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.”