The Lady and the Pirate by Emerson Hough (best new books to read txt) 📕

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