"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 Helène. For indeed, indeed, Omar, and you, too, stout
Lafitte and hardy L'Olonnois, the Bird of Life was on the wing.