The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

took a bite of his loaf, and offered me the rest, saying he had no stomach for food; but I could not eat my own, and so we thrust the bread in our breeches pockets and set to work, heaving everything overboard that might lighten us, and for ever a-straining our eyes to sight a ship. Then we set to devising means to make the sheet cling over the damaged planks, but to little purpose, and so Dawson essayed to get at it from the inside by going below, but the water was risen so high there was no room between it and the deck to breathe, and so again to wedging the canvas in from the outside till the sun sank. And by that time the water was beginning to lap up through the hatchway. Then no longer able to blink the truth, Jack turns to me and asks:

      “How long shall we last?”

      “Why,” says I, “we have sunk no more than a foot these last six hours, and at this slow pace we may well last out eight or nine more ere the water comes over the bulwarks.”

      He shook his head ruefully, and, pointing to a sluice hole in the side, said he judged it must be all over with us when the water entered there.

      “Why, in that case,” says I, “let us find something to fill the sluice hole.”

      So having nothing left on deck, we went into the cabin on a pretence of seeing how Moll fared, and Jack sneaked away an old jacket and I a stone bottle, and with these we stopped the sluice hole the best we could.

      By the time we had made a job of this ’twas quite dark, and having nothing more to do but to await the end, we stood side by side, too dejected to speak for some time, thinking of the cruelty of fate which rescued us from one evil only to plunge us in a worse. At length, Jack fell to talking in a low tone of his past life, showing how things had ever gone ill with him and those he loved.

      “I think,” says he in conclusion, “I am an unlucky man, Kit. One of those who are born to be a curse against their will to others rather than a blessing.”

      “Fie, Jack,” says I, “’tis an idle superstition.”

      “Nay,” says he, “I am convinced ’tis the truth. Not one of us here but would have been the happier had I died a dozen years ago. ’Tis all through me that we drown tonight.”

      “Nay, ’tis a blessing that we die all together, and none left to mourn.”

      “That may be for you and me who have lived the best years of our life, but for those in there but just tasting the sweets of life, with years of joy unspent, ’tis another matter.”

      Then we were silent for a while, till feeling the water laving my feet, I asked if we should not now tell Mr. Godwin of our condition.

      “’Twas in my mind, Kit,” answers he; “I will send him out to you.”

      He went into the cabin, and Mr. Godwin coming out, I showed him our state. But ’twas no surprise to him. Only, it being now about three in the morning, and the moon risen fair and full in the heavens, he casts his eyes along the silver path on the water in the hope of rescue, and finding none, he grasps my hand and says:

      “God’s will be done! ’Tis a mercy that my dear love is spared this last terror. Our pain will not be long.”

      A shaft of moonlight entered the cabin, and there we perceived Dawson kneeling by the crib, with his head laid upon the pillow beside his daughter.

      He rose and came out without again turning to look on Moll, and Mr. Godwin took his place.

      “I feel more happy, Kit,” says Jack, laying his hand upon my shoulder. “I do think God will be merciful to us.”

      “Aye, surely,” says I, wilfully mistaking his meaning. “I think the water hath risen no higher this last hour.”

      “I’ll see how our sheet hangs; do you look if the water comes in yet at the sluice hole.”

      And so, giving my arm a squeeze as he slips his hand from my shoulder, he went to the fore part of the vessel, while I crossed to the sluice hole, where the water was spurting through a chink.

      I rose after jamming the jacket to staunch the leak, and turning towards Jack I perceived him standing by the bulwark, with the moon beyond. And the next moment he was gone. And so ended the life of this poor, loving, unlucky man.

      I know not whether it was this lightening of our burden, or whether at that time some accident of a fold in the sail sucking into the leaking planks, stayed the further ingress of waters, but certain it is that after this we sank no deeper to any perceptible degree; and so it came about that we were sighted by a fishing-boat from Carthagena, a little after daybreak, and were saved—we three who were left.

      I have spent the last week at Hurst Court, where Moll and her husband have lived ever since Lady Godwin’s death. They are making of hay in the meadows there; and ’twas sweet to see Moll and her husband, with their two boys, cocking the sweet grass. And all very merry at supper; only one sad memory cast me down as I thought of poor Jack, sorrowing to think he could not see the happiness which, as much as our past troubles, was due to him.

      THE OFFSHORE PIRATE, by F. Scott Fitzgerald

      I

      This unlikely story begins on a sea that was a blue dream, as colorful as blue-silk stockings, and beneath a sky as blue as the irises of children’s eyes. From the western half of the sky the sun was shying little golden disks at the sea—if you gazed intently enough you could see them skip from wave tip to wave tip until they joined a broad collar of golden coin that was collecting half a mile out and would eventually be a dazzling sunset. About half-way between the Florida shore and the golden collar a white steam-yacht, very young and graceful, was riding at anchor and under a blue-and-white awning aft a yellow-haired girl reclined in a wicker settee reading The Revolt of the Angels, by Anatole France.

      She was about nineteen, slender and supple, with a spoiled alluring mouth and quick gray eyes full of a radiant curiosity. Her feet, stockingless, and adorned rather than clad in blue-satin slippers which swung nonchalantly from her toes, were perched on the arm of a settee adjoining the one she occupied. And as she read she intermittently regaled herself by a faint application to her tongue of a half-lemon that she held in her hand. The other half, sucked dry, lay on the deck at her feet and rocked very gently to and fro at the almost imperceptible motion of the tide.

      The second half-lemon was well-nigh pulpless and the golden collar had grown astonishing in width, when suddenly the drowsy silence which enveloped the yacht was broken by the sound of heavy footsteps and an elderly man topped with orderly gray hair and clad in a white-flannel suit appeared at the head of the companionway. There he paused for a moment until his eyes became accustomed to the sun, and then seeing the girl under the awning he uttered a long even grunt of disapproval.

      If he had intended thereby to obtain a rise of any sort he was doomed to disappointment. The girl calmly turned over two pages, turned back one, raised the lemon mechanically to tasting distance, and then very faintly but quite unmistakably yawned.

      “Ardita!” said the gray-haired man sternly.

      Ardita uttered a small sound indicating nothing.

      “Ardita!” he repeated. “Ardita!”

      Ardita raised the lemon languidly, allowing three words to slip out before it reached her tongue.

      “Oh, shut up.”

      “Ardita!”

      “What?”

      “Will you listen to me—or will I have to get a servant to hold you while I talk to you?”

      The lemon descended very slowly and scornfully.

      “Put it in writing.”

      “Will you have the decency to close that abominable book and discard that damn lemon for two minutes?”

      “Oh, can’t you lemme alone for a second?”

      “Ardita, I have just received a telephone message from the shore——”

      “Telephone?”