The housekeeper smiled a motherly smile. “I haven’t missed one yet.”
Outside, the sun was shining down out of a cloudless and brilliantly blue sky. A gentle breeze blew in from the Gulf of Mexico, ruffling the fronds of the tall palms that lined the streets and serving to make the heat bearable. As she approached the downtown part of Tampa, the traffic grew heavier and the crowds thicker until, by the time she had made her way to the waterfront, the throng was so jammed that she could hardly push her way through. Golly, Vicki thought, she’d never seen so many people in one place in all her life! Not even in New York. The paper had said that more than half a million people were expected to jam the streets today, and Vicki estimated that the figure couldn’t be far wrong. This was more than four times the normal population of the city. She wondered how all of them had managed to find places to stay.
She elbowed her way to the front of the crowd just in time to see a big drawbridge swing up to allow a big sailing ship to enter the upper Bay. It was an authentic-looking pirate ship, a full-rigged sailing vessel. Hundreds of colorful pennants flew from lines rigged all over its superstructure, and its decks and yardarms were jammed with men in fierce-looking pirate costumes, waving cutlasses and shooting pistols into the air. The ship’s sails were furled and a pair of tugboats, tiny by comparison, were pushing the big ship through the water.
Dozens of cruisers, sailboats, outboards, and skiffs were clustered all around her, like chicks around a mother hen. Everybody was shouting and yelling. People in the crowd that milled around Vicki were craning their heads to see over other people’s heads, and fathers were holding little children on their shoulders to let them see the fun. Peddlers circulated through the crowd carrying trays of souvenirs—pirate flags, Confederate flags, tiny brass figures of pirates, pistols, cutlasses, and model ships.
Caught up helplessly in the surging throng, Vicki was pushed this way and that. But she found that she too was cheering and shouting with the rest of them and having the time of her life.
Then the pirates landed, amid a wild chorus of cheering and yelling and firing of blank pistol shots. The costumed members of Ye Mystic Krewe clambered onto gaily decorated floats, and amid the strident music of half a dozen bands, the parade began to move slowly up the street away from the docks.
On one of the floats, wearing a huge black beard, an eye patch, and brandishing a revolver in the air, Vicki saw a figure that looked vaguely familiar. She blinked and stared a second time. It was Mr. Curtin! He wore a striped red-and-white sash around his waist, and on his head was perched a tricornered hat with a huge skull and crossbones painted on its front.
Carried along by the tide of the crowd, Vicki waved frantically and yelled at the top of her voice: “Hi, Mr. Curtin! Hi, Mr. Curtin!”
Finally he saw her and waved back. “Yo-ho-ho, Vicki, and a bottle of rum! Where are the girls?”