"Gee!" exclaimed Jean Lafitte, as we were about to cast off. "Looky
here, de Cubs licked de G'ints five to one to-day." He pointed to
figures in a newspaper which he had obtained. So then it might have
been excitement of rage, and not of joy, which had animated Cal
Davidson when he went aboard.
"Never mind then," said I, "for that gives us a day's start."
"How do you mean?" demanded Jean.
"It means that yonder varlet will not leave Natchez to-morrow until
late evening, after the wires are in from the northern ball games," I
replied. "Of course he'll stop there next." I felt now that the Lord
had, by implanting this insane lust of petty baseball news in his
soul, delivered my enemy into my hand.
Now I wist not how or at what dignified speed the Belle Helène swept
on down that mighty river through the rich southern lands; nor do I
scarce half remember the painstaking persistent run we made with the
grimy Sea Rover in pursuit, hour after hour, night or day. We had no
licensed pilot or licensed engineer, we bore no lights as prescribed
by law, and heeded no channels as prescribed by government engineers.
Pirates, indeed, we might have been as we plowed on down in the wake
of our quarry, along the ancient highway famous in fast packet days.
We cared nothing for law, order, custom, conventions, precedents--the
very things which had enslaved me all my life I now cast aside.
Through bend after bend, along willow-lined flats and bluffs crowned
with stately, moss-draped live-oaks, we swept on and on; and always I
strained my eyes to see, my ears to hear, on ahead some sign of the
Belle Helène; always strained my heart for some sign from her. Why,
even I looked in the water for some bottle bearing a memory from yon
captive maid to me. Captive? Why, certainly she must be captive; and
certainly she must know that I, Black Bart the Avenger, was upon the
trail.
We made the pleasant city of Natchez in the evening of the sweetest
day on which, as I thought, the sun had ever set. Her lofty hills--for
here the great eastern fence of hills which bound the Vermont Delta on
the eastward sweep in to close the foot of the Delta's V, and run
sheer to the river's brink--rose upon our left. The low tree-covered
lands on the Louisiana side lay at our right, and over them hung,
center of a most radiant evening curtain, painted in a thousand colors
by the mighty brush of nature, the round red orb of day, now sinking
to his rest.
I did not begrudge the sun his rest that day. For now, just at the
edge of this beautiful picture there hung, at the dry point where the
old keel boats used to land at old Natchez, under the hill where the
pirates of those days sought relaxation from labors in the joys of
combat or of wine, I caught sight of the long, low, graceful hull of
the Belle Helène!