The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

silent for a moment looking up at the gathered host of stars blinking like arc-lights in the warm sky. The negroes’ song had died away to a plaintive humming and it seemed as if minute by minute the brightness and the great silence were increasing until he could almost hear the midnight toilet of the mermaids as they combed their silver dripping curls under the moon and gossiped to each other of the fine wrecks they lived on the green opalescent avenues below.

      “You see,” said Carlyle softly, “this is the beauty I want. Beauty has got to be astonishing, astounding—it’s got to burst in on you like a dream, like the exquisite eyes of a girl.”

      He turned to her, but she was silent.

      “You see, don’t you, Anita—I mean, Ardita?”

      Again she made no answer. She had been sound asleep for some time.

      IV

      In the dense sun-flooded noon of next day a spot in the sea before them resolved casually into a green-and-gray islet, apparently composed of a great granite cliff at its northern end which slanted south through a mile of vivid coppice and grass to a sandy beach melting lazily into the surf. When Ardita, reading in her favorite seat, came to the last page of The Revolt of the Angels, and slamming the book shut looked up and saw it, she gave a little cry of delight, and called to Carlyle, who was standing moodily by the rail.

      “Is this it? Is this where you’re going?”

      Carlyle shrugged his shoulders carelessly.

      “You’ve got me.” He raised his voice and called up to the acting skipper: “Oh, Babe, is this your island?”

      The mulatto’s miniature head appeared from round the corner of the deck-house.

      “Yas-suh! This yeah’s it.”

      Carlyle joined Ardita.

      “Looks sort of sporting, doesn’t it?”

      “Yes,” she agreed; “but it doesn’t look big enough to be much of a hiding-place.”

      “You still putting your faith in those wirelesses your uncle was going to have zigzagging round?”

      “No,” said Ardita frankly. “I’m all for you. I’d really like to see you make a get-away.”

      He laughed.

      “You’re our Lady Luck. Guess we’ll have to keep you with us as a mascot—for the present anyway.”

      “You couldn’t very well ask me to swim back,” she said coolly. “If you do I’m going to start writing dime novels founded on that interminable history of your life you gave me last night.”

      He flushed and stiffened slightly.

      “I’m very sorry I bored you.”

      “Oh, you didn’t—until just at the end with some story about how furious you were because you couldn’t dance with the ladies you played music for.”

      He rose angrily.

      “You have got a darn mean little tongue.”

      “Excuse me,” she said melting into laughter, “but I’m not used to having men regale me with the story of their life ambitions—especially if they’ve lived such deathly platonic lives.”

      “Why? What do men usually regale you with?”

      “Oh, they talk about me,” she yawned. “They tell me I’m the spirit of youth and beauty.”

      “What do you tell them?”

      “Oh, I agree quietly.”

      “Does every man you meet tell you he loves you?”

      Ardita nodded.

      “Why shouldn’t he? All life is just a progression toward, and then a recession from, one phrase—’I love you.’”

      Carlyle laughed and sat down.

      “That’s very true. That’s—that’s not bad. Did you make that up?”

      “Yes—or rather I found it out. It doesn’t mean anything especially. It’s just clever.”

      “It’s the sort of remark,” he said gravely, “that’s typical of your class.”

      “Oh,” she interrupted impatiently, “don’t start that lecture on aristocracy again! I distrust people who can be intense at this hour in the morning. It’s a mild form of insanity—a sort of breakfast-food jag. Morning’s the time to sleep, swim, and be careless.”

      Ten minutes later they had swung round in a wide circle as if to approach the island from the north.

      “There’s a trick somewhere,” commented Ardita thoughtfully. “He can’t mean just to anchor up against this cliff.”

      They were heading straight in now toward the solid rock, which must have been well over a hundred feet tall, and not until they were within fifty yards of it did Ardita see their objective. Then she clapped her hands in delight. There was a break in the cliff entirely hidden by a curious overlapping of rock, and through this break the yacht entered and very slowly traversed a narrow channel of crystal-clear water between high gray walls. Then they were riding at anchor in a miniature world of green and gold, a gilded bay smooth as glass and set round with tiny palms, the whole resembling the mirror lakes and twig trees that children set up in sand piles.

      “Not so darned bad!” cried Carlyle excitedly.

      “I guess that little coon knows his way round this corner of the Atlantic.”

      His exuberance was contagious, and Ardita became quite jubilant.

      “It’s an absolutely sure-fire hiding-place!”

      “Lordy, yes! It’s the sort of island you read about.”

      The rowboat was lowered into the golden lake and they pulled to shore.

      “Come on,” said Carlyle as they landed in the slushy sand, “we’ll go exploring.”

      The fringe of palms was in turn ringed in by a round mile of flat, sandy country. They followed it south and brushing through a farther rim of tropical vegetation came out on a pearl-gray virgin beach where Ardita kicked of her brown golf shoes—she seemed to have permanently abandoned stockings—and went wading. Then they sauntered back to the yacht, where the indefatigable Babe had luncheon ready for them. He had posted a lookout on the high cliff to the north to watch the sea on both sides, though he doubted if the entrance to the cliff was generally known—he had never even seen a map on which the island was marked.

      “What’s its name,” asked Ardita—”the island, I mean?”

      “No name ’tall,” chuckled Babe. “Reckin she jus’ island, ’at’s all.”

      In the late afternoon they sat with their backs against great boulders on the highest part of the cliff and Carlyle sketched for her his vague plans. He was sure they were hot after him by this time. The total proceeds of the coup he had pulled off and concerning which he still refused to enlighten her, he estimated as just under a million dollars. He counted on lying up here several weeks and then setting off southward, keeping well outside the usual channels of travel rounding the Horn and heading for Callao, in Peru. The details of coaling and provisioning he was leaving entirely to Babe who, it seemed, had sailed these seas in every capacity from cabin-boy aboard a coffee trader to virtual first mate on a Brazillian pirate craft, whose skipper had long since been hung.

      “If he’d been white he’d have been king of South America long ago,” said Carlyle emphatically. “When it comes to intelligence he makes Booker T. Washington look like a moron. He’s got the guile of every race and nationality whose blood is in his veins, and that’s half a dozen or I’m a liar. He worships me because I’m the only man in the world who can play better ragtime than he can. We used to sit together on the wharfs down on the New York water-front, he with a bassoon and me