“Name best price outright sale bill Helen to me answer Chicago.”
“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 meantBelle 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 mycollection. 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 abouthimself 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 theSea Roverand 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.
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 shipSea Roverlay 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 inparticular, 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 theSea Roverwas, 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 Orientalcalm, 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 shipSea 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!
The man and two boys in a boat, one of the boys rowingI, 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 Imight 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 theFrühlingslied. 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.
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 theSea Roverto 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 thefield; 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 ateal 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 theSea Rover’sbowline, somelessons 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 ofour 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 abetter—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 shapeour 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.
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 rollingand 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 theSea 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 theSea Roveragainst theBelle 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 onthe 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 thetouch of another man’s hand or weapon is quite another matter. That arouses the unthinking blood, and follows then, no matter the issue, thegaudium 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 theymayhap 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 noword 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-barsof 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 theSea Roverpasses. 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. Thecamp 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 wewere 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 liefeeding 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, afterwe 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.
“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 totakethem 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 thathe 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 alsoregarded 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 theodor, 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 placedin 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 goodstart—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 asThe 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 shipSea Roverlay 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 theSea Roveras she headed out boldly into the high seas.