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

most famous of the Davidson waistcoats being the worse for the salt-water immersions it had known; and my ancient flannels were corkscrewing about my limbs. But as for Helena, young and vital, she discarded her sweater for breakfast, and appeared as she had before the shipwreck, in lace bridge coat and wearing many gems! L’Olonnois, with the intimacy of kin and the admiration of youth—and with youth’s lack of tact—saluted her now gaily. “Gee! Auntie,” said he, at table on the sand, “togged out that way, all them glitterin’ gems, you shore look fit for a pirate’s bride!”

Poor Helena! She blushed red to the hair; and I fear I did no better myself. “Jimmy!” reproved Aunt Lucinda.

“Don’t call me ‘Jimmy’!” rejoined that hopeful. “My name is L’Olonnois, the Scourge of The Sea. Me an’ Jean Lafitte, we follow Black Bart the Avenger, to the Spanish Main. Auntie, pass me the bacon, please. I’m just about starved.”

Mrs. Daniver, as was her custom, ate a very substantial breakfast; Helena, almost none at all; nor had I much taste for food. In some way, our constraint insensibly extended to all the party, much to L’Olonnois’ disgust. “It’s her fault!” I overheard him say to his mate. “Women can’t play no games. An’ we was havin’ such a bully chance! Now, like’s not, we won’t stay here longer’n it’ll take to get things back to the boat again. I don’t want to go back home—I’d rather be a pirate; an’ so’d any fellow.”

“Sure he would,” assented Jean. They did not see me, behind the tent.

“Somethin’s wrong,” began L’Olonnois, portentously.

“What’d you guess?” queried Lafitte. “Looks to me like it was somethin’ between him an’ the fair captive.”

“That’s just it—that’s just what I said! Now, if Black Bart lets his whiskers grow, an’ Auntie Helena wears them rings, ain’t it just like in the book? Course it is! But here they go, don’t eat nothin’, don’t talk none to nobody.”

“I’ll tell you what!” began Lafitte.

“Uh-huh, what?” demanded L’Olonnois.

“A great wrong has been did our brave leader by yon heartless jade; that’s what!”

“You betcher life they has. He’s on the square, an’ look what he done for us—look how he managed things all the way down to here. Anybody else couldn’t have got away with this. Anybody else’d never a’ went out there last night after John, just a Chink, thataway. An’ her!”

Jimmy’s disapproval of his auntie, as thus expressed, was extreme. I was now about to step away, but feared detection, so unwillingly heard on.

“But he can’t see no one else but yon fickle jade!” commented Jean Lafitte, “unworthy as she is of a bold chief’s regard!”

“Nope. That’s what’s goin’ to make all the trouble. I’ll tell you what!”

“What?”

“We’ll have to fix it up, somehow.”

“How’d you mean?”

“Why, reason it out with ’em both.”

Jean apparently shook his head, or had some look of dubiousness, for L’Olonnois went on.

“We gotta do it, somehow. If we don’t, we’ll about have to go back home; an’ who wants to go back home from a good old desert island like this here. So now——”

“Uh, huh?”

“Why, I’ll tell you, now. You see, I got some pull with her—the fair captive. She used to lick me, but she don’t dast to try it on here on a desert island: so I got some pull. An’ like enough you c’d talk it over with Black Bart.”

“Nuh—uh! I don’t like to.”

“Why?”

“Well, I don’t. He’s all right.”

“Yes, but we got to get ’em together!”

“Shore. But, my idea, he’s hard to get together if he gets a notion he ain’t had a square deal nohow, someways.”

“Well, he ain’t. So that makes my part the hardest. But you just go to him, and tell him not to hurry, because you are informed the fair captive is goin’ to relent, pretty soon, if we just don’t get in too big a hurry and run away from a place like this—where the duck shootin’ is immense!”

“But kin you work her, Jimmy?”

“Well, I dunno. She’s pretty set, if she thinks she ain’t had a square deal, too.”

“Well now,” argued Lafitte, “if that’s the way they both feel, either they’re both wrong an’ ought to shake hands, or else one of ’em’s wrong, and they either ought to get together an’ find out which it was, or else they ought to leave it to some one else to say which one was wrong. Ain’t that so?”

“O’ course it’s so. So now, thing fer us fellows to do, is just to put it before ’em plain, an’ get ’em both to leave it to us two fellers what’s right fer ’em both to do. Now, I think they’d ought to get married, both of ’em—I mean to each other, you know. Folks does get married.”

“Black Bart would,” said Jean Lafitte. “I’ll bet anything. The fair captive, she’s a heartless jade, but I seen Black Bart lookin’ at her, an’——”

“An’ I seen her lookin’ at him—leastways a picture—an’ says she, ‘Jimmy——’”

“Jimmy!” It was I, myself, red and angry, who now broke from my unwilling eavesdropping.

The two boys turned to me innocently. I found it difficult to say anything at all, and wisest to say nothing. “I was just going to ask if you two wouldn’t like to take the guns and go out after some more ducks—especially the kind with red heads and flat noses, such as we had yesterday. And I’ll lend you Partial, so you can try for some more of those funny little turtles. I’ll have to go out to the ship, and also over to the lighthouse, before long. The tide will turn, perhaps, and at least the wind is offshore from the island now.”

“Sure, we’ll go.” Jean spoke for both at once.

“Very well, then. And be careful. And you’d—you’d better leave your auntie and her auntie alone, Jimmy—they’ll want to sleep.”

“You didn’t hear us sayin’ nothin’, did you, Black Bart?” asked L’Olonnois, suspiciously.

“By Jove! I believe that’s a boat beating down the bay,” said I. “Sail ho!” And so eager were they that they forgot my omission of direct reply.

“It’s very likely only the lighthouse supply boat coming in,” said I. “I’ll find out over there. Better run along, or the morning flight of the birds will be over.” So they ran along.

As for myself, I called Peterson and Williams for another visit to our disabled ship, which now lay on a level keel, white and glistening, rocking gently in the bright wind. I left word for the ladies that we might not be back for luncheon.

We found that the piling waters of Côte Blanche, erstwhile blown out to sea, were now slowly settling back again after the offshore storm. The Belle Helène had risen from her bed in the mud now and rode free. Our soundings showed us that it would be easy now to break out the anchor and reach the channel, just ahead. So, finding no leak of consequence, and the beloved engines not the worse for wear, Williams went below to get up some power, while Peterson took the wheel and I went forward to the capstan.

The donkey winch soon began its work, and I felt the great anchor at length break away and come apeak. The current of the air swung us before we had all made fast; and as I sounded with a long bow pike, I presently called out to Peterson, “No bottom!” He nodded; and now, slowly, we took the channel and moved on in opposite the light. We could see the white-capped gulf rolling beyond.

“Water there!” said Peterson. “We can go on through, come around in the Morrison cut-off, and so make the end of the Manning channel to the mainland. But I wish we had a local pilot.”

I nodded. “Drop her in alongside this fellow’s wharf,” I added. “The ladies have sent some letters—to go out by the tender’s boat, yonder—I suppose he’ll be going back to-day.”

“Like enough,” said Peterson; and so gently we moved on up the dredged channel, and at last made fast at the tumble-down wharf of the lighthouse; courteously waiting for the little craft of the tender to make its landing.

We found the mooring none too good, what with the storm’s work at the wharf, and as we shifted our lines a time or two, the gaping, jeans-clad Cajun who had come in with mail and supplies passed in to the lighthouse ahead of us; and I wonder his head did not twist quite off its neck, for though he walked forward, he ever looked behind him.

When at length we two, Peterson and myself, passed up the rickety walk to the equally rickety gallery at the foot of the light, we found two very badly frightened men instead of a single curious one. The keeper in sooth had in hand a muzzle-loading shotgun of such extreme age, connected with such extreme length of barrel, as might have led one to suspect it had grown an inch or so annually for all of many decades. He was too much frightened to make active resistance, however, and only warned us away, himself, now, a pale saffron in color.

“Keep hout!” he commanded. “No, you’ll didn’t!”

“We’ll didn’t what, my friend?” began I mildly. “Don’t you like my looks? Not that I blame you if you do not. But has the boat brought down any milk or eggs that you can spare?”

“No milluk—no haig!” muttered the light tender; and they would have closed the door.

“Come, come now, my friends!” I rejoined testily. “Suppose you haven’t, you can at least be civil. I want to talk with you a minute. This is the power yacht Belle Helène, of Mackinaw, cruising on the Gulf. We went aground in the storm; and all we want now is to send out a little mail by you to Morgan City, or wherever you go; and to pass the time of day with you, as friends should. What’s wrong—do you think us a government revenue boat, and are you smuggling stuff from Cuba through the light here?”

“We no make hany smug’,” replied the keeper. “But we know you, who you been!”

He smote now upon an open newspaper, whose wrapper still lay on the floor. I glanced, and this time I saw a half-page cut of the Belle Helène herself, together with portraits of myself, Mrs. Daniver, Miss Emory and two wholly imaginary and fearsome boys who very likely were made up from newspaper portraits of the James Brothers! Moreover, my hasty glance caught sight of a line in large letters, reading: