"No, we didn't know who you was."
"Let it be so. Let me be a man of no name. A name is of no
consequence, and neither am I."
"Sho, now, that ain't so. I never seen a better--now, I never seen--"
Jean Lafitte's reticence in friendship, again, was getting the better
of him.
"So we said we'd call you Black Bart," added L'Olonnois.
"That is a most excellent name," said I after some thought. "At
present, I can find no objection to it, except that I wear no beard at
all and would have a red or brown one if I did; and that Black Bart
was rather a pirate of the land than of the sea."
"Was he?" queried L'Olonnois. "Wasn't he a pirate, too, never?"
"There was a famous pirate chief known as Bluebeard or Blackbeard, and
it may be, sometimes, they called him Black Bart."
"Wasn't he a awful desper't sort of pirate?"
"He is said to have been."
"It sounds like a awful desper't name," said Jimmy: "like as though
he'd fill up his ship with captured maidens, an' put all rivals to the
sword."
"Such, indeed, shipmate," said I, "was his reputation."
"Well," concluded L'Olonnois, "we couldn't think o' any better name'n
that, because we know that is just what you would do."
(So, then, my reputation was advancing!) "Wasn't you never a pirate before, honest?" queried Lafitte at this
juncture. "Because, you seem like a real pirate to us. We been, lots
of times, over on the lake."
"It may be because my father was always called a pirate," I replied.
"You see, in these days, there are not so many pirates who really
scuttle ships and cut throats."
"But you would?"
"Certainly. 'Tis in my blood, my bold shipmate."
"We knew it," concluded L'Olonnois calmly. "So, after now, we'll call
you Black Bart. You can let your whiskers grow, you know."
"True," said I. "Well, we will at least take the whiskers under
advisement, as the court would say."
"We must be an awful long ways from home," ventured L'Olonnois, after
a time.
"Hundreds of miles our good ship has ploughed the deep, and as yet has
raised no sail above the horizon," I admitted.
"Do you--now--do you--well, anyhow, do you have any idea of where we
are going?" demanded Lafitte, shamefacedly.
"Not in the slightest."
"But now--well--now then----"
In answer I drew from my pocket a map and a compass; the latter mostly
for effect, since I knew very well the bed of our river must shape
our course for many a mile. On the map I pointed out how, presently,
our river would run into a lake, into which, also, ran another river;
and would emerge on the other side much larger. I showed them that
down that other river, as, indeed, down mine, logs used to float from
the pine forests--many of my father's logs, of ownership said to have
been piratical--and I showed how, presently, this stream would carry
us into one of the ancient waterways down which millions of wealth in
timber have come; and explained about the wild crews of river runners
who once ran the rafts down that great highway, and into the greater
highway of the Mississippi; whence men might in due time arrive upon
the Spanish Main.