A House-Boat on the Styx by John Kendrick Bangs (books under 200 pages TXT) 📕

This boat, stealing up the river like a thief in the night, contained Captain Kidd and his pirate crew, and their mission was a mission of vengeance.  To put the matter briefly and plainly, Captain Kidd was smarting under the indignity which the club had recently put upon him.  He had been unanimously blackballed, even his proposer and seconder, who had been browbeaten into nominating him for membership, voting against him.

“I may be a pirate,” he cried, when he heard what the club had done, “but I have feelings, and the Associated Shades will repent their action.  The time will come when they’ll find that I have their club-house, and they have—its debts.”

It was for this purpose that the great terror of the seas had come upon this, the first favorable opportunity.  Kidd knew that the house-boat was unguarded; his spies had told him that the members had every one gone to the fight, and he resolved that the time had come to act.  He did not know that the Fates had helped to make his vengeance all the more terrible and withering by putting the most attractive and fashionable ladies of the Stygian country likewise in his power; but so it was, and they, poor souls, while this fiend, relentless and cruel, was slowly approaching, sang on and danced on in blissful unconsciousness of their peril.

In less than five minutes from the time when his sinister-craft rounded the bend Kidd and his crew had boarded the house-boat, cut her loose from her moorings, and in ten minutes she had sailed away into the great unknown, and with her went some of the most precious gems in the social diadem of Hades.

The rest of my story is soon told.  The whole country was aroused when the crime was discovered, but up to the date of this narrative no word has been received of the missing craft and her precious cargo.  Raleigh and Cæsar have had the seas scoured in search of her, Hamlet has offered his kingdom for her return, but unavailingly; and the men of Hades were cast into a gloom from which there seems to be no relief.

Socrates alone was unaffected.

“They’ll come back some day, my dear Raleigh,” he said, as the knight buried his face, weeping, in his hands.  “So why repine?  I’ll never lose my Xanthippe—permanently, that is.  I know that, for I am a philosopher, and I know there is no such thing as luck.  And we can start another club.”

“Very likely,” sighed Raleigh, wiping his eyes.  “I don’t mind the club so much, but to think of those poor women—”

“Oh, they’re all right,” returned Socrates, with a laugh.  “Cæsar’s wife is along, and you can’t dispute the fact that she’s a good chaperon.  Give the ladies a chance.  They’ve been after our club for years; now let ’em have it, and let us hope that they like it.  Order me up a hemlock sour, and let’s drink to their enjoyment of club life.”

Which was done, and I, in spirit, drank with them, for I sincerely hope that the “New Women” of Hades are having a good time.