Pirates' Hope - Lynde Francis

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speculative. Quite as truly as in the case of Bonteck Van Dyck – though in a vastly different manner – here was a "perfectly good cat, spoiled." I had known Jerry Dupuyster quite intimately in the university days; known him for a lovable fellow with rather more, than less, than his fair allowance of brains and ability. But something, either the bait of the major's hypothetical fortune, or too much idleness – or both – had turned him into.. the speculative train paused. I didn't know what the compelling influences had turned Jerry Dupuyster into, but whatever it might be, it seemed too trivial to warrant the effort needful to try to define it.

      Sauntering forward on the starboard promenade I saw that Grey had joined his wife and Edie Van Tromp on the bridge, and that Van Dyck and a lean, hatchet-faced man whom I took to be the yacht's sailing-master, were with them. While I looked on, Goff, the sailing-master, came down to the rail to direct the stowing of the last load of luggage through the open port below. Like some other things in this Caribbean cruise entourage, this man Goff was a new wrinkle, and a rather astounding one. Hitherto – at least in my knowing of them – the Andromeda's skippers had been of the Atlantic-liner class, spick and span martinets in natty uniform, with fine, quarter-deck manners, and maintaining a discipline comparable only to that of the Navy.

      But Goff was at the other end of the gamut of extremes; a gaunt, hard-bitted old Yankee fishing-smack captain, if appearances counted for anything; hungry-looking, lank and weather-beaten, with a harsh voice and a bad eye. And to emphasize the oddities, the sailormen he was directing seemed to be all foreigners; another sea change sharply opposed to Van Dyck's former notions about manning his yacht.

      As it appeared, there was to be no loss of time in the outsetting. While the trunks were still tumbling into the hold baggage-room, a subdued clamor came up from the fire hold, and the yacht's twin funnels began to echo to the roar of the stirred fires. A minute later the lower-river pilot, a hairy-faced giant who might have taken the heavy villain's part in comic opera, climbed aboard. With a bare nod to the sailing-master, the giant ascended to the bridge, and almost immediately the yacht's searchlight blazed out, the order to cast off was given, and the trim white hull, shuddering to the thrust of its propellers, edged away into the brown flood of the Mississippi, and made a majestic half-circle in midstream to pass the lights of the city in review as it was headed for the Gulf.

      Dodging the pair of smokers under the after-deck awning, I went around to the port promenade, where I stumbled upon Billy Grisdale sitting alone with his bull pup between his knees.

      "Hello, Prebby," he said, much as if it had been only three days instead of as many years since he had come down to the East River pier, a fresh-faced prep. school-boy, to see me off for the tropics. "Come over here and sit down and give me a smoke." And when I had done all three: "Rum old go, isn't it? If I wasn't such an ass about carrying a tune, I'd be warbling 'My native land, good-night.' Got your life insured?"

      "I'm an orphan and a bachelor; why should I carry insurance, Billy?" I said, laughing at his doleful humor.

      "I don't know. Guess I've got a bad case of the hyps. Can't think of anything but that bloody-bones jingle of Stevenson's:

      'Fifteen men on a dead man's chest,

      Yo, ho, ho, and a bottle of rum!'

      Teck Van Dyck's a pirate. He's gone daffy over something, and we're all going to heaven in a hand-basket."

      Of course this was all froth; pure froth. But there was usually a little clear liquor in the bottom of Billy's stein.

      "What ails you?" I asked.

      An impish grin spread itself over his smooth, boyish face.

      "I'm in love, if anybody should ask you. Everything looks green to me, and I want to chew slate-pencils. Ergo– which is college slang for 'Ah, there, stay there' – I'm as daffy as Teck. Don't laugh or I'll set Tige on you. Say, Prebby, do I look like an invalid?"

      "Yes; about as much as Mr. John Sullivan did when he carried the world heavy-weight wallop in his good right hand."

      "Yet I am an invalid. Doc Fanning says I am, and he's like George Washington. He might lie if he could, but he can't because he's lost the combination."

      "What on earth are you gibbering about, Billy?"

      "Facts; iron-clad, brass-bound, blown-in-the-bottle, sold-only-in-the-original-package facts. Fanning's the family physician, you know, and he has gone on record as declaring that I need half a winter off in a mild climate. And I don't know to this good minute whether I succeeded in fooling him, or whether he was just plain good-natured enough to size the thing up and fool the governor – I don't, really, Prebby."

      "But why?" I persisted.

      "The 'why' is a girl, of course; you ought to know that without being told. She's a lulu and a charmer, and if I can't marry her I'll end it all with a bare bodkin. Her name? I'm going to tell you, Prebby; and, again, if you laugh, I'll make Tige bite you. It's Edith."

      "Not Edie Van Tromp!"

      "Prebby, you're the one only and original wizard. You could make your fortune if you should set up as a guesser."

      "Ye gods and little children!" I commented. "Edie Van Tromp is eighteen, if I remember correctly; and you are – "

      "I was twenty a few days ago, if you don't mind," he returned, tickling the cropped ears of the bull pup. And then: "'Crazy,' you say? Maybe so – quite likely so. I've got to keep the pace, you know. This little ship's full of crazy people. I'm crazy about Edie, and, if you listen to what you hear, Jerry Dupuyster's crazy about Conetta Kincaide – just like you used to be – and Jack Grey's crazy about his Annette, and Ingerson and Teck are both crazy about Madeleine Barclay. So there you are. And if the wind gets around into the sour east, Teck's going to sink the ship in the deep-blue Caribbean, and drown us all – all but Madeleine – and live happily ever after. Apropos of nothing at all, Prebby, this is a rotten cigar you gave me, and I'm all mussed up and discouraged. What's that bell clanging about?"

      "It is striking five bells in the first night watch – otherwise, or landsman-wise, half-past ten o'clock."

      "Good! – excellent good. Let's turn in, so we can turn out bright and early for our first shot at the blue water. What do you say?"

      I said the required word, and we went below to our respective staterooms. The next morning when I turned out and drew aside the curtain shading the stateroom port light, the sun was shining brightly, and for a horizon there were only the tumbling wavelets of the Gulf of Mexico.

      III

      THE MAJOR – AND OTHERS

      The first morning in blue water developed the fact that breakfast on the Andromeda was destined to be a broken meal. In the white-lacquered dining-saloon, only three members of the ship's company, Major Terwilliger, Madeleine Barclay's father, and Professor Sanford were at table, though Van Dyck and Billy Grisdale had been still earlier, had already breakfasted and had gone on deck.

      As I took my place, the major, affecting the bluff heartiness which was merely a mask for an ease-loving, self-centered habit which never for a moment lost sight of the creature comforts, was trying, quite ineffectually, to draw Sanford into a discussion of the merits and demerits of certain French liqueurs – a subject upon which the clean-living, abstemious professor of mathematics was as poorly informed as any anchorite of the desert.

      "Vermuth, now; a dash of vermuth in your morning bitters," the major expatiated; "there's nothing like it for an appetiser. I'm not saying anything against the modern cocktail, properly compounded; it has its place. But for a morning eye-opener it is crude. Believe me, a Frenchman knows the meaning of the word apéritif much better than we do."

      "Yes?" said the professor, with a palpable effort to galvanize an interest which he was evidently far from feeling.

      "Quite so," declared the major; after which he proceeded to enlarge upon American backwardness in the matter of picking and choosing among the potables, inveighing with all the warmth of a past master in the art of good living against the barbarism of taking one's liquor raw.

      While the major was giving his alcoholic homily, and not omitting,

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