“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?”