THE LADY AND THE PIRATE

Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate
and a Fair Captive

By

EMERSON HOUGH

Author of
THE MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE, 54-40 OR FIGHT
THE PURCHASE PRICE, JOHN RAWN, ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY

HARRY A. MATHES

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Thus the heartless jade stood, unable to meet my eagle eye

Copyright 1913
Emerson Hough

PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

CONTENTS

THE LADY AND THE PIRATE

CHAPTER I

IN WHICH I AM A CAITIFF

I WAS sitting at one of my favorite spots engaged in looking through my fly-book for some lure that might, perhaps, mend my luck in the afternoon’s fishing. At least, I had within the moment been so engaged; although the truth is that the evening was so exceptionally fine, and the spot always so extraordinarily attractive to me—this particular angle of the stream, where the tall birches stand, being to my mind the most beautiful bit on my whole estate—that I had forgotten all about angling and was sitting with rod laid by upon the bank, the fly-book scarce noted in my hand. Moreover, a peculiarly fine specimen of Anopheles, (as I took it to be) was at that very moment hovering over my hand, and I was anxious to confirm my judgment as well as to enlarge my collection of mosquitoes. I had my other hand in a pocket feeling for the little phial in which I purposed to enclose Anopheles, if I could coax him to alight. Indeed, I say, I was at that very moment as happy as a man need be; or, at least, as happy as I ever expected to be. Imagine my surprise, therefore, at that moment to hear a voice, apparently intended for me, exclaim, “Halt! Caitiff!”

I looked up, more annoyed than displeased or startled. It is not often one sees so fine a specimen of Anopheles; and one could have sworn that, but for my slight involuntary movement of the hand, he must have settled; after which—crede experto!—he would have been the same as in my phial, and doomed to the chloroform within the next hour. Besides, no matter who one may be or how engaged, it is not wholly seemly to be accosted as a caitiff, when one is on one’s own land, offending no man on earth, owing no debt and paying no tribute, feudal, commercial, military or personal, to any man on earth.

The situation seemed to me singular. Had the time been some centuries earlier, the place somewhere in the old world, such speech might have had better fitting. But the time was less than a year ago, the place was in America. I was on my own lands, in this one of our middle states. This was my own river; or at least, I owned the broad acres on both sides of it for some miles. And I was a man of no slinking habit, no repulsive mien, of that I was assured, but a successful American of means; lately a professional man and now a man of leisure, and not so far past thirty years of age. My fly-rod was the best that money can buy, and the pages of the adjacent book were handsomely stocked by the best makers of this country and each of the three divisions of Great Britain; in each of which—as well as in Norway, Germany, or for the matter of that, India, New Zealand, Alaska, Japan or other lands—I had more than once wet a line. My garb was not of leather jerkin, my buskins not of thonged straw, but on the contrary I was turned out in good tweeds, well cut by my London tailor. To be called offhand, and with no more reason than there was provocation, a “caitiff,” even by a voice somewhat treble and a trifle trembling, left me every reason in the world to be surprised, annoyed and grieved. For now Anopheles had flown away; and had I not been thus startled, I should certainly have had him. Yet more, no fish would rise in that pool the rest of that evening, for no trout in my little stream thereabout ever had seen a boat or been frightened by the plash of an oar since the time, three years back, when I had bought the place.

I looked up. Just at the bend, arrested now by hand anchorage to the overhanging alders, lay a small boat, occupied by two boys, neither of more than fourteen years, the younger seemingly not more than twelve. It was the latter who was clinging with one hand to the drooping bushes. His companion, apparently the leader in their present enterprise, was half crouching in the bow of the boat and he, evidently, was the one who had accosted me.

A second glance gave me even more surprise, for it showed that the boat, though not precisely long, low and rakish of build, evidently was of piratical intent. At least she was piratical in decoration. On each side of her bow there was painted—and the evening sun, shining through my larches, showed the paint still fresh—in more or less accurate design in black, the emblem of a skull and cross-bones. Above her, supported by a short staff, perhaps cut from my own willows, flew a black flag, and whatever may have been her stern-chaser equipment, her broadside batteries, or her deck carronades—none of which I could well make out, as her hull lay half concealed among the alders—her bow-chaser was certainly in commission and manned for action. The pirate captain, himself, was at the lanyard; and I perceived that he now rested an extraordinarily large six-shooter in the fork of a short staff, which was fixed in the bow. Along this, with a three-cornered gray eye, he now sighted at the lower button of my waistcoat, and in a fashion that gave me goose-flesh underneath the button, in spite of all my mingled emotions. Had I not “halted,” as ordered, to the extent of sitting on quietly as I was, he no doubt would have pulled the lanyard, with consequences such as I do not care to contemplate, and mayhap to the effect that this somewhat singular story would never have been written.

“Halt, Sirrah!” began the pirate leader again, “or I will blow you out of the water!”

I sat for a moment regarding him, my chin in my hand.

“No,” said I at last; “I already am out of the water, my friend. But, prithee, have a care of yonder lanyard, else, gadzooks! you may belike blow me off the bank and into the water.”

This speech of mine seemed as much to disconcert the pirate chieftain as had his me. He stood erect, shifting his Long Tom, to the great ease of my waistcoat button.

“Won’t you heave to, and put off a small boat for a parley?” I inquired.

CHAPTER II

IN WHICH I HOLD A PARLEY

THE two pirates turned to each other for consultation, irresolute, but evidently impressed by the fact that their prize did not purpose to hoist sail and make a run for it.

“What ho! mates?” demanded the captain, in as gruff a voice as he could compass: “Ye’ve heard his speech, and he has struck his flag.”

“Suppose the villain plays us false,” rejoined the “mates” or rather, the mate, in a voice so high or quavering that for a moment it was difficult for me to repress a smile; although these three years past I rarely had smiled at all.

The captain turned to one side, so that now I could see both him and his crew. The leader was as fine a specimen of boy as you could have asked, sturdy of bare legs, brown of face, red of hair, ragged and tumbled of garb. His crew was active though slightly less robust, a fair-haired, light-skinned chap, blue-eyed, and somewhat better clad than his companion. There was something winning about his face. At a glance I knew his soul. He was a dreamer, an idealist, an artist, in the bud. My heart leaped out to him instinctively in a great impulse of sympathy and understanding. Indeed, suddenly, I felt the blood tingle through my hair. I looked upon life as I had not these three years. The imagination of Youth, the glamour of Adventure, lay here before me; things I cruelly had missed these last few years, it seemed to me.

“How, now, shipmates?” I remarked mildly. “Wouldst doubt the faith of one who himself hath flown the Jolly Rover? Cease your fears and come aboard—that is to say, come ashore.”

“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?”

“Spang! to the Spanish Main.” This also from the blue-eyed boy; who, now, with some difficulty, managed to let down the hammer of his six-shooter without damage to himself or others.

“We didn’t know but youse would try to stop us,” exclaimed the red-haired leader. “We come around the bend and seen you settin’ there; an’ we was resolved—to—to——”

“To sell our lives dearly!” supplemented Jimmy. “He who would seek to stop us does so at his peril.” And Jimmy made so fell a movement toward his side-arms that I hastened to restrain him.

“Yes,” said I; “you are quite right, my hearties.”

“But, gee!” ventured the red-haired pirate, “what was you thinkin’ about?”

“You ask me to tell truth, good Sire,” I made reply, “and I shall do no less. At the very moment you trained your bow-chaser on me, I was thinking of two things.”

“Speak on, caitiff!” demanded Jimmy fiercely.

“Nay, call me not so, good Sir,” I rejoined, “for such, in good-sooth, I am not, but honest faithful man. Ye have but now asked what I pondered, and I fain would speak truth, an’ it please ye, my hearties.”

“What’s he givin’ us, Jimmy?” whispered the pirate captain dubiously, aside.

“Speak on!” again commanded he of the blue eyes. “But your life blood dyes the deck if you seek to deceive Jean Lafitte, or Henry L’Olonnois!”

(So then, thought I, at last I knew their names.)

In reply I reached to my belt and drew out quickly—so quickly that they both flinched away—the long handled knife which, usually, I carried with me for cutting down alders or other growth which sometimes entangled my flies as I fished along the stream. “Listen,” said I, “I swear the pirates’ oath. On the point of my blade,” and I touched it with my right forefinger, “I swear that I pondered on two things when you surprised me.”

“Name them!” demanded Jimmy L’Olonnois fiercely.

“First, then,” I answered, “I was wondering what I could use as a cork to my phial, when once I had yonder Anopheles in it——”

“Who’s he?” demanded Jean Lafitte.

“Anopheles? A friend of mine,” I replied; “a mosquito, in short.”

“Jimmy, he’s crazy!” ejaculated Jean Lafitte uneasily.

“Say on, caitiff!” commanded L’Olonnois, ignoring him; “what else?”

“In the second place,” said I—and again I placed my right forefinger on the point of my blade, “I was thinking of Helena.”

“Is she your little girl,” hesitatingly inquired Jimmy L’Olonnois, for the instant forgetting his part.

“No,” said I sadly, “she is not my little girl.”

“Where is she?” vaguely.

“Regarding the whereabouts of either Anopheles or Helena, at this moment,” said I still sadly, “I am indeed all at sea, as any good pirate should be.”

I tried to jest, but fared ill at it. I felt my face flush at hearing her name spoken aloud. And sadly true was it that, on that afternoon and many another, I had found myself, time and again, adream with Helena’s face before me. I saw it now—a face I had not seen these three years, since the time when first I had come hither with the purpose of forgetting.

Jimmy was back in his part again, and doing nobly. “Ha!” said he. “So, fellow, pondering on a fair one, didst not hear the approach of our good ship, the Sea Rover?”

“In good sooth, I did not,” I answered; “and as for these other matters, I swear on my blade’s point I have spoken the truth.”

Our conversation languished for the moment. Illusion lay in the balance. The old melancholy impended above me ominously.

CHAPTER III

IN WHICH I AM A CAPTIVE

“WHAT ho! Jean Lafitte,” said I at length, rousing myself from the old habit of reverie, of which I had chiefest dread; “and you, Henri L’Olonnois, scourges of the main, both of you, listen! I have a plan to put before you, my hearties.”

“Say on, Sirrah!” rejoined the younger pirate, so promptly and so gravely that again I had much to do to refrain from sudden mirth.

“Why then, look ye,” I continued. “The sun is sinking beneath the wave, and the good ship rides steady at her anchor. Meantime men must eat! and yonder castle amid the forest offers booty. What say ye if we pass within the wood, and see what we may find of worth to souls bold as ours?”

“’Tis well!” answered L’Olonnois; and I could see assent in Lafitte’s eyes. In truth I could discover no great preparations for a long voyage in the open hold of the Sea Rover, and doubted not that both captain and crew by this time were hungry. Odd crumbs of crackers and an empty sardine can might be all very well at the edge of the village of Pausaukee (I judged they could have come no greater distance, some twelve or fifteen miles); but they do not serve for so long a journey as lies between Pausaukee and the Spanish Main.

They rose as I did, and we passed beyond the clump of tall birches, along the edge of my mowing meadow, and through the gate which closes my woodland path—to me the loveliest of all wood-trails, so gentle and so silent is it always, and so fringed, seasonably, with ferns and flowers. Thus, presently, we saw the blue smoke rising above my lodge, betokening to me that my Japanese factotum, Hiroshimi, now had my dinner under way.

To me, it was my customary abode, my home these three years; but they beside me saw not the rambling expanse of my leisurely log mansion. They noted not the overhanging gables, the lattices of native wood. To them, yonder lay a castle in a foreign land. Here was moat and wall, then a portcullis, and gratings warded these narrow portals against fire of musketoon. My pet swallows’ nest, demure above my door, to them offered the aspect of a culverin’s mouth; and, as now, I made my customary approach-call, by which I heralded my return from any excursion on the stream of an evening, I could swear these invaders looked for naught less than a swarm of archers springing to the walls, and the hoarse answer of my men-at-arms back of each guarded portal. Such is the power of youthful dreaming, such the residuary heritage of days of high emprise, when life was full of blood and wine and love, and savored not so wholly of dull commonplace!

But indeed, (or so I presume; for at the moment my own imagination swept on with theirs) none manned the walls or rattled the chains of gate and bridge. The saffron Hiroshimi opened the screen door before us, showing no surprise or interest in my strange companions. Thus we made easy conquest of our castle. As we entered, there lay before us, lighted softly by the subdued twilight which filtered through the surrounding grove, the interior of that home which in three years I had learned much to love, lonely as it was. Here I now dwelt most of the time, leaving behind me, as though shut off by a closed door, the busy scenes of an active and successful life. (I presume I may fairly speak thus of myself, since there is no one else to speak.)

My pirate companions, suddenly grown shy, stood silent for a moment, for the time rather at a loss to carry on the play which had been easier in the open. I heard Jimmy draw a long breath. He was first to remove his hat. But his companion was quicker to regain his poise, although for a moment he forgot his pirate speech. “Gee!” said he. “Ain’t this great!”

I doubt if any praise I ever heard in my life pleased me more than this frank comment; no, not even the kind word and hand-clasp of old Judge Henderson, what time I won my first cause at law. For this that lay about me was what I had chosen for my life to-day. I had preferred this to the career into which my father’s restless ambition had plunged me almost as soon as I had emerged from my college and my law-school—a career which my own restless ambition had found sufficient until that final break with Helena Emory, which occurred soon after the time when my father died; when the news went out that I, his heir, was left with but a shrunken fortune, and with many debts to pay; news which I, myself, had promulgated for reasons of my own. After that, called foolish by all my friends, lamented by members of my family, forgotten, as I fancy, by most who knew me, I had retired to this lodge in the wilderness. Here, grown suddenly resentful of a life hitherto wasted in money-getting alone, I had resolved to spend the remainder of my days, as beseemed a student and a philosopher. Having read Weininger and other philosophers, I was convinced that woman was the lowest and most unworthy thing in the scale of created things, a thing quite beneath the attention of a thinking man.

I have said that I was scarce beyond thirty years of age. Even so, I found myself already old; and like any true philosopher, I resolved to make myself young. As hitherto I had had no boyhood, I determined to achieve a boyhood for myself. Studying myself, I discovered that I had rarely smiled; so I resolved to find somewhat to make me smile. The great realm of knowledge, widest and sweetest of all empires for a man, lay before me alluringly when I entered upon my business career; and so interested was I in my business and my books that only by chance had I met the woman who drove me out of both. A boy I had never been; nay, nor even a youth. I had always been old. True, like others of my station, I had owned my auto cars, my matched teams—owned them now, indeed—but I had never owned a dog. So, when I came hither with ample leisure, perhaps my chief ambition was a deliberate purpose to encompass my deferred boyhood. Thus I had built this house of logs which now—with a surprised and gratifying throb of my heart I learned it—appealed to the souls of real boys. It was the castle where I dreamed; and now it was the palace of their dreams also. I felt, at least, that I had succeeded. My heart throbbed in a new way, very foolish, yet for some reason suddenly enjoyable.

My house was all of logs and had no decorations of paint or tapestry within. Its only arras was of the skins of wild beasts—of the African lion and leopard, the zebra, many antelopes. The walls were hung with mounted heads—those of the moose, the elk, the bighorn, most of the main trophies of my own land and to these, through my foreign hunting, I had added heads of all the great trophies of Africa and Asia as well. A splendid pair of elephant tusks stood in a corner. A fine head of the sheep of Tibet, ovus poli—and I prize none of my trophies more, unless it be the fine robe of the Chinese mountain tiger—looked full front at us from above the fireplace. My rod racks, and those which supported my guns and rifles, were here and there about the room. The whole gave a jaunty atmosphere to my home. I had gone soberly about the business of sport; and in these days, that can be practised most successfully by a man with much leisure and unstinted means.

My books lay about everywhere, also, books which perhaps would not have appealed to all. My copies of the Vedas, many works on the Buddhist faith, and translations from Confucius, lay side by side with that Bible which we Christians have almost forgot. Here, too, stood my desk with its cases of preserved mosquitoes—for this year I was studying mosquitoes as an amusement. I had collected all the mosquito literature of the world, and my books, in French, German and English, lay near my great microscope. I had passed many happy hours here in the oblivion of mental concentration, always a delight with me, now grown almost a necessity if I were to escape the worst of all habits, that of introspection and self-pity.

My piano and my violins also were in full sight; for the world of music, as well as the world of sport and youth, I was deliberately opening for myself, also in exchange for that closed world of affairs which I had abandoned. Indeed, all manners of the impedimenta of a well-to-do Japanese-cared-for bachelor were in evidence. To me, each object was familiar and was cherished. I had never felt need to apologize to any gentleman for my quarters or their contents—or to any woman, for no woman had ever seen my home. I may admit that, contrary to the belief of some, I was a rich man, far richer that I had need or care to be; and since it was not due to my own ability altogether nor in response to any real ambition of my own, I know I will be pardoned for simply stating the truth. My one great ambition in life was to forget; but if that might be best obtained in sport, in study, or amid the gentle evidences of good living, so much the better. Many men had called my father, stern and masterful man that he was, a robber, a thief, a pirate—in great part, I suspect, in envy that they themselves had not attained a like stature in similar achievement. But no one had ever called his son a pirate—until now! It made me oddly happy.

I ought to have been happy here all these years, able to do precisely what I liked; but sometimes I felt myself strangely alone in the world. I was always silent and apparently cold—though really, let me whisper—only shy. Sometimes, even here, I found myself a trifle sad. It is difficult to be a boy when one starts at thirty; especially difficult if one has always been rather old and staid.

I tell all these things to explain that keen pleasure, that swift exultation, that rush of the blood to my cheeks, which I felt when I saw that my house and my way of life met the approval of real boys. Pirates, too!

Swift, therefore, fell once more the magic curtain of romance. I heard a strange voice, my own voice, saying: “Enter then, my bold mates, and let us explore this castle which we have conquered.” Yes, illusion floated in through the windows on the pale light of the evening. This was a castle we had taken; and the detail that I chanced to own it was neither here nor there.

“Prisoner,” began L’Olonnois sternly—he was usually spokesman, if not always leader—“Prisoner, your life is spared for the time. Lead on! Attempt to play us false, and your blood shall be spilled upon the deck!”

“It shall be so,” I answered. “And if I do not give you the best meal you have had to-day, then indeed let my life’s blood stain the deck.”

So saying, I nodded to Hiroshimi to serve the dinner.

CHAPTER IV

IN WHICH I AM A PIRATE

WITH my own hands I have trained that prize, Hiroshimi, to cook and to serve; but only Providence could give Hiroshimi his super-humanly disinterested calm. He fitted perfectly into the picture of our dream. ’Twas no ordinary log house in which we sat, indeed no house at all. Beneath us rose and fell a stanch vessel, responsive to the long lift of the southern seas. It was not a rustle of the leaves we heard through the open windows, but the low ripple of waves along our strakes came to our ears through the open ports. Hiroshimi did not depart to the kitchen; but high aloft our lookout swept the sea for sail that might offer us a prize.

If any say that this manner of illusion may not exist between two boys and a man, I answer that we did not thus classify it. By the new pleasure in my soul, by the new blood in my cheek, I swear we were three boys together, and all in quest of adventure.

True, at times our speech smacked less of nautical and piratical phrase, at times, indeed, halted. It is difficult for a twelve-year-old pirate, exceeding hungry, to ask for a third helping of grilled chicken in a voice at once stern and ingratiating. Moreover, it is difficult for a discreet and law-abiding citizen, with a full sense of duty, deliberately to aid and abet two youthful runaways. But whenever illusion wavered, L’Olonnois saved the day by resuming his stern scowl, even above a chicken-bone. His facility in rolling speech I discovered to be, in part, attributable to a volume which I saw protruding from his pocket. At my request he passed it to me, and I saw its title; The Pirate’s Own Book. I knew it well. Indeed, I now arose, and passing to my bookshelves, drew down a duplicate copy of that rare volume, recounting the deeds of the old buccaneers. The eyes of L’Olonnois widened as I laid the two side by side.

“You’ve got it, too!” he exclaimed.

I nodded.

“That explains it,” said Jean Lafitte.

“Explains what?”

“Why, how you—why now—how you could be a pirate, too, just as natural as us.”

“I have read it many a time,” said I.

“Wasn’t you never a pirate?” asked Jean Lafitte.

“No,” said I, smiling, “although many have said my father was. He was very rich.”

“Well, you can talk just like us,” said Jean Lafitte admiringly, “even if you have lost all.”

“Of course,” said I exultingly. “Why not? I think as you do. As much as you I am disgusted with the dulness of life. I, too, wish to seek my fortune. Well then, why not, John Saunders? Why not, James Henderson?”

Ah, now indeed illusion halted! Both boys, abashed, fell back in their chairs. “How did you know our names?” asked the older of the two at length.

“Nay, fear not,” said I. “I do but seek to prove my fitness to join the jolly brotherhood, good mates.”

“Aw, honest!” rejoined Jimmy; “you got to tell us how you knew.”

“Well, then, let me go on. In your book, here, I saw your father’s name, Jimmy. I know your father. He is Judge Willard Henderson of the Appellate Court in the city. I was admitted to the bar under him. He has a summer place at the lake above here, as I know, although I have never visited him there. I know your mother, too, Jimmy,—so well I should not like to cause her even a moment’s uneasiness about you.”

“Do you know my auntie, Helena Emory?” demanded Jimmy suddenly. I felt the blood surge into my face.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” I rejoined, “I only have some gift of the second sight, as I shall now prove to you. For instance, Jean Lafitte, I know your earlier name was John Saunders, although I never saw or heard of you before.”

“Well, now, how’d you know that?” demanded the elder boy.

“I did not promise to tell the secrets of my art,” I smiled. I did not tell him that I had seen the name of Saunders on the tag of a shirt somewhat soiled.

“Your father’s name was John before you,” I added at a venture. He assented, half-frightened, although I had only guessed at this, supposing John Saunders to be a somewhat continuous family name in a family of auburn Highlanders.

“He sells farm stuff at the hotel above,” I ventured. And again my guess was truth.

“You take the wagon there, sometimes, with vegetables and milk and eggs; and so you met Jimmy, here, and you went fishing together; and he told you stories out of his book. I fear, John, that your father licks you because you go fishing on Sunday. That was why you resolved to run away. You led Jimmy into that with you. Yesterday you took a boat from the lake near the hotel, and you painted her up and rigged her for a pirate ship. You rowed across the lake to the marsh where the little stream makes out—my trout-stream here. You followed that stream down, with no more trouble than ducking under a wire fence once in a while, until you came to my land, and until you saw me. You were afraid I might tell on you; and besides, you were pirates now; and so you took me prisoner. Marry, good Sirs, ’tis not the first time a prisoner has joined a pirate band!”

“That’s wonderful!” gasped Jean T. Lafitte Saunders. “And you say you have never been up to our lake!”

“No,” said I, “but I have a map, and I know my river heads in your lake, and that very probably it runs out of the low marshy side. Besides, being a boy myself, I know precisely what boys would do. Tell me, do you think I would betray two of the brotherhood?”

“You won’t give us away?” The elder pirate’s face was eager.

“On the contrary, I’ll see that you don’t get into any trouble.”

“That’s a good scout!” ejaculated he fervently, his freckled face flushing.

“We wasn’t—that is, we hadn’t—well, you see?” began Jimmy. “Maybe we’d just have camped down here and gone back to-morrow. I was afraid about taking the boat. Besides, I’ve only got about six dollars, anyhow.” He spread his wealth out upon the table before me frankly.

“Have no fear,” said I. “To-night I shall write a few letters that will clear up every trouble back home, and allow us to continue our journey to the Spanish Main.”

“Oh, will you?” cried Jimmy, much relieved. “That’ll be a good scout,” he added.

Suddenly I found myself smiling at him, I who had smiled so rarely these years, whether in the Selkirks or the Himalayas, in Uganda or here in my own little wilderness—because Helena had left me so sad.

“But if I promise, you, also, must promise in turn.”

Used as I was, already, to the astounding changes in Jimmy from boy to buccaneer and back again, I was now interested at the fell scowl which he summoned to his features, as soon as he felt relieved as to the domestic situation. “Speak, fellow!” he demanded; and folding his arms, presented so threatening a front that I saw my man Hiroshimi covertly lay hold upon a carving knife.

“Why, then, my hearties,” said I, “’tis thus. I’ll sign on as sea-lawyer and scrivener, as well as purser for the ship. Yes, I’ll sign articles and voyage with you for a week or a month, or two months, or three. I’ll provender the ship and pay all bills of libel or demurrage in any port of call; and by my fateful gift of second sight, which ye have seen well proven here to-night, not only will I see ye safe for what ye already have done, but will keep ye safe against any enemy we may meet, be he whom he may!”

“’Tis well,” said L’Olonnois. “Say on!”

“And in return I ask a boon.”

“Name it, fellow!”

“Already I have named it—that I, too, shall be accepted as one of the brotherhood. Oh, listen”—I broke out impulsively—“I have never been a pirate, and I have never been a boy. I have had everything in the world I wanted and it made me awfully lonesome, because when you have everything you have nothing. I have nothing to do but eat and sleep, and hunt and fish, and read and write, and study and think, and play my music, here. I do not want to do these things any more. Especially I do not want to think. Boys do not think, and I want to be a boy. I want to be a pirate with you. I want to seek my fortune with you.”

We sat silent, almost solemn for a moment, so sincere was my speech and so startling to them. But thanks to L’Olonnois and his saving book, illusion came to us once more in time.

“Will ye be good brother and true pirate?” demanded L’Olonnois. “And will ye take the oath of blood?”

“That I will!” said I.

“Brothers and good shipmates all”—broke in Jean Lafitte in a deep voice—“what say ye? Shall we put him to the oath?”

“Aye, aye, Sir!” responded the deep chorus of scores of full-chested voices. Or, at least, so it seemed to us, though, mayhap, ’twas no more than Jimmy who spoke.

“Swear him, then!” commanded Jean Lafitte. “Swear him by the oath of blood.”

“We—we haven’t any blood!” whispered L’Olonnois, aside, somewhat troubled.

“That have we, mates,” said I, “and the ceremony shall have full solemnity.”

I took up my keen hunting knife and deliberately and slowly opened the side of my thumb, more to the pain of Jimmy, I fancy, than to myself, as I could see by the twitch of his features.

“By this blood I swear!” said I: “and on the point of my blade I swear to be a true pirate; to fight the fight of all; to divulge no plans of the company; and to share with my brothers share and share alike of all booty we may take.”

“’Tis well!” said L’Olonnois, much impressed and delighted, as also was his mate, very evidently.

“And now, my brothers,” said I, “you, also, must swear to divulge no secret of mine that you may learn, to tell nothing of my plans, or my name, or the name of the port where I signed on the rolls.”

“We don’t know your name,” said Jimmy, “but neither of us will give you away.”

Jean Lafitte was all for opening up his own thumb for blood, but I stopped him. “This will do,” said I, and stained his fingers and those of L’Olonnois—who grew pale at sight of it to his evident disgust.

So, thus, I became a pirate, and we three were brother rovers of the deep. I fancied my associates would be loyal. I was thinking of a certain cousin of the younger pirate. Not for worlds would I seek to pursue her now; but there had arisen in my soul, already, a sort of strange wonder whether some intent of fate had sent this youngster here to remind me once more of her, whom I would forget.

“Now,” said I at last, “let us seek what fare the castle offers for the night.” I could see they were tired and sleepy, and so found for them bath and clean pajamas—somewhat too large to be sure—and good beds in the wing of my log house. And never, as I be a true pirate, never have I seen so many and so various single-fire and revolving short arms, in my life, as these two buccaneers disclosed when they unbelted and laid aside their jackets! Even thus equipped, I found them looking enviously at my walls, where hung weapons of many lands. I sent them to bed happier by telling them that, in the morning, they should select such as they chose for the equipment of our vessel. “Gee!” said Jean Lafitte again. “Gee! Gee!” He was so happy that I, too, was happy. It was L’Olonnois who changed that.

“Methinks,” said he, regarding me sternly, “that in yonder ivy-clad halls might dwell some lady fair! Tell me, is it not so?”

He stretched a thin arm out, in the sleeve of my smallest pajamas, and pointed a slender finger at the interior of my castle of dreams. Alas, after all it was empty! My old melancholy came back to me.

“No, my brothers,” said I, “no maid has ever passed yon door. No, nor ever will.”

L’Olonnois bent his flaxen head in dignified and manly sympathy. “I see,” said he, “our brother in his youth has, perhaps, been deceived by some fair one!”

Upon which I left them for my own room.

If two buccaneers in my castle slept well that night, a third did not. Anopheles might go hang. I did not fancy my new microscope. I doubted if my last violin were a real Strad. I did not like the last music my dealers had sent out to me. My studies of Confucius and Buddha might go hang, and my new book as well. For now, before me, came the face of a certain pirate’s aunt, and she was indeed a lady fair. And I knew full well—as I had known all these years, although I had tried to deceive myself into believing otherwise—that gladly as I had exchanged the city for the wilderness, with equal gladness would I exchange my leisure, all my wealth, all my belongings, for a moment’s touch of her hand, a half-hour of talk heart-to-heart with her, so that, indeed, I might know the truth; so that, at least, I might have it direct from her, bitter though the truth might be.

CHAPTER V

IN WHICH WE SAIL FOR THE SPANISH MAIN

WHEN, in the morning, I passed from my quarters toward the main room which served me both as living-room and dining hall, I found that my pirate guests were also early risers. I could hear them arguing over some matter, which proved to be no more serious than the question of a cold bath of mornings, Jimmy maintaining that everybody had a cold bath every morning, whereas John insisted with equal heat that nobody ever bathed (“washed,” I think he called it), oftener than once a week, to wit, on Saturdays only. They engaged in a pillow fight to settle it, and as Jimmy had John fairly well smothered by his rapid fire, I voted that the ayes appeared to have it when they referred the point to me.

As we are very remote and never visited in my wilderness home, it is not infrequent that I take my morning meal very much indeed in mufti, although Hiroshimi is always most exact himself. On this morning it occurred to us all that pajamas made a garb more piratical and more nautical than anything else obtainable, so we took breakfast—and I think Hiroshimi never served me a breakfast more delicate and tempting—clad as perhaps the Romans were, if they had pajamas in those times. All went well until the keen eyes of Jimmy, wandering about my place, noted a certain photograph which rested on the top of my piano—where I was much comforted always to have it, especially of an evening, when sometimes I played Mendelssohn’s Spring Song, or other music of the like. It was the picture of the woman who did not know and very likely did not care where, or how, I lived—Helena Emory, to my mind one of the most beautiful women of her day; and I have seen the world’s portraits of the world’s beauties of all recorded days in beauty. Toward this Jimmy ran excitedly—I, with equal speed, endeavoring to divert him from his purpose.

“But it’s my Auntie Helen!” he protested, when I recovered it and placed it in my pocket.

“It is your Auntie fiddlesticks, Jimmy,” said I hastily, hoping my color was not heightened. “It is your grandmother! Finish your breakfast.”

“I guess I ought to know—” he began.

“What!” I rejoined. “Wouldst pit your wisdom against one who has the second sight; have a care, shipmate.”

“It was!” he reiterated. “I know ain’t anybody pretty as she is, so it was.”

“Jimmy L’Olonnois,” said I, “let us reason about this. I——”

“Lemme see it, then. I can tell in a minute. Why don’t you lemme see it, then?” He was eager.

“Shipmate,” I replied to him, “the hand is sometimes quicker than the eye, and the mind slower than the heart. For that reason I can not agree to your request.”

“But what’d he be doing with Miss Emory’s picture, Jimmy?” argued Lafitte.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” I added. “It may be that, in your haste, you have confused in your mind, Jimmy, some portrait with that of the Princess Amèlie Louise, of Furstenburg.” (I had indeed sometimes commented on the likeness of Helena Emory to that light-hearted old-world beauty.) Jimmy did not know that a photograph of the princess herself, also, stood upon the piano top, nor did he fully grasp the truth of that old saying that the hand is quicker than the eye. At least, he gazed somewhat confused at the portrait which I now produced before his eyes.

“Who was she?” he inquired.

“A very charming young lady of rank, who eloped with a young man not of rank. In short, although she did not marry a chauffeur, she did marry an automobile agent. And surely, Jimmy, your Auntie Helen—whoever she may be—would do no such thing as that and still claim to be a cousin of a L’Olonnois?”

“I don’t know. You can’t always tell what a girl’s going to do,” said Jimmy sagely. “But I don’t think Auntie Helen’s going to marry a auto man.”

“Why, Jimmy?” (I found pleasure and dread alike in this conversation.)

“Because everybody says she’s going to get married to Mr. Davidson, and he’s a commission man.”

Now, I am sure, my face did not flush. It may have paled. I tried to be composed. I reached for the melon dish and remarked, “Yes? And who is he? And really, who is your Auntie Helena, Jimmy, and what does she look like?” I spoke with a fine air of carelessness.

“She looks like the princess, you said,” replied Jimmy. “And Mr. Davidson’s rich. He’s got a house on our lake, this summer, and he lives in New York and has offices in Chicago, and travels a good deal. He has some sort of factory, too, and he’s awful rich. I like him pretty well. He knows how all the ball clubs stand, both leagues, every day in the year. You ought to know him, because then you might get to know my Auntie Helena. If they got married, like as not, I could take you up to their house. I thought everybody knew Mr. Davidson, and my Auntie Helena, too.”

Everybody did. Why should I not know Cal Davidson, one of the decentest chaps in the world? Why not, since we belonged to half a dozen of the same clubs in New York and other cities? Why not, since this very summer I had put my private yacht (named oddly enough, the Belle Helène) in commission for the first season in three years, and chartered her for the summer around Mackinaw, and a cruise down the Mississippi to the Gulf that fall? Why not, since I had still unbanked the handsome check Davidson had insisted on my taking as charter money for the last quarter?

Davidson! Of all men I had counted him my friend. And now here was he, reputed to be about to marry the girl who, as he knew, must have known, ought to have known, was all the world to me! Even if she would have none of me, and even though I had no shadow of claim on her—even though we had parted not once but a dozen times, and at last in a final parting—Davidson ought to have known, must have known! And my own yacht! Why, no man may know what may go forward in a yachting party. And, if perchance that fall he could persuade to accompany him Helena and her chaperon (I made no doubt that would be her Aunt Lucinda; for Helena’s mother died when she was a child, and she was somewhat alone, although in rather comfortable circumstances) what could not so clever a man as Davidson, I repeat, one with so much of a way with women, accomplish in a journey so long as that, with no other man as his rival? It would be just like Cal Davidson to go ashore at St. Louis long enough to find a chaplain, and then go on ahead for a honeymoon around the world—on my boat, with my.... No, she was not mine ... but then....

All my life I have tried to be fair, even with my own interests at stake. I tried now to be fair; and I failed! I could see but one side to this case. Davidson must be found at once, must be halted in mid-career.

It was about this time that Hiroshimi came in with the morning’s mail and telegrams, all of which at my place come in from the railway, ten miles or so, by rural free delivery. I paid small attention to him, most of my mail, these days, having to do with gasoline pumps or patent hay rakes and lists from my gun and tackle dealers and such like.

Hiroshimi coughed. “Supposing Honorable like to see these yellow wire envelopings.”

I glanced down and idly opened the telegram. It was from Cal Davidson himself, and read:

“Name best price outright sale bill Helen to me answer Chicago.”

So then, the scoundrel actually was on his way down the lakes, headed for the South, even thus early in the season! I knew, of course, that Bill Helen meant Belle Helène. As though I would sell my boat to him, of all men! It might almost as well have been a sale of Helena herself outright, as this cursed telegram stated. I crumpled the sheet in my hand.

“If Honorable contemplates some answering of mail this morning, it will be one ow-wore till the miserable pony mail carry all man comes,” ventured Hiroshimi.

“Nothing this morning, Hiro,” I managed to choke out, “and, Hiro, make ready my bag, the small one, for a journey.”

“S-s-s-s!” hissed Hiroshimi, which was his way of saying, “Yes, sir, very well, sir.” Surprise he neither showed now nor at any time; and since he never could tell at what hour I might conclude to start for his country or Europe or Africa or some other land for a stay of weeks or months, there was perhaps some warrant for his calm. He had less to do when I was away; although I always suspected him of poaching my trout with his infernal Japanese methods of angling.

At this moment L’Olonnois saw, through the open door, a red squirrel which scampered up a tree. At once he forgot all about his Auntie Helen and scampered off in pursuit, followed presently by Lafitte. This gave me time to decide upon a plan.... At last, I lifted my head again.... Why not, then?

When L’Olonnois returned from the chase of the squirrel, he was all L’Olonnois and none Jimmy Henderson. The spell of his drama was upon him once more.

“What ho, mate,” he began, scowling most vilely at me, “the sun is high in the heavens, yet we linger here. Let us up anchor, hoist the top-gallant mast and set sail for the enemy.”

Jimmy’s nautical terms might have been open to criticism, but there was no denying the bold and manly import of his speech. My own heart jumped well enough with it now.

“’Tis well, shipmate,” said I. “Come, get ready your togs and your weapons, and let us away. As you say, the good ship tugs at her anchor chains this morning.”

I managed to better the wardrobe of both boys by certain ducks and linens from my own store, albeit a world too large. Lafitte, none too happy at being thus uncongenially clean, was delight itself when set to selecting an armament from my collection. He chose three bright and clean Japanese swords, special blades of the Samurai armorers, forged long before Mutsuhito’s grandfather was a boy—I had paid a rare price for them in Japan. To these he added three basket-handled cutlasses, which I had obtained in London, each almost old enough to have belonged to the crew of Drake himself. A short-barreled magazine pistol for each of us was his concession to the present unromantic age. As for Jimmy, he insisted on a small bore rifle as well as a shotgun. “We might see something,” he remarked laconically.

Thus equipped, I persuaded my associates to lay aside most of their somewhat archaic artillery. Neither had taken any thought of other supplies. Hiroshimi, however, now appeared, bearing, in addition to my hand luggage, two hampers, a roll of blankets and a silk tent in its canvas wrapper.

“Honorable is embarked in those small-going boat that is made tied to the bank?” inquired Hiroshimi. He had said nothing to me about my guests, or asked how they came; but as I knew he would find out all about it, anyhow, after his own fashion, I had not mentioned anything to him, or told him what to do. I only nodded now, relying on his efficiency. He now approached my young pirates, and rather against their will, removed from them some of their burden of weapons, slinging about himself bundles, baskets, bags and cutlery, until he almost disappeared from view. He cast on me a reproachful gaze, however, as he took from Lafitte’s hand the bared blade of the old Samurai sword, and noted the ancient inscription on blade and scabbard as he sheathed it reverently.

“What does it say, Hiro?” I asked of him.

“Very old talk, Honorable,” answered Hiroshimi. “It say, ‘Oh, Honorable Gentleman who carry me, I invite you to make high and noble adventurings.’”

“Let me carry it, Hiro,” said I; and I tucked it under my own arm.

“Good!” exclaimed L’Olonnois. “Then you are going with us? And did you write the letters that you promised us?”

“I always keep my word.”

“And it’ll be all right back home about mother and the boat? I’ll give you my six dollars!”

“There is no need. I told you, if you would make me one of the crew of the Sea Rover and let me seek my fortune with you, I would gladly pay all the reckoning of our journey.”

“And how long will we be gone?”

“Till after your school begins, I fear.”

“And how far are you going with us?”

“Spang! to the Spanish Main!” I answered.

So then we set forth down my woodland path.

CHAPTER VI

IN WHICH I ACQUIRE A FRIEND

WE proceeded, therefore, through the wood, sweet in the dew of morning, among many twittering birds, and so came, presently, to the end of my path, where the little gate shuts it off from my mowing meadow; at the upper end of which, it may be remembered, the good ship Sea Rover lay anchored. The grass stood waist-high and wet in the dew as we turned along the meadow side, and L’Olonnois flinched a bit, although Lafitte waded along carelessly.

I observed that each boy had now thrust into his hat band a turkey feather, picked up, en route, along my field’s edge. Jimmy was not sure of the correctness of this; and admitted that, sometimes, he had read literature having to do with Indian fighting, as well as piratical enterprises. I suggested that, to my mind, nothing quite took the place of the regulation red kerchief bound about the head; whereat, gravely, both L’Olonnois and Lafitte discarded their hats and feathers, for the bandannas which I proffered them. Having bound these about their foreheads, a great courage and confidence came to them.

L’Olonnois drew his sword, and with some care placed the blade between his teeth. “Hist!” exclaimed Lafitte, himself swept by his friend’s imagination, and preparing to place his cutlass in his mouth also. “Let us approach the vessel with care, lest the enemy be about.” So saying, each pirate with a mouthful of cold steel, and a hand shading his red-kerchiefed brow, stole through my clump of birches toward the bend, where the boat had first surprised me; myself following, somewhat put to it to refrain from laughter, although one rarely laughs in the young hours of the day, and myself rarely, at all.

We were greeted by no hostile shot, and found our vessel quite as we had left her, as I could see at a glance when we neared the bank; but, none the less, something stirred in the bushes. A growl and a sudden barking, greeted Hiroshimi as he approached the boat in advance.

“You, Tige!” called out Lafitte. The dog—a dog none too beautiful, and now just a bit forlorn—approached us, alternately wagging in friendship and retreating in alarm.

“Well, what do you think of that!” said Jimmy. “We left him back at the lake—sent him home half a dozen times. How’d he get here, and how’d he know where we was?”

“He couldn’t a-swum the lake,” assented John. “And it was more’n ten miles around; and how could he smell where we went, on the water? Come here, Tige, you blame fool!”

“Nay,” said I, “he is no fool, this dog, but a creature of great reason, else he never could have found you. And I’ll be bound he is as keen for adventure as any of us.”

“He is coming here last night two ow-wore after dinner,” said the omniscient Hiroshimi. “Also he bite me on leg. He, also, is malefactor.”

“He has allotted to himself the duty of caring for the property of his masters, Hiro,” I said, “and hence is not really a malefactor. Besides, since he would not leave the boat and follow our trail, he is by this time hungry. Feed him, Hiro.”

But Hiroshimi was not eager to approach the piratical canine again; so I, myself, fished something from a hamper and called the dog to me. He ate gladly and most gratefully.

Now, it is a strange thing to say, but it is the truth, I had never before in my life fed a dog! I had won many knotty suits at law, had solved many hard problems dealing with human nature—and had found human nature for the most part rarely glad or grateful—but I have never owned or even fed a dog. A strange new feeling came in my throat now. Suddenly I swallowed some invisible intangible thing.

“John,” said I, “what breed of dog is this?” Indeed, it was hard to tell offhand, although he had the keen head of a collie.

“I guess he’s just one o’ them partial dogs,” answered John, “mostly shepherd, maybe; I dunno.”

“Very well, Partial shall be his name. And is he yours?”

“He runs round on the farm. He goes with Jimmy an’ me.”

“John, will you sell me Partial?” I asked this suddenly, realizing that my voice might sound odd.

“What’d ye want him fer?” he replied. “He’d be a nuisance.”

“I think not. See how faithful he has been, see how grateful he is; and how wise. He reasoned where you were as well as I reasoned who you were. He knows now that we are talking about him, and knows that I am his friend—see him look at me; see him come over and stand by me. John, do you think—do you believe a dog, this dog, would learn to like me, ever? Would he understand me?”

“Well,” said John judicially, standing sword in hand, “I dunno. Someways, maybe dogs and boys understands quicker. But you understand us. Maybe he’d understand you.”

“Well reasoned, Jean Lafitte,” said I, “perhaps your logic is better than you know, at least, I hope so. And now I offer you yonder magazine pistol as your own in fee, if you will sign over to me all your right, title and interest, in Partial, here. Evidently he belongs with us. He seems to care for us. And I experience some odd sort of feeling, which I can not quite describe. Perhaps it is only that I feel like a boy, and one that is going to own a dog. Is it a bargain?”

“Sure! You c’n have him for nuthin’,” said Lafitte. “He ain’t worth nothin’. Besides, I can’t charge a brother of the flag anything; anyhow, not you.” I inferred that Jean Lafitte, also, was going to grow up into one of those men like myself, cursed with a reticence and shyness in some matters, and so winning a reputation of oddness or coldness, against all the real and passionate protest of his own soul.

“No, brother,” I said to him: “I’ll not offer you trade, but gift. Let it be that if I can win the dog, and if he will take me as his master and friend, he shall be mine. And you take the pistol, and have a care of it.”

“That’s all right!” said Lafitte shyly, yet delightedly, as I could see.

“Here, Partial!” I called to the dog; and being young and friendly, and attached to neither in particular, and only in general worshiping the creature Boy, he came to me! I fed him, stroked him, looked into his eyes. And in a few moments he put his feet on my shoulders, and licked at my ear, and began to talk to me in low eager whines, and rubbed his muzzle against my cheek, and said all that a dog could say in oath of feudal service, pledging loyalty of life and limb. At which I felt very odd indeed; and began to see the world had many things in it of which I had never known; but which, now, I was resolved to know.

“Honorable is embarking those malefactor canine thing with so much impediments in this small-going boat?” inquired Hiroshimi.

“Yes,” I answered. “At once. All four of us. Put the stuff aboard, Hiro.”

So, somewhat crowded as the Sea Rover was, with three boys and a dog, not to mention our supplies and our armament, at last we were afloat with crew and cargo aboard. Hiro was not surprised, and asked no questions. With the salaam with which he announced dinner, he now announced his own departure for his duties at my deserted house; and as he walked he never turned around for curious gaze. Often, often have I, in my readings in the Eastern philosophy, endeavored to analyze and to emulate this Oriental calm, this dismissal from the soul of things small, things unessential and things unavoidable. An enviable character, my boy Hiroshimi.

Now all was bustle and confusion aboard the good ship Sea Rover. “Stand by the main braces!” roared Lafitte.

“Aye, aye, Sir!” replied the crew, that is to say, Jimmy L’Olonnois.

“Hard a lee!”

“Hard a lee it is, Sir!”

“Hoist the top-gallant mainsail an’ clew all alow an’ aloft!”

“Aye, aye, Sir!”

“Man the capstan! All hands to the starboard mizzen chains! Heave away!”

“Heave away!” rejoined our gallant crew, never for a moment in doubt as to the captain’s meaning. And, indeed, he gave a push with an oar at the bank, which thrust us into the smart current of my little river.

We were afloat! We were off to seek our fortune!

I, too, stood, shading my eyes with my hand

Ah, what a fine new world was this which lay before us! But for one thing, this had no doubt been the happiest moment in my life. For, always, the attaining of knowledge, the growth of a man’s mind and soul, had to me seemed the one ambition worth a man’s while; and now, as I might well be assured, I had learned more and grown more, these last twelve hours or so, than I had in any twelve years of my life before. Before me, indeed, had opened a vast and wonderful world. That morning, as we swept around curve after curve of the swift trout-stream that I loved so well, among my alders, through my bits of wood, along my hills—with Lafitte and L’Olonnois standing, each alert, silent, peering ahead under his flat hand to see what might lie ahead (I astern with Partial’s head on my knee), I felt rise in my soul the same sweet grateful feeling that I had when the new world of music opened to me, what time I first caught the real meaning of the Frühlingslied. My heart leaped anew in my bosom, for the time forgetting its sadness. I saw that the world after all does hold faith and loyalty and friendship and perpetual, self-renewing Youth.... I also rose, cast my hat aside, and with one hand reaching down to touch my friend’s head, I, too, stood, shading my eyes with my edged hand, peering ahead into this strange new world that lay ahead of me.

CHAPTER VII

IN WHICH I ACHIEVE A NAME

SO winding is my trout river, and so extensive are my lands along it, that it was not until nearly noon that our progress, sometimes halted by shallows, again swift in the deeper reaches, brought the Sea Rover to the lower edge of my estate. Here, the river was deeper and more silent, the waters were not quite so cold, but as we passed a high hardwood bridge from which issued a cool spring of water, I suggested a halt in our voyage, to which my companions, readily enough, agreed. We, therefore, disembarked and prepared to have our luncheon.

It was obvious to me that Jean Lafitte and Henri L’Olonnois were not on their first expedition out-of-doors, for they set about gathering wood and water in workmanlike fashion. They did not yet fully classify me, so, in boyish shyness, left me largely ignored, or waited till I should demonstrate myself to them. It was, therefore, with delicacy that I ventured any suggestions from the place where Partial and I sat in the shade watching them.

I have mentioned the fact that I had been a hunter and traveler, and had met success in the field; yet the truth is, I began all that late in life, and deliberately. To me, used to exact habit of thought in all things, and accustomed to be governed by trained reason alone, it was never enough to say that a thing was partly done, or well enough done to pass: only the best possible way had any appeal to me. I brought my reason to bear on every situation in life. Thus, I studied an investment carefully, and before going into it, I knew what the result would be. My investments, therefore, always have prospered, because they were not based on guess or chance, as nine-tenths of all the public’s business ventures are. In the same way, I had gone deliberately about the matter of winning the regard of the only woman I ever saw who seemed to me much worth while. I argued and reasoned with Helena Emory that she should marry me, proving to her by every rule of logic that, not only was she the most lovable woman in all the records of the world, but, also, that love such as mine never had before been known in the world. Sometimes, as I logically proved the fitness of our union, and grew warm at my own accuracy, she wavered, relented, warmed: and then again, forgetting my argument, she would relapse into womanlike frivolity once more.... I did not like to think of this, as I sat in the shade with Partial. It cost me much in self-respect, irritated me.

But, having studied sport and outdoor living deliberately as I had studied the law and business and Helena, I had rather a thorough grounding, on life in the open, for I had read every authority obtainable; whereas my young associates had read none. So cautiously, now and then, I suggested little things to them, as that the fire need not be so large, and would do better if confined between two green side logs. I taught them how to boil the kettle quickly, how to make tea, and also, more difficult, how to make coffee; how to cook bacon just enough, and how to cook fish—for I had taken a few trout earlier in the day—and how to make toast without charring it to cinders. Again, I delighted them by telling them of little camping devices, and quite won their hearts when I found among Hiroshimi’s packages, a small camp griddle with folding legs, of my own devising. It was quite clean and new, but it performed as I felt quite sure it would. In fact, reason will govern all things—except a woman.

We ate al fresco, as true buccaneers of the main, and grew better and better acquainted. It occurred to me that mayhap the nautical education of my associates was, after all, somewhat superficial, so I set about mending it by explaining something of the rigging of the ship; and I gave them, by means of the Sea Rover’s bowline, some lessons in sailorman splices and knots. The bow-line-in-a-bight, the sheet-bend, the clinch-knot, the jam-knot, the fisherman’s water-knot, the stevedore’s slip-knot, the dock-hand’s round-turns and half-hitches for cable makefast, the magnus-hitch, the fool’s-knot, the cat’s-cradle, the sheep-shank, the dog-shank, and many others—all of which I had learned in books and in practise—I did for them over and over again; just as I could have done for them a half-dozen different ways of throwing the diamond-hitch in a pack-train, or the stirrup-hitch in a cow camp, or many other of the devices of men who live in the open; for beginning late in life in these things, I had studied them hard and faithfully.

I could see—and I noted it with much gratification—that I was rising in the estimation of my pirates. It pleased me not at all to show that I knew more than they of these things, for I was older and my mind was long my trained servant; but I had monstrous delight in seeing myself accepted as one fit to associate with them. Once or twice, I saw the two draw apart in some debate which I knew had to do with me. “Well, now,” Lafitte would begin; and L’Olonnois would demur. “No, I don’t just like that one,” he would say. By nightfall—and I presume I do not need to recall all the incidents of our afternoon, or of our pitching camp by the riverside an hour before sundown—I learned what was the subject of their argument. I had been admitted to the pirates’ band, but the question was over my name.

We sat by our fireside, before our little tent, after a pleasant meal which I know was well cooked because I cooked it myself—trout, a young squirrel, and toast, and real coffee—and Partial was close at my knee, having obviously adopted me. We were fifteen or twenty miles from my house, nearly twice that from their homes, but the world, itself, seemed very remote from us. We reveled in a new luxurious world of rare deeds, rare dreams all our own. I was conjuring up some new argument to put before Helena should I ever see her again—as of course I never should—when Lafitte rolled over on the grass and looked up at us.

“We was just saying,” he remarked, “that you didn’t have no name.”

“That is true. I have not told you my name, nor have you asked it. Had you been impolite, you might have learned it by prying about my place.” I spoke gravely and with approval.

“No, we didn’t know who you was.”

“Let it be so. Let me be a man of no name. A name is of no consequence, and neither am I.”

“Sho, now, that ain’t so. I never seen a better—now, I never seen—” Jean Lafitte’s reticence in friendship, again, was getting the better of him.

“So we said we’d call you Black Bart,” added L’Olonnois.

“That is a most excellent name,” said I after some thought. “At present, I can find no objection to it, except that I wear no beard at all and would have a red or brown one if I did; and that Black Bart was rather a pirate of the land than of the sea.”

“Was he?” queried L’Olonnois. “Wasn’t he a pirate, too, never?”

“There was a famous pirate chief known as Bluebeard or Blackbeard, and it may be, sometimes, they called him Black Bart.”

“Wasn’t he a awful desper’t sort of pirate?”

“He is said to have been.”

“It sounds like a awful desper’t name,” said Jimmy: “like as though he’d fill up his ship with captured maidens, an’ put all rivals to the sword.”

“Such, indeed, shipmate,” said I, “was his reputation.”

“Well,” concluded L’Olonnois, “we couldn’t think o’ any better name’n that, because we know that is just what you would do.”

(So, then, my reputation was advancing!)

“Wasn’t you never a pirate before, honest?” queried Lafitte at this juncture. “Because, you seem like a real pirate to us. We been, lots of times, over on the lake.”

“It may be because my father was always called a pirate,” I replied. “You see, in these days, there are not so many pirates who really scuttle ships and cut throats.”

“But you would?”

“Certainly. ’Tis in my blood, my bold shipmate.”

“We knew it,” concluded L’Olonnois calmly. “So, after now, we’ll call you Black Bart. You can let your whiskers grow, you know.”

“True,” said I. “Well, we will at least take the whiskers under advisement, as the court would say.”

“We must be an awful long ways from home,” ventured L’Olonnois, after a time.

“Hundreds of miles our good ship has ploughed the deep, and as yet has raised no sail above the horizon,” I admitted.

“Do you—now—do you—well, anyhow, do you have any idea of where we are going?” demanded Lafitte, shamefacedly.

“Not in the slightest.”

“But now—well—now then——”

In answer I drew from my pocket a map and a compass; the latter mostly for effect, since I knew very well the bed of our river must shape our course for many a mile. On the map I pointed out how, presently, our river would run into a lake, into which, also, ran another river; and would emerge on the other side much larger. I showed them that down that other river, as, indeed, down mine, logs used to float from the pine forests—many of my father’s logs, of ownership said to have been piratical—and I showed how, presently, this stream would carry us into one of the ancient waterways down which millions of wealth in timber have come; and explained about the wild crews of river runners who once ran the rafts down that great highway, and into the greater highway of the Mississippi; whence men might in due time arrive upon the Spanish Main.

“Is there any way a fellow can get across from Lake Michigan into the Mississippi River?” demanded Lafitte, who was of a practical turn of mind: and on the map I showed him all the old trails of the fur traders, explorers and adventurers, French and English, who had discovered our America long ago; whereat their eyes kindled and their tongues went dumb.

At last, I told them we must to our hammocks; and soon our bloody band was deep in sleep. At least, so much might have been said for Lafitte and L’Olonnois. Alone of the band of sea rovers myself, Black Bart, sat musing by the fire, the head of my friend, Partial, in my lap.

CHAPTER VIII

IN WHICH WE HAVE AN ADVENTURE

OUR band of hardy adventurers arose with the sun on the morning following our first night in bivouac, and by noon of that day, thanks, perhaps, in some measure to my own work at the oars, and a sail which we rigged from a corner of the tent, we had passed into and through the lake which our map had showed us. Now we were below the edge of the pine woods, and our stream ran more sluggishly, between banks of cattails or of waving marsh grasses. We put out a trolling line, and took a bass or so; and once Lafitte, firing chance-medley into a passing flock of plover, knocked down a half-dozen, so that we bade fair to have enough for dinner that night. It was all a new world for us. No one might tell what lay around the next bend of our widening waterway. We were explorers. A virgin world lay before us. The nature of the country along the stream kept the settlements back a distance; so that to us, now, in reality, retracing one of the ancient fur-trading routes, we might almost have been the first to break these silences.

Toward nightfall we came into a more rolling and more park-like region; our prow was now heading to the westward, for the general course of the great river beyond. I had no notion to visit the city of Chicago, and our route lay far above that which must be taken by any large craft bound for the Mississippi route to the Gulf.

Farms now came down to the water’s edge in places, villages offered mill-pond dams—around which, in scowling reticence, we portaged the Sea Rover, unmindful alike of queries and of jeers. I found time to post additional letters now. Indeed, I was preparing for a long and determined enterprise. It was the Sea Rover against the Belle Helène; and, did the skipper of the latter loll along in flanneled ease and luxury, not so with the hardy band of cutthroats who manned our smaller and more mobile craft, men used to hardships, content to drink spring water instead of sparkling wines, and to eat the product of their own weapons.

We were I do not know how far from our first encampment, perhaps thirty miles or more, when toward five o’clock of the evening we concluded to land at a wooded grassy bank which offered a good camping place. We made all fast, and in a few moments had our tent up and a little fire going, Lafitte and L’Olonnois, at this, happy as any two pirates I ever have seen; and were on the point of spreading our canvas table cover upon the grass, when we heard a gruff voice hail us.

“Heh! What’re you doin’ there?”

We turned, expecting to meet some irate farmer on whose land perhaps we innocently were trespassing; but the figure which now emerged from the screening bushes was rougher, bolder, and in some indescribable way wilder, than that of a farmer. I could not, at first, assign the fellow a place, for I knew this was an old and well settled country, and not supposed to be overrun with tramps or campers. He was a stout man nearly of middle age, dirty and ill clad, his coarse shirt open at the neck, his legs clad in old overalls, his hat and shoes very much the worse for wear. His face was covered with a rough beard, and so brown and so begrimed that, at once, I guessed this must be some dweller in the open. Yet he seemed no tramp; and even if he were, he had no right to hail us in this fashion.

I only looked at him, and made no answer, feeling none due. He came out into the open, followed by a nondescript dog, which had the lack of decency—and also of discretion—to attack my dog Partial with no parley or preliminary. I wot not of what stock Partial came, but somewhere in his ancestry must have been stark fighting strain. Mutely and sternly, as became a gentleman, he joined issue; and so well had he learned the art of war that in the space of a few moments, in spite of the loud outcry of the owner of the invading cur, he had him on his back in a throat grip which was the end of the battle and bade fair soon to be the end of the enemy.

The man who had accosted us caught up a club and made toward Partial with intent to kill him. Then, indeed, we all sprang into action. In two strides I was before him.

“Drop that!” I said to him quickly, but I hope not angrily. “Call him off, Jack!” I cried to Lafitte at the same time.

The sound of conflict ceased as Partial was persuaded to release his fallen foe, and the latter disappeared, with more wisdom as to attacking a band of pirates. His owner, however, was not so easily daunted. He still advanced toward Partial, and as I still intervened, he made a vicious side blow at me with his club.

It all happened, almost, in the twinkling of an eye. Here, then, was an adventure, and before the end of our second day!

There was not time to learn or to ask the reason for this man’s animosity toward us, and, indeed, no thought of that came to my mind. A man may lay tongue to one—within certain bounds—and one will only walk away from him; but the touch of another man’s hand or weapon is quite another matter. That arouses the unthinking blood, and follows then, no matter the issue, the gaudium certaminis, with no care as to odds or evens. Wherefore, even as the club whizzed by to my side step, I came back from the other foot and smote the hostile stranger on the side of the neck so stiffly that he faltered and almost dropped. Then seeing that I was so much lighter than himself and perhaps valuing himself against me purely on a basis of avoirdupois, pound for pound, he gathered and came at me, roaring out blasphemy and obscenity which I had rather Lafitte and L’Olonnois had not heard.

I had not often fought in fact, but knew that, sometimes, a gentleman must fight. What astonished me now was the fact that fighting contained no manner of repugnance to me. With a certain joy I met my foe, circled with him, exchanged blows with him—unequally it is true, for I was cool as though trying a cause at law, and he was very angry: so that he got most of my leads, and I but few of his, albeit jarring me enough to make my ears sing and my eyes blur somewhat, although of pain I was no more conscious than a fighting dog. The turf was soft underfoot, and the space wide, so that we fought very happily and comfortably over perhaps a hundred feet of country, first one and then the other coming in; until at last I had him so well blown that he stood, and I knew we must now end it toe to toe. I bethought me of a trick of my old boxing teacher, and stood before him with arms curved wide apart, inviting him to come into what seemed an opening. He rushed, and my left fist caught him on the neck. He straightened to finish me, but I stooped and brought my right in a round-arm blow, full and hard into the small of his back and at one side. It sickened him, and before he could rally, I stepped behind him, and having no ethics save the necessity of subduing him, I caught up his arm by the wrist, and slipping under it with my shoulder, pulled it down till he howled: a trick, only one of very many, which Hiroshimi patiently had taught me.

That very naturally ended our contest, and it was near to ending our war-like neighbor as well. During this warfare, which was short or long, I knew not, my associates, stunned and perhaps fearful, had sat silent; at least, I neither heard nor saw them. But now, all at once, over my shoulder I saw both Lafitte and L’Olonnois running in to my assistance. Each held in hand a bared blade of the samurai, and had I not shouted out to them to refrain, I have small doubt that in the most piratical and unsamuraic fashion they mayhap would have disemboweled my captive; for the old swords were keen as razors, and my friends were as red of eyesight as myself.

“No! No!” I called to them, even as our victim writhed and roared in terror. “Drop your weapons—that isn’t fair.” They obeyed, shamefacedly and with regret, as I am convinced: for illusion with them, at times, indeed overleaped the centuries, and they were back in a time of blood: even as I was in a stone-age wrath for my own part.

“Come here, Jack,” I ordered, “and you, too, Jimmy. Do you see how I have him?”

They agreed. “It’s a peach,” said Lafitte. “Make him holler!”

“No,” I replied, easing off the strain on the wrenched arm, “he has already ‘hollered.’”

“Yes, sure, ’nuff, ’nuff!——ye!” cried our captive, who, now, was in mortal terror and much contrition, seeing both flesh and blood and cold steel had all the best of him. “Lemme go!”

“Certainly,” I assented; “we did not ask you to come, and do not want you to stay. But, first, I must use you in a few demonstrations to my young friends. Jack,”—and I motioned to him with my head—“get behind him.”

Eagerly, his three-cornered gray eyes narrowed, Lafitte skipped back of my man, and with no word from me he fastened on the other wrist so suddenly the man had no warning, and with a strong heave of all his body he doubled that arm up also. Much roaring now, and many protestations, for when our prisoner began with abuse, we could change it into supplication by raising his bent arms no more than one inch or two.

“Now, Jimmy,” said I, “go in front of him, and put a thumb in the corner of his jaw, on each side. Press up until he begs our pardon.” And, faith, my blue-eyed pirate, so far from shuddering at the task, at last managed to find those certain nerve centers known to all efficient policemen; and very promptly, the man made signs he would like to beg the boy’s pardon and did so.

“Now, give me that arm, Jack,” I resumed calmly, since our subject had no more fight left in him than a sack of meal. “So. Now go around and put your thumbs in his eyes—no, not really in his eyes, but in the middle of the bone above his eyes. So. Now, ask this boy’s pardon, or I’ll twist your arms off.” And he asked it.

“You couldn’t do it if you’d fight fair!” he bellowed.

“Could I not?” I asked. And cast him free. “Come on again, then.”

“I’m afraid of them kids,” said he. “They’d stick me.”

“No, they would not,” said I; but still he would not come on. Then I made a quick catch at his wrist, edgewise, and rolled my thumb along it at a certain place where the nerves lie close to the edge of the bone, as any policeman knows; and he would follow me, then. So I led him to our little camp-fire.

“Now,” said I to him, “be seated,” and he sat. I asked him if he would shake hands with me and my boys and make up. He was very sullen, but, at last, did so, not cheerfully, I fear, for he was not of good blood.

“Tell me,” I demanded then, seeing that the triumph of calm reason had been sufficient in his case, “why did you come here, and why do you try to drive us off, who are only on a peaceful journey as pirates, seeking our fortune?”

“Pirates!” he exclaimed. “Just what I thought. What’s the use my leasin’ the pearl fer a mile along here if anybody can come and camp, and go to work, right alongside o’ me? If old farmer Snider, that owns this land, hadn’t gone to town I’d have the law on ye. Me payin’ my money in and gettin’ no protection. Fishin’s rotten, too!”

I now perceived that we had encountered one of those half-nomad characters, a fresh-water pearl fisherman, such as those who, for some years, with varying fortune, have combed the sand-bars of our inland river for the fresh-water mussels which sometimes, like oysters, secrete valuable pearls or nacreous bits known as slugs. This explained much to me.

“I know the law,” said I. “Farmer Snider can not lease the highway of yonder river where the Sea Rover passes. But I know also the law of the wilderness. One trapper does not intrude on another who has first located his country. We will pass on to-morrow. Meantime, if you don’t mind, we will go with you to your camp and see how you do your work. Please forget that we have had any trouble. Had you but spoken thus at first, and not borne war against these bold pirates, all would have been well.”

He looked at me oddly, evidently thinking my mind touched.

“Come!” I said, wiping the blood from my face, and passing him also a basin of water, “you fought well and the wonder is you did not kill me with one of those swings or swipes of yours. They were crooked and awkward, but they came hard.”

He grinned and saved his face further by saying: “Well, you was three to one ag’in me.” I smiled and let it stand so: and after a while, he arose stiffly and we all passed back into the wood.

We found that we were upon a little island, between two shallow arms of the stream. The camp of the pearl fisher lay at the lower end; and never have I seen or smelled so foul a place for human habitation. The one large tent served as shelter, and a rude awning sheltered the ruder table in the open air. But directly about the tent, and all around it in every direction, lay heaps of clam shells, most of them opened, some not yet ready for opening. I had smelled the same odor—and had not learned to like it—in far-off Ceylon, at the great pearl fisheries of the Orient. The “clammer” seemed immune.

Presently, he introduced to us a woman, very old, extraordinarily forbidding of visage, and unspeakably profane of speech, who emerged from the tent; his mother, he said. It seemed that they made their living in this way, clamming, as they called it, all the way from Arkansas to the upper waters of the Mississippi. They had made this side expedition up a tributary, in search of country not so thoroughly exploited; without much success in their venture, it seemed. The old lady, her head wrapped in a dirty shawl, sat down on an empty box, and stroked a large and dirty Angora cat, another member of the family, the while she bitterly and profanely complained. It was now dusk, and she did not notice anything out of the way in her son’s rather swollen nose and lips.

I explained to Lafitte and L’Olonnois that we were now come into the neighborhood of possible treasure, and the sight of a few pearls, none of very great worth, which the old crone produced from a cracker box, was enough to set off Jimmy L’Olonnois, who was all for raiding the place.

“What!” he hissed to me in an aside. “Did we not spare his life? Then the treasure should be ours!”

“Wait, brother,” said I. “We shall see what we shall see.” And I quieted Lafitte also, who was war-like at the very sound of the word pearl. “Them’s what they take from the Spanish ships,” said he. “Pearls is fitten for ladies fair. An’ here is pearls.”

“Wait, brother,” I demanded of him. For I was revolving something in my mind. I presently accosted the clammers.

“Listen,” said I, “you say business is bad.”

“It certainly and shorely is,” assented the old dame, fishing a black pipe out of her pocket, and proceeding to feed it from another pocket, to the discomfort of the soiled Angora cat.

“Well, now, let me make you a proposition,” said I, taking a glance at the heap of fresh shell which lay beyond the racks of trolling lines and their twisted wire hooks, by means of which dragging apparatus the mussels are taken—shutting hard on the wire when it touches them as they lie feeding with open mouths—“you’ve quite a lot of shell there, now.”

“Yes, but what’s in it? Button factories all shut down with a strike, and no market: and as for pearls, they ain’t none. Blame me for carryin’ a grouch?”

“Not in the least. But what will you take for your shells, and agree to open them for us, at wages of five dollars a day?”

“Both of us?” he demanded shrewdly. I smiled and nodded. “It’s more than you average, twice over,” said I, “and you say the stream is no good. Now I, too, am a student of the great law of averages, because I am or was a director in a great life insurance company. You say the luck is bad. Like other adventurers, I say that under the law of averages, it is time for the luck to change.”

“The luck’s with you,” growled the clammer, “it’s ag’in me.” Unconsciously, he put a finger to his swollen nose. “What’ll you gimme?” he demanded.

“One hundred dollars bonus and ten dollars a day,” said I promptly; and he seemed to know I would not better that.

“Who are ye?” he queried: “a buyer?”

“No, a pirate.”

“I believe ye. I never saw such a outfit.”

“Will you trade?” I asked; “and how long will it take to open the lot?”

“Nigh all day, even if we set up all night and roasted.” He nodded to a wide grating; and the ashes underneath showed that in this way the poor clams, like the Incas of old, were sometimes forced to give up their treasures by the persuasion of a fire under them.

“Very well,” I said. “We’ll call it a day. That’s a hundred and ten dollars for you by this time to-morrow. I invoke the aid of capital and of chance, both, against you. You will very likely lose: but if so, it would not be the first time the producer of wealth has lost it. But I make the wager fair, as my reason tells me I should.”

“Ye’re a crazy bunch, and I think ye’re out of the state asylum over yonder,” broke in the old woman, “but what the hell do we care whether ye’re crazy or not? Ye look like ye had the money. Jake, we’ll take him up.”

“All right,” said Jake. “We’ll go ye.”

“To-morrow morning, then,” said I; and our party rose to return to our camp, where Partial greeted us with warmth; he having assigned to himself the duty of guard. And so, as Pepys would say, to bed; although Lafitte and L’Olonnois scarce could sleep.

“Let him attempt to make a run for it, after we have hove him to, and we will board him and give no quarter!” This was almost the last of the direful speech I heard from L’Olonnois, as at last I turned myself to a night of deep and peaceful slumber.

CHAPTER IX

IN WHICH WE TAKE MUCH TREASURE

“YOU must be awful rich, Black Bart,” said L’Olonnois to me as we sat on the grass, at breakfast, the following morning.

“No, Jimmy,” I replied, putting down my coffee cup, “on the contrary, I am very poor.”

“But you have all sorts of things, back there where you live; and last night you said you would pay that man a hundred dollars, just to open a lot of clam shells. Now, a hundred dollars is a awful sight of money.”

“That depends, Jimmy,” I said.

“’N’ we’d ought to take them pearls,” broke in Lafitte. “Didn’t we lick him?”

“We did, yes; twice.” And in my assent I felt, again, a fierce satisfaction in the first conquest of our invader, that of body to body, eye to eye; rather than in the one where I brought intellect to aid in war. “But there are two ways of being a pirate. Let us see if we can not win treasure by taking a chance in logic, and so be modern pirates.”

They did not understand me, and went mute, but at last Jimmy resumed his catechism. “Who owns the place where you live, Black Bart?”

“I do.”

“But how much?”

“Some five or six miles.”

“Gee! That must be over a hundred acres. I didn’t know anybody owned that much land. Where’d you get it?”

“In part from my father.”

“What business was he in?”

“He was a pirate, Jimmy, or at least, they said he was. But my mother was not.—I will tell you,” I added suddenly: “my father owned a great deal of timber land long ago, and iron, and oil, and copper, when nobody cared much for them. They say, now, he stole some of them, I don’t know. In those days people weren’t so particular. The more he got, the more he wanted. He never was a boy like you and me. He educated me as a lawyer, so that I could take care of his business and his property, and he trained me in the pirate business the best he could, and I made money too, all I wanted. You see, my father could never get enough, but I did; perhaps, because my mother wasn’t a pirate, you see. So, when I got enough, my father and mother both died, and when I began to see that, maybe, my father had taken a little more than our share, I began trying to do something for people ... but I can’t talk about that, of course.”

“Well, why not?” demanded Lafitte. “Go on.”

“A fellow doesn’t like to.”

“But what did you do?”

“Very little. I found I could not do very much. I gave some buildings to schools, that sort of thing. No one thanked me much. A good many called me a Socialist.”

“What’s that—a Socialist?”

“I can’t tell you. Nobody knows. But really, I suppose, a Socialist is a man born before the world got used to steam and electricity. Those things made a lot of changes, you see, and in the confusion some people didn’t get quite as square a deal as they deserved; or at least, they didn’t think they had. It takes time, really, as I suppose, to settle down after any great change. It’s like moving a house.”

“I see,” said Jimmy sagely. “But, Black Bart, you always seemed to me like as if, now, well, like you was studyin’ or something, somehow. Ain’t you never had no good times before?”

“No. This is about the first really good time I ever had in all my life. You see, you can’t really understand things that you look at from a long way off—you’ve got to get right in with folks to know what folks are. Don’t you think so?”

“I know it!” answered Jimmy, with conviction. And I recalled, though he did not, the fact that he bathed daily, Lafitte weekly, yet no gulf was fixed between their portions of the general humanity.

“It must be nice to be rich,” ventured Lafitte presently. “I’m going to be, some day.”

“Is that why you go a-pirating?” I smiled.

“Maybe. But mostly, because I like it.”

“It’s a sort of game,” said L’Olonnois.

“All life is a sort of game, my hearties,” said I. “What you two just have said covers most of the noble trade of piracy and nearly all of the pretty game of life. You are wise as I am, wise as any man, indeed.”

“What I like about you, Black Bart,” resumed L’Olonnois, naively, “is, you seem always fair.”

I flushed at this, suddenly, and pushed back my plate. “Jimmy,” said I at last, “I would rather have heard that, from you, than to hear I had made a million dollars from pearls or anything else. For that has always been my great hope and wish—that some day I could teach myself always to be fair—not to deceive anybody, most of all not myself; in short, to be fair. Brother, I thank you, if you really believe I have succeeded to some extent.”

“Why ain’t you always jolly, like you was havin’ a good time, then?” demanded my blue-eyed inquisitor. “Honor bright!”

“Must it be honor bright?”

“Yes.”

“Then I will tell you. It is because of the first chapter of Genesis, Jimmy.”

“What’s that?”

“Fie! Fie! Jimmy, haven’t you read that?” He shook his head.

“I’ve read a little about the fights,” he said, “when Saul ’n’ David ’n’ a lot of ’em slew them tens of thousands. But Genesis was dry.”

“Do you remember any place where it says ‘Male and female created He them’?”

“Oh, yes; but what of it? That’s dry.”

“Is it, though?” I exclaimed. “And you with an Auntie Helena, and a brother Black Bart. Jimmy L’Olonnois, little do you know what you say!”

“Well, now,” interrupted the ruthless soul of Jean Lafitte, “how about them pearls?”

“That’s so,” assented Jimmy. “Pearls is booty.”

“Very well, then, shipmates,” I assented, “as soon as we have washed the dishes, we will see what can be done with the enemy yonder.”

We found our two clammers, the young man and his crone of a mother, up betimes and hard at work, as evil-looking a pair as ever I saw. The man’s face was still puffed and discolored, where my fists had punished him, and his disposition had not improved overnight. His hag-like dam also regarded us with suspicion and disfavor, I could note, and I saw her glance from me to her son, making mental comparisons; and guessed she had heard explanations regarding black eyes which did not wholly satisfy her.

They had already roasted open and examined quite a heap of shells by the time we arrived, and I inquired, pleasantly, if they had found anything. The man answered surlily that they had not; but something made me feel suspicious, since they had made so early a start. I saw him now and then wipe his hands on his overalls, and several times noted that as he did so, his middle finger projected down below the others, as though he were touching for something inside his pocket, which lay in front, the overalls being made for a carpenter, with a narrow pocket devised for carrying a folded foot-rule. But I could see nothing suggested in the pocket.

“That’s too bad,” I said pleasantly. “It looks as though I were going to lose my hundred, doesn’t it? Still, the day is long.”

I busied myself in watching the deft work of the two as they opened the shells started by the heat, sweeping out the fetid contents, and feeling in one swift motion of a thumb for any hidden secretion of the nacre. Nothing was found while I was watching, and as I did not much like the odor, I drew to one side. I found L’Olonnois and Lafitte standing apart, in full character, arms folded and scowling heavily.

“If yonder villain plays us false,” said Lafitte between his clenched teeth, “he shall feel the vengeance of Jean Lafitte! And I wouldn’t put it a blame bit a-past him, neither,” he added, slightly out of drawing for the time.

“You are well named, Lafitte,” I smiled. “You are a good business man. But the day is long.”

It was, indeed, long, and I put in part of it wandering about with Partial, hunting for squirrels, which he took much delight in chasing up trees. Again, I lay for a time reading one of my favorite authors, the wise stoic, Epictetus, tarrying over one of my favorite passages:

“Remember that you are an actor of just such a part as is assigned you by the Poet of the play; of a short part, if the part be short, of a long part if the part be long. Should He wish you to act the part of a beggar, (‘or of a pirate,’ I interpolated, aloud to myself, and smiling) take care to act it naturally and nobly; and the same if it be the part of a lame man, or a ruler, or a private man. For this is in your power—to act well the part assigned to you; but to choose that part is the function of another.”

I lay thoughtful, querying. Was I a rich man, or a poor man? Was I a ruler, or a private man, or a lame man?... I asked myself many questions, concluding that all my life I had, like most of us all, been more or less a lame man and a private man after all, and much like my fellow.... It was a great day for me; since each day I seek to learn something. And here now was I, blessed by the printed wisdom of age and philosophy, and yet more blessed by the spoken philosophy of unthinking Youth.... I lay flat, my arms out on the grass, and looked up at the leaves. I felt myself a part of the eternal changeless scheme, and was well content. It has always been impossible for me to care for the little things of life—such as the amassing of money—when I am alone in the woods. I pondered now on the wisdom of my teachers, Epictetus, Jimmy, John and the author of the Book of Genesis.

I arose at last with less of melancholy and more of resolve than I had known for years. The world swam true on its axis all around me; and I, who all my life had been in some way out of balance in the world, now walked with a strange feeling of poise and certainty.... No, I said to myself, I would argue no more with Helena. And meantime since the Poet of the play had assigned me the double rôle of pirate and boy, I was resolved to act both “naturally and nobly.”

I could not have called either of my associates less than natural and noble in his part, viewed as I found them when at length I sought them to partake of a cold luncheon. They stood apart, gloom and stern dignity themselves, offering no speech to the laboring clammers, who, by this time, were but masses of evil odors and ill-temper in equal parts.

“I think he’s holdin’ out on us!” hissed Jean Lafitte, as I approached. “Time and again I seen the varlet make false moves. Let him have a care! The eye of Jean Lafitte is upon him!”

For my own part, I cared little for anything beyond the sport in my pearl venture, but no man likes to be “done,” so I joined the guard over the pearl fishing. I could see little indication of success on the part of the two clammers, who went on in their work steadily, exchanging no more than a monosyllable now and then, but who were animated, it seemed to us, by the same excitement which governs the miner washing gravel in his pan. They scarce could rest, but went on from shell to shell, opening each as eagerly as though it meant a fortune. This of itself seemed to me both natural and yet not wholly natural; for it was now late in the day’s work. Why should they go on quite so eagerly in what six hours of stooping in the sun should have made monotonous routine?

They showed me a few pieces they had saved, splinters and slugs of nacre, misshapen and of no luster, and sneered at the net results, worth, at most, not so much as the day’s wages I was paying either. I cared nothing for the results, and smiled and nodded as I took them.

Thus the day wore on till mid-afternoon, when, such had been the zeal of the clammers, the heap of bivalves was exhausted. They stood erect, straightening their stiffened backs, and grinned as they looked at me.

“Well,” said the old hag, “I reckon ye’re satisfied now that we know this business better’n you do. He told ye there wasn’t no pearl in this river.”

“No;” added her hopeful son, “an’ come to think of it, how’d I ever know you had a hundred dollars? I ain’t seen it yet. But we’ve done, so let’s see it now.”

I quietly opened my pocketbook and took several bills of that yellow-backed denomination, and selected one for him. He took it at first suspiciously, then greedily, and I saw his eyes go to my wallet. “I forgot,” said I, and took out two bills of five dollars each, which I handed to him.

“By golly!” said he, “so’d I forgot!”

“Why did you forget about your wages?” I asked, and looked at him keenly. He turned his eyes aside.

“This fresh-water pearl fishing,” said I, “has many points of likeness to the ocean pearl fishing in Ceylon.”

“You been there?” he queried. “And why is it like them?”

“In several ways. It is, in the first place, all a gamble. The pearl merchants buy the oysters as I bought my mussels, by the lump and as a chance, based on the law of average product. They rot the oysters as you do the mussels. The smell is the same: and many other things are the same. For instance, it is almost impossible to keep the diver from stealing pearls, just as it is hard to keep the Kafirs from stealing the diamonds they find in the mines.”

I still was looking at him closely, and now I said to him mildly, and in a low tone of voice, “It would be of no use—I should only beat you again; and I would rather spare your mother. You see,” I added in a louder tone of voice, “the natives put pearls in their hair, between their toes, in their mouths—although they do not chew tobacco as you do. One who merely put one in the pocket of his overalls—if he wore overalls—would be called very clumsy, indeed, especially if he had been seen to do it.”

Involuntarily, he clapped a hand on his pocket. What would have been his next act I do not know, for at that moment I heard a voice call out sharply, “Halt! villain. Throw up your hands, or by heavens you die!” Turning swiftly, I saw Lafitte, his pistol barrel rested in very serviceable fashion in the crotch of a staff, the same as when he first accosted me on my stream, glancing along the barrel with an ominous gray eye again gone three-cornered.

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.”

“What then?” he demanded, still covetous, albeit rueful, too, at what he vaguely knew was lost opportunity.

“It was because you did not play the part of a clammer naturally and nobly,” I replied. “My friend, I counsel you to read Epictetus—and while you are at that,” I added, “I suggest you read also that other classic, the one known as The Pirate’s Own Book.”

So saying, since he stood stupefied, and really not seeing my hand, which I reached out to him in farewell, I called to Partial, and followed by the two stern and relentless figures, made our way back to the spot where the good ship Sea Rover lay straining at her hawser.

“What ho! messmates!” I cried. “Fortune has been kind to our bold band this day. We have taken large booty. Let us up anchor and set sail. Before yon sun has sunk into the deep we shall be far away, and our swift craft is able to shake off all pursuit.”

“Whither away, Black Bart,—Captain, I mean!” said Jean Lafitte (and I blushed at this title and this hard-won rank, as one of the proudest of my swiftly-following accomplishments in happiness).

“Spang! to the Spanish Main,” was my reply.

A moment later, the waves were rippling merrily along the sides of the Sea Rover as she headed out boldly into the high seas.

CHAPTER X

IN WHICH I SHOW MY TRUE COLORS

THERE were many lesser adventures in which Lafitte, L’Olonnois and I shared on our voyage through the long waterways leading down to the great river, but of these I make small mention, for, in truth, one boasts little of one’s deeds in piracy after the fact, or of inciting piracy and making accessories before the fact, the more especially if such accessories be small but bloodthirsty boys. These latter, let me plead in extenuation of my own sins, already were pirates, and set upon rapine. For my own part, seeing their resolution to take green corn and other vegetables, aye, even fowls, as part of the natural returns of their stern calling, I made no remonstrances, not the first leader unable to restrain his ruthless band, but I eased my own conscience by leaving—quite unknown to them,—sundry silver coins in cleft sticks, prominently displayed, in the hope that irate farmers might find them when, after our departure, they visited the scenes of our marauding. And to such an extent did this marauding obtain that, by the time we had reached the Mississippi River, I was almost wholly barren of further silver coins.

Many things I learned as we voyaged; as that my dog Partial would, when asked, roll over and over upon the ground, or sit up and bark—things taught him by no man known in his history, so far as Lafitte could recall it. And things I learned regarding birds and small animals of which my law books had told me nothing. As to mosquitoes, I learned that, whereas they do not hurt a young pirate, they do an old one; and I half resolved to discontinue my book regarding them. Perhaps it was not of first importance.

But two things grew on me in conviction. First, I loved Helena Emory more and more each day of my life; and second, that I must see her at the first moment possible—in spite of all my resolutions to put her out of my life forever! And, these two things being assured, when we saw the rolling yellowish flood of the Father of the Waters at last sweeping before us, I realized that, bound as I was in honor to hold on with my faithful band, our craft, the Sea Rover—sixteen feet long she was, and well equipped with Long Toms and deck cannonades—would have no chance to overtake the Belle Helène, fastest yacht on the Great Lakes, who might, so far as I could tell, at that very moment be cleaving through the Chicago canal, to enter the great river hundreds of miles ahead of us.

Wherefore, leaving my bold mates in bivouac one day, I made journey to the nearest town. There, I sent certain messages to anxious parents, and left for them our probable itinerary as tourists traveling by private conveyance. I could not set our future dates and ports more closely together; for, before I left town, I had purchased a sturdy power boat of our own, capable of doing her ten or twelve miles under her own petrol. I was in no mind to fall farther and farther back of the Belle Helène each day; and I counted upon our piratical energy to keep us going more hours a day than Cal Davidson—curses on him!—would be apt to travel.

I gave orders for immediate fitting of my new craft, and delivery on the spot; and within the hour, although regarded with much suspicion by the town marshal and many leading citizens, I set out for our bivouac, with the aid of the late owner of the boat, to whom I gave assurance that no evil should befall him. When we chugged along the shore, and slackened opposite our camp, I heard the stern voice of Lafitte hail us: “Ship ahoy!” (Perhaps he saw me at the stern sheets.)

“Aye! Aye! mate!” I answered, through my cupped hands. “Bear a hand with our landing line.” Whereat my hardy band came running and made us fast.

“What has gone wrong, Black Bart?” demanded L’Olonnois, uncertain of my status. “Hast met mishap and struck colors?”

“By no means!” I rejoined. “This is a prize, our first capture. And since she has struck her colors, let us mount our own at her foremast and ship our band to a bigger and faster craft.”

The late owner, who bore the name of Robinson, looked on much perplexed, and, I think, in some apprehension, for he must have thought us dangerous, whether sane or mad.

“Who’ll run her?” he at length demanded of me, looking from me to my two associates. Then forth and stood Jean Lafitte; and answered a question I confess I had not yet myself asked: “Ho! I guess a fellow who can run a gasoline pump in a creamery can handle one of them things. So think not, fellow, to escape us!”

I reassured Robinson, who was apparently ready to make a run for it; and I explained to Lafitte and L’Olonnois my plan.

“We’ll by no means discard our brig, the original Sea Rover,” said I, “and we’ll tow her along as our tender. But we’ll christen the prize the Sea Rover instead, and hoist our flag over her—and paint on her name at the first point of call we make. Now, let us hasten, for two thousand miles of sea lie before us, and Robinson is also five miles from home.”

But Robinson became more and more alarmed each moment. He had my money, I his bill of sale, but ride back to town with us he would not. Instead, he washed his hands of us and started back afoot—to get the town marshal, I was well convinced. It mattered little to us; for once more did sturdy Jean Lafitte more than make good his boast. With one look at the gasoline tank to assure himself that all was well, he made fast the painter of the old Sea Rover, and even as L’Olonnois with grim determination planted the Jolly Rover above our bows, and as I tossed aboard the cargo of our former craft, Lafitte cranked her up with master hand, threw in the gear, and with a steady eye headed her for midstream, where town marshals may not come.

I looked at my mates in admiration. They could do things I could not do, and they faced the future with no trace of hesitation. I caught from them a part of this resolution I so long had lacked. I added this to my determination to see Helena Emory once more and soon as wind and wave would allow. So that, believe me, the blood rose quickly in my veins as I saw now we had faster travel ahead of us.

“Square away the main braces, my hearties!” I called. “Break out the spinnaker and set the jibs. It’s a wet sheet and a flowing sea, and let any stop us at their peril!”

“Aye! Aye! Sir,” came the response of Jean Lafitte in a voice almost bass, and “Aye! Aye! Sir,” piped the blue-eyed Lieutenant L’Olonnois. The stanch craft leaped ahead, wallowing in cross seas till we reached the mid-current of the Mississippi’s heavy flood, then riding and rising gamely as she met wave after wave that came up-stream with the head wind. The eyes of Lafitte gleamed. L’Olonnois, hand over eyes, stood in our bows. “Four bells, and all’s well!” he intoned in a vigorous voice.

It was my own heart made answer, in the sweetest challenge it ever had given to the world: “All’s well!” And far ahead I, too, peered across the wave, seeking to make out the hull of fleeing craft that bore treasure I was resolved should yet be mine.

“More sail, Officer!” I called to Jean Lafitte. He grinned in answer.

“You’re in a hurry, Black Bart. What makes you?” And even L’Olonnois turned a searching gaze upon me.

“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.

We came, I knew not after how many days forgotten in detail—after passing, each avoided as a pestilence, many cities prosperous in commerce—alongside the river port of the city of St. Louis, crowded with motley and misfit shipping of one sort or other, where our craft might moor without fear of exciting any suspicion, in spite of our ominous name; for I had the precaution to lower our flag of the skull and cross-bones.

I sought out the man most apt to know of any considerable vessels docking there, and made inquiry for any power yacht one hundred and twenty-five feet long, white and black ventilators, white hull with blue line, flying the burgee Belle Helène, or some such name. None could advise me for a time, and I looked in vain, as I had in every dock in six hundred miles, for the trim hull of my yacht. At last one old mariner, in rubber boots, himself skipper of a house-boat south-bound for a winter’s trapping, admitted that he had seen such a craft three days before!

“Did she dock?” I demanded.

“Sure she did, and lay over night. I remember it well enough, for I saw her tie up; and that evening her owner went ashore and up-town, and with him his bride, I reckon—handsomest girl in all the town. They must have been married, for he was lookin’ like he owned her. That was lemme see, two days ago or maybe four. They came aboard her next morning, all three—there was a old party along, girl’s mother likely—around eleven o’clock, and in a little while cast off and went on down-river. As fine a boat as ever made the river run—still as a mouse she was, but quick as a cat, and around Ste. Genevieve, I reckon, before I got back to my own scow after helping them off here. No wonder her owner was proud. He stood on the quarter-deck like a lord. Why shouldn’t he, ownin’ a boat an’ a girl like that?”

“He doesn’t own either!” I retorted hotly.

“Why, how do you know he don’t?” demanded my sea-going man.

“Who should know, if not myself?”

“Sho! You talk like you owned her!”

“I do own her!”

“It looks like it. Which do you mean—her the yacht, or her the girl?”

“Both—no! That is, well at least I own the boat.”

“That may all be, or it all mayn’t,” he replied, openly scoffing; “at least so far’s the boat goes. Anybody kin buy anything that has the price. But as to the girl, you’d have to prove it, if I was him. And if he didn’t look like he owned her, or was goin’ to, I’ll eat your own gas tank there, an’ them two kids in it fer good measure.”

Of course I could not argue or explain, and therefore turned away. But all the answer of my soul came from the lips of L’Olonnois, who, propped up against the cockpit combing, was reading aloud to Lafitte from The Pirate’s Own Book as I approached. “Hah! my good man!” exclaimed the pirate chieftain as he looked at his blade, “unhand the maid, or by Heaven! your life’s blood shall dye the deck where you stand!”

“Ah, ha! Cal Davidson,” said I to myself through my set teeth; “little do you think that you are discovered in your sins, and little do you know that the avenger is on your track. But have a care, for Black Bart and his band pursues you!”

And, seeing that we had now laid in abundance of ship’s stores, including four drums of gasoline; and since the trail of Cal Davidson was, at least, no wider than the banks of the river down which he had fled, it looked ill enough for the chances of that robber when the stanch Sea Rover, her flag again aloft and promising no quarter, chugged out into midstream and took up a pursuit which was to know no faltering until at last I had learned the truth about the fair captive of the Belle Helène. For indeed, indeed, Omar, and you, too, stout Lafitte and hardy L’Olonnois, the Bird of Life was on the wing.

CHAPTER XII

IN WHICH WE CLOSE WITH THE ENEMY

CAL Davidson took on five drums of petrol at Cairo, and a like amount of champagne at Memphis, and no man may tell what other supplies at this or that other point along the river. He evidently suspected no pursuit, or, if he did, was a swaggering varlet enough, for, according to all accounts which we could get, he loitered and lingered along, altogether at his leisure, with due attention to social matters at every port; for if he had not a wife at every port, at least, he had an acquaintance of business or social sort, so that, one might be sure, there were few dull moments for him and his party, whether afloat or ashore. He must have attended a dinner-party and two theaters at Memphis, and have sailed only after making three thousand dollars out of a combination in champagne present and cotton future, whose disgusting details I did not seek to learn. Trust Davidson to make money, and to make the most of life also as he went along. He always had the best of everything; and surely now he had, for the leisurely, ease-seeking Belle Helène, not actuated by any vast motive beyond that of the bee and the honey flower, slipped on down and ahead with perfect ease, while we, grimy, slow, determined, plowed on in her wake losing miles each hour the graceful Belle Helène chose to show us her light disdainful heels, serenely indifferent because wholly ignorant of our existence.

But we held to the chase as true pirates, not loitering at any port, and—since now I, also, had learned something of the intricacies of our engine, and could take a trick while the others slept—running twice the hours daily the haughty yacht would deign to log. I knew that Cal Davidson would stop to shoot and to visit, and knew that he could, by no human means, be induced to pass any telegraph point where the daily standing of the baseball clubs could be learned—he counted that day lost in which he did not learn the scores. As for myself, I have never been able to understand how any grown man or any one ungrown can take any interest whatever in the deeds of hired ball-playing Hessians, who have back of them neither patriotism nor even a municipal pride. But, for once, I was joyed that the organized business sense of a few men had put an otherwise able citizen under tribute, because now, though the Belle Helène must pause at least daily, the Sea Rover need do no such thing.

Nor did we. We were hot on the trail of the enemy as he flew south along the Chickasha Bluffs, hot as he left Memphis behind, and taking the widening waters which now wandered through low forest lands, reached out for the next city of size, historic Vicksburg on her seventy hills. And hot and eager, more than ever, were we when, chugging around the head of that vast arm of the river, where it curves like a boy of some southern sea, with its heights rising beyond and afar, we saw what caused me to exclaim aloud, “At last! There she lies, my hearties!”

I pointed on ahead. To my eyes, who had designed her, every line of that long, graceful, white hull was familiar. The jaunty rake of her air-shafts, like stacks of a liner, the sweep of her clean freeboard up to her shining rail, the ease of her bows, the graceful boldness of her overhang—all were familiar enough to me. She was my boat, and once I was wont to enjoy her. And on board her now was the woman who had taken away from me all desire to keep a yacht in commission, to keep open a house in town, or an office, or to frequent my clubs, or to meet my friends. Was she there, this woman; and was she still?—but I dared not ask that question.

“Full speed ahead, Jean!” I called. “That’s the Belle Helène! Yonder lies the enemy!”

And then the inevitable happened. Perhaps it was too much gas, perhaps too much lubricant, perhaps a spark plug was carrying too much carbon. At any rate, the engine of the Sea Rover chose that time to chug and cease to revolve!

It was more than a mile to the foot of that vast curve; and even as I leaped at the grimy oily motor, I saw a white dingey with blue trim make out from the wharf and leisurely pull alongside the landing stair of the yacht. It held two figures only, that of the deck-hand who rowed, and that of the large white-flanneled man who now disembarked from the dingey and went aboard the yacht. He was waving a paper over his head, so that I inferred the Giants must have won that day. And then, as we tugged and hurried with our arbitrary motor, I saw the Belle Helène, with a slight smiling salute to friends ashore, swing daintily about and head out and down the river! The faint and infallible rhythm of her perfect enginery came throbbing to us across the water ... I stood up. I hailed, I waved, I shouted, and I fear even cursed. Perhaps they thought some drunken fisherman was disporting himself; but certainly, a few moments later, we were rocking on the roll of the river, and the yacht was out of sight and sound around the next great bend.

“It shall go hard but we overhaul yon varlet yet,” said L’Olonnois grimly.

“Aye,” assented Lafitte; “we’ve busted a plug, an’ he has showed us a clean pair of heels, but it’s a long chase if the Sea Rover does not overhaul him. We’ll have to overhaul our engine first, though,” he added thoughtfully.

But the overhauling of our engine meant a voyage under sweeps to a precarious landing among divers packets, house-boats and launches, on Vicksburg waterside, and a later visit to a specialist in diseases of the carburetor; so that, when at last the Sea Rover was ready for the sea again, her chase might have been a hundred miles ahead an she liked.

“Gee!” exclaimed Jean Lafitte, as we were about to cast off. “Looky here, de Cubs licked de G’ints five to one to-day.” He pointed to figures in a newspaper which he had obtained. So then it might have been excitement of rage, and not of joy, which had animated Cal Davidson when he went aboard.

“Never mind then,” said I, “for that gives us a day’s start.”

“How do you mean?” demanded Jean.

“It means that yonder varlet will not leave Natchez to-morrow until late evening, after the wires are in from the northern ball games,” I replied. “Of course he’ll stop there next.” I felt now that the Lord had, by implanting this insane lust of petty baseball news in his soul, delivered my enemy into my hand.

Now I wist not how or at what dignified speed the Belle Helène swept on down that mighty river through the rich southern lands; nor do I scarce half remember the painstaking persistent run we made with the grimy Sea Rover in pursuit, hour after hour, night or day. We had no licensed pilot or licensed engineer, we bore no lights as prescribed by law, and heeded no channels as prescribed by government engineers. Pirates, indeed, we might have been as we plowed on down in the wake of our quarry, along the ancient highway famous in fast packet days. We cared nothing for law, order, custom, conventions, precedents—the very things which had enslaved me all my life I now cast aside. Through bend after bend, along willow-lined flats and bluffs crowned with stately, moss-draped live-oaks, we swept on and on; and always I strained my eyes to see, my ears to hear, on ahead some sign of the Belle Helène; always strained my heart for some sign from her. Why, even I looked in the water for some bottle bearing a memory from yon captive maid to me. Captive? Why, certainly she must be captive; and certainly she must know that I, Black Bart the Avenger, was upon the trail.

We made the pleasant city of Natchez in the evening of the sweetest day on which, as I thought, the sun had ever set. Her lofty hills—for here the great eastern fence of hills which bound the Vermont Delta on the eastward sweep in to close the foot of the Delta’s V, and run sheer to the river’s brink—rose upon our left. The low tree-covered lands on the Louisiana side lay at our right, and over them hung, center of a most radiant evening curtain, painted in a thousand colors by the mighty brush of nature, the round red orb of day, now sinking to his rest.

I did not begrudge the sun his rest that day. For now, just at the edge of this beautiful picture there hung, at the dry point where the old keel boats used to land at old Natchez, under the hill where the pirates of those days sought relaxation from labors in the joys of combat or of wine, I caught sight of the long, low, graceful hull of the Belle Helène!

“Avast! Jean Lafitte,” I cried. “Shorten all sail, and bear across, west-by-west.”

“Aye! Aye! Sir,” came the response from my bold crew.

“Why don’t we run in and board her?” demanded L’Olonnois. However, seeing that I had laid hold of the steering line where I sat, and was heading the Sea Rover across the Louisiana side, away from the city’s water-front, he subsided.

“We’ll cast anchor yonder where the holding ground is good,” I explained. “To-night we’ll send off the long boat with a boarding party. And marry!” I added, “it shall go hard, but we’ll hold yon varlet to his accounting!”

CHAPTER XIII

IN WHICH WE BOARD THE ENEMY

SLOWLY the vast painting of the sky softened and faded until, at length, its edges blended with the shadows of the forest. There came into relief against the sky-line the etched outlines of the trees crowning the bluff on the eastern side of the great river. The oncoming darkness promised safety for a craft unimportant as ours as we now lay in the shadows of the western shore. Meantime, as well as the failing light allowed, we let nothing on board the Belle Helène go unobserved.

The yacht lay—with an audacity of carelessness which I did not like to note—hardly inside the edge of the regular shipping channel, but swung securely and gracefully at her cable, held by an anchor which I had devised myself, heavy enough for twice her tonnage. On the deck I could see an occasional figure, but though I plied my binoculars carefully, not the figure which I sought. A man leaned against the rail, idly, smoking, but this I made out to be the engineer, Williams, come up to get the evening air. Billy, the deck-hand, John, my Chinese cook, and Peterson, the boat-master, were at the time out of sight, as well as Cal Davidson, who had her under charter.

We lay thus, separated by some distance of the river’s flood, each craft at anchor, only one observed by the other. But to my impatient gaze matters seemed strangely slow on board the Belle Helène. I was relieved when at last the rather portly but well groomed figure of my friend Davidson appeared on deck. He made his way aft along the rail, and I could see him bend over and call down the companionway of the after staterooms. Then, an instant later, he was joined on the after deck by two ladies. The sight of one of these caused my heart to bound.

They stood for a moment, no more than dimly outlined, but I could see them well enough. The older lady, with the scarf about her head, was Aunt Lucinda. The slighter figure in white and wearing no head covering, was she, Helena Emory! It was Helena! It was Helena!

She turned toward Davidson. I could hear across the water the sound of laughter. A sudden feeling of anger came into my soul. I shifted my position in the Sea Rover, and stepped on Partial’s tail, causing him to give a sharp bark and to come and lick my hand in swift repentance. I feared for the time that his sound might attract attention to our boat, which, if examined closely, might seem a trifle suspicious. True pirates, and oblivious of all law, we had not yet hoisted our riding lights, though for all I know our black flag still was flying.

The three figures passed forward along the deck slowly and disappeared down the front companion-stair which led to the cozy dining-room. I could see them all sitting there, about my own table, using the very silver and linen which I had had made for the Belle Helène, attended by John, my Chinese cook and factotum, whom I had especially imported, selected from among a thousand other Chinese by myself at Hankow. I knew that Davidson would have champagne and a dozen other wines in abundance, everything the market offered. A pleasant party, this of three, which was seating itself at my table over yonder, while I, in a grimy, dingy, little tub lay looking at them, helpless in the gloom! Ah, villain, shrewd enough you were when you planned this trip for Aunt Lucinda’s health! Well enough you knew that of all places in the world none equals a well equipped private yacht for the courting of a maid. Why, if it be propinquity that does it, what chance had any man on earth against this man, enjoying the privilege of propinquity of propinquities, and adding thereto the weapons of every courtesy, every little pleasure a man may show a maid? Trust Cal Davidson for all that! I well-nigh gnashed my teeth in anger.

I scarce know how the time passed, until at last I saw them, in the illumination of the deck lights, at length come on deck again. They stood looking out over the river, or toward the lights of Natchez-under-the-Hill, and at length idly walked aft once more. The two ladies seated themselves on deck chairs under the awning of the rear deck. I could not see them now, but heard the tinkle and throb of a guitar come across the water, touched lightly with long pauses, as under some suspended melody not yet offered in fulness. Now and again I could hear a word or so, the rather deep voice of Aunt Lucinda, the bass tones of Davidson, but strain my ears as I might, I could not hear the sound of that other voice, low and sweet, an excellent thing in woman.

At length the little party seemed to be breaking up. I saw Davidson, half in shadow, outlined by the deck lights as he rose, and passed forward. Then I heard the falls run, and a soft splash as the dingey was launched overside. Cal Davidson was going ashore. He could no longer resist his anxiety over the baseball score! A moment later I heard the dip of the oars. Some one turned on the search-light, so that a wide shaft of light swung along the foot of Natchez Hill, toward which the dingey was headed. The shadows on the deck of the Belle Helène seemed darker now, by contrast, but I believed that Williams, the engineer, now had left the rail on which he was leaning over his folded arms.

I turned now to my wondering companions, who, seeing me so much interested, had remained for a long time practically silent. Fall now, curtain of romance, for we be but three pirates here! Up anchor, then, and back across the stream toward our quarry quickly, my bold mates, for now there lies at hand a dangerous work of the boarding party!

Thus I might have spoken aloud; for, at least, I hardly needed to do more than motion to Jean Lafitte, and as we resumed our softly chugging progress, having broken out our shallow anchorage, he steered the boat to the motion of my hand. We passed close alongside the Belle Helène and I examined her keenly as we did so. Then, apparently unnoticed, we dropped down-stream a bit, and found another anchorage.

“Clear away the long boat for the boarding party,” I now whispered hoarsely. I spoke to companions now in full character. Belted and armed, Lafitte and L’Olonnois rose ready for any bold emprise, each with red kerchief pulled about his brow. And now, to my interest, I observed that each had resumed the black mask which they had worn earlier in our long voyage, sign of the desperate character of each wearer.

“Whither away, Black Bart?” demanded L’Olonnois fiercely. “Lead, and we follow.”

“You had better put on a mask, Black Bart,” added Jean Lafitte, and handed me a spare one of his own manufacture. I hesitated, but then, seeing that part of my success lay in our all remaining somewhat piratical of character, I hastily slipped it above my eyes, and pulled down my hat brim. “She will not know me now,” said I to myself. And truly enough we seemed desperate folk, fierce as any who ever lay in keel boat off the foot of Natchez bluff, even in the bloodiest times of Mike Fink the Keel-boatman or of Murrell the southern bandit king.

Partial, without invitation, climbed into the skiff with us. “Cast off,” I ordered. “Oars!” And my young men—whom by this time I had trained in many ways nautical—obeyed in good seaman fashion. A moment later we lay almost under the rail of the Belle Helène. No one hailed us. We seemed taken only for some passing skiff.

“Listen!” I whispered, “there is risk in what we are going to do.”

I looked at my blue-eyed pirate, L’Olonnois, who sat closer to me. On his face was simple and complete happiness. At last, his adventure had come to him and he was meeting it like a man.

“What is it, Black Bart?” I heard Jean Lafitte whisper hoarsely.

“We are to board and take yonder ship,” I replied softly. “If we are to succeed, you must do precisely as I tell you. Leave the main risk to me, that of the law. I’ll take possession on the ground that she is my boat, that her charter money is not paid, and that yonder varlet is making away with her out of the country. She holds much treasure, let me assure you of that, my men—the greatest treasure that ever came down this river.

“Now, listen. You, Lafitte, as soon as we get aboard, are to run and close the hatch of the engine-room. That will pen Williams, the engineer, below, where he can make no resistance. As soon as that is done, run to those doors forward which lead down to the dining-room companionway and shut those doors and latch them. That will take care of John, the cook. The deck-hand is away with the varlet. That leaves only the shipmaster and the women captives.

“While you are busy in this way, Lafitte, I will hunt for Peterson, the master, who very likely is sitting quiet on the forward deck somewhere. The main danger lies with him. While I attend to him, you, L’Olonnois, run aft. You will find there two ladies, one very old and ugly, the other very young and very beautiful. See that they do not escape, and hold them there until I come aft to meet you.

“All this must go through as we have planned. Once the maiden is in our power, and the ship our own, we will head down-stream for the open sea. Are you with me, my bold mates?”

“Lead on, Black Bart!” I heard L’Olonnois hiss; and I saw Jean Lafitte tighten his belt.

“All ready, then,” said I. “I’ll go forward and make fast the painter when we reach the landing stair. Follow me quickly. Leave Partial in the boat. Gently now.”

Swiftly but silently, we swept in under the lee of the Belle Helène. The landing ladder had not been drawn up after Davidson’s departure, so that the boarding party had easy work ahead.

I sprang upon the deck, my footfalls deadened by the rubber matting which lay along all the decks. I turned. Above the rail behind me rose the face of Lafitte, masked. The long blade of a Malay kris was in his teeth. In one hand he held a pistol, using the other as he climbed. He scraped out of his belt as he came aboard I know not how many pistols which fell into the water, but still, God wot! had abundant remaining. Nor did L’Olonnois, close behind him, his Samurai sword between his teeth, present a spectacle less awesome. I breathed a sudden prayer that these might meet with no resistance, else I could only fear the direst consequences!

I made a quick motion with my hand, even as I sprang forward in search of Peterson. The dull thud of the engine-room hatch, an instant later, assured me that Lafitte had performed the most important part of the work assigned to him. Forsooth, ere long, he had done all his work as laid out for him. It chanced that, as he sprang to the doors of the forward saloon, he met John, the Chinaman. Reaching for him with one hand, he closed the doors with the other, with such promptness and precision that the cue of John was caught in the door and he was imprisoned below, where he howled in much grief and perturbation, unable to escape without the sacrifice of his cue.

Meantime, I found Peterson, my old skipper, much as I had expected. He was a middle-aged, placid, well-poised man, a pessimist in speech, but a bold man in soul. He was fond of an evening pipe, and he sat now smoking and looking down the illuminated lane made by our search-light. He turned toward me, a sudden curiosity upon his face as he saw that I was a stranger on the boat, though not a stranger to himself.

“Sir—Mr. Harry—” he began, half rising.

I reached out my left hand and caught him by the shoulder. In my right hand I held a pistol, and this, somewhat gaily, I waved before Peterson’s face. “Halt,” said I, “or I will blow you out of the water”—a phrase which I had found sufficient in earlier circumstances.

The old man smiled pleasantly and in mock fashion put up both his hands. Had it been anyone else, he probably would have knocked me down. “All right, Mr. Harry,” said he, “you will have your joke. But tell me, what’s up? We weren’t expecting you here. Mr. Davidson’s gone ashore.”

“Just a lark, Peterson,” said I. I had slipped down the mask so that he could see me plainly. “By George, sir!” said he, “I am glad to see you, back on the old boat again. Where have you been?”

“Just come on board, Peterson,” said I. “I am going to run her now myself.

“Money not paid over, Peterson,” said I. It stretched my conscience a bit, although the truth was I had Davidson’s uncashed check in my pocket at the time.

“We’ve all had our pay regular,” he rejoined. “Why, what’s wrong?”

“But I haven’t had mine, Peterson,” said I. “When the charter money isn’t paid and an owner has reason to suppose that his boat is going to be run out of the country, he has to act promptly, you understand. So I have taken my own way. The Belle Helène is in my charge now, and you will report to me for orders.”

“What’s that squalling?” demanded Peterson, who was a trifle hard of hearing.

“Something seems wrong with John, the cook,” I answered. “I only hope he has not made any resistance to my men, who, I promise you, are the most desperate lot that ever cut a throat. For instance, they have locked Williams down in the engine-room. Go over there, Peterson, and quiet him. But tell him that, if he shows a head above the hatch, he is apt to have his brains blown out. Keep quiet now, all of you, until I get this thing in hand.”

“But the boat’s under charter to Mr. Davidson,” demurred Peterson.

“Charter or no charter, Peterson,” said I, “I’m in command here, and it’s no time to argue.”

At this time we heard cries of a feminine sort from the after deck, so I knew that L’Olonnois, as well, had performed the duty assigned to him.

“Stay here, Peterson,” said I. “It’s all right, and I’ll take care of you in every regard. Wait a moment.”

“Who are you?” she demanded

I hurried aft. L’Olonnois stood in the shadow, his back against the saloon door, facing his two prisoners. I also faced them now. The deck lights gave ample illumination, so that I could see her—Helena—face to face and fairly. She turned to me; but now I had pulled up my mask again, and she could have no more than a suspicion as to my identity.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “What right have you here?”

For half a moment I paused. Then I felt a sense of relief as I heard at my elbow the piping voice of L’Olonnois in reply.

“Lady,” said he, standing with folded arms, his bared blade gripped in his good right hand and showing at a short up-cast angle, “it ill beseems a gentleman to give pain to one so fair, but prithee have a care, for, by heavens! resistance is useless here.”

CHAPTER XIV

IN WHICH IS ABOUNDING TROUBLE

I LOOKED at Helena Emory, glad that she did not at first sight recognize the intruder who had elicited her wrath,—for she seemed almost more angry than perturbed, such being her nature. I thought she had never been half so beautiful as now, never more alive, more vibrantly and dynamically feminine than now. She had not even a scarf about her head, so that all its Greek clarity of line, all its tight-curling dark hair—almost breaking into four ringlets, two at each white temple—were distinct to me as I looked at her, even in the half light. Her face, with its wondrous dark eyes, was full toward me, meeting this danger for such as it might be; so that, again, I saw the sweet full oval of her brow and cheek and chin, with just these two dark incipient curls above. I could not see the twin dark tendrils at the white nape of her neck, but I knew they were there, as beautiful as ever. Her mouth was always the sweetest God ever gave any woman—and I repeat, I have seen and studied all the great portraits, and found none so wholly good as that of Helena, done by Sargent in his happiest vein. Now the red bow of her lips parted, as she stood, one slender hand across her bosom, panting, but not in the least afraid, or, at least, meeting her fear boldly, as one high-born should.

She was all in white, with not the slightest jewel or ornament of any kind. I saw that even the buckle at her waist was covered in white. Her boots and her hair were dark; for Helena knew the real art of dressing. She stood fairly between me and the deck light, so that all her white figure was frank in its gentle curves; erect now, and bravely drawn to all her five feet five, so that she might meet my gaze—albeit through a mask—as fully as a lady should when she has met affront.

I always loved Helena, always, from the first time I met her. I had bidden adieu to life when, after many efforts to have her see me as I saw her, I turned away to the long hard endeavor to forget her. But now I saw my attempts had all been in vain. If absence had made my heart more fond, the presence of her made it more poignantly, more imperiously, fonder than before. My whole body, my whole soul, unified, arose. I stretched out my arms, craving, demanding. “Helena!” I cried.

My voice was hoarse. Perhaps she did not know me, even yet. Her answer was a long clear call for help.

“Ahoy!” she sang. “On shore, there—Help!”

Her call was a signal for present trouble. Partial, my dog, abandoned in the long boat, began barking furiously. There came an answering hail which assured me that yon varlet, Davidson, had heard. I was conscious of the sound of a scuffle somewhere forward. Below, at my side, Aunt Lucinda gave voice to a long shrill wail of terror. John, my Chinaman, his cue still held fast in the jammed edges of the door, chimed in dismally. Midships I heard a muffled knocking at Williams’, the engineer’s, hatch.

I forgot I was standing masked, with a naked weapon in my hand. I dropped my mask, dropped my weapon, and turned quickly toward Helena.

“Be silent!” I commanded her.

She stood for one instant, her hands at her cheeks. Then, “Ahoy!” rang out her voice once more in sheer disobedience, and “You!” she said to me, furious.

“Yes, I,” was my answer, and my own fury was now as cold as hers. “Go below,” I ordered her. “I am in command of this boat. Quick!”

I had never spoken thus to her in all my life, but almost to my surprise she changed now. As though half in doubt, she turned toward the stair leading down to the ladies’ cabin where Aunt Lucinda was shrieking in terror.

“Guard the door,” I called to L’Olonnois as I turned away. I heard it slam shut and the click of the lock told me my prisoners were safe, so I hastened forward.

“Good Lord, Mr. Harry!” cried my skipper, Peterson, when he saw me. “Come here, take this little devil—away—I’m afraid he’ll knife me.”

I hurried to him for he struggled in the dark with Jean Lafitte.

“To the rescue, Black Bart!” called Jean Lafitte. “Catch his other arm. I’ve got this one, and if he moves, by Heaven I’ll run him through.”

“Run me through, you varmint—what do you mean?” roared Peterson. “Ain’t it enough you pull a gun on me and try to poke out my eye, and twist off my arm, without sticking me with that bread-slicer you got? Mr. Harry—for Heaven’s sake——”

“There now, Jean Lafitte,” I said, “enough. He has begged for quarter.”

“No, I ha’int,” asserted Peterson venomously. “I’ll spank the life outen him if I ever get the chance—” I raised a hand.

“Enough of all this noise,” I said. “I am in charge now, Peterson. Go to the wheel. Break out the anchor and get under way. At once, man! I have no time to argue.”

Peterson had never in his life heard me speak in this way before, but now, for what reason I do not know—perhaps from force of habit, perhaps because he knew I was owner of the boat, perhaps in awe of the naked kris of Jean Lafitte, still presented menacingly at his abdomen—the old skipper obeyed.

I heard the faint jangle of bells in the engine-room below. Obviously, Williams, the engineer, was responsive to his sense of duty and routine. The power came pulsing through the veins of the Belle Helène and I heard her screws revolve. I, myself, threw in the donkey winch as she forged ahead, and so broke out the anchor. It still swung, clogging her bows as she turned in the current. The bells again jangled as she got more speed and as the anchor came home. Our search-light swept a wide arc along the foot of Natchez Hill, as our bows circled about and headed down the great river. And now we picked in full view, hardly sixty fathoms distant, the dingey, pulled furiously toward us. My friend, the varlet Cal Davidson, half stood in the stern of the stubby craft and waved at us an excited hand.

“Ahoy there, Peterson!” he cried. “Stop! Hold on there! Wait! Where are you going there!”

Peterson turned toward me an inquiring gaze, but I only pointed a hand down-stream, and he obeyed me! I reached my hand to the cord and gave Peterson, Davidson, Natchez and all the world, the salute of a long and vibrant whistle of defiance. It came back to us in echoes from the giant bluffs, swept across the lowlands on the opposite side.

“Full speed ahead, Peterson,” said I quietly.

“Where are we going, Mr. Harry?” he demanded anxiously.

“I don’t know,” said I. “It all depends—maybe around the world. I don’t know and I don’t care.”

“I’m scared about this—it don’t look right. What’s come into you, Mr. Harry?” asked the old man solicitously.

“Nothing, Peterson,” said I, “except that the bird of time is on the wing. I am a pirate, Peterson——”

“I never knew you so far gone in drink before, Mr. Harry,” said he, as he threw over the wheel to pick up the first starboard channel light.

“Yes, I have been drinking, Peterson,” said I. “I have been drinking the wine of life. It oozes drop by drop, and is all, too soon, gone if we delay. Full speed ahead, Peterson. I am in command.”

“Jean!” I called to my able lieutenant. “Reach over into the long boat and bring Partial on board. He is my friend. And bring also our flag. Run it aloft above our prize.”

“Aye, aye, Sir,” came the reply of Jean Lafitte. And a few moments later our long boat was riding astern more easily. Jean Lafitte on his return busied himself with our burgee. And at that moment, Partial, overjoyed at also having a hand in these affairs, barked joyously at his discovery of the neglected end of the cook’s cue projecting through the hinges of the door. On this he laid hold cheerfully, worrying it until poor John shrieked anew in terror; and until I freed him; and ordered tea.

I next went over to the hatches of the engine-room, and having opened them, bent over to speak to Williams, the engineer.

“It’s all right, Williams,” said I. “I am going to take her over now and run her perhaps to the Gulf. We hadn’t time to tell you at first. There has been a legal difficulty. Peterson is on deck, of course.”

“All right, Mr. Harry,” said Williams, who recognized me as he leaned out from his levers to look up through the open hatch. “At first I didn’t know what in hell was up. It sounded like a mutiny——”

“It was a mutiny, Williams,” said I, “and I am the head mutineer. But you’re sure of your pay, so let her go.”

He did let her go, smoothly and brilliantly, so that before long she was at her top speed, around fifteen knots an hour. I was familiar with every detail of the Belle Helène, and now I looked in both the generating plant and the storage batteries, so that four thousand candle-power of electric light blazed over her from bow to fantail. The steady purr of the Belle Helène’s double sixties—engines I had had made under my own care—came to me with a soothing rhythm where I stood near by the wheel. Her search-light made a vast illumination far ahead. Brilliant enough must have seemed the passing spectacle of our stanch little ship to any observer, as we now swept on down the tawny flood of the great river. Who would deny me the feeling of exultation which came to me? Was I not captor and captain of my own ship?

I turned to meet L’Olonnois, my blue-eyed pirate. He stood at my side as one glorified. The full swing of romance had him, the full illusion of this,—imagination’s most ardent desire—now gripped him fully. He was no boy, but a human being possessed of all his dreams. His second self, once oppressed, now free, stood before me wholly satisfied. I needed not to ask whether he had been faithful to his trust.

“I locked the door on ’em, Black Bart,” said he, “and bade them cease a idle remonstrancing. ‘Little do you know,’ say I to them, ‘that Black Bart the Avenger is now on the trail. Let any oppose him at their peril,’ says I to them. She give me candy, the fair captive did, but I spurned her bribe. ‘Beware,’ says I to her. ‘Little do you know what lies before you.’”

CHAPTER XV

IN WHICH IS CONVERSATION WITH THE CAPTIVE MAIDEN

JEAN LAFITTE, who had so well executed the work assigned him in the boarding party’s plans, proved himself neither inefficient nor unobservant. He approached me now, with a salute, which probably he copied from Peterson.

“How now, good leftenant?” said I.

“If you please, Black Bart,” he began, “how are we headed, and what are our plans?”

“Our course on this river, Jean Lafitte, will box the compass, indeed box an entire box of compasses, for no river is more winding. Yet in time we shall reach its end, no doubt, since others have.”

“And what about our good ship, the Sea Rover, that we have left behind?”

“By Jove! Jean Lafitte,” I exclaimed, “that is, indeed, a true word. What, indeed? We left her riding at anchor just off the channel edge, and so far as I recall, she had not her lights up, in accordance with the law.”

“Shall we put about and take her in tow, Black Bart?”

“By no means. That is the very last of my intentions.”

“What’ll become of her, then?”

“That is no concern of mine.”

“But nobody’ll know whose she is, and nobody can tell what may happen to her——”

“Quite true. She may be stolen, or sunk. Why not?”

“But she cost a lot of money.”

“On the contrary, she cost only twelve hundred dollars.”

“Twelve hundred dollars!” Jean drew a long deep breath. “I didn’t know anybody had that much money in the world. Besides, look what you spent for them pearls. Ain’t you poor, then, Black Bart?”

“On the contrary, I have that much more money left, very likely. And I do not, to say truth, care a jot, a rap or a stiver, what becomes of the derelict Sea Rover now. Have we not taken a better ship for our own?”

“Yes, but suppose yon varlet boards the Sea Rover, an’ chases us the way we done him?”

“Again, by Jove! Jean Lafitte; an idea. But suppose he does? Much good it will do him. For, look you, good leftenant, the Belle Helène will not stop to send any man ashore for baseball scores. Such was not the practise of the old buccaneers, nor shall it be ours; whereas, no matter what the haste, yon varlet could in nowise refrain from that same folly which hath lost him his ship to us. Each hour will only widen the gap between us. Let him take our tub if he likes, and do as he likes, for ’twill be a long day before he picks up our masts over his horizon, Jean Lafitte.”

“Aye, aye, Sir!” rejoined my lieutenant, and withdrew. I could see he was not overjoyed at the abandonment of our earlier ship that had brought us so far in safety. All this luxury of the Belle Helène had the effect of oppressing a pirate who so short a time ago had started out on the high seas in a sixteen foot yawl, and who had seen that yawl, in a manner of speaking, grown into a schooner, the schooner comparatively grown into a full-fledged four-decker, richly fitted as any ship of the royal navy.

But these, all, were lesser things to me, for on my soul was a more insistent concern. I turned now, seeing that Peterson, wholly reconciled to the new order of affairs, was speeding the boat onward as though I never had left her; so that I knew she was safe in his hands, although I set Lafitte to watch him. Followed by my faithful friend Partial, who expressed every evidence of having enjoyed a most interesting evening, I presently made my way aft.

As I approached the door of the after-cabin suite, occupied by the ladies, I made my presence known at first discreetly, then more pointedly, and, at length, by a knocking on the door.

“Below, there!” I called, boldly as I could; for eager as I was to see Helena Emory, there were certain things about the interview which might be difficult. Lovers who have parted, finally, approach each other, even by accident, thereafter, with a certain reluctance. (Lovers, did I say? Nay, never had she said she loved me. She had only said she wished she did, wished she could.)

No answer came at first. Then, “Who is it?” in the voice of Aunt Lucinda.

“It is I, Mr. Henry—” but I paused: “—It is I, Black Bart the Avenger,” I concluded. “May I come in?”

Silently the door opened, and I entered the little reception-room which lay between the two staterooms of this cabin. Before me stood Helena! And now I was close to her, I could see the little curls at her temples, could see the double curves of her lips, the color in her cheek. Ah! she was the same, the same! I loved her—I loved her not the same, but more and more, more!

She held her peace; and all I could do was to stand and stare and then hold out my hand. She took it formally, though her color heightened. I saluted Aunt Lucinda also, who glared at me. “How do you do?” I said to them both, with much originality and daring.

“Black Bart!” snorted Aunt Lucinda. “Black Bart! It might be, from these goings on. What does it all mean?”

“It means, my dear Mrs. Daniver,” said I, “that I have taken charge of the boat myself.”

“But how?” demanded Helena. “We did not hear you were coming. And I don’t understand. Why, that rascally little nephew of mine, in the mask, frightened auntie nearly to death. And he said the most extraordinary things!

“Where is Mr. Davidson?” she added. “He didn’t tell us a word of this.”

“He didn’t know a word of it himself,” I answered. “Let me tell you, no self-respecting pirate—and as you see, I am a pirate—is in the habit of telling his plans in advance.”

“A pirate!”

I bowed politely. “At your service. Black Bart—my visiting cards are mislaid, but I intend ordering some new ones. The ship’s cook, John, will soon be here with tea. These events may have been wearying. Meantime, allow me to present my friend Partial.”

Partial certainly understood human speech. He now approached Helena slowly and stood looking up into her face in adoration. Then, without any command, he lay down deliberately and rolled over; sat up, barked; and so, having done all his repertory for her whom he now—as had his master before him—loved at first sight, he stood again and worshiped.

“Nice doggie!” said Helena courteously.

“Have a care, Helena!” said I. “Love my dog, love me! And all the world loves Partial.”

The color heightened in her cheeks. I had never spoken so boldly to her before, but had rather dealt in argument than in assertion; which I, later, was to learn is no way to make love to any woman.

“When do we get back to Natchez?” she demanded.

“We do not get back to Natchez.”

“Oh? Then I suppose Mr. Davidson picks us up at Baton Rouge?”

“Yon varlet,” said I, “does not pick us up at Baton Rouge.”

“New Orleans?”

“Or at New Orleans—unless he is luckier than I ever knew even Cal to be.”

“Whatever do you mean?” inquired Aunt Lucinda in tones ominously deep.

“That the Belle Helène is much faster than the tug we left behind at Natchez, even did he find it. He will have hard work to catch us.”

“To catch us?”

“Yes, Helena, to catch us. Of course he’ll follow in some way. I have, all the way from above Dubuque. Why should not he?”

The ladies looked from me to each other, doubting my sanity, perhaps.

“I don’t just understand all this,” began Helena. “But since we travel only as we like, and only with guests whom we invite or who are invited by the boat’s owner, I shall ask you to put us ashore.”

“On a sand-bar, Helena? Among the alligators?”

“Of course I mean at the nearest town.”

“There is none where we are going, my dear Miss Emory. Little do you know what lies before you! Black Bart heads for the open sea. Let yon varlet follow at his peril. Believe me, ’twill cost him a very considerable amount of gasoline.”

“What right have you on this boat?” she demanded fiercely.

“The right of any pirate.”

“Why do you intrude—how dare you—at least, I don’t understand——”

“I have taken this ship, Helena,” said I, “because it carries treasure—more than you know of, more than I dreamed. My father was a pirate, I am well assured by the public prints. So am I. ’Tis in the blood. But do not anger me. Rather, have a cup of tea.” John, my cook, was now at the door with the tray.

“Thank you,” rejoined Helena icily. “It would hardly be courteous to Mr. Davidson—to use his servants and his table in this way in his absence. Besides——”

“Besides, I recalled that your Aunt Lucinda’s neuralgia is always benefited by a glass or so of ninety-three at about ten thirty of the evening. John!”

“Lessah!”

“Go to the left-hand locker in B; and bring me a bottle of the ninety-three. I think you will find that better than this absurd German champagne which I see yon varlet has been offering you, my dear Mrs. Daniver. But—excuse me——”

Helena looked up, innocently.

“—A moment before there were six empty bottles on the table there. And I saw you writing. How many have you thrown overboard through the port-hole?”

“I didn’t know you were so observant,” replied Helena demurely. “But only three.”

“It is not enough,” said I. “Go on, and write your other messages for succor. Use each bottle, and we shall have more emptied for you, if you like. You shall have oil bottles, vinegar bottles, water bottles, wine bottles, all you like. Yon varlet might run across one, floating, it is true. I hope he will. Methinks ’twould bid him speed. But all in vain would be your appeal, for swift must be the craft that can come up with Black Bart now. And desperate, indeed, must be the man would dispute his right to tread these decks.”

“I hope you are enjoying yourself,” said Helena scornfully. “Don’t be silly.”

“Will you have tea, Helena?” I asked.

“Poor, dear Mr. Davidson!” sniffed Aunt Lucinda, taking a glance out the port into the black night. “I wonder where he is, and what he will say.”

“I can tell you what he will say, my dear Mrs. Daniver,” said I; “but I would rather not.”

“Well, I’ll tell you what I say,” snorted Aunt Lucinda. “I think this joke has gone far enough.”

“It is no joke, madam. I was never so desperately in earnest in all my life.”

“Then put us ashore at Baton Rouge.”

“I can not. I shall not.”

“What do you mean? Do you know what this looks like, the way you are acting, running off with Mr. Davidson’s yacht, and this——”

“Yes, madam?”

“Why, it’s robbery, and it’s, it’s, why it’s abduction, too. You ought to know the law.”

“I do know the law. It is piracy. Have we not told you that resistance would be worse than useless? Haven’t I told you I’ve captured this ship? Little do you know the fate that lies before you, madam, at the hands of my ruthless men if I should prove unable to restrain them! And have a care not to offend Black Bart the Avenger, himself! If you do, Aunt Lucinda, he may cut off your evening champagne.”

I heard a sudden suppressed sound, wondrous like a giggle; but when I turned, Helena was sitting there as sober as Portia, albeit I thought her eyes suspiciously bright.

“Well,” said she, at length, “we can’t sit here all night and talk about it, and I’ve used up all my note-paper and bottles. I’ll tell you what I suggest, since you have seen fit to intrude on two women in this way. We will hold a parley.”

“When?”

“To-morrow.”

“At what hour?”

“After breakfast.”

“Why not at breakfast?”

“Because we shall eat alone, here,—auntie and I—in our cabin.”

“Very well then, if it seems you are so bitter against the new commander of the ship that you will not sit at the captain’s table—as we did the second time we went to Europe together, we three—don’t you remember, Helena?”

“Never—at your table, sir!” said Helena Emory, her voice like a stab. And when I bethought me what that had meant before now, what it would mean all my life, if this woman might never sit at board of mine, never eat the fruit of my bow and spear, never share with me the bread of life, for one instant I felt the cold thrust of fate’s steel once more in my bowels. But the next instant a new manner of feeling took its place, an emotion I never had felt toward her before—anger, rage!

“It is well,” said I, pulling together the best I could. “And now, by my halidom! or by George! or by anything! you shall be taken at your word. You breakfast here. Be glad if it is more than bread and water—until you learn a better way of speech with me.”

Again I saw that same sudden change on her face, surprise, almost fright; and I swear she shrank from me as though in terror, her hand plucking at Aunt Lucinda’s sleeve; whereas, all Aunt Lucinda could do was to pluck at her niece’s sleeve in turn.

“As to the parley, then,” said I, pulling, by mistake, my mask from my pocket instead of my kerchief, “we shall hold it, to-morrow, at what time and in what place I please. It ill beseems a gentleman to pain one so fair, as we may again remark; but by heaven! Helena, no resistance!”

“Wait! What do you really mean?” She raised a hand. “I’ve told you I just can’t understand all this. I always thought you were a—a—gentleman.”

“A much misused word,” was my answer. “You never understood me at all. I am not a gentleman. I’m a poor, miserable, unhappy, drifting, aimless and useless failure—at least, I was, until I resolved upon this way to recoup my fortunes, and went in for pirating. What chance has a man who has lost his fortune in the game to-day—what chance with a woman? You ask me, who am I? I am a pirate. You ask what I intend to do? What pirate can answer that? It all depends.”

“On what?”

“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.

“Yes, Peterson?”

“We’re on our last drum of gasoline, Mr. Harry,” said he. “Where’ll we put in—Baton Rouge?”

“No, we can’t do that, Peterson,” I answered. “Can’t we make it to New Orleans?”

“Hardly. But they carry gas at most of these landings now—so many power boats and autos nowadays, you see.”

“Very well. We’ll pass Bayou Sara and Baton Rouge, and then you can run in at any landing you like, say twenty miles or so below. Can you make it that far?”

“Oh, yes, but you see, at Baton Rouge——”

“You may lay to long enough to mail these letters,” said I, frowning; “but the custom of getting the baseball scores is now suspended. And send John here.”

The old man touched his cap again, a trifle puzzled. I wondered if he recognized Davidson’s waistcoat—he asked no more questions.

“John,” said I to my Chinaman, “carry this to the ladies;” and handed him a card on which I had inscribed: “Black Bart’s compliments; and he desires the attendance of the ladies on deck for a parley. At once.”

John came back in a few moments and stood on one foot. “She say, she say, Misal Hally, she say no come.”

“Letter have got, John?”

“Lessah have got.”

“Take it back. Say, at once.”

“Lessah. At wullunce.”

“Lessah,” he added two moments later. “Catchee lettah, them lady, and she say, she say, go to hellee!”

“What! What’s that, John? She said nothing of the sort!”

“Lessah, said them. No catchee word, that what she mean. Lady, one time she say, she say, go topside when have got plenty leady for come.”

“Go back to your work, John,” said I. And I waited with much dignity, for perhaps ten minutes or so, before I heard any signs of life from the after suite. Then I heard the door pushed back, and saw a head come out, a head with dark tendrils of hair at the white neck’s nape, and two curls at the temple, and as clean and thoroughbred a sweep of jaw and chin as the bows of the Belle Helène herself. She did not look at me, but studiously gazed across the river, pretended to yawn, idly looked back to see if she were followed; as she knew she was not to be.

At length, she turned as she stepped out on the deck. She was fresh as the dew itself, and like a rose. All color of rose was the soft skirt she wore, and the little bolero above, blue, with gold buttons, covered a soft rose-colored waist, light and subtle as a spider’s web, stretched from one grass stalk to another of a dewy morning. She was round and slender, and her neck was tall and round, and in the close fashion of dress which women of late have devised, to remind man once more of the ancient Garden, she seemed to me Eve herself, sweet, virginal, as yet in a garden dew-sweet in the morning of the world.

She turned, I say, and by mere chance and in great surprise, discovered me, now cap in hand, and bowing.

“Oh,” she remarked; very much surprised.

“Good morning, Eve,” said I. “Have you used Somebody’s Soap; or what is it that you have used? It is excellent.”

A faint color came to her cheek, the corners of her bowed lips twitched. “For a pirate, or a person of no culture, you do pretty well. As though a girl could sleep after all this hullabaloo.”

“You have slept very well,” said I. “You never looked better in all your life, Helena. And that is saying the whole litany.”

“You are absurd,” said she. “You must not begin it all again. We settled it once.”

“We settled it twenty times, or to be exact, thirteen times, Helena. The only trouble is, it would not stay settled. Tell me, is there any one else yet, Helena?”

“It is not any question for you to ask, or for me to answer.” She was cold at once. “I’ve not tried to hear of you or your plans, and I suppose the same is true of you. It is long since I have had a heartache over you—a headache is all you can give me now, or ever could. That is why I can not in the least understand why you are here now. Auntie is almost crazy, she is so frightened. She thinks you are entirely crazy, and believes you have murdered Mr. Davidson.”

“I have not yet done so, although it is true I am wearing his shoes; or at least his waistcoat. How do you like it?”

“I like the one with pink stripes better,” she replied demurely.

“So then—so then!” I began; but choked in anger at her familiarity with Cal Davidson’s waistcoats. And my anger grew when I saw her smile.

“Tell me, are you engaged to him, Helena?” I demanded. “But I can see; you are.” She drew herself up as she stood, her hands behind her back.

“A fine question to ask, isn’t it? Especially in view of what we both know.”

“But you haven’t told me.”

“And am not going to.”

“Why not?”

“Because it is the right of a middle-aged woman like myself——”

“—Twenty-four,” said I.

“—To do as she likes in such matters. And she doesn’t need make any confidences with a man she hasn’t seen for years. And for whom she never—she never——”

“Helena,” said I, and I felt pale, whether or not I looked it, “be careful. That hurts.”

“Oh, is it so?” she blazed. “I am glad if it does hurt.”

I bowed to her. “I am glad if it gives you pleasure to see me hurt. I am. Habeo!”

“But it was not so as to me,” I added presently. “Yes, I said good-by to you, that last time, and I meant it. I had tried for years, I believe, with every argument in my power, to explain to you that I loved you, to explain that in every human likelihood we would make a good match of it, that we—we—well, that we’d hit it off fine together, very likely. And then, I was well enough off—at first, at least——”

“Oh, don’t!” she protested. “It is like opening a grave. We buried it all, Harry. It’s over. Can’t you spare a girl, a middle-aged girl of twenty-four, this resurrection? We ended it. Why, Harry, we have to make out some sort of life for ourselves, don’t we? We can’t just sit down and—and——”

“No,” said I. “I tried it. I got me a little place, far up in the wilderness with what remained of my shattered fortunes—a few acres. And I sat down there and tried that ‘and—and’ business. It didn’t seem to work. But we don’t get on much in our parley, do we?”

“No. The most charitable thing I can think of is that you are crazy. Aunt Lucinda must be right. But what do you intend to do with us? We can’t get off the boat, and we can’t get any answer to our signals for help.”

“So you have signaled?”

“Of course. Waved things, you know.”

“Delightful! The passing steamers no doubt thought you a dissipated lot of northern joy-riders, bound south on some rich man’s yacht.”

“Instead of two troubled women on a stolen boat.”

“Are you engaged to Cal Davidson, Helena?”

“What earthly difference?”

“True, none at all. As you say, I have stolen his boat, stolen his wine, stolen his fried potatoes, stolen his waistcoats. But, bear witness, I drew the line at his neckties. Nowhere else, however!” And as I added this I looked at her narrowly.

“Will you put us ashore?” she asked, her color rising.

“No.”

“We’re coming to a town.”

“Baton Rouge. The capital of Louisiana. A quaint and delightful city of some sixty thousand inhabitants. The surrounding country is largely devoted to the sugar industry. But we do not stop. Tell me, are you engaged?”

But, suddenly, I saw her face, and on it was something of outraged dignity. I bent toward her eagerly. “Forgive me! I never wanted to give you pain, Helena. Forget my improper question.”

“Indeed!”

“I’ve been fair with you. And that’s hard for a man. Always, always,—let me tell you something women don’t understand—there’s the fight in a man’s soul to be both a gentleman and a brute, because a woman won’t love him till he’s a brute, and he hates himself when he isn’t a gentleman. It’s hard, sometimes, to be both. But I tried. I’ve been a gentleman—was once, at least. I told you the truth. When they investigated my father, and found that, acting under the standard of his day, he hadn’t run plumb with the standards of to-day, I came and told you of it. I released you then, although you never had promised me, because I knew you mightn’t want an alliance with—well, with a front page family, you know. It blew over, yes; but I was fair with you. You knew I had lost my money, and then you——”

“I remained ‘released’.”

“Yes, it is true.”

“And am free, have been, to do as I liked.”

“Yes, true.”

“And what earthly right has a man to try both rôles with a woman—that of discarded and accepted? You chose the first; and I never gave you the last. It is horrible, this sort of talk. It is abominable. For three years we have not met or spoken. I’ve not had a heartache since I told you. Don’t give me a headache now. And it would make my head ache, to follow these crazy notions. Put us ashore!”

“Not till I know the truth,” said I.

“About what?”

“Well, for instance, about the waistcoat with pink stripes.”

“You are silly.”

“Yes. How do you like my suit?”

“I never saw Mr. Davidson wear that one,” said she.

“For good reasons. It is my own, and four years old. You see, a poor man has to economize. And you know, since I lost my fortune, I’ve been living almost from hand to mouth. Honestly, Helena, many is the time when I’ve gone out fishing, trying to catch me a fish for my supper!”

“So does a poor girl have to economize,” said she.

“You are most sparing of the truth this morning, Helena, my dear,” I said.

“How dare you!” she blazed now at the tender phrase. “Fine, isn’t it, when I can’t get away? If I could, I’d go where I’d never see or hear of you again. I thought I had.”

“But you have not. You shall hear and see me daily till I know from your own lips the truth about you and—and every and any other man on earth who—well, who wears waistcoats with pink stripes.”

“We’ll have a long ride then,” said she calmly, and rose.

I rose also and bowed.

CHAPTER XVII

IN WHICH IS HUE AND CRY

WE ran by the river-front of Baton Rouge, and lay to on the opposite side while our dingey ran in with mail. I sent Peterson and Lafitte ashore for the purpose, and meantime paced the deck in several frames of mind. I was arrested in this at length by L’Olonnois, who was standing forward, glasses in hand.

“Here they come,” said he, “and a humpin’ it up, too. Look, Jean Lafitte is standin’ up, wavin’ at us. Something’s up, sure. Mayhap, we are pursued by the enemy. Methinks ’tis hue and cry, good Sir.”

“It jolly well does look like it, mate,” said I, taking his glasses. “Something’s up.”

I could see the stubby dingey forced half out the water by Peterson’s oars, though she made little speed enough. And I saw men hurrying on the wharf, as though about to put out a boat.

“What’s wrong, Peterson?” I shouted as he came in range at last.

“Hurry up!” It was Lafitte who answered. “Clear the decks for action. Yon varlet has wired on ahead to have us stopped! They’re after us!” So came his call through cupped hands.

I ran to the falls and lowered away the blocks to hoist them aboard, even as I ordered speed and began to break out the anchor. We hardly were under way before a small power boat, bearing a bluecoated man, puffed alongside.

“What boat is this?” he called. “Belle Helène, of Mackinaw?”

In answer—without order from me,—my bloodthirsty mate, L’Olonnois, brought out the black burgee of the Jolly Rover, bearing a skull and cross-bones. “Have a look at that!” he piped. “Shall we clear the stern-chaser, Black Bart?”

“Hold on there, wait! I’ve got papers for you,” called the officer, still hanging at our rail, for I had not yet ordered full speed.

“He hollered to me he was going to arrest us, Mr. Harry,” explained Peterson, much out of breath. “What’s it all about? What papers does he mean?”

“The morning papers, very likely, Peterson,” said I. “The baseball scores.”

“Will you halt, now?” called the officer.

“No,” I answered, through the megaphone. “You have no authority to halt us. What’s your paper, and who is it for?”

“Wire from Calvin Davidson, Natchez, charging John Doe with running off with his boat.”

“This is not his boat,” I answered, “but my own, and I am not John Doe. We are on our way to the coast, and not under any jurisdiction of yours.”

He stood up and drew a paper from his pocket, and began to read. In reply I pulled the whistle cord and drowned his voice; while at the same time I gave the engineer orders for full speed. Shaking his fist, he fell astern.

None the less, I was a bit thoughtful. After all, the Mississippi River, wide as it was, ran within certain well defined banks from which was no escaping. We were three hundred miles or more from the high seas, and passing between points of continuous telegraphic communication; so that a hue and cry down the river might indeed mean trouble for us. Moreover, even as I turned to pick up the course—for I had myself taken the wheel—I saw the figure of Aunt Lucinda on the after deck. She was on the point of heaving overboard a bottle—I heard it splash, saw it bob astern. “Now, the devil will be to pay,” thought I. But, on second thought, I slowed down, so that distinctly I saw the officer, also slowing down, stoop over and take the bottle aboard his launch.

“Ahoy, the launch!” I hailed. He put a hand at his ear as I megaphoned him. “Take this message for Mr. Calvin Davidson,” I hailed. He nodded that he heard. “—That to-night John Doe will wear his waistcoat, the one with the pink stripes. Do you get me?”

Apparently he did not get me, for he sat down suddenly and mopped his face. We left him so. And for aught I could know, he took back ashore material for a newspaper story, which bade fair to be better for the newspapers than for us on board the Belle Helène; for, up and down the river, the wires might carry the news that a crazy man had been guilty of piracy, highway robbery, abduction, I know not how many other crimes; and to arrest him on his mad career they might enlist all the authorities, municipal, county, state and even national. “John Doe,” said I to myself, “if I really were you, methinks I should make haste.” None the less I smiled; for, if I were John Doe only, then Calvin Davidson had no idea who had stolen his chartered yacht, and who was about to disport in his most cherished waistcoat! The situation pleased me very much. “L’Olonnois,” said I, “come hither, my hearty.”

“Aye, aye, Sir,” replied that worthy. “What is it, Black Bart?”

“Nothing, except I was just going to say that I enjoy it very much, this being a pirate.”

“So do I,” said he. “An’ let any pursue us at their peril!”

CHAPTER XVIII

IN WHICH IS DISCUSSION OF TWO AUNTIES

L’OLONNOIS was still all for training the stern-chaser Long Tom (the Belle Helène’s brass yacht cannon) on the enemy, and came to me presently breathing defiance. “’F I only had any chain shot in the locker,” said he, “beshrew me, but I would pay him well for this! He’s got my Auntie Helen’s auntie scared silly.”

“And how about your Auntie Helena herself?” I asked of him. Thus far, he had been guilty of no nepotism whatever, and had treated his auntie as any other captive maiden, perchance fallen into his ruthless hands.

“Well, she ain’t so scared as she is mad, near’s I can see,” was his reply. “She sat there when I first drove ’em down-stairs, lookin’ at me, an’ she says, ‘Jimmy,’ says she, ‘what’s all this foolishness?’ An’ she reaches out her hand, an’ she offers me candy—she makes awful nice fudges, too. She knew that wasn’t fair! But I says to her. ‘Woman, cease all blandishments, for now you are in our power!’ An’ I liked that, fer I been in her power long enough. Then she set down, an’ near’s I can tell, she got to thinking things over. I know her—she’ll try to get away.”

“She has tried to do so, my good leftenant, is trying now. She and her Auntie Lucinda have thrown over I know not how many bottles carrying messages. It were only by mere chance yon varlet could escape coming over some of them. Add this to the fact that yon varlet has got the king’s navy after us, and marry! methinks we have full work cut out for us. Not that stout heart should falter, good leftenant, eh?”

“We follow Black Bart the Avenger,” said L’Olonnois, folding his arms and frowning heavily. “But say,” he added, “what seems funny to me is, you and my Auntie Helen must of known each other before now.”

“Not at all, not at all—that is, but casually, and long years since. It had long since escaped my mind.” I felt myself flushing sadly.

“I’ll tell her that—I knew she was mistaken. I was sure she was.”

“No! No! Jimmy, you’ll tell her nothing of the kind. I only meant——”

“Well, she remembers you, I’m almost sure, an’ so does Aunt Lucinda. Aunt Lucinda, why I’ve heard her back home tell Auntie Helena about as good fish in the sea, an’ she mustn’t bother over a man that’s poor. Was it you, Black Bart? And are you poor?”

“As I stand before you now, Jimmy L’Olonnois, I’m the poorest beggar in the world,” said I. “I have risked my all on one hazard. If I win, I shall be rich beyond compare. If I fail, I shall be poor indeed.”

“She knows that. She knows you’re poor, all right. I heard Aunt Lucinda tell her often. She said you was rich once, an’ lost it all, speculatin’ in a mine or something; an’ what was the use marryin’ a man who hadn’t anything? I don’t know, but I think that was why Aunt Lucinda worked up this trip with Mr. Davidson. He’s got money to burn—look at this yacht, an’ everything—an’ I know him and Auntie Lucinda, anyhow, have got it doped out that him an’ Auntie Helen’s goin’ to get married—even if they ain’t now, so far’s I know. Anyhow, our takin’ the ship has broke up something. But say, now, Black Bart——”

“Well, my good leftenant——”

“I got a idea!”

“Indeed?”

“Yep. Looka here, now—why don’t you just do like the pirate book says?”

“How is that?”

“Marry the captive maid your own self?”

I felt my color rise yet more.

“Why, now, that happened right along in them days—pirate chief, he takes a beautiful maiden captive, an’ after makin’ all his prisoners walk the plank but just her, he offers his hand an’ fortune. An’ lots of times, somehow, the beautiful maiden she married the ruthless pirate chief, an’ they lived happy ever after. Why don’t you?”

“I hadn’t thought of that, Jimmy,” I said, most mendaciously; “but the idea has some merit. In fact, we’ve already started in by taking the beautiful maiden captive, and, mayhap, yon varlet yet shall walk the plank, or swear a solemn oath never to wear such waistcoats as these again. But one thing lacks.”

“What?”

“The maiden’s consent!”

“No, it don’t! They never ast ’em—they just married ’em, that was all. An’ every time, they lived happy ever after. An’ they founded families that——”

“Jimmy!” I raised a hand. “That will do.”

“Well, anyhow, I wouldn’t pay any attention to Aunt Lucinda about it. She’s strong for yon varlet, for he’s got the dough.”

“And isn’t your Auntie Helena also—but no, on second thought, I will not ask you that——”

“Why no, sure not—it’s better to demand it of her own fair lips, an’ not take no for a answer. They always live happy ever after.”

—“Of course, Jimmy.”

—“And so would you.”

“I know it! I know it!”

“Well, then, why just don’t you?”

“Good leftenant, Black Bart will take your counsel into full advisement. Later, we shall see. Meantime, we must have a care for our good ship’s safety, for none may tell what plans yon varlet may be laying to circumvent us.”

So saying, I sought out Peterson and asked him for his maps and charts.

There was, as I found by consulting these, a deep bayou, an old river bed, that ran inland some thirty miles, apparently tapping a rich plantation country which was not served by the regular river boats.

“Do you know anything about this old channel, Peterson?” I inquired.

“Nothing at all except from hearsay and what you see here,” he replied. “I don’t know whether or not it has a bar at either end, but likely enough it has at both, though we might crowd through.”

“And how about the gasoline supply?”

“Enough to get us in, at least. And, I say, here’s a sort of plantation post-office marked. There’s just a bare chance we could get a drum or so in there. I don’t think we can, though.”

“What’s she drawing now as she runs, Peterson?”

“Four feet two inches. She’s a shade low by the stern. We’ve quite a lot of supplies aboard, this early in the cruise. But I don’t suppose we’ve got enough.”

“Well, Peterson,” said I, “water leaves no trail. If there’s no one watching when we open up this next bend, run for the bayou, and we’ll see if we can get under cover. Of course, it’s all a mistake about Mr. Davidson’s wiring on to have us stopped—though we can’t blame him, since he hasn’t any idea who it is that has run away with the boat. But now, it suits me better to double in here, and let the chase try to find us on the main river; if there is any chase. You see, I don’t want to disturb the ladies unduly, and they might not understand it all if we were overhauled and asked to explain our change in the ownership.”

“Quite right, sir, and very good. I catch the idea. But, sir——”

He hesitated.

“Yes?”

“Well, sir, if I might be so bold, what are your plans about the two ladies?”

“I have none which will effect your navigation of the boat, Peterson.”

The old man flushed a shade. “Excuse me, Mr. Harry. I know you’ll do nothing out of the way. But the old hen—I beg pardon——”

“You mean the revered aunt, Peterson.”

“Yes, sir, the revered aunt. Well, sir, the revered aunt, dash her!—--”

“Yes, dash her starry toplights, Peterson; and even if need be, shiver her timbers! Go on——”

“Why, she’s been tryin’ to pull off a weddin’ on this boat ever since we left Mackinaw.”

“Why not? You mean that Mr. Davidson and the revered aunt were getting on well?”

“Oh, no, bless your heart, no! It was the young lady, Miss Emory. And she——”

I raised my hand. “Never mind, Peterson. We can’t discuss that at all. But now, I’m minded to give my friend Mr. Davidson a little game of follow-my-leader. And just to show how we’ll do that, we’ll begin with a preliminary go at hide-and-seek. Take the chance, Peterson, and run into the bayou. I’ll put off the small boat for soundings. If we can get gas, and can get in, and can get out unnoticed, maybe we can run by New Orleans in the night, and none the wiser.”

“And where then, Mr. Harry?”

“Peterson, the high seas have no bridges, and if they had, I should not cross them yet. Perhaps if I did, I then should burn them behind me.”

“She’s a mortal fine young woman, Mr. Harry, a mortal fine one. I’ll be sworn he makes a hard run for her. But so can we—eh, Mr. Harry? He’ll like enough pocket us in here, though.”

I made no answer to this. The old man left me to take the wheel, and I noted his head wag from side to side.

CHAPTER XIX

IN WHICH I ESTABLISH A MODUS VIVENDI

AS good fortune would have it, we swung in, opposite the screened mouth of Henry’s Bayou, at a time when the stream was free of all craft that might have observed us, although far across the forest we could see a black column of smoke, marking a river steamer coming up.

“Quick with that long boat, Lafitte,” I ordered; and he drew our old craft alongside as we slowed down. “Get over yonder and sound for a bar. Take the boat hook. If you get four feet, we’ll try it.”

My hardy young ruffian was nothing if not prompt, nor was he less efficient than the average deck-hand. It was he who did the sounding while Willie, our factotum, pulled slowly in toward the mouth of the old river bed. I watched them through the glasses, noting that rarely could Lafitte find any bottom at all with the long shaft of the boat hook. “She’s all right, Peterson,” said I. “Follow on in, slowly—I don’t want that steamer yonder to catch us.”

“Why don’t you?” A voice I should know, to which all my body would thrill, did I hear it in any corner of the world, spoke at my elbow. I started for a half instant before I made reply, looking into her dark eyes, sensible again of the perfume most delirium-producing for a man: the scent of a woman’s hair.

“Because, Helena,” said I, “I wish our boat to lie unnoticed for a time, till the hue and cry has lulled a bit.”

“And then?” She bent on me her gaze, so difficult to resist, and smiled at me with the corners of her lips, so subtly irresistible. I felt a rush of fire sweep through all my being, and something she must have noted, for she gave back a bit and stood more aloof along the rail.

“And then,” said I savagely, “this boat runs by all the towns, till we reach the Gulf, and the open sea.”

“And then?”

“And then, Helena, we sail the ocean blue, you and I.”

“For how long?”

“Forever, Helena. Or, at least, until——”

“Until when?”

“Until you say you will marry me, Helena.”

She made no answer now at all beyond a scornful shrug of her shoulders. “Suppose I can not?” she said at last.

“If you can not, all the same you must and shall!” said I. “You shall be prisoner until you do.”

“Is there no law for such as you?”

“No. None on the high sea. None in my heart. Only one law I know any more, Helena—I who have upheld the law, obeyed it, reverenced it.”

“And that?”

“The law of the centuries, of the forest, of the sea. The law of love, Helena.”

“Ah, you go about it handsomely! If you wished me to despise you, to hate you, this would be very fit, what you say.”

“You may hate me, despise me, Helena. Let it be so. But you shall not ignore me, as you have these three years.”

“It was your fault; your wish—as well as my wish. We agreed to that. Why bring it up again? When the news came that you had quit your profession, and just at the time you had lost all your father’s fortune and your own, had turned your back and run away, when you should have stayed and fought—well, do you think a girl cares for that sort of man? No. A man must do something in this world. He mustn’t quit. He’s got to fight.”

“Not even if he has nothing to work for?”

“No, not even then. There are plenty of girls in the world——”

“One.”

—“And a man mustn’t throw away his life for any one woman. That isn’t right. He has his work to do, his place to make and hold. That’s what a woman wants in a man. But you didn’t. Now, you come and say we must forget all the years of off-and-on, all the time we—we—wasted, don’t you know? And because I am, for a little while, in your hands, you talk to me in a way of which you ought to be ashamed. You threaten me, a woman. You even almost compromise me. This will make talk. You speak to me as though, indeed, you were a buccaneer, and I, indeed, in your power absolutely. If I did not know you——”

“You do not. Forget the man you knew. I am not he.”

She spread out her hands mockingly, and yet more I felt my anger rise.

“I am another man. I am my father, and his great grandfather, and all his ancestors, pirates all. I know what I covet, and by the Lord! nothing shall stop me, least of all the law. I shall take my own where I find it.”

“And now listen!” I concluded. “I am master on this ship, no matter how I got it. Late poor, as you say, I shall be richer soon, for I shall take, law or no law, consent or no consent, what I want, what I will have. And that is you!

“Each day, at eleven, Helena,” I concluded, “I shall meet you on the after deck, and shall try to be kind, try to be courteous——”

“Why, Harry——”

“Try to be calm, too. I want to give you time to think. And I, too, must think. For a time, I wondered what was right, in case you had really pledged yourself to another man.”

“Suppose I had?” she asked, sphinx-like.

“I will try to discover that. Not that it would make any difference in my plans.”

“You would take what was another’s?” She still gazed at me, sphinx-like.

“Yes! By the Lord, Helena, my father did, and his, and so would I! So would I, if that were you! Let him fend for himself.”

She turned from the rail, her color a little heightened, affected to yawn, stretched her arms.

We were now passing over the bar, slowly, feeling our way, our skiff alongside, and the shelter of the curving, tree-covered bayou banks now beginning to hide us from view, though the bellowing steamer below had not yet entered our bend.

“Who is that boy?” she inquired lazily.

“That, madam, is no less than the celebrated freebooter, Jean Lafitte, who so long made this lower coast his rendezvous.”

“Nonsense! And you’re filling his head with wild ideas.”

“Say not so; ’twas he and your blessed blue-eyed pirate nephew, the cutthroat L’Olonnois, who filled my head with wild ideas.”

“How, then?”

“They took me prisoner, on my own—I mean, at the little place where I stop, up in the country. And not till by stern deeds I had won their confidence, did they accept me as comrade, and, at last, as leader—as I may modestly claim to be. And do not think that you can wheedle either of them away from Black Bart. L’Olonnois remembers you spanked him once, and has sworn a bitter vengeance.”

“Why did you happen to start sailing down this way?”

“Because I learned Cal Davidson had started—with you.”

“And all that way you had it in mind to overtake us?”

“Yes; and have done so; and have taken his ship away from him, and for all I know his bride.”

“He was your friend.”

“I thought so. I suppose he never knew that you and I used to—well, to know each other, before I lost my money.”

“He never spoke of that.”

“No difference, unless all for the better, for I shall, now, never give you up to any man on earth.”

“And I thought you the best product of our civilization, a man of education, of breeding.”

“No, not breeding, unless savagery gives it. I’m civilized no longer. When you stand near me, and your hair—go below, Helena! Go at once!”

She turned, moved slowly toward her door.

I finished calmly as I could. “To-morrow, at eleven, I shall give you an audience here on the deck. We shall have time. This is a wilderness. You can not get away, and I hope no one will find you. That is my risk. And oh! Helena,” I added, suddenly, feeling my heart soften at the pallor of her face—“Oh, Helena, Helena, try to think gently of me as you can, for all these miles I have followed after you; and all these years I have thought of you. You do not know—you do not know! It has been one long agony. Now go, please. I promise to keep myself as courteous as I can. You and I and Aunt Lucinda will just have a pleasant voyage together until—until that time. Try to be kind to me, Helena, as I shall try to be with you.”

Silent, unsmiling, she disappeared beyond her cabin door, nor would she eat dinner even in her cabin, although Aunt Lucinda did; and found the ninety-three was helping her neuralgia.

I know not if they slept, but I slept not at all. The shadows hung black about us as we lay at anchor four miles inland, silent, and with no lights burning to betray us. Now and again, I could hear faint voices of the night, betimes croakings, splashings in the black water about us. It was as though the jungle had enclosed us, deep and secret-keeping. And in my heart the fierce fever of the jungle’s teachings burned, so that I might not sleep.

But in the morning Helena was fresh, all in white, and with no more than a faint blue of shadow beneath her eyes. She honored us at breakfast, and made no manner of reference to what had gone on the evening before. This, then, I saw, was to be our modus vivendi; convention, the social customs we all had known, the art, the gloss, the veneer of life, as life runs on in society as we have organized it! Ah, she fought cunningly!

“Black Bart,” said L’Olonnois, after breakfast as we all stood on deck—Helena, Auntie Lucinda and all—“what’s all them things floatin’ around in the water?”

“They look like bottles, leftenant,” said I; “perhaps they may have floated in here. How do you suppose they came here, Mrs. Daniver?” I asked.

“How should I know?” sniffed that lady.

“Well, good leftenant, go overside, you and Jean, and gather up all those bottles, and carry them with my compliments to the ladies at their cabin. You can have the satisfaction of throwing them all overboard later on, Mrs. Daniver. Only, remember, that there is no current in the bayou, and they will stay where they fall for weeks, unless for the wind.”

“And where shall we be, then?” demanded Auntie Lucinda, who had eaten a hearty breakfast, and I must say was looking uncommon fit for one so afflicted with neuralgia.

“Oh, very likely here, in the same place, my dear Mrs. Daniver,” said I, “unless war should break out meantime. At present we all seem to have a very good modus vivendi, and as I have no pressing engagements, I can conceive of nothing more charming than passing the winter here in your society.” Saying which I bowed, and turning to Helena, “At eleven, then, if you please?”

CHAPTER XX

IN WHICH I HAVE POLITE CONVERSATION, BUT LITTLE ELSE

I HAD myself quite forgotten my appointed hour of eleven, feeling so sure that it would not be remembered, as of covenant, by the party of the second part, so to speak, and was sitting on the forward deck looking out over the interesting pictures of the landscape that lay about us. It was the morning of a Sabbath, and a Sabbath calm lay all about us—silence, and hush, and arrested action. The sun itself, warm at a time when soon the breezes must have been chill at my northern home, was veiled in a soft and tender mist, which brought into yet lower tones the pale greens and grays of the southern forest which came close to the bayou’s edge. The forest about us not yet fallen before the devastating northern lumbermen—men such as my father had been, who cared nothing for a tree or a country save as it might come to cash—was in part cypress, in part cottonwood, but on the ridge were many oaks, and over all hung the soft gray Spanish moss. The bayou itself, once the river, but now released from all the river’s troubling duties, held its unceasing calm, fitted the complete retirement of the spot, and scarce a ripple broke it anywhere. Over it, on ahead, now and then passed a long-legged white crane, bound for some distant and inaccessible swamp; all things fitting perfectly into this quiet Sabbath picture.

My cigar was excellent, I had my copy of Epictetus at hand, and all seemed well with the world save one thing. Here, at hand, was everything man could ask, all comforts, many luxuries; and I knew, though Helena did not, that the safe increase of my fortune—that fortune which some had called tainted, and which I myself valued little, soon as I had helped increase it by the exercise of my profession—was quite enough to maintain equal comfort or luxury for us all our lives. But she was obstinate, and so was I. She would not say whether she loved Cal Davidson, and I would never undeceive her as to my supposed poverty. Why, the very fact that she had dismissed me when she thought my fortune gone—that, alone, should have proved her unworthy of a man’s second thought. Therefore, ergo, hence, and consequently, I could not have been a man; for I swear I was giving her a second thought, and a thousandth; until I rebelled at a weakness that could not put a mere woman out of mind.

And then, I slowly turned my head, and saw her standing on the after deck. Her footfall was not audible on the rubber deck-mats, and she had not spoken. I resolved, as soon as I had leisure, to ask some scientific friends to explain how it was possible that with no sound or other appeal to any of the sensorial nerves, I could, at a distance of seventy-five feet, become conscious of the presence of a person no more than five feet five, who had not spoken a word, and was standing idly looking out over the ship’s rail, in quite the opposite direction from that in which I sat. And then the ship’s clock struck six bells, and recalled the appointment at eleven. Hastily I dropped Epictetus and my cigar, and hurried aft.

“Good morning again, Helena,” said I.

She stood looking on out over the water for a time, but, at length, turned toward me, just a finger up as to stifle a yawn. “Really,” said she, “while I am hardly so situated that I can well escape it or resent it, it does seem to me that you might well be just a trifle less familiar. Why not ‘Miss Emory’?”

“Because, Helena, I like ‘Helena’ better.”

A slow anger came into her eyes. She beat a swift foot on the deck.

“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t stamp with your feet. It reminds me of a Belgian hare, and I do not like them, potted or caged.”

“I might as well be one,” she broke out, “as well be one, caged here as we are, and insulted by a—a——”

“A ruthless buccaneer——”

“Yes, a ruthless buccaneer, who has remembered only brutalities.”

“And forgotten all amenities? Why, Helena, how could you! And after all the cork-tipped cigarettes I have given you, and all the ninety-three I have given your Auntie Lucinda—why look at the empty message bottles she and you have thrown out into the helpless and unhelping bayou—a perfect fleet of them, bobbing around. Shan’t I send the boys overboard to gather them in for you again?”

“A fine education you are giving those boys, aren’t you, filling their heads with lawless ideas! A fine debt we’ll all owe you for ruining the character of my nephew Jimmy. He was such a nice nephew, too.”

“Your admiration is mutual, Miss Emory—I mean, Helena. He says you are a very nice auntie, and your divinity fudges are not surpassed and seldom equaled. It is an accomplishment, however, of no special use to a poor pirate’s bride; as I intend you shall be.”

She had turned her back on me now.

“Besides, as to that,” I went on, “I am only affording these young gentlemen the same advantages offered by the advertisements of the United States navy recruiting service—good wages, good fare, and an opportunity to see the world. Come now, we’ll all see the world together. Shall we not, Miss Emory—I mean, Helena?”

“We can’t live here forever, anyhow,” said she.

“I could,” was my swift answer. “Forever, in just this quiet scene. Forever, with all the world forgot, and just you standing there as you are, the most beautiful girl I ever saw; and once, I thought, the kindest.”

“That I am not.”

“No. I was much mistaken in you, much disappointed. It grieved me to see you fall below the standard I had set for you. I thought your ideals high and fine. They were not, as I learned to my sorrow. You were just like all the rest. You cared only for my money, because it could give you ease, luxury, station. When that was gone, you cared nothing for me.”

I stood looking at her lovely shoulders for some time, but she made no sign.

“And therefore, finding you so fallen,” I resumed, “finding you only, after all, like the other worthless, parasitic women of the day, Miss Emory—Helena, I mean—I resolved to do what I could to educate you. And so I offer you the same footing that I do your nephew—good wages, good fare, and an opportunity to see the world.”

No answer whatever.

“Do you remember the Bay of Naples, at sunset, as we saw it when we first steamed in on the old City of Berlin, Helena?”

No answer.

“And do you recall Fuji-yama, with the white top—remember the rickshaw rides together, Helena?”

No answer.

“And then, the fiords of Norway, and the mountains? Or the chalk cliffs off Dover? And those sweet green fields of England—as we rode up to London town? And the taxis there, just you and I, Helena, with Aunt Lucinda happily evaded—just you and I? Yes, I am thinking of forcing Aunt Lucinda to walk the plank ere long, Helena. I want a world all my own, Helena, the world that was meant for us, Helena, made for us—a world with no living thing in it but yonder mocking-bird that’s singing; and you, and me.”

“Could you not dispense with the mocking-bird—and me?” she asked.

“No,” (I winced at her thrust, however). “No, not with you. And you know in your heart, in the bottom of your trifling and fickle and worthless heart, Helena Emory, that if it came to the test, and if life and all the world and all happiness were to be either all yours or all mine, I’d go anywhere, do anything, and leave it all to you rather than keep any for myself.”