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

rose alongside on a wave, and made fast our line. When Williams and I had followed, we took a general inventory of the Belle Helène. All the deck gear was gone, spare oars and spars, a canvas or so, and some coils of rope. Beyond that, there seemed no serious damage, unless the hull had been injured by its pounding during the night.

“It’s a mud-bank here, I think, Mr. Harry,” said Peterson. “She may have ripped some of her copper on the oyster reefs, but she seems to bed full length and maybe she’s not strained, after all.”

“There’s the line of channel guides,” said I, pointing to a row of sticks driven into the mud a couple of miles in length.

“Yes,” said the old man, “the channel’s not more than a biscuit toss from here. We came right across it—if it hadn’t been in the dark, we’d have gone through into the lee of the island and been all right. Now as it is, we’re all wrong.”

“How do you mean?” I asked.

“How’ll we get that anchor up?” grumbled he. “If we start the engines and try to crawl up by the capstan, we couldn’t pull her out of the mud. If we put on a donkey engine we’d snatch the bow out of here before we could lift the hook. And until we do, how are we going to move her? There’s the channel, but it’s as far as ever. We can’t sweep her off, of course, and we can’t pole her off.”

“Well, Peterson,” said I, “let us, by all means, hope for the worst.” I smiled, seeing that he now was possessed of his normal gloom.

“Well,” said he, “we went on at full tide, and hard aground at that. This wind is blowing all the water out of Côte Blanche. Of course, if the wind should turn and drive in again, we might move her, if we caught her at high tide once more. Until that happens, I guess we’re anchored here for sure.”

“The glass is rising now, Peterson,” said I, pleasantly.

“Oh, yes, it may rise a little,” said he, “and of course the storm’s gone by for the time. But I don’t think there’s going to be any good change of weather that’ll hold, very soon. But now, Williams and I’ll go below and see if we can start a pump. I expect she’s sprung a leak, all right.”

Shaking his head in much apprehension, the old man made his way with Williams, first into the engine-room. For my own part, I turned toward my cabin door. All at once as I did so it seemed to me I heard a sound. It came again, a sort of a meek diffident sound, expectant rather than complaining. And then I heard an unmistakable scraping at the door. Hastening, I flung it open. I was greeted with a great whine of joy and trust, a shaggy form leaped upon me, thrust its cold nose into my face, gave me much greetings of whines, and at length of a loud howl of joy.

“Partial!” I cried, and caught him by the paws as he put them on my shoulders and rubbed his muzzle along my cheek, whimpering; “Partial! Oh, my dear chap, I say now, I’m glad to see you!”

As a matter of fact, I had forgotten Partial these three days, other things being on my mind. Once more our amateurishness in shipwreck had nearly cost us a life. Partial, no doubt, had meekly waited at his usual place until ordered to come out with the rest. We had closed the doors and port-holes when we left the Belle Helène, and thus he had been locked in.

I sat down on one of the bench lockers with Partial’s head in my hand, and almost my eyes became moist. “Partial,” said I, “let me confess the truth to you. The woman had maddened me. I forgot you—I did, and will own it now. It was a grave fault, my friend. I do not ask you to forgive me, and all I can do is to promise you such amend as lies in my power. From now on, I promise you, you shall go with me to all the ends of the earth. My people shall be your people, till death do us part. Do you hear me, Partial?”

He answered by springing up again and licking my face and hands, whimpering excitedly, glad that I had come at last. “Dear Partial,” said I, “you’re no gladder than I am. And what’s more, you’ve nothing to cost you penitence. Come, we’ll go to the dining-room and see whether there’s anything left to eat.”

He followed me now along the rolling deck, and happily I was able to get him some scraps for his breakfast. Peterson heard me talking, and thrust up a head above the engine-room hatch. He was as crestfallen as myself when I showed him that, once more, we had been forgetful and had left a friend while busy in saving ourselves.

I went once more to my cabin—Peterson having discovered, apparently to his great regret, that so far as could be determined, we had not started a seam or smashed a timber anywhere. I found a small tent among other of my sporting equipment and tossed this out to go in the long boat’s cargo. Another fowling piece and ammunition, my canvas hunting coat and wading boots, followed. Even, I caught down from a nail the only other pair of trousers available in my wardrobe—for Davidson’s vast midship section comported ill with my own. I found my watch in these other trousers, and putting a hand in a pocket, fished out also my portemonnaie. It had certain bills in it—I presume two or three thousand dollars in all, and I thrust these into my pocket. At the bottom of the little purse,—among collar buttons and other hard objects,—I found a little round white object, and once more bethought me of my pearl which I had won on the far northern river, as it seemed to me many years before—the pearl which, as I have said, was to be known as the Belle Helène. I preserved it now.

Peterson and Williams, meantime, were busy in getting aboard a case or so of water—not forgetting the ninety-three of which I reminded the old man once more. Some additional stores of bacon and tea, and a case of eggs, were also taken aboard. At length, with quite a little cargo in the way of comforts, we embarked once more and started for our rude encampment.

“We may be here for a month,” said Peterson gloomily, looking at the Belle Helène, now rolling just a little, her keel fast full length in the mud-bar. “I don’t think there’s ever going to be any change of wind—it’ll blow steadily this way for a week, anyhow.”

“I presume, Peterson,” said I coolly, “that you don’t see the sun breaking through the clouds over there, at all. And I fancy that you will not believe, either, that the sea is lulling now. Very well, I don’t want to make you unhappy, my friend.”

I heard Williams chuckling as he stooped over his engine. Thus, chugging on merrily with the long oily roll of the sea under us, we presently once more ran our surf, and this time had small difficulty in winning through, for, once we felt the ground under us, we simply sprang overboard and waded in, dragging the boat with us, waist-deep sometimes in the flood, but on the whole quite safe.

My two pirate mates came down to the beach joyously, and helped us unload. It seemed that they had made something of a hunt already, for with much pride Jean now displayed to me certain birds, proof of his own prowess with his shotgun.

“Some of ’em’s good to eat,” said he. “Regular greenheads, like we get up North.” I looked at the string of birds, and saw that they were mallards and teals, a couple of dozen at least.

“Fie, fie!” said I. “I fear you’ve been shooting on the water.”

“Sure I did! And here’s four things that I don’t suppose are good to eat—they got kind of snaky heads, and red-colored, too. Ain’t no ducks good to eat that ain’t got green heads.”

“Each man to his taste,” said I, “but if you like, you may have the green heads, and I’ll take these with the auburn locks.”

“Pshaw! What are they?” answered he.

“Only canvasbacks,” said I, “and good fat ones, too. What luck have you, Jimmy, my son?”

“Well, I went along and helped carry things,” said L’Olonnois.

“What’s that you’ve got on a string?” I asked him.

“Oh, that,” said he, flushing. “It ain’t nothing but a little turtle. It had funny marks on its back. I caught it in the grass over there by the lake.”

Something about Jimmy’s little turtle interested me, and I picked it up in my hands.

“For amateur sportsmen, gentlemen,” said I, “you’re doing pretty well. Your funny little turtle, Jimmy, is nothing but a diamond-back terrapin. There are perhaps more of them on this coast than anywhere else in the world to-day. And Partial, here—that friend of ours now leaping excitedly and joyously before them, barking at this little turtle of Jimmy’s—will perhaps be able to help you find some more of them in the grass—the market hunters here hunt them with dogs, as perhaps you did not know.”

“We got some oysters, Sir,” said Willy, coming forward shyly and shamefacedly; and showed me the cockpit of the duck boat pretty well filled. The boy had, it seems, found a reef of these in a brackish arm which made inland, and dug them by the simple process of stooping down below the surface of the water, since he had no oyster tongs.

“Well,” said I, “it looks as if we would fare pretty well for lunch. John”—and I called my China boy—“again I find renewed cause for felicitations on your rescue.”

John stood looking at me blankly.

“You savee, John?” said I, showing him one of the canvasbacks, and he remarked mildly, “All litee.” If anything, his lunch was better than his breakfast, and when I saw him take Jimmy’s funny little turtle from him and examine it with appraising eye, I felt fairly well convinced that we should not suffer at the dinner hour.

But though a certain gaiety now came to others of the party as we sat about our midday meal, warm now and well fed, and although the boys excitedly made plans about putting up the tent and furnishing it and going into camp for the winter, I could not share their eagerness. There was one other reticent figure at our fireside. Helena sat silent, the head of Partial in her lap. I felt resentment that she should steal from me even my dog. At last, having nothing better to do, I picked up my gun, and slipping on my coat, started down the beach, telling the boys that I was going alone, perhaps too far for them to follow, with the purpose of making some sort of an exploration of the island.

Moody and depressed, not in the least well satisfied with life, even with matters thus so far more fortunate than we had so recently had reason to expect, I walked along the hard sand, sometimes looking at the long lines of wild fowl streaming in above the fresh-water lagoon, but in reality thinking but little of these. I did not at first hear the light step which came behind me on the sand.

CHAPTER XXXIV IN WHICH IS NO RAPPROCHEMENT WITH THE FAIR CAPTIVE

“HARRY!” I heard her call, and turned quickly. “Harry, wait!”

She came hurrying up toward me. I felt