“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?”