The Lady and the Pirate by Emerson Hough (ebook reader library TXT) 📖

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