IN WHICH I ACHIEVE A NAME
So winding is my trout river, and so extensive are my lands along it,
that it was not until nearly noon that our progress, sometimes halted
by shallows, again swift in the deeper reaches, brought the _Sea
Rover_ to the lower edge of my estate. Here, the river was deeper and
more silent, the waters were not quite so cold, but as we passed a
high hardwood bridge from which issued a cool spring of water, I
suggested a halt in our voyage, to which my companions, readily
enough, agreed. We, therefore, disembarked and prepared to have our
luncheon.
It was obvious to me that Jean Lafitte and Henri L'Olonnois were not
on their first expedition out-of-doors, for they set about gathering
wood and water in workmanlike fashion. They did not yet fully classify
me, so, in boyish shyness, left me largely ignored, or waited till I
should demonstrate myself to them. It was, therefore, with delicacy
that I ventured any suggestions from the place where Partial and I sat
in the shade watching them.
I have mentioned the fact that I had been a hunter and traveler, and
had met success in the field; yet the truth is, I began all that late
in life, and deliberately. To me, used to exact habit of thought in
all things, and accustomed to be governed by trained reason alone, it
was never enough to say that a thing was partly done, or well enough
done to pass: only the best possible way had any appeal to me. I
brought my reason to bear on every situation in life. Thus, I studied
an investment carefully, and before going into it, I knew what the
result would be. My investments, therefore, always have prospered,
because they were not based on guess or chance, as nine-tenths of all
the public's business ventures are. In the same way, I had gone
deliberately about the matter of winning the regard of the only woman
I ever saw who seemed to me much worth while. I argued and reasoned
with Helena Emory that she should marry me, proving to her by every
rule of logic that, not only was she the most lovable woman in all the
records of the world, but, also, that love such as mine never had
before been known in the world. Sometimes, as I logically proved the
fitness of our union, and grew warm at my own accuracy, she wavered,
relented, warmed: and then again, forgetting my argument, she would
relapse into womanlike frivolity once more.... I did not like to think
of this, as I sat in the shade with Partial. It cost me much in
self-respect, irritated me.
But, having studied sport and outdoor living deliberately as I had
studied the law and business and Helena, I had rather a thorough
grounding, on life in the open, for I had read every authority
obtainable; whereas my young associates had read none. So cautiously,
now and then, I suggested little things to them, as that the fire need
not be so large, and would do better if confined between two green
side logs. I taught them how to boil the kettle quickly, how to make
tea, and also, more difficult, how to make coffee; how to cook bacon
just enough, and how to cook fish--for I had taken a few trout earlier
in the day--and how to make toast without charring it to cinders.
Again, I delighted them by telling them of little camping devices, and
quite won their hearts when I found among Hiroshimi's packages, a
small camp griddle with folding legs, of my own devising. It was quite
clean and new, but it performed as I felt quite sure it would. In
fact, reason will govern all things--except a woman.
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.
"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.
"Is there any way a fellow can get across from Lake Michigan into the
Mississippi River?" demanded Lafitte, who was of a practical turn of
mind: and on the map I showed him all the old trails of the fur
traders, explorers and adventurers, French and English, who had
discovered our America long ago; whereat their eyes kindled and their
tongues went dumb.
At last, I told them we must to our hammocks; and soon our bloody band
was deep in sleep. At least, so much might have been said for Lafitte
and L'Olonnois. Alone of the band of sea rovers myself, Black Bart,
sat musing by the fire, the head of my friend, Partial, in my lap.