“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.