“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.”