“On you!” I answered furiously. “What right had you to ruin me, to throw me over——”
She turned a frightened glance to Aunt Lucinda, whom I had entirely forgotten. It was my turn to blush. To hide my confusion I drew on my mask as I bowed.
I met John coming down with the ninety-three. As he returned on deck a moment later, I pushed shut the doors and sprung the outside latches; so that those within now were prisoners, indeed. And then I stood looking up at the stars, slowly beginning to see why God made the world.
CHAPTER XVI
IN WHICH IS FURTHER PARLEY WITH THE CAPTIVE MAIDEN
CAL Davidson’s taste in neckwear was a trifle vivid as compared with my own, yet I rather liked his shirts, and I found a morning waistcoat of his which I could classify as possible; beside which I obtained from John the cook a suit of flannels I had given him four years ago, and which he was saving against the day of his funeral and shipment back to China. So that, on the whole, I did rather well, and I was not ill content with life as I sat, with the Pirate’s Own Book in my lap, and Partial’s head on my knee, looking out over the passing panorama of the river. The banks now were low, the swamps, at times, showing their fan-topped cypresses close to where we passed; and all the live oaks carried their funereal Spanish moss, gray and ghostlike.
We sometimes passed river craft, going up or down, nondescript, dingy and slow, for the most part. Sometimes we were hailed gaily by monkey-like deck-hands, sometimes saluted by the pilot of a larger boat. At times we swept by busy plantation landings where the levees screened the white-pillared mansion houses so that we could only see the upper galleries. And now at these landings, we began to see the freight, made up as much of barrels as of bales. We were passing from cotton to cane. But though it still was early in the fall, the weather was not oppressive, and the breeze on the deck was cool. I had very much enjoyed my breakfast, and so had my shipmates L’Olonnois and Lafitte, to whom each moment now was a taste of paradise revealed. I envied them, for theirs, now, was that rare, fleeting and most delectable of all human states, the full realization of every cherished earthly dream. It made me quite happy that they were thus happy; and as to the right or wrong of it, I put that all aside for later explanation to them.
I looked up to see Peterson, who touched his cap.