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

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.”

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