Pirates' Hope

"You wrote home about that adventure, as you may, or may not, remember, and the story got around to me. Afterward, I chanced to see in the shipping news the report of the captain of the tramp 'tanker' which had picked you up. Your island wasn't down on any of the charts, and Captain Svenson gave the latitude and longitude as a matter of information. Have you any idea what island it was – or is?"

"No. As you may imagine, I was only too glad to see the last of it when we were taken off."

"It is said to be the Lost Island of the old English plateship harriers – Sir Frankie Drake and the rest," Van Dyck went on. "There is a story that Drake once ran a Spanish treasure ship into the lagoon which encircles the island, shot it full of holes, and finally burned it after a siege lasting a couple of days. The tale adds that during the two-day fight the Spaniards had time to unload and bury some of the gold bars in the galleon's cargo. Drake tried to make his prisoners tell what they had done with the treasure – so the story goes – and when they proved obstinate he sailed away and left them to starve. At a somewhat later period the island appears in the legends as 'Pirates' Hope' – place where the black-flag rovers used to put in to refit. Nobody seems to know why it hasn't been put down on the modern charts."

I closed my eyes and a cold little chill ran up and down my back. Van Dyck's yarn was probably only a figment of the story-tellers, but it brought back most vividly the memory of that despairing month I had spoken of; the dragging hours and days, the pinch of starvation, the hope deferred as we stared our eyes out sweeping the meeting line of sea and sky that never – until that last welcome day – gave back a sign of the world out of which we had been blotted. Also, the story resurrected another memory, one which had been almost forgotten with the lapse of time. There had been relics on the island; a few bits of the iron and woodwork of an ancient wreck, and a few bleached bones – human bones. Still, I had all the incredulity of one who had listened to many marvelous tales of the sea.

"You can hear dozens of yarns like that about every coral island and cay in the Caribbean," I said.

"I know," he agreed. "And on a pleasure voyage it helps out wonderfully if you have some one along who can tell them. How would the old Spanish Main strike you as a winter cruising ground for the good ship Andromeda?"

It was at this point that I began to see a few rays of daylight – or thought I did.

"Show me the Andromeda's passenger list and I can tell better," I laughed.

"Your fellow voyagers will be people you know, or used to know – the majority of them," he returned; then, with what seemed to be a curious lack of enthusiasm, he enumerated them. "I've invited the newly married Greys; the Ph.D. Sanfords; Major Terwilliger and his nephew, Jerry Dupuyster; Conetta Kincaide and her dragoness aunt, Miss Mehitable; Madeleine Barclay and her father; young Grisdale and his bull pup; and Hobart Ingerson. And last, but by no means least, Mrs. Eager Van Tromp and her three daughters."

"Heavens!" I interjected. "Why didn't you include all of New York, while you were about it? Do you mean to tell me that you have all these people with you in the Andromeda?"

"Not yet, but soon," he qualified. "They are on the way down here in my private car. I'm here to meet them, and so, by the same token, are you."

"Good Lord! If you had hired a Hagenbeck to make your collection it couldn't have been more zoo-like! What under the sun were you thinking of, Teck?"

"They are all people I'd like to know better," he rejoined half absently. "The 'collection,' as you so scoffingly call it, was quite carefully chosen, if you did but know it."

"But Ingerson!" I protested.

"I know. Ingerson is a brute, you would say; and so would I, if I were on the witness stand and obliged to testify. But in condemning him we should be in the minority, Dick. He has the entrée to the best houses in New York, and half of the dowagers in that abandoned city would snap at him for a son-in-law."

"That may well be. But to shut yourself up with him in a yacht party for weeks on end – "

"Your point is well taken. But you will remember that I have admitted the madnesses from start to finish. The vital thing, however, is this: Will you consent to go along with us to add the saving touch of sanity? Don't turn me down, Dick," he added, and the adjuration was almost a pleading.

"I'm not turning you down," I hastened to say. "I am merely asking 'why?'"

Van Dyck's face was a study in moody perplexity, and he spoke slowly, almost hesitantly, when he answered my query.

"I don't know that I can explain the exact 'why,' or give a logical reason, even to so good a friend as you are, Dick. The winter-cruise notion originated with Mrs. Van Tromp, I believe; and she is responsible for the inclusion of the major and his nephew. Also, she is the one who asked me to invite Ingerson. She has been playing in hard luck lately, and for the sake of her three girls, who, in her point of view, have simply got to marry money, she is obliged to keep the pace. I suppose the prospect of a winter in Florida – the four of them at Palm Beach, with no chance to cut economical corners, you know – appalled her. Besides, she knows the Andromeda, and the Andromeda's chef. That goes a long way with as good a trencherwoman as she is."

"That will do for a starter," I said. "Let us say that Mrs. Van Tromp and her daughters are bread-and-butter guests. But how about the others?"

Van Dyck did not reply until after the deft serving man had cleared the table and brought the cigars.

"The others, with the possible exception of Billy Grisdale, who is only an infant, are people with whom I should like to become better acquainted, as I have said."

"Which is still purer piffle," I put in. "You've known all of them practically all your life. But go on."

"I've known them, and I haven't known them," he asserted. "There are the Sanfords – the professor and his wife: they typify the older married set, and the casual onlooker would say that they try to give the impression that they are still satisfied and happy. I should like to find out if they really are satisfied and happy. Then there are the Greys; they are still in the billing and cooing stage: I'd like to see if it isn't possible for them to get too much of each other when the doors are all shut and locked and neither of them can duck out for a breath of the fresh air of solitude."

"Jehu!" I muttered. "The blue-bearded old gentleman of the Old-World legend wasn't in it with you. Let's have the rest of it."

Van Dyck's smile barely missed being a saturnine grin, and there was scarcely a suggestion of mirth in it.

"Major Terwilliger poses as a generous, large-hearted old rounder who is eventually going to do something handsome for Jerry Dupuyster, his sister's son. Privately, I have a notion that the major's liberal fortune – which he promises to bestow upon Gerald – is largely, if not wholly, a myth, and that he is selfish enough to keep Jerry dangling as a bait to the scheming mammas – and aunts – for the social advantages and 'side' thereby accruing to Jerry's uncle."

"Conetta Kincaide's aunt, for example?" I interpolated.

"Yes, Aunt Mehitable, if you like. And, this being the case, I have a perfectly normal curiosity to see what will happen when the dragoness gets the major and Jerry in a clear field, with no possibility of a breakaway for them, or of interference with her dragonizing for her."

"Having already used Bluebeard, I'm out of comparisons for you," I said. "What about the Barclays, father and daughter?"

Van Dyck shook his head and the faintest possible shadow of a frown came and sat between his eyes.

"We needn't be ill-natured on the wholesale plan," he evaded. "You wouldn't suspect a man like Holly Barclay of offering his daughter to the highest bidder, would you? Supposing we admit that he has gone through the fortune that his wife's father got together, and let it stand at that."

"You are not letting it stand at that," I countered shrewdly.

"No, perhaps I am not," he admitted, after a thoughtful pause. "I thought I should like to prove or disprove a thing that I have heard, about Holly Barclay – and Madeleine – and – well, you'll guess it if I don't say it – about Ingerson."

"Again with the clear field and no favor, I suppose," I put in a bit savagely. Then: "Van Dyck, you ought to be shot!"

He was glancing at his watch, and his smile was wry.

"I shall get my little drink of hemlock before the table is cleared, never fear," he said soberly. "Any time you may think I am not getting it, you have my permission to blow the gaff; to call the others together and tell them what I've done to them. That is fair, isn't it?"

I nodded, and again he relapsed into thoughtful silence. Our dinner appointment had been for a rather late hour in the evening, and by now the great dining-room was all but empty, though the small dark-faced man on our right was still dallying with the sweets and the black coffee. A heavy, intoxicating fragrance drifted across from the flowering cereus in the palm room, and the distance-mellowed strains of an orchestra playing in an alcove on the opposite side of the rotunda added another sensuous touch. The glamour of the tropics, a far-reaching breath of the beckoning mystery of shimmering seas, and coral reefs singing to the beat of the murmuring surf – the mystery whose appeal is ever and most strongly to the senses and the passions – was in the air when I said, gravely enough, I make no doubt:

"I'll go with you, Bonteck; and chiefly for the reason you have just given – the reason and the permission. Let this be your fair warning: if at any time your little farce threatens to grow into a tragedy, I shall most certainly call you down."

"I was rather hoping you'd say something like that," he agreed, with what appeared to be the utmost sincerity.

"At the same time," I went on, "it is only fair to add that your expensive experiment will fail. Nothing will happen on the Andromeda that couldn't, or wouldn't, happen in a house party at your country place in the Berkshires. You will come back as wise – or as foolish – as you are now."

"Oh, well," he said, pushing his chair back and casting the napkin aside, "we needn't pull the bud in pieces to find out what kind of a flower it's going to be. I can't promise you that you will be greatly edified, and it is quite within the possibilities that you may find yourself frightfully bored. But, in any event, it will help out a little if we leave something to the imagination, don't you think? – something to speculate about and to look forward to. I know it does look rather cut-and-dried in the prospect; eight bells breakfast, luncheon when you like to have it, dinner in the second dog-watch, and cards – always cards when Mrs. Van Tromp can find a partner and a table – in the evening."

He had got upon his feet and was standing before me, an acutely attractive figure of a well-built, well-groomed man in faultless evening dress. The identifying smile of other and less cynical days was drawing at the corners of his eyes when he went on.

"We'll live in hopes. Perhaps we shall be able to smash the Andromeda on some reef that isn't down on the charts. Failing that, there is always the chance of a stray hurricane – with the other chance of the engines breaking down at the inopportune moment. We shall find excitement of some kind; I can feel it in my bones."

"Small chance on a baby Cunarder," I grumbled, rising in my turn.

"Oh, I don't know," he offered, in gentle deprecation. "At any rate we can still be hopeful. Now if you are ready we'll go to the railroad station and meet the players. I told you they were on the way down from New York, but I omitted to add that they are due to arrive to-night; within fifteen or twenty minutes, to be strictly accurate. Let's gather up a few for-hire autos and go to the rescue."

II

THE SHIP'S COMPANY

We were on the sidewalk – "banquette," as it is called in New Orleans – in front of the hotel, and Van Dyck was marshaling a number of vehicles for a descent upon the railroad station, when a small man with his soft hat pulled well down over his eyes appeared at my elbow as silently as if he had materialized out of the rain-wet pavement.