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

of the Sea Rover and let me seek my fortune with you, I would gladly pay all the reckoning of our journey.”

“And how long will we be gone?”

“Till after your school begins, I fear.”

“And how far are you going with us?”

“Spang! to the Spanish Main!” I answered.

So then we set forth down my woodland path.

CHAPTER VI IN WHICH I ACQUIRE A FRIEND

WE proceeded, therefore, through the wood, sweet in the dew of morning, among many twittering birds, and so came, presently, to the end of my path, where the little gate shuts it off from my mowing meadow; at the upper end of which, it may be remembered, the good ship Sea Rover lay anchored. The grass stood waist-high and wet in the dew as we turned along the meadow side, and L’Olonnois flinched a bit, although Lafitte waded along carelessly.

I observed that each boy had now thrust into his hat band a turkey feather, picked up, en route, along my field’s edge. Jimmy was not sure of the correctness of this; and admitted that, sometimes, he had read literature having to do with Indian fighting, as well as piratical enterprises. I suggested that, to my mind, nothing quite took the place of the regulation red kerchief bound about the head; whereat, gravely, both L’Olonnois and Lafitte discarded their hats and feathers, for the bandannas which I proffered them. Having bound these about their foreheads, a great courage and confidence came to them.

L’Olonnois drew his sword, and with some care placed the blade between his teeth. “Hist!” exclaimed Lafitte, himself swept by his friend’s imagination, and preparing to place his cutlass in his mouth also. “Let us approach the vessel with care, lest the enemy be about.” So saying, each pirate with a mouthful of cold steel, and a hand shading his red-kerchiefed brow, stole through my clump of birches toward the bend, where the boat had first surprised me; myself following, somewhat put to it to refrain from laughter, although one rarely laughs in the young hours of the day, and myself rarely, at all.

We were greeted by no hostile shot, and found our vessel quite as we had left her, as I could see at a glance when we neared the bank; but, none the less, something stirred in the bushes. A growl and a sudden barking, greeted Hiroshimi as he approached the boat in advance.

“You, Tige!” called out Lafitte. The dog—a dog none too beautiful, and now just a bit forlorn—approached us, alternately wagging in friendship and retreating in alarm.

“Well, what do you think of that!” said Jimmy. “We left him back at the lake—sent him home half a dozen times. How’d he get here, and how’d he know where we was?”

“He couldn’t a-swum the lake,” assented John. “And it was more’n ten miles around; and how could he smell where we went, on the water? Come here, Tige, you blame fool!”

“Nay,” said I, “he is no fool, this dog, but a creature of great reason, else he never could have found you. And I’ll be bound he is as keen for adventure as any of us.”

“He is coming here last night two ow-wore after dinner,” said the omniscient Hiroshimi. “Also he bite me on leg. He, also, is malefactor.”

“He has allotted to himself the duty of caring for the property of his masters, Hiro,” I said, “and hence is not really a malefactor. Besides, since he would not leave the boat and follow our trail, he is by this time hungry. Feed him, Hiro.”

But Hiroshimi was not eager to approach the piratical canine again; so I, myself, fished something from a hamper and called the dog to me. He ate gladly and most gratefully.

Now, it is a strange thing to say, but it is the truth, I had never before in my life fed a dog! I had won many knotty suits at law, had solved many hard problems dealing with human nature—and had found human nature for the most part rarely glad or grateful—but I have never owned or even fed a dog. A strange new feeling came in my throat now. Suddenly I swallowed some invisible intangible thing.

“John,” said I, “what breed of dog is this?” Indeed, it was hard to tell offhand, although he had the keen head of a collie.

“I guess he’s just one o’ them partial dogs,” answered John, “mostly shepherd, maybe; I dunno.”

“Very well, Partial shall be his name. And is he yours?”

“He runs round on the farm. He goes with Jimmy an’ me.”

“John, will you sell me Partial?” I asked this suddenly, realizing that my voice might sound odd.

“What’d ye want him fer?” he replied. “He’d be a nuisance.”

“I think not. See how faithful he has been, see how grateful he is; and how wise. He reasoned where you were as well as I reasoned who you were. He knows now that we are talking about him, and knows that I am his friend—see him look at me; see him come over and stand by me. John, do you think—do you believe a dog, this dog, would learn to like me, ever? Would he understand me?”

“Well,” said John judicially, standing sword in hand, “I dunno. Someways, maybe dogs and boys understands quicker. But you understand us. Maybe he’d understand you.”

“Well reasoned, Jean Lafitte,” said I, “perhaps your logic is better than you know, at least, I hope so. And now I offer you yonder magazine pistol as your own in fee, if you will sign over to me all your right, title and interest, in Partial, here. Evidently he belongs with us. He seems to care for us. And I experience some odd sort of feeling, which I can not quite describe. Perhaps it is only that I feel like a boy, and one that is going to own a dog. Is it a bargain?”

“Sure! You c’n have him for nuthin’,” said Lafitte. “He ain’t worth nothin’. Besides, I can’t charge a brother of the flag anything; anyhow, not you.” I inferred that Jean Lafitte, also, was going to grow up into one of those men like myself, cursed with a reticence and shyness in some matters, and so winning a reputation of oddness or coldness, against all the real and passionate protest of his own soul.

“No, brother,” I said to him: “I’ll not offer you trade, but gift. Let it be that if I can win the dog, and if he will take me as his master and friend, he shall be mine. And you take the pistol, and have a care of it.”

“That’s all right!” said Lafitte shyly, yet delightedly, as I could see.

“Here, Partial!” I called to the dog; and being young and friendly, and attached to neither in particular, and only in general worshiping the creature Boy, he came to me! I fed him, stroked him, looked into his eyes. And in a few moments he put his feet on my shoulders, and licked at my ear, and began to talk to me in low eager whines, and rubbed his muzzle against my cheek, and said all that a dog could say in oath of feudal service, pledging loyalty of life and limb. At which I felt very odd indeed; and began to see the world had many things in it of which I had never known; but which, now, I was resolved to know.

“Honorable is embarking those malefactor canine thing with so much impediments in this small-going boat?” inquired Hiroshimi.

“Yes,” I answered. “At once. All four of us. Put the stuff aboard, Hiro.”

So, somewhat crowded as the Sea Rover was, with three boys and a dog, not to mention our supplies and our armament, at last we were afloat with crew and cargo aboard. Hiro was not surprised, and asked no questions. With the salaam with which he announced dinner, he now announced his own departure for his duties at my deserted house; and as he walked he never turned around for curious gaze. Often, often have I, in my readings in the Eastern philosophy, endeavored to analyze and to emulate this Oriental calm, this dismissal from the soul of things small, things unessential and things unavoidable. An enviable character, my boy Hiroshimi.

Now all was bustle and confusion aboard the good ship Sea Rover. “Stand by the main braces!” roared Lafitte.

“Aye, aye, Sir!” replied the crew, that is to say, Jimmy L’Olonnois.

“Hard a lee!”

“Hard a lee it is, Sir!”

“Hoist the top-gallant mainsail an’ clew all alow an’ aloft!”

“Aye, aye, Sir!”

“Man the capstan! All hands to the starboard mizzen chains! Heave away!”

“Heave away!” rejoined our gallant crew, never for a moment in doubt as to the captain’s meaning. And, indeed, he gave a push with an oar at the bank, which thrust us into the smart current of my little river.

We were afloat! We were off to seek our fortune!