_ CHAPTER XI. IN WHICH MY PLOT THICKENS
We sped on now steadily, day by delightful day, and ever arose in my soul new wonders at the joy of life itself, things that had escaped me in my plodding business life. Now and again, I took from my pocket the little volume which always went with me on the stream when I angled, and which I confess sometimes charmed me away from the stream to some shaded nook where I might read old Omar undisturbed--as now I might, with L'Olonnois at the masthead and Lafitte at the wheel. And always these wise, reckless, joyous pages of the old philosopher spelled to me "Haste! Haste!"
"Whether at Naishapur or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,
The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop.
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one."
"Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing!"
What truth, what absolute truth of the red-hot spur lay in those words, lesson direst to me! What had my life been, plodding in books to learn to keep by forms of law the booty my father had stolen? Away with it, then, for now the Bird of Time was on the wing! Let me forget the wasted years, spent in adding dollar to dollar; for what could the highest pile of dollars mean to a man who had missed what Lafitte and L'Olonnois and Omar had in their teaching? The booty of the world, the pearls of price, the casks of the Wine of Life, are his only who takes them. They can not be bought, can not be given. "Oh, haste! Jean Lafitte, for my new knowledge indeed eats at my soul. Hasten, for the Bird of Life is on the wing, L'Olonnois." So I spoke to them; and they, feeling it all a part of the play, gravely answered in kind, to what end that any who sought to stay Black Bart and his crew did so at peril of their blood.
We came, I knew not after how many days forgotten in detail--after passing, each avoided as a pestilence, many cities prosperous in commerce--alongside the river port of the city of St. Louis, crowded with motley and misfit shipping of one sort or other, where our craft might moor without fear of exciting any suspicion, in spite of our ominous name; for I had the precaution to lower our flag of the skull and cross-bones.
I sought out the man most apt to know of any considerable vessels docking there, and made inquiry for any power yacht one hundred and twenty-five feet long, white and black ventilators, white hull with blue line, flying the burgee
Belle Helene, or some such name. None could advise me for a time, and I looked in vain, as I had in every dock in six hundred miles, for the trim hull of my yacht. At last one old mariner, in rubber boots, himself skipper of a house-boat south-bound for a winter's trapping, admitted that he had seen such a craft three days before!
"Did she dock?" I demanded.
"Sure she did, and lay over night. I remember it well enough, for I saw her tie up; and that evening her owner went ashore and up-town, and with him his bride, I reckon--handsomest girl in all the town. They must have been married, for he was lookin' like he owned her. That was lemme see, two days ago or maybe four. They came aboard her next morning, all three--there was a old party along, girl's mother likely--around eleven o'clock, and in a little while cast off and went on down-river. As fine a boat as ever made the river run--still as a mouse she was, but quick as a cat, and around Ste. Genevieve, I reckon, before I got back to my own scow after helping them off here. No wonder her owner was proud. He stood on the quarter-deck like a lord. Why shouldn't he, ownin' a boat an' a girl like that?"
"He doesn't own either!" I retorted hotly.
"Why, how do you know he don't?" demanded my sea-going man.
"Who should know, if not myself?"
"Sho! You talk like you owned her!"
"I do own her!"
"It looks like it. Which do you mean--her the yacht, or her the girl?"
"Both--no! That is, well at least I own the boat."
"That may all be, or it all mayn't," he replied, openly scoffing; "at least so far's the boat goes. Anybody kin buy anything that has the price. But as to the girl, you'd have to prove it, if I was him. And if he didn't look like he owned her, or was goin' to, I'll eat your own gas tank there, an' them two kids in it fer good measure."
Of course I could not argue or explain, and therefore turned away. But all the answer of my soul came from the lips of L'Olonnois, who, propped up against the cockpit combing, was reading aloud to Lafitte from
The Pirate's Own Book as I approached. "Hah! my good man!" exclaimed the pirate chieftain as he looked at his blade, "unhand the maid, or by Heaven! your life's blood shall dye the deck where you stand!"
"Ah, ha! Cal Davidson," said I to myself through my set teeth; "little do you think that you are discovered in your sins, and little do you know that the avenger is on your track. But have a care, for Black Bart and his band pursues you!"
And, seeing that we had now laid in abundance of ship's stores, including four drums of gasoline; and since the trail of Cal Davidson was, at least, no wider than the banks of the river down which he had fled, it looked ill enough for the chances of that robber when the stanch
Sea Rover, her flag again aloft and promising no quarter, chugged out into midstream and took up a pursuit which was to know no faltering until at last I had learned the truth about the fair captive of the
Belle Helene. For indeed, indeed, Omar, and you, too, stout Lafitte and hardy L'Olonnois, the Bird of Life was on the wing. _