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The Lady and the Pirate, a novel by Emerson Hough |
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Chapter 12. In Which We Close With The Enemy |
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_ CHAPTER XII. IN WHICH WE CLOSE WITH THE ENEMY Cal Davidson took on five drums of petrol at Cairo, and a like amount of champagne at Memphis, and no man may tell what other supplies at this or that other point along the river. He evidently suspected no pursuit, or, if he did, was a swaggering varlet enough, for, according to all accounts which we could get, he loitered and lingered along, altogether at his leisure, with due attention to social matters at every port; for if he had not a wife at every port, at least, he had an acquaintance of business or social sort, so that, one might be sure, there were few dull moments for him and his party, whether afloat or ashore. He must have attended a dinner-party and two theaters at Memphis, and have sailed only after making three thousand dollars out of a combination in champagne present and cotton future, whose disgusting details I did not seek to learn. Trust Davidson to make money, and to make the most of life also as he went along. He always had the best of everything; and surely now he had, for the leisurely, ease-seeking Belle Helene, not actuated by any vast motive beyond that of the bee and the honey flower, slipped on down and ahead with perfect ease, while we, grimy, slow, determined, plowed on in her wake losing miles each hour the graceful Belle Helene chose to show us her light disdainful heels, serenely indifferent because wholly ignorant of our existence. But we held to the chase as true pirates, not loitering at any port, and--since now I, also, had learned something of the intricacies of our engine, and could take a trick while the others slept--running twice the hours daily the haughty yacht would deign to log. I knew that Cal Davidson would stop to shoot and to visit, and knew that he could, by no human means, be induced to pass any telegraph point where the daily standing of the baseball clubs could be learned--he counted that day lost in which he did not learn the scores. As for myself, I have never been able to understand how any grown man or any one ungrown can take any interest whatever in the deeds of hired ball-playing Hessians, who have back of them neither patriotism nor even a municipal pride. But, for once, I was joyed that the organized business sense of a few men had put an otherwise able citizen under tribute, because now, though the Belle Helene must pause at least daily, the Sea Rover need do no such thing. Nor did we. We were hot on the trail of the enemy as he flew south along the Chickasha Bluffs, hot as he left Memphis behind, and taking the widening waters which now wandered through low forest lands, reached out for the next city of size, historic Vicksburg on her seventy hills. And hot and eager, more than ever, were we when, chugging around the head of that vast arm of the river, where it curves like a boy of some southern sea, with its heights rising beyond and afar, we saw what caused me to exclaim aloud, "At last! There she lies, my hearties!" I pointed on ahead. To my eyes, who had designed her, every line of that long, graceful, white hull was familiar. The jaunty rake of her air-shafts, like stacks of a liner, the sweep of her clean freeboard up to her shining rail, the ease of her bows, the graceful boldness of her overhang--all were familiar enough to me. She was my boat, and once I was wont to enjoy her. And on board her now was the woman who had taken away from me all desire to keep a yacht in commission, to keep open a house in town, or an office, or to frequent my clubs, or to meet my friends. Was she there, this woman; and was she still?--but I dared not ask that question. "Full speed ahead, Jean!" I called. "That's the Belle Helene! Yonder lies the enemy!" And then the inevitable happened. Perhaps it was too much gas, perhaps too much lubricant, perhaps a spark plug was carrying too much carbon. At any rate, the engine of the Sea Rover chose that time to chug and cease to revolve! It was more than a mile to the foot of that vast curve; and even as I leaped at the grimy oily motor, I saw a white dingey with blue trim make out from the wharf and leisurely pull alongside the landing stair of the yacht. It held two figures only, that of the deck-hand who rowed, and that of the large white-flanneled man who now disembarked from the dingey and went aboard the yacht. He was waving a paper over his head, so that I inferred the Giants must have won that day. And then, as we tugged and hurried with our arbitrary motor, I saw the Belle Helene, with a slight smiling salute to friends ashore, swing daintily about and head out and down the river! The faint and infallible rhythm of her perfect enginery came throbbing to us across the water ... I stood up. I hailed, I waved, I shouted, and I fear even cursed. Perhaps they thought some drunken fisherman was disporting himself; but certainly, a few moments later, we were rocking on the roll of the river, and the yacht was out of sight and sound around the next great bend. "It shall go hard but we overhaul yon varlet yet," said L'Olonnois grimly. "Aye," assented Lafitte; "we've busted a plug, an' he has showed us a clean pair of heels, but it's a long chase if the Sea Rover does not overhaul him. We'll have to overhaul our engine first, though," he added thoughtfully. But the overhauling of our engine meant a voyage under sweeps to a precarious landing among divers packets, house-boats and launches, on Vicksburg waterside, and a later visit to a specialist in diseases of the carburetor; so that, when at last the Sea Rover was ready for the sea again, her chase might have been a hundred miles ahead an she liked. "Gee!" exclaimed Jean Lafitte, as we were about to cast off. "Looky here, de Cubs licked de G'ints five to one to-day." He pointed to figures in a newspaper which he had obtained. So then it might have been excitement of rage, and not of joy, which had animated Cal Davidson when he went aboard. "Never mind then," said I, "for that gives us a day's start." "How do you mean?" demanded Jean. "It means that yonder varlet will not leave Natchez to-morrow until late evening, after the wires are in from the northern ball games," I replied. "Of course he'll stop there next." I felt now that the Lord had, by implanting this insane lust of petty baseball news in his soul, delivered my enemy into my hand. Now I wist not how or at what dignified speed the Belle Helene swept on down that mighty river through the rich southern lands; nor do I scarce half remember the painstaking persistent run we made with the grimy Sea Rover in pursuit, hour after hour, night or day. We had no licensed pilot or licensed engineer, we bore no lights as prescribed by law, and heeded no channels as prescribed by government engineers. Pirates, indeed, we might have been as we plowed on down in the wake of our quarry, along the ancient highway famous in fast packet days. We cared nothing for law, order, custom, conventions, precedents--the very things which had enslaved me all my life I now cast aside. Through bend after bend, along willow-lined flats and bluffs crowned with stately, moss-draped live-oaks, we swept on and on; and always I strained my eyes to see, my ears to hear, on ahead some sign of the Belle Helene; always strained my heart for some sign from her. Why, even I looked in the water for some bottle bearing a memory from yon captive maid to me. Captive? Why, certainly she must be captive; and certainly she must know that I, Black Bart the Avenger, was upon the trail. We made the pleasant city of Natchez in the evening of the sweetest day on which, as I thought, the sun had ever set. Her lofty hills--for here the great eastern fence of hills which bound the Vermont Delta on the eastward sweep in to close the foot of the Delta's V, and run sheer to the river's brink--rose upon our left. The low tree-covered lands on the Louisiana side lay at our right, and over them hung, center of a most radiant evening curtain, painted in a thousand colors by the mighty brush of nature, the round red orb of day, now sinking to his rest. I did not begrudge the sun his rest that day. For now, just at the edge of this beautiful picture there hung, at the dry point where the old keel boats used to land at old Natchez, under the hill where the pirates of those days sought relaxation from labors in the joys of combat or of wine, I caught sight of the long, low, graceful hull of the Belle Helene! "Avast! Jean Lafitte," I cried. "Shorten all sail, and bear across, west-by-west." "Aye! Aye! Sir," came the response from my bold crew. "Why don't we run in and board her?" demanded L'Olonnois. However, seeing that I had laid hold of the steering line where I sat, and was heading the Sea Rover across the Louisiana side, away from the city's water-front, he subsided. "We'll cast anchor yonder where the holding ground is good," I explained. "To-night we'll send off the long boat with a boarding party. And marry!" I added, "it shall go hard, but we'll hold yon varlet to his accounting!" _ |
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