We ate al fresco, as true buccaneers of the main, and grew better
and better acquainted. It occurred to me that mayhap the nautical
education of my associates was, after all, somewhat superficial, so I
set about mending it by explaining something of the rigging of the
ship; and I gave them, by means of the Sea Rover's bowline, some
lessons in sailorman splices and knots. The bow-line-in-a-bight, the
sheet-bend, the clinch-knot, the jam-knot, the fisherman's water-knot,
the stevedore's slip-knot, the dock-hand's round-turns and
half-hitches for cable makefast, the magnus-hitch, the fool's-knot,
the cat's-cradle, the sheep-shank, the dog-shank, and many others--all
of which I had learned in books and in practise--I did for them over
and over again; just as I could have done for them a half-dozen
different ways of throwing the diamond-hitch in a pack-train, or the
stirrup-hitch in a cow camp, or many other of the devices of men who
live in the open; for beginning late in life in these things, I had
studied them hard and faithfully.
I could see--and I noted it with much gratification--that I was rising
in the estimation of my pirates. It pleased me not at all to show that
I knew more than they of these things, for I was older and my mind was
long my trained servant; but I had monstrous delight in seeing myself
accepted as one fit to associate with them. Once or twice, I saw the
two draw apart in some debate which I knew had to do with me. "Well,
now," Lafitte would begin; and L'Olonnois would demur. "No, I don't
just like that one," he would say. By nightfall--and I presume I do
not need to recall all the incidents of our afternoon, or of our
pitching camp by the riverside an hour before sundown--I learned what
was the subject of their argument. I had been admitted to the pirates'
band, but the question was over my name.
We sat by our fireside, before our little tent, after a pleasant meal
which I know was well cooked because I cooked it myself--trout, a
young squirrel, and toast, and real coffee--and Partial was close at
my knee, having obviously adopted me. We were fifteen or twenty miles
from my house, nearly twice that from their homes, but the world,
itself, seemed very remote from us. We reveled in a new luxurious
world of rare deeds, rare dreams all our own. I was conjuring up some
new argument to put before Helena should I ever see her again--as of
course I never should--when Lafitte rolled over on the grass and
looked up at us.
"We was just saying," he remarked, "that you didn't have no name."
"That is true. I have not told you my name, nor have you asked it. Had
you been impolite, you might have learned it by prying about my
place." I spoke gravely and with approval.