.
Perhaps it was Edouard Manning, planter, miner, sportsman, gentleman,
traveler, scholar and host, who first taught me what wealth might
mean, may mean, ought to mean. Always, before now, I had approached
his home with joy, as that of an old friend. There, I knew, I would
find horses, guns, dogs, good sport and a simple welcome; and I could
read or ride as I preferred. A king among all the cousins of Jean
Lafitte, Monsieur Edouard. Hereabouts ran the old causeway by which
the wagon reached the "importations" of Jean's barges, brought inland
from his schooners hid in the marshes far below. Here, too, as is well
known in all the state, was the burying-ground of Jean Lafitte's
treasure-chests: for, though the old adventurer sold silks and
tobaccos and sugars very cheap to the planters and traders, he
secreted, as is well known, great store of plate, bullion and minted
coins, at divers points about the several miles of forest covered
heights; so that the very atmosphere thereabout--till custom stales it
for the visitor who comes often there--reeks with the flavor of pieces
of eight, Spanish doubloons, and rare gems of the Orient. Laughingly,
many a time Monsieur Edouard had agreed to go a-treasure hunting with
me, even had showed me several of the curious old treasure-keys, maps
and cabalistic characters which tell the place where Lafitte and his
men buried their gold--such maps as are kept as secret heirlooms in
many a Cajun family.
But now, as I saw myself once more approaching this pleasant spot so
well known to me, I felt little of the old thrill of eagerness come
over me. True, Edouard would be there, and the dogs, and the birds,
and the horses, and the quiet welcome. True, also, I could, either in
truth or by evasion, establish a pleasant and conventional footing for
all my party--it would be easy to explain so natural and pleasant an
incident as a visit during a yacht cruise, and to laugh at all that
silly newspaper sensation which by now must fully have blown over.
True, Monsieur Edouard would be charmed to meet the woman whose
influence on my life he knew so well. Yes, I could tell him
everything easily, nicely, except the truth; which was, that I was
bringing to another man's arms the woman whom he knew I loved. No, the
blue loom of Manning's Island gave me no joy now. I wished it three
thousand miles away instead of thirty. I wished that almost anything
might prevent my arrival--accident, delay.
And then, in the most natural way in the world, there were both!
Without much warning, the pulse of our engine slackened, the throb of
our single screw slowed down and ceased. Williams stuck his head up
out of his engine-room and shouted something to Peterson, who
methodically drew out his pipe and made ready for a smoke.
"It's no use going any farther," explained Williams when I came up.
"That intake's gone wrong again, and she's got sand all through her.
It's a crime to see her cut herself all to pieces this way. We've just
got to stop and clean her up, that's all, and fix the job right--ought
to have done it back there before we started in."
"How long will it take, Williams?" I asked.
"Oh, I don't know, sir. More than this afternoon, sure."
"That's too bad," said I, with a fair imitation of regret. "We had
expected to make Manning Island by night."
"Yes, it is too bad, but it's better to stop than ruin her, isn't it,
sir?"
"Certainly it is, and I quite approve your judgment. But I presume we
can go a little way yet, until we find a good berth somewhere? There's
a deep channel comes in from the left, just ahead, and I think if we
move on half a mile or so, we can get water enough to float even at
low tide, and at the same time be out of sight of any boats passing in
the lower part of the bay."
"Oh, yes, sir, we can get that far," said the engineer. Peterson was
full of gloom, and though he thought nothing less than that we were
going to be kept here a month, as one more event in a trip already
unlucky enough, he gave the wheel to our Cajun pilot, and we crawled
on around the head of a long point that came out into the bay. Here we
could not see Manning Island, and were out of sight from most of the
bay, so that, once more, the feeling of remoteness, aloofness, came
upon me.
Not that it did me any present good. I despatched L'Olonnois as
messenger to the ladies, telling them the cause of our delay, and
explaining how difficult it was to say just when we would get in to
the island; and then I betook myself to gloomy pacing up and down what
restricted part of the deck I felt free for my own use. I wearied of
it soon, and went to my cabin, trying to read.
At first I undertook one of the modern novels which had been
recommended by my bookseller, but I found myself unable to get on with
it, and standing before my shelves took down one volume after another
of philosophers who once were wont to comfort me--men with brains,
thinking men who had done something in the world beside buying yachts
and country houses. My eye caught a page which earlier I had turned
down, and I read again:
"Trust thyself; every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the
place the Divine Providence has found for you--the society of friends,
the connexion of events. Great men have always done so, and confided
themselves childlike to the genius of their age.... And we now are
men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent
destiny; and not pinched in a corner nor cowards fleeing before a
revolution, but redeemers, and benefactors, pious aspirants to be
noble clay, under the Almighty effort let us advance on Chaos and the
Dark."
I read the mystic, involved, subjective words again, as most of the
Concord Sage's words require, and reflected how well they jumped with
the note of my heathen Epictetus, who had said, "Be natural and
noble". And, so thinking, I began to wonder whether, after all, my
father, whose ruthless ways I betimes had explored, whose ruthless
sins I had betimes atoned, had not been, perhaps, a better man than
sometimes I had credited him with being. He, in accordance with his
lights, had accepted the part given him by the Poet of the Play. He
had confided himself childlike to the genius of his age, roaring,
fighting, scrambling, getting and sometimes giving. He had trusted
himself; and in the end, a bold man, he had advanced bravely on Chaos
and the Dark. After a life of war and sometimes of rapine, done under
the genius of his day, he had struck boldly the last chord on an iron
string. Dear old Governor! I did not regret the million of his money I
had spent to restore his memory clean in my own mind: for after all,
it had all been in open war--that time when he unloaded a worthless
mine on his friend, Dan Emory--Helena's father, Daniel Emory, who was,
at first, said to have left his family penniless; until a shrewd
lawyer in some miraculous way had managed to sell at a good price a
box full of worthless mining stock to some innocent victim.
Helena Emory never knew of that sale, nor did her guardian aunt. I did
know of it, for the very good reason that I was both the shrewd lawyer
and the innocent purchaser. It was the last act of my professional
career; and it was this which caused the general report that I had
made a bad mining venture, had lost my father's fortune, and retired
from my career a ruined man. A few friends knew otherwise: and I
blessed the rumor which cost me certain friends who thought me poor
and so forsook me. Perhaps, my father would have called me quixotic
had he known. Now, as I read and pondered, I neither blamed him for
his own course in fair business war with old Dan Emory, nor did I
censure myself for my own hidden act of restitution. Let the world wag
its head if it liked, and remain ignorant of other millions given to
me before my father's death, unprobated, secret, after the fashion of
my pirate parent who buried his treasures and told none but his kin
how they might be found.
Of course, in time, it all might come out. In time, Helena would know
that this yacht which she supposed to be Davidson's was my own, that
the farm I was supposed to have rented really was a handsome estate
that I owned, that many covert deeds in finance had been my own--it
was only my silence and my absence in many parts of the world which
had prevented her, also much a traveler, from knowing the truth about
me long ago. And the truth was, I was not a poor man, but a rich one.
Yet he who had stolen my purse would indeed have stolen trash this
day. Rich in one way, I was poor, indeed, in others. I cared nothing
for old Dan Emory's money, but very, very much for old Dan Emory's
daughter; and her I might not have, even after all my efforts.... No,
the waters would leave no trail; and once more, after I had restored
old Dan Emory's daughter to her home and friends, I would travel the
wide world again, and the gossipers might guess what causes had ended
a professional career, apparently ended a great fortune, and actually
had ended a life.... For, I thought--using some philosophy of my own
making--it is not wealth, but usefulness, contentment and independence
which a man should hold as his most desired success. These achieved,
little is left to gain. Any one of these last, and nothing remains
worth gaining.
I took up another book, at another marked page: "Let us learn to be
content with what we have. Let us get rid of our false estimates, set
up all the higher ideals--a quiet home, vines of our own planting; a
few books full of the inspiration of genius; a few friends worthy of
being loved; a hundred innocent pleasures that bring no pain or
remorse; a devotion to the right that will never swerve; a simple
religion empty of all bigotry, full of trust and hope and love--and to
such a philosophy, this world will give up all the empty joy it has."
I meditated over this also, applying these tests to my own life....
Ah! now I saw why my foot was ever restless, why I sought always new
scenes.... Where was my quiet home, the vines of my own planting?
Would I flee from that to every corner of the world? Not if it held
the woman of my choice. Would she thus roam restless, if she held the
heart of her chosen and if they had a home?... I began to see the Plan
unfold. Yes, and saw myself outside the Plan.... Because of a devotion
to the right that would not swerve. Because of a fanaticism, an
"oddness", a nonconformity--ah! so I said bitterly to myself, because,
after all, I was unattuned to my age, because I was unfit to survive
before a man's own judge.... It is Portia judges this world. The case
of every man comes before a woman for decision. I, who rarely had lost
a case at law where I could use my own trained mind, had lost my first
and only case at the bar of Love....
So--and I sighed as I shut the books and returned them to their
shelves--contentment never could be mine, nor that quiet home where
only life is lived that is worth living; nor usefulness; nor
independence.
I did not hear Jimmy when he came in, and when he spoke I jumped,
startled.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
IN WHICH IS AN ARMISTICE WITH FATE
"Black Bart!" said Jimmy. "Say, now----"
"Well, good mate," said I, and laid a hand on his curly fair head,
"what shall I say?"
"Say nothin'," he remarked, dropping his voice. "Listen!"
"Yes?"
"We have held a council."
"Who has?"
"Why, me and Jean Lafitte and the heartless jade. I told her you sent
us to her to bid her seek your presence."
"Jimmy! What on earth do you mean! That's precisely the last thing I
would have done--I haven't done it. On the contrary----"
"I told her," he resumed calmly, "that when Black Bart, the pirut,
spoke, he spoke to be obeyed. She said, 'I can't go,' and I said, 'You
_gotta_ go.'"
"You, yourself, may now go and tell her that there has been a very bad
mistake, Jimmy; and that she need not come."
"An' make her cry worse? I ain't goin' to do it!"
"Sir! This is mutiny!--But did she cry, Jimmy?"
"Yes. Awful. She said she was homesick. She ain't. I don't know what
really is the matter. I ast Jean Lafitte, an' he said maybe you'd
know. We thought maybe it was something about yon varlet. Do you
know?"
"No, I do not, Jimmy." I found myself engaged in one of those
detestable conversations where one knows the talk ought to end, yet
dislikes to end it.
Jimmy stood for some time, much perturbed, looking every way but at
me, and at last he blurted out.
"Don't you just jolly well awfully love the fair captive, yon
heartless jade--my Auntie Helen? Don't you, Black Bart?"
I made no answer, but frowned very much at his presumption.
"--Because, everybody else does. She's nice. I should think you would.
_I_ do, I know mighty well."
"She is--she is--she's a very estimable young woman, Jimmy," said I,
coloring. "I think I may say that without compromising myself."
"Then why do you hurt her feelings the way you do--when she's plumb
gone on you, the way she is?"
I sprang toward him to clap a hand over his garrulous mouth, but he
evaded me, and spoke from behind the bathroom door. "Well, she is!
Don't I hear her sticking up for you all the time--didn't I hear her
an' Auntie Lucinda havin' a reg'lar row over it again, 'I don't care
if he _hasn't_ got a cent!' says she."
"But yon varlet is rich," said I.
"She didn't mean yon varlet--she meant you, I'm pretty sure, Black
Bart. An' she's been feedin' Partial all the afternoon--say, he's the
shape of a sausage."
"She is heartless, Jimmy! Little do you know the ways of a heartless
jade--she wants to win away from me the last thing on earth I
have--even my dog. That's all. Now, Jimmy, you must go."
But he emerged only in part from his shelter. "So Jean Lafitte an' me,
we looked it up in the book; an' it says where the heartless jade is
brought before the pirut chief, 'How now, fair one!' says he, an' he
bends on her the piercin' gaze o' his iggle eye: 'how now, wouldst
spurn me suit?' The fair captive she bends her head an' stands before
him unable to encounter his piercin' gaze, an' for some moments a deep
silence prevails----"
"Jimmy!" I heard a clear voice calling along the deck. No answer, and
Jimmy raised a hand to command silence of me also.
"Jimme-e-e-e!" It was Helena's voice, and nearer along the rail.
"Here's the fudges--now where can the little nuisance have gone! Jim!"
"Here I am, Auntie," replied the little nuisance, as she now
approached the door of our cabin; and he brushed past me and started
not aft but toward the bows. "An' there _you_ are!" he shouted over
his shoulder in cryptic speech, whether to me or to his Auntie Helen I
could not say.
She stood now in such position near my door that neither of us could
avoid the other without open rudeness. I looked at her gravely and she
at me, her eyes wide, her lips silent for a time. Silently also, I
swung the cabin door wide and stood back for her to pass.
"You have sent for me?" she said at last, still standing as she was. A
faint smile--part in humor, part in timidity, part, it seemed suddenly
to me, wistful; and all just a trifle pathetic--stirred her lips.
"'I sent my soul through the Invisible,'" said I; and stepped within
and quite aside for her to pass.
"Jimmy told the biggest lie in all his career," said I. She would have
sprung back.
"--And the greatest truth ever told in all the world. Come in, Helena
Emory. Come into my quiet home. Already, as you know, you have come
into my heart."
"I am not used to going into a gentleman's--quarters," said she: but
her foot was on the shallow stair.
"It is common to three gentlemen of the ship's company, Helena Emory,"
said I, "and we have no better place to receive our friends."
She now was in the room. I closed the door, and sprung the catch.
"At last," said I, "you are in my power!" And I bent upon her the
piercing gaze of my eagle eye.
CHAPTER XXXIX
IN WHICH ARE SEALED ORDERS
She stood before me for just a moment undecided. The twilight was
coming and the room was dim.
"Auntie will miss me," said she, "after a time."
"I have missed you all the time," was my reply.
"But you sent for me?"
"Of course I did. Doesn't this look as though I had?"
"I don't quite understand----"
"Shall I call Jimmy to explain? He called you a heartless jade----"
"The little imp! How dare he!"
"--As in fact all of our brotherhood has come to call you: 'The
heartless jade.'"
"I made fudges for him! And the little wretch told me I wasn't playing
the game! What did he mean? Oh, Harry, I wouldn't have come if I
hadn't wanted to play the game fairly. I'm sorry for what I said." She
spoke now suddenly, impulsively.
"What was it you said?"
"When I said--when I called you--a coward. I didn't mean it."
"You said it."
"But not the way you thought. I only meant, you took an unfair
advantage of a girl, running off with her, this way, and giving her no
chance to--to get away. But now you do give me a chance--you meant to,
all along--and in every way, as I've just done telling auntie, you've
been perfectly fine, perfectly splendid, perfectly bully, too! It has
been a hard place for a man, too, but--Harry, dear boy, I'll have to
say it, you've been some considerable gentleman through it all! There
now!" And she stood, aloof, agitated, very likely flushed, though I
could not tell in the dark.
"Thank you, Helena," I said.
"And as to your being any other sort of a coward--that you had
physical fear--that you wouldn't do a man's part--why, I never did
mean that at all. How could I? And if I had--why, even Auntie Lucinda
said your going out after that Chinaman the other night was
heroic--even if he couldn't have cooked a bit!--and you know Auntie
Lucinda has always been against you."
"Yes, and you both called me a coward, because I quit my law office
and ran away from misfortune."
"Yes, we did. And I meant that, too! I say it now to your face, Harry.
But maybe I don't know all about that----"
"Maybe not."
"Well, I wouldn't want to be unjust, of course, but I _don't_ think a
man ought to throw away his life. You're young. You could start over
again, and you ought to have tried. Your father made his own money,
and so did my father--why, look at the Sally M. mine, that has given
me my own fortune. Do you suppose that grew on a bush to be shaken
off? So why couldn't you go out in the same way and do something in
the world--I don't mean just make money, you know, but _do_ something?
That's what a girl likes. And you were able enough. You are young and
strong, and you have your education; and I've heard my father say,
before he died--and other men agreed with him--that you were the best
lawyer at our bar, and that you had an extraordinary mind, and a clear
sense of justice, and, and----"
"Go on. Did he say that?"
"Yes."
"But with all my fine qualities of mind and heart," said I, "I lost
all when I lost my money!"
"What do you mean?"
"I'll tell you what I mean--you dropped me because you thought me
poor. Well, I don't blame you. It takes money to live, and you
deserved all that the world can give. I don't blame you. There were
other men in the world for you. The trouble with me was that there was
no other woman in the world for me. All our trouble--all our many
meetings and partings--have come out of those two facts."
"Did you think that of me?" she asked at length, slowly. I suppose she
was pale, but I could not see.
"I certainly did. How could I think anything else?"
"Harry!" she half whispered. "Why, Harry, Harry!"
"Admit that you did!" I exclaimed bitterly, "and let me start from
that as a premise. Listen! If you were a man, and loved a woman, and
she chucked you when you lost your money, do you think you'd break
your neck to make any more success in the world after that? Why should
you? Why does a man work? It's for a home, for the sake of power, and
mostly for the sake of the game."
"Yes."
"And I could play that game--I can play it now, and win at it, any
time I like. I quit it not because I was afraid of the game--it's the
easiest thing in the world to make money, if that's all you really
want to do. That's all your father wanted, or mine, and it was easy. I
can play that game. But why? Ah! if it were to win a quiet home, the
woman I loved, independence, usefulness, contentment,--yes! But when
all those stakes were out of the game, Helena, I didn't care to play
it any more. And that was why you thought I ran away. I did run
away--from myself, and you."
She was silent now, and perhaps paler--I could not see.
"--But wherever I have gone, Helena, all over the world, I've found
those two people there ahead of me, and I couldn't escape
them--myself, and you!"
"Did you think that of me, Harry?" She half whispered once more.
"Yes, I did. And did you think that of me?"
"Yes, I did. But I did not understand."
"No. Like many a woman, you got cause and effect mixed up: and you
never troubled yourself to get it straight. Let me tell you, unless
two people can come to each other without compromises and without
explanations and without reservations, they would better never come
at all. I don't want you cheap, you oughtn't to want me cheap. So how
can it end any way other than the way it has? If it was my loss of
fortune that made you chuck me, I oughtn't ever to give you a second
thought, for you wouldn't be worth it. The fact you did, and that I
do, hasn't anything to do with it at all."
"No."
"And if you don't think me able and disposed to play a man's part in
the world, you oughtn't to care a copper for me, that is plain, isn't
it?"
"Yes, quite plain."
"And the fact that you did, and that you do, has nothing to do with
it--nothing in the world, has it, Helena?"
"No." She must have been very pale, though I could not tell.
"Therefore, as logic shows us, my dear, and because we never did get
our premises straight, and so never will get our conclusions straight,
either--we don't belong together and never can come together, can we?"
"No." I could barely hear her whisper.
"No. And that is why, just before you came, I was trying to pull
myself together and to advance as best an unhappy devil may, upon
Chaos and the Dark! And that's all I see ahead, Helena, without
you--Chaos and the Dark."
"It was all you saw that night, in the little boat," she said after a
time. "Yet you went?"
"Oh, yes, but that was different."
"Is this all, Harry?" she said, and moved toward the door.
"Yes, my dear; it is all--but all the rest."
Her color must have risen, for I saw dimly that she raised both her
hands to her bosom, her throat. Thus the heartless jade stood, her
head drooped, unable to meet the piercing gaze of my eagle eye.
There came a faint scratching at the door, a little whimpering whine.
"It is Partial, my dog, come after you," said I bitterly. "He knows
you are here. He never has done that way for me. He loves you."
"He knows _you_ are here, and he loves you," said she. "That is why
things come and scratch at doors where ruffians live."
I flung open the door. "Partial," said I, "come in; and choose between
us."
As to the first part of my speech, the invitation to enter, Partial
obeyed with a rush; as to the second, the admonition, he apparently
could not obey at all. In his poor dumb brute affliction, lack of
human speech, he stood, after saluting us both, alternately and
equally, hesitant between us, wagging, whining and gazing, knowing
full well somewhat was wrong between us, grieving over us, beseeching
us--but certainly not choosing between us.
"Give him time," said I hoarsely. "He loves you more, and is merely
polite to me."
"Give him time," said she bitterly. "He loves you more, and you don't
deserve it."
But Partial would not choose.
"He wants us _both_, Helena!" said I at last. "He has wiped out logic,
premises, conclusions, cause and effect, horse, cart and all! He wants
us _both_! He wants a quiet home and independence, Helena, and
usefulness, and contentment. Ah, my God!"
She reached down and put a hand on his head, but he only looked from
one to the other of us, unhappy.
"Don't you love me, Helena?" I asked quietly, after a time. "For the
sake of my dog, can you not love me?"
She continued stroking the head of the agonized Partial.... And until,
somewhat inarticulately, I had choked or spoken, and had caught her
dark hair against my cheek and kissed her hair and stammered in her
ear, and turned her face and kissed her eyes and her cheek and her
lips many, many times, Partial held his peace and issued no
decision.... At least, I did not hear him....
She was sobbing now, her head on my shoulder, as we sat on the locker
seat, and Partial's head was on the cushion beside us, and he was
silent and overjoyed, and tranquilly happy--seeing perhaps, that a
quiet home would in the event be his, and that he was going to live
happy ever after. And after I drew Helena's head closer to my face, I
kissed her hair.
"Do you love me, Helena?" I asked. "Only the truth now, in God's
name!"
"You know I do," she said, and I felt her arms about my neck.
"Have you, always?"
"I think so, yes. It seems always."
"We have been cruel to each other."
"Yes, are cruel now."
"How now?"
"You make me say I love you, and yet----"
"You will marry me--right away, soon, Helena--as I am, poor, ragged,
without a cent, only myself?"
"Not here," she smiled.
"At Edouard Manning's, at once, as soon as we get in?"
"It is duress! I am in the power of a ruffian band! Is it fair? Are
you sure I know my mind?"
"I am sure only that I know my own! Tell me, what was in that note I
carried, addressed to yon varlet Davidson?"
"Sealed orders!"
"And how does that affect me, Helena. Tell me--I know you love me, and
you know that all the rest is small, to that; but as to that wedding
part of it, Helena--what do you say?"
She hesitated for an instant. "You want me to--come--to come with
honor, as you do?"
"Yes. I'll take any risk that means with you."
"Will you take sealed orders, too?"
"Yes."
"Turn on the lights."
I reached the switch, and an instant later a dozen high candle-power
bulbs flooded the suite with light. With a little cry of dismay Helena
sprang away, and stood at my shaving-glass, arranging her hair. Now
and then she turned her face just enough to smile at me a little, her
eyes dark, languid, heavy lidded, a faint shadow of blue beneath. And
now and then her breast heaved, as though it were a sea late troubled
by a storm gone by.
"What will auntie say?" she sighed at last.
"What will you say?" I replied.
"Oh, brute, you shall not know! I must have some manner of revenge
against a ruffian who has taken advantage of me while I was in his
power!"
"Ah, heartless jade!"
"--So you shall wait until we are ashore. I will give you sealed
orders----"
"When?"
"Now. And you shall open them at your friend's house--as soon as we
are all settled and straightened after leaving the boat--as soon
as----"
"It looks as though it were as soon as you please, not when I please."
"Harry, it is my revenge for the indignities you have heaped on me. Do
you think a girl will submit to that meekly--to be browbeaten, abused,
endangered as I have been! No, sir--sealed orders or none. I have only
owned I loved you. So many girls have been mistaken about things
when--when the moon, or a desert island or--or something has bewitched
them. But I haven't said I would marry you, have I, ever?"
"No. I don't care about that so much as the other; but I care a very,
very great deal about it, too. You, too, are cruel. You are a
heartless jade."
"And you have been a cruel and ruthless pirate."
"Tell me now!"
"No." And she evaded me, and gained the door. "I must go. Oh, it's all
a ruin now--Auntie'll be furious. And what shall I say?"
"Give her sealed orders, and my love! And when do I get mine?"
"In five minutes."
She was gone.... And after some moments, rapt as I was at her late
presence, which still seemed to fill the room like the fragrance, like
the fragrance of her hair which still lingered in my senses, I looked
about, sighing for that she was gone. Then I noted that our friend
Partial had gone with her. "Fie! Partial, after all, you loved her
more!" I said to myself.
But in a few moments I heard a faint sound at my door. I opened. There
stood Partial in the dusk, gravely wagging his tail, looking at me
without moving his head. And I saw that he held daintily in his mouth
a dainty note, addressed to me in the same handwriting as that on the
note I had sent out from the heartless jade to yon varlet. And it was
sealed, and marked with instructions for its opening.... "When You
Two Varlets Meet." No more.
"Peterson," said I, advancing to the forward deck, where I found him
smoking, "I've been getting up some correspondence, since we'll be
ashore by to-morrow noon----"
"--I don't know as to that, Mr. Harry."
"Well, I know about it. So, tell Williams that, even if he has to work
all night, we must be moving as soon as it's light enough to see. I've
got a very important message----"
"By wireless, Mr. Harry?" chuckled the old man.
"Yes, by wireless," (and I looked at Partial, who wagged his tail and
smiled). "So I must get into Manning Island the first possible moment
to-morrow. And Peterson, as we've had so good a run this trip, with no
accident or misfortune of any kind, I don't know but I may make it a
month or two extra pay--double--for you and Williams, and even John.
And as to Willy, please don't fire him, Peterson, for his deserting
the ship's cook the other night. In fact, I'm very glad, on the whole,
he did. Give him double pay for doing it, Peterson!"
"Ain't this the wonderful age!" remarked Peterson to a star which was
rising over the misty marsh. "Especial, now, that wireless!"
I only patted Partial on the head, and we smiled pleasantly and
understandingly at each other. Of course, Peterson could not know what
we knew.
CHAPTER XL
IN WHICH LAND SHOWS IN THE OFFING
Before the white sea mists had rolled away I was on deck, and had
summoned a general conference of my crew.
"'Polyte," I demanded of our pilot, "how long before your partner will
be at the lighthouse, below, there?"
"'Ow long?"
"Yes."
"Oh, maybe thees day sometam."
"And how long before he'll start back with the mail?"
"'Ow long?"
"Yes."
"Oh, maybe thees same day sometam."
"And how long will it take him to get back to some post-office with
those letters?"
"'Ow long?"
"Yes."
"Oh, maybe those nex' day sometam."
"And then how long to the big railroad to New Orleans?"
"'Ow long?"
"Yes."
"Oh, maybe those nex' day too h'also sometam, heem."
"Then it will be three days, four days, before a letter could get from
the lighthouse to New Orleans?"
"'Ow long?"
"Three or four days?"
"_Oui_, maybe so."
"And how long will it take us to get in to the plantation of Monsieur
Edouard, above, there?"
"'Ow long?"
"Yes."
"H'I'll could not said, Monsieur. Maybe three four day--_'sais pas_."
"Holy Mackinaw!" I remarked, _sotto voce_.
"Pardon?" remarked 'Polyte respectfully. "Le
Machinaw--_que-est-que-ce-que-est, ca_?"
"It is my patron saint, 'Polyte," I explained, and he crossed himself
for his mistake.
"Suppose those h'engine he'll h'ron, we'll get in four five h'our
h'all right, on Monsieur Edouard, yass," he added. "H'I'll know those
channel lak some books."
By now Williams--who, judging by certain rappings, hammerings and
clankings heard through the cabin walls back and above the
engine-rooms, had been at work much of the night--had reported, and
much to my pleasure had said he thought we could make it in at least
to the Manning dock before further repairs would be needed. To prove
which, he went down and "turned her over a time or two," as he
expressed it. Whereupon I gave orders to break out the anchor, and
knowing that any Cajun market hunter and shrimp fisher like 'Polyte
can travel in any mist or fog before sunup by some instinct of his
own, I took a chance and began to feel our way out to the mouth of the
Manning channel before the morning mists were gone; so that we were at
breakfast by the time the wide and gently rippling bay broke clear
below us, and by magic, we saw the oak-crowned heights of the island
dead ahead.
Thence on, within the walls of the deep dredged channel, all we had to
do was to go sufficiently slow and follow the curves carefully, so
that the heavy waves of our boat, larger than any intended for that
channel, might not too much endanger the mud walls, or threaten
wreckage to the frail stagings leading to the cabins of the
half-aquatic trappers and fishers who dwell here in the marshes.
So, at last, after many windings and doublings, we came in at the rear
of the timbered slopes, and could see the mansion houses and the
offices of the stately old plantation, where dwelt my friend, Edouard
Manning, who knew nothing of my coming.
After custom, I signaled loud and often with the boat's whistle, so
that the men might come to the landing for us; and, in order that
Edouard himself might be warned, I gave orders to my hardy mates to
make proper nautical salute of honor.
"Cast loose the stern-chaser, Jean Lafitte," said I: "and do you and
L'Olonnois load and fire her often as you like until we land; or until
you burst her."
Gleefully they obeyed, and soon the roar of our deck gun echoed
formidably along the slopes, as had no gun since the salt-seeking
Union navy, in the Civil War, had pounded at the gates of Edouard's
father: and until scores of coots and rail chattered in excited chorus
for answer, and long clouds of wild ducks arose and circled over the
marsh. Again and again, my bold mates loaded and fired: and now,
turning back by chance from my own place at the wheel, I saw that they
had assumed full character, and each with a red kerchief bound about
his brow, was armed with, I dare not say how many, pistols, dirks,
swords and cutlasses thrust through his belt or otherwise suspended
on his person.
I saw now the two ladies, their fingers in their ears, also on deck,
protesting at this cannonading at their cabin door; and so I raised my
hat to a very radiant and radiantly appareled Helena, for the first
time that day; and heard the answer of L'Olonnois to the dour protest
of Auntie Lucinda.
"We follow Black Bart the Avenger, an' let any seek to stop us at
their per-rul! Jean, run up the flag, while I load her up again."
And Jean having once more hoisted the skull and cross-bones at our
masthead, and assumed a specially savage scowl as he stood with folded
arms on our bow deck, we made what a mild imagination might have
called rather an impressive entry as we swept into the Manning
landing.
I was not surprised to see Edouard himself there, and his wife, and
some thirty odd dogs and as many blacks, waiting for us at the wharf.
Nor was I surprised to see that all seemed somewhat to marvel at our
manner of advent, though I knew that Edouard, through his
field-glasses, had recognized both my boat and myself long before we
made the last curve and came gently in to the wharf where the grinning
darkies could catch our line.
What did surprise me--and perhaps for a time I may have shown
surprise--was to see, in all this gay throng, two forms not usual on
the Manning landing. One was the elegantly garbed and rather stunning
figure of Sally Byington; and the other the robust, full-bodied,
gorgeously arrayed form of my old friend, Cal Davidson! How or why
they came there I could not for the moment guess.
"'Tis he--yon varlet!" I heard a stern voice hiss at my ear. "Beshrew
me, but it shall go hard with him! I'm loading her up with marbles
now!" But I had no more than time to persuade my two lieutenants to
modify this purpose, and partially to disarm themselves, before the
two groups were mingling, with much chattering and laughing and gay
saluting.
Edouard, hat in hand, was on deck before our fenders touched the
wharf, laughing and grasping my hands and looking up at my flag.
"I knew you were coming," said he. "Fact is, all the country's been
looking for you. Davidson just got in a couple of hours ago--and you
know his lady is an old friend of Mrs. Manning's. And----"
He was shaking the hands of Mrs. Daniver and Helena almost before I
could present them. Auntie Lucinda bestowed upon him the gaze of a
solemn and somewhat tear-stained visage (though I saw distinct
approval on her face as she caught sight of the great mansion house
among the giant oaks, and witnessed the sophisticatedness of the group
on the landing, and the easy courtesy of Edouard himself).
"By Jove! old man!" the latter found time to say to me, "I
congratulate you--she's away beyond her pictures." He did not mean
Mrs. Daniver; and he never had seen Helena before. I could only press
his hand and attempt no comment as to the congratulations, for part of
that was a matter which yet rested in a sealed envelope in my pocket;
and at best it must be three or four days.... But then, with a great
flash of arrested intelligence, it was borne in upon me that perhaps,
after all, it was not so much a question of the tardy United States
mails! Because yon varlet, fat and saucy, and well content with life,
already, by some means and for some reason, had outrun the mails. He
was here, and we had met. It need not be four days before I could
learn my fate.... I reached into my pocket and looked at my sealed
orders. No matter what Davidson's letter held, here was Davidson
himself.
"Oh, I say, there, you Harry, confound you!" roared Davidson to me in
his great voice above the heads of everybody. "I say, what did I tell
you?"
Now I had not the slightest idea what Davidson had told me, nor what
he meant by waving a paper over his head. "They've signed Dingleheimer
for next year! Now what do you think of that? World's championship,
and good old Dingleheimer for next year--I guess that's pretty poor
for them little old Giants, what?" And he smiled like one devoid of
all care as well as of all reason.
I myself smiled just a moment later--after I had greeted the Manning
ladies, had seen Helena step up and kiss Sally Byington fervently,
directly on the cheek, whose too keen coloring I once had heard her
decry; had slapped Edouard joyously on the shoulders and pointed to my
pirate flag and gloomy black-visaged crew--I say I also smiled
suddenly when I felt a hand touch me on the shoulder.
'Polyte, the pilot, stood, cap in hand, and asked me to one side.
"Pardon, Monsieur," said he, "but those _gentilhommes_--those fat
one--ees eet she'll was Monsieur Davelson who'll H'I'll got letter on
heem from those lighthouse, heem?"
"Why, yes, 'Polyte--the letter you said would take four days to get to
New Orleans."
'Polyte smiled sheepishly. "He'll wouldn't took four days now,
Monsieur! H'I'll got it h'all those letter here. H'I'll change the
coat on the _lighthouse_, maybe, h'an H'I'll got the coat of Guillaume
witt' h'all those letter in her, yass?" And he now handed me the
entire packet of letters, which I had supposed left far behind us on
the previous day!
I took the letters from him, and handed all of them but one to
Edouard's old body servant to put in the office mail. The remaining
one I held in the same hand with its mate: and I motioned Davidson
aside to a spot under a live oak as the other began now slowly to move
toward the path from the landing up the hill.
"This is for you," said I, handing him his letter; and told him how it
came to him thus.
"It's from Helena--dear old girl, isn't she a trump, after all!" he
said, tearing open the letter and glancing at it.
"She is a dear girl, Mr. Davidson," said I, stiffly, "yes."
"Why, of course--yes, of course I'd have done it, if I'd got this
before I left the city," said he, "but how can I now?"--holding the
letter open in his hand.
"Do you mean to tell me," I began, but choked in anger mixed with
uncertainty. What was it she had asked of him, offered to him? And was
not Helena's wish a command.
"Yes, I mean to tell you or any one else, I'd do a favor to a lady if
I could; but----"
"What favor, Mr. Davidson?" I demanded icily.
"Well, why 'Mr. Davidson'? Ain't I your pal, in spite of all the muss
you made of my plans? Why, I'm damned if I'll pay you the charter
money at all, after the way you've acted, and all----"
"Mr. Davidson, damn the charter money!"
"That's what I say! What's charter money among friends? All right, if
you can forgive half the charter fee, I'll forgive the other half,
and----"
"What was in the letter from her?"
"It's none of your business, Harry--but still, I don't mind saying
that Miss Emory wrote me and said that if I was still--oh! I say!" he
roared, turning suddenly and poking a finger into my ribs, "if you
haven't got on one of my waistcoats!"
"The one with pink stripes," said I still icily, "and deuced bad ones
they all are. And these clothes I borrowed from my China boy. But
then----"
"I see, you must have come in a hurry, eh?"
"Yes. But come now, old man, what's in that letter? I've got one of my
own here, done in the same hand, hers. I am under sealed orders--until
I shall have met you, which is now. So I suppose some sort of
explanation is due on both sides. We might as well have it all out
here, before we join the house party, so as to avoid any awkwardness."
"Oh, nothing in my letter to amount to anything," he replied. "Miss
Emory only wanted to know if I'd please have her trunks shipped out
here from New Orleans--only that; and she asked me please to bring her
a box of marshmallows, as hers were all gone. She's polite, always,
dear old Helena--she says, here, 'So pleasant is our journey in every
way, and so kind have you gentlemen been, and so thoughtful in
providing every luxury, that I can not think of a single thing I could
ask for except some more marshmallows. Jimmy, the young imp, my
nephew, you know, has found mine, though I hid them under both
cushions in the stateroom.'"
I had my hat off, and was wiping my forehead. A sudden burst of glory
seemed to me to envelope all the world. If there had been duplicity
anywhere, I did not care.
"I suppose Jimmy is the one with two guns and a Jap sword, eh?" asked
Davidson.
"No, the other one, God bless him! Is that all there was in the
letter, Cal?"
"Yes. What's in yours? What's the game--button, button, who's got the
girl? And can't you _open_ your letter now?"
"Yes," said I, and did so. It contained just two words (Helena
afterward said she had not time to write more while Auntie Lucinda
might be in from the other stateroom).[A]
"Well, what's it say, dash you!" demanded Cal Davidson. "Play fair
now--I told, and so must you!"
"I'm damned if I do, Cal!" said I, and put it in my pocket. But I
shook hands with him most warmly, none the less....
FOOTNOTE:
[A] (Those interested may find them later in the text.[B])
CHAPTER XLI
IN WHICH IS MUCH ROMANCE, AND SOME TREASURE, ALSO VERY MUCH HAPPINESS
We walked on slowly up the hill together, my friend Calvin Davidson
and myself, following the parti-colored group now passing out of sight
behind the shrubbery. At last we paused and sat down on one of the
many seats that invited us. Around us, on the great lawn, were many
tropic or half-tropic plants, and the native roses, still abloom.
Yonder stood the old bronze sun-dial that I knew so well--I could have
read the inscription, _I Mark Only Pleasant Hours_; and I knew its
penciled shadow pointed to a high and glorious noon.... It seemed to
me that Heaven had never made a more perfect place or a more perfect
day; nor, that I am sure, was ever in the universe a world more
beautiful than this, more fit to swing in union with all the harmony
of the spheres.... I had fought so long, I had been so unhappy, had
doubted so much, had grown so sad, so misanthropic, that I trust I
shall be forgiven at this sudden joy I felt at hearing burst on my
ears--albeit a chorus of Edouard's mocking-birds hid in the oaks--all
the music of the spheres, soul-shaking, a thing of joy and
reverence.... So I spoke but little.
"But I say, old man," began Davidson presently, "it's all right for a
joke, but my word! it was an awfully big one, and an awfully risky
one, too,--your stealing your own yacht from me! I didn't think it of
you. You not only broke up my boat party--you see, Sally was going on
down with us from Natchez--Miss Emory said she'd be glad to have her
come, and of course she and Mrs. Daniver made it proper, all right--I
say, you not only busted that all up, but by not sending a fellow the
least word of what you were going to do, you got those silly
newspapers crazy, from New Orleans to New York--why, you're famous,
that is, notorious! But so is Miss Emory, that's the worst of it. I
don't just fancy she'll just fancy some of those pictures, or some of
those stories. Least you can do now is to marry Helena and the old
girl, too, right off!"
"In part, that is good advice," said I. "I wish I could wear your
clothes, Cal--but I remember now that Edouard and I can wear the same
clothes, and have, many a time."
"But I say, don't be so hoggish. There's other people in the world
beside you--_you'd_ never have thought of making that river cruise,
now would you?"
"No."
"Nor you couldn't have got Helena aboard the boat if you had, now
could you?"
"No."
"Let alone the old girl, her revered aunt!" He dug another thumb into
his own pink striped waistcoat. "She loves you a lot, I am not of the
impression!"
"No, I think she rather favored you!" I replied gravely.
"No chance! And I say, isn't Sally a humdinger? Just the sort for
me--something doing every minute. And a fellow can always tell just
what she's thinkin'----"
"I'm not right sure, Cal, whether that's safe to say of any woman,"
said I. "A ship on the sea, or a serpent on a rock has--to use your
own quaint manner of speech, my friend--so to speak, nothing on the
way of a maid with a man. But go on. I do congratulate you. Do you
know, old man, I almost thought, once--a good while ago--that you were
just a little--that is--_épris_ of Helena your own self?"
"Come again? 'Apree'--what's that?"
"--Gone on her."
"Oh, not at all, not at all--not in the least! Why, I can't see what
in the world--oh, well of course, you know, she's _fine_; but what I
mean is, why--there was Sally, you know. Say, do you know why I wanted
to get Sally away on that boat?--I was afraid you'd cut in somewhere,
run across her down at Mardi Gras, or something. And I just _figured_,
once you got a girl on a boat that way, away from all the other
fellows, you know, why even a plain chap like me would have a chance,
do you see? And I say now, I'll own it up--I was right down _jealous_
of _you_, too! Wasn't it silly? And I ask your pardon. You're an
awfully good sort, Harry, though you're so d----d serious--you get too
much in earnest, take things too hard, you know. Will you shake hands
with me, knowing what a fool I've been? I say, you're the best chap in
the world, old man--if only you were a little more _human_ once in a
while."
He put out his hand and I met it. "Will you shake hands with me, Cal?"
said I, "on precisely those same terms about having been an awful
fool? It's you who are the best chap in the world. And I'll admit
it--I was jealous of you!"
He roared at this. "Well," said he, "as George Cohan says, 'All's well
that ends well', and I guess we couldn't beat this for a championship
year, now could we? Now say, about Dingleheimer----"
"Oh, hang Dingleheimer, Cal!" I exclaimed. "What I want to know is,
did you ever talk any to Miss Emory about--well, about me, you
know?--say anything about my affairs, or anything, you know? I mean
while you were there on the boat together."
"No. She wouldn't let me. Besides, the truth is, I was so full of
Sally all the time, I mostly talked about _her_. By Jove! that was a
measly trick you played us, running off with the boat from under my
nose! But I proposed to Sally in Natchez that night, and she came on
down to the city the next day by rail--while _I_ ran down in that
dirty little scow you left behind. And I never tumbled for days that
it was _you_ had run off with the boat--though I found a photo of
Helena and your cigarette case in the boat you left. Never tumbled
till that story of the taxi driver came out. Then I said, 'Well, of
all things! Wonder if that old stick has really come to life after
all!' And you sure had! What's in _your_ letter? Say, ain't a boat the
place----"
"But how did you happen to be here?"
"Oh, I've known Ed Manning years, in New York, Paris, all around. He
asked me to visit him some time. I wired and asked him if I could come
out for our honeymoon--you know, Harry, I'm such a d----d romantic son
of a gun, and once before I was out here at Ed's, and those d----d
nightingales, catbirds, what d'ye call 'ems----"
"--Mockers."
"Yes, mockers, they sung so sweet, especial in the evenings, you
know--and I'm so d----d romantic--_always_ was thataway--and you know,
why, a fellow _can_ be romantic on his honeymoon, can't he?--he can
just cut loose then an' be as big a d--n fool as he likes then--an'
get away with it, what? Say, can't he?"
--"Yes."
--"So that's why I came."
--"But--honeymoon? Are you going to be married?"
--"Naw! I ain't goin' to be married--I _am_ married! Day before
yesterday, in New Orleans. And I don't believe in dandlin' an' foolin'
around about a little thing like that. Ain't you married yet?"
"No. Impossible. No preacher on Côte Blanche Bay or on our boat. I've
got Aunt Lucinda Daniver along, to take care of the proprieties. If I
should leave it to her, I never would be married."
"Why?"
"She thinks I'm broke."
"Yes, too bad about that! I wish I could swap bank rolls with you. Why
didn't you tell her the truth--and Helena, too? Why didn't you tell
'em it was your own yacht? Why didn't you tell 'em you're worth a few
millions and don't have to work?"
"I don't know--maybe I'm like you, Cal, foolish about nightingales and
things. But tell me--you never did tell them anything about that Sally
M. mine business, did you?"
"No, I should say not! Didn't you tell me you didn't want it to get
out? It was bad enough, the way old Dan and your--sainted father
handed it to each other over that mine, wasn't it? I know about it,
for I promoted that mine myself, and the name'll prove that--Sally M.
Byington, with the Byington left off! There wasn't a blasted thing in
it then. But when you--like a blame quixotic fool--after she was good
for six thousand a month velvet, and ore blocked out to last a
thousand years--why, then you fool around in Papa's records, and think
Papa wasn't on the square with old Dan. So on the quiet you get it all
made over, back to old Dan's daughter; and take a sneak into the
hazelbrush when she turns you down! Say, you know what _I'd_ a-done?"
"No."
--"I'd a-held on to the mine and told the girl how much it was
bringin' in--that's _my_ system. Then I'd a-got the mine and the girl
both, maybe!"
--"Maybe."
"Well, that's the system I'd a-played. I wouldn't a-took to the tall
grass, me."
"On the other hand, I played a system invented by myself and Henri
L'Olonnois."
"I never heard of him. Well, anyhow, you were rich enough to afford to
do what you liked. But as to keeping it secret, you can't do that any
longer. Those newspaper fellows are the devil to get hold of things.
Since all this stuff came out about you running away with your own
boat--I can see now why you did it, and I'm glad you did--why, your
whole life history has been printed, including all that restitution
business about the Sally M. Fellows came to me and asked me about you,
asked if I knew you. Said, yes, I knew you--said you were a romantic
chap, and a good business man, too--and the best old scout in the
world--what?"
I had arisen, and stood in some doubt. "What's the matter--let's go
on up to the house. I want to see Sally," he concluded.
"And I want very much to see Helena," said I. "Only, it's going to be
rather harder now to meet her--and Mrs. Daniver."
"Well, I don't know," said Cal Davidson; "every fellow plays his own
system. There's something in what you say about women having a good
poker face so far as tellin' what they think about a man is
concerned--yes. Frinstance, how much did Helena know I knew, or know
you knew or thought you knew--well, you get me? But the trouble with
you is, you ain't romantic in your temperament like me.... But if I
was you, I wouldn't be scared to tell Mrs. Daniver I had a dollar and
a quarter or so left! It'll soften the blow some to her, maybe. And as
for Helena----"
"And as for Helena, I can look her in the face, and she can me, now.
And--will you telephone to New Iberia for a minister--at once--for
this evening train? And will you tell Edouard to have his man lay out
his best evening clothes for me--tell him I'll trade him these of my
cook's for them--and a suit of traveling clothes? Because, oh! fellow
varlet----" (I paused here; we both did; for a mocker just now broke
into an extraordinary burst of song, so sweet, so throbbingly sweet,
that we could not help but listen, both of us being lovers)....
"What were you saying, old man?" Cal Davidson asked after a while,
musingly, as one awakening.... "Some bird, what?"
... "Because, to-night," I answered, "I am going to marry my fair
captive, yon heartless jade, Helena. I've loved her always, rich or
poor, and she loves me, rich or poor. And we shall live happy ever
after. And may God bless us, and all true lovers!"
"Amen!" I heard some one say; and have often wondered whether it was
yon varlet, the mocking-bird, or Cal Davidson himself, who spoke.... I
looked around for Partial. He had followed Helena.
FOOTNOTE:
[B] (The words in Helena's note, addressed to Henry Francis Drake,
Esquire, were, as I have said, but two: "Yes--Now". That was why I was
married that evening. It was curious about the wedding ring, for that
I would not borrow; so an old negro blacksmith took a gold ring
Edouard gave me, one found years ago by a Cajun treasure hunter in
some one of the few successful hunts for the treasure of Jean Lafitte;
and into this, in place of the gem long since missing, he clasped my
pearl, the one we got on the river far in the north; the great pearl
later known as the largest and most brilliant ever found in fresh
water. It was I who named it the "_Belle Helène_". So that our ring
pleased all but L'Olonnois and Jean Lafitte. These two pirates had set
at work that very afternoon, with 'Polyte (by Edouard's consent) and
dug behind the smoke-house. Wonderful enough, they did find old
bricks, enclosing a sort of hollow cavity, bricks of an ancient day;
and though they got nothing else ('Polyte said he knew who had beaten
them to this treasure--it was Achilles Dufrayne of Calcasieu, curse
him!) they both explained how easy it would be to deceive the fair
captive into thinking we really had found the ring's setting as well
as the ring itself, in a pirate treasure-box. I would not do that, on
the ground that already I had deceived the fair captive quite
enough.... But, though yon varlet, my friend dear old Cal Davidson,
spoke rather freely about his honeymoon, and all that, I can not do so
of mine with Helena.... I did not know that I could again be so happy.
Often I have wished I were a romantic man, like dear old Cal.... I
fear my book on the mosquitoes of North America never will be written
now.--H. F. D.)
THE END
Transcriber's Note
Minor typographic errors in spelling and punctuation have been
corrected without note.
The Table of Contents has been made consistent with the chapter
headers, as follows--"In Which I Have a Polite Conversation" amended
to "In Which I Have Polite Conversation"; "In Which Is Certain
Conversation" amended to "In Which Is Certain Polite Conversation".
This book contains some archaic spelling, and some dialect; this is
all reproduced here as in the original.
Illustrations have been moved slightly so that they are not in the
middle of a paragraph. The frontispiece illustration has been moved to
follow the title page.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Lady and the Pirate, by Emerson Hough
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