The Lady and the Pirate - Emerson Hough (lightweight ebook reader .txt) 📗

“She’s not as big as the Mauretania,” said Helena, fixing L’Olonnois’ collar for him.

“I’m sure she’s going to roll horribly,” added Aunt Lucinda. “And if I should be seasick, with my neuralgia, I’m sure I don’t know what I should do.”

“I know!” remarked L’Olonnois; and Helena promptly dropped her hand over his mouth.

“Let us not think of storm and shipwreck,” said I, “at least until they come. I want to ask your attention to John’s imitation of Luigi’s oysters à la marinière. The oysters are of our own catching this morning. For, you must know, the water hereabout is very shallow, and is full of oysters.”

“You said full of sharks,” corrected Aunt Lucinda.

“Did I? I meant oysters.” And I helped her to some from the dumb-waiter and uncorked the very last bottle of the ninety-three left in the case. “And as for this storm of which you speak, ladies,” I added as I poured, “I would there might come every day as ill a wind if it would blow me as great a good as yourselves for luncheon.”

“Yes,” said L’Olonnois brightly, “you might blow in once in a while an’ see us fellers. I told Black Bart that captives——” but here I kicked Jimmy under the table. Poor chap, what with his Auntie Helena’s hand at one extremity and my boot at the other, he was strained in his conversation, and in disgust, joined Jean Lafitte in complete silence and oysters.

“Really,” and Helena raised her eyes, “isn’t it growing colder?”

“Jean, close the port behind Miss Emory,” said I. It was plain enough to my mind that a blue norther was breaking, with its swift drop in temperature and its possibly high wind.

“The table’s actin’ funny,” commented Jean Lafitte presently. He had never been at sea before.

“Yes,” said Aunt Lucinda, with very much—too much—dignity. “If you all will please excuse me, I think I shall go back to the cabin. Helena!”

“Go with Mrs. Daniver at once, Jimmy,” said I to L’Olonnois.

“Aye, aye, Sir!” saluted he joyously; and added aside as he passed me, “Hope the old girl’s going to be good an’ sick!”

I could see Peterson standing near the saloon’s door, and bethought me to send Jean Lafitte up to aid him in making all shipshape. We were beginning to roll; and I missed the smooth thrust of both our propellors, although now the engines were purring smoothly enough. Thus by mere chance, I found myself alone with Helena. I put out a hand to steady her as she rose.

“Is it really going to be bad?” she inquired anxiously. “Auntie gets so sick.”

“It will be rough, for three hours yet,” I admitted. “She’s not so big as the Mauretania, but as well built for her tonnage. You couldn’t pound her apart, no matter what came—she’s oak and cedar, through and through, and every point——”

“You’ve studied her well, since you—since you came aboard?”

—“Yes, yes, to be sure I have. And she’s worth her name. Don’t you think it was mighty fine of—of Mr. Davidson to name her after you—the Belle Helène?”

“He never did. If he had, why?”

“Don’t ask such questions, with the glass falling as it is,” I said, pulling up the racks to restrain the dancing tumblers.

“Oh, don’t joke!” she said. “Harry!”

“Yes, Helena,” said I.

“I’m afraid!”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. But we seem so little and the sea so big. And it’s getting black, and the fog is coming. Look—you can’t see the shore-line any more now.”

It was as she said. The swift bank of vapor had blotted out the low-lying shores entirely. We sailed now in a narrowing circle of mist. I saw thin points of moisture on the port lights. And now I began to close the ports.

“There is danger!” she reiterated.

“All horses can run away, all auto cars can blow up, all boats can sink. But we have as good charts and compasses as the Mauretania, and in three hours——”

“But much can happen in three hours.”

“Much has happened in less time. It did not take me so long as that to love you, Helena, and that I have not forgotten in more than five years. Five years, Helena. And as to shipwreck, what does one more matter? It is you who have made shipwreck of a man’s life. Take shame for that.”

“Take shame yourself, to talk in this way to me, when I am helpless, when I can’t get away, when I’m troubled and frightened half to death? Ah, fine of you to persecute a girl!” She sobbed, choking a little, but her head high. “Let me out, I’m going to Auntie Lucinda. I hate you more and more. If I were to drown, I’d not take aid from you.”

“Do you mean that, Helena?” I asked, more than the chill of the norther in my blood.

“Yes, I mean it. You are a coward!”

I stood for quite a time between her and the companion stair, my hand still offering aid as she swayed in the boat’s roll now. I was thinking, and I was very sad.

“Helena,” said I, “perhaps you have won. That’s a hard word to take from man or woman. If it is in any way true, you have won and I have lost, and deserved to lose. But now, since little else remains, let me arrange matters as simply as I can. I’ll admit there’s an element of risk in our situation—one screw is out of commission, and one engine might be better. If we missed the channel west of the shoals, we might go aground—I hope not. Whether we do or not, I want to tell you—over yonder, forty or fifty miles, is the channel running inland, which was my objective point all along. I know this coast in the dark, like a book. Now, I promise you, I’ll take you in there to friends of mine, people of your own class, and no one shall suspect one jot of all this, other than that we were driven out of our course. And once there, you are free. You never will see my face again. I will do this, as a ship’s man, for you, and if need comes, will give my life to keep you safe. It’s about all a coward can do for you. Now go, and if any time of need comes for me to call you, you will be called. And you will be cared for by the ship’s men. And because I am head of the ship’s men, you will do as I say. But I hope no need for this will come. Yonder is our course, where she heads now, and soon you will be free from me. You have wrecked me. Now I am derelict, from this time on. Good-by.”

I heard footfalls above. “Mrs. Daniver’s compliments to Captain Black Bart,” saluted L’Olonnois, “an’ would he send my Auntie Helena back, because she’s offle sick.”

“Take good care of your Auntie Helena, Jimmy,” said I, “and help her aft along the rail.”

I followed up the companionway, and saw her going slowly, head down, her coat of lace blown wide; her hand at her throat, and sobbing in what Jimmy and I both knew was fear of the storm.

“Have they got everything they need there, Jimmy?” I asked, as he returned.

“Sure. And the old girl’s going to have a peach of a one this time—she can’t hardly rock in a rockin’ chair ’thout gettin’ seasick. I think it’s great, don’t you? Look at her buck into ’em!”

Jimmy and his friend shared this immunity from mal de mer. I could see Jean now helping haul down our burgee, and the deck boy, Willy, in his hurried work about the boat. Williams, I could not see. But Peterson was now calm and much in his element, for a better skipper than he never sailed a craft on the Great Lakes.

“I think she’s going to blow great guns,” said he, “and like enough the other engine’ll pop any minute.”

“Yes?” I answered, stepping to the wheel. “In which case we go to Davy Jones about when, Peterson?”

“We don’t go!” he rejoined. “She’s the grandest little ship afloat, and not a thing’s the matter with her.”

“Can we make the channel and run inside the long key below the Côte Blanche Bayou?”

“Sure we can. You’d better get the covers off the boats, and see the bottom plugs in and some water and supplies shipped aboard—but there’s not the slightest danger in the world for this boat, let me tell you that, sir. I’ve seen her perform before now, and there’s not a storm can blow on this coast she won’t ride through.”

AFTER the fashion of these gulf storms, this one tarried not in its coming, nor offered any clemency when it had arrived. Where but a half-hour since the heavens had been fair, the sea rippling, suave and kind, now the sky was not visible at all and the tumbling waves about us rolled savagely as in a nature wholly changed. The wind sang ominously overhead, as with lift and plunge we drove on into a bank of mist. A chill as of doom swiftly had replaced the balm of the southern sky; and forsooth, all the mercy of the world seemed lost and gone.

And as our craft, laboring, thrust forward blindly into this reek, with naught of comfort on any hand, nor even the dimmest ray of hope visible from any fixed thing on ahead, in like travail of going, in like groaning to the very soul, the bark of my life now lay in the welter, helpless, reft of storm and strife, blind, counseled by no fixed ray ahead. I know not what purpose remained in me, that, like the ship which bore us, I still, dumbly and without conscious purpose, forged onward to some point fixed by reason or desire before reason and desire had been engulfed by this final unkindness of the world. For myself, I cared little or none at all. The plunge of the boat, the shriek of the wind, the wild magic and mystery of it, would have comported not ill with a strong man’s tastes even in hours more happy, and now, especially, they jumped with the wild protest of a soul eager for some outlet of action or excitement. But for these others, these women—this woman—these boys, all brought into this danger by my own mad folly, ah! when the thought of these arose, a swift remorse caught me; and though for myself I feared not at all, for these I feared.

Needs must, therefore, use every cool skilled resource that lay at hand. No time now for broken hearts to ask attention, the ship must be sailed. Crippled or not, what she had of help for us must be got out of her, used, fostered, nourished. All the art of the navigator must be charged with this duty. We must win through. And, as many a man who has seen danger will testify, the great need brought to us all a great calm and a steady precision in that which needed doing.

I saw Peterson at the wheel, wet to the skin, as now and again a seventh wave, slow, portentous, deadly-deliberate, showed ahead of us, advanced, reared and pounded down on us with its tons of might. But he only shook the brine from his eyes and held her up, waiting for the slow pulse of our crippled engine to come on.

“Can’t keep my pipe lit!” he called to me, as I stood beside him; and at last, Peterson, in a real time of danger, seemed altogether happy and altogether free of apprehension beyond that regarding