A CONFERENCE ON DECK
“Here’s a kettle of fish!”
said Kidd, pulling his chin whisker in perplexity
as he and his fellow-pirates gathered about the capstan
to discuss the situation. “I’m blessed
if in all my experience I ever sailed athwart anything
like it afore! Pirating with a lot of low-down
ruffians like you gentlemen is bad enough, but on
a craft loaded to the water’s edge with advanced
women I’ve half a mind to turn back.”
“If you do, you swim we’ll
not turn back with you,” retorted Abeuchapeta,
whom, in honor of his prowess, Kidd had appointed executive
officer of the House-boat. “I have no desire
to be mutinous, Captain Kidd, but I have not embarked
upon this enterprise for a pleasure sail down the Styx.
I am out for business. If you had thirty thousand
women on board, still should I not turn back.”
“But what shall we do with ’em?”
pleaded Kidd. “Where can we go without
attracting attention? Who’s going to feed
’em? Who’s going to dress ’em?
Who’s going to keep ’em in bonnets?
You don’t know anything about these creatures,
my dear Abeuchapeta; and, by-the-way, can’t we
arbitrate that name of yours? It would be fearful
to remember in the excitement of a fight.”
“Call him Ab,” suggested
Sir Henry Morgan, with an ill-concealed sneer, for
he was deeply jealous of Abeuchapeta’s preferral.
“If you do I’ll call you
Morgue, and change your appearance to fit,”
retorted Abeuchapeta, angrily.
“By the beards of all my sainted
Buccaneers,” began Morgan, springing angrily
to his feet, “I’ll have your life!”
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen my
noble ruffians!” expostulated Kidd. “Come,
come; this will never do! I must have no quarrelling
among my aides. This is no time for divisions
in our councils. An entirely unexpected element
has entered into our affairs, and it behooveth us
to act in concert. It is no light matter ”
“Excuse me, captain,”
said Abeuchapeta, “but that is where you and
I do not agree. We’ve got our ship and
we’ve got our crew, and in addition we find
that the Fates have thrown in a hundred or more women
to act as ballast. Now I, for one, do not fear
a woman. We can set them to work. There
is plenty for them to do keeping things tidy; and if
we get into a very hard fight, and come out of the
melee somewhat the worse for wear, it will be a blessing
to have ’em along to mend our togas, sew
buttons on our uniforms, and darn our hosiery.”
Morgan laughed sarcastically.
“When did you flourish, if ever, colonel?”
he asked.
“Do you refer to me?” queried Abeuchapeta,
with a frown.
“You have guessed correctly,”
replied Morgan, icily. “I have quite forgotten
your date; were you a success in the year one, or when?”
“Admiral Abeuchapeta, Sir Henry,”
interposed Kidd, fearing a further outbreak of hostilities “Admiral
Abeuchapeta was the terror of the seas in the seventh
century, and what he undertook to do he did, and his
piratical enterprises were carried on on a scale of
magnificence which is without parallel off the comic-opera
stage. He never went forth without at least seventy
galleys and a hundred other vessels.”
Abeuchapeta drew himself up proudly.
“Six-ninety-eight was my great year,”
he said.
“That’s what I thought,”
said Morgan. “That is to say, you got your
ideas of women twelve hundred years ago, and the ladies
have changed somewhat since that time. I have
great respect for you, sir, as a ruffian. I have
no doubt that as a ruffian you are a complete success,
but when it comes to ‘feminology’ you
are sailing in unknown waters. The study of women,
my dear Abeuchadnezzar ”
“Peta,” retorted Abeuchapeta, irritably.
“I stand corrected. The
study of women, my dear Peter,” said Morgan,
with a wink at Conrad, which fortunately the seventh-century
pirate did not see, else there would have been an
open break “the study of women is
more difficult than that of astronomy; there may be
two stars alike, but all women are unique. Because
she was this, that, or the other thing in your day
does not prove that she is any one of those things
in our day in fact, it proves the contrary.
Why, I venture even to say that no individual woman
is alike.”
“That’s rather a hazy
thought,” said Kidd, scratching his head in a
puzzled sort of way.
“I mean that she’s different
from herself at different times,” said Morgan.
“What is it the poet called her? ’an
infinite variety show,’ or something of that
sort; a perpetual vaudeville a continuous
performance, as it were, from twelve to twelve.”
“Morgan is right, admiral!”
put in Conrad the corsair, acting temporarily as bo’sun.
“The times are sadly changed, and woman is no
longer what she was. She is hardly what she is,
much less what she was. The Roman Gynaeceum would
be an impossibility to-day. You might as well
expect Delilah to open a barbershop on board this
boat as ask any of these advanced females below-stairs
to sew buttons on a pirate’s uniform after a
fray, or to keep the fringe on his epaulets curled.
They’re no longer sewing-machines they
are Keeley motors for mystery and perpetual motion.
Women have views now they are no longer
content to be looked at merely; they must see for
themselves; and the more they see, the more they wish
to domesticate man and emancipate woman. It’s
my private opinion that if we are to get along with
them at all the best thing to do is to let ’em
alone. I have always found I was better off in
the abstract, and if this question is going to be
settled in a purely democratic fashion by submitting
it to a vote, I’ll vote for any measure which
involves leaving them strictly to themselves.
They’re nothing but a lot of ghosts anyhow, like
ourselves, and we can pretend we don’t see them.”
“If that could be, it would
be excellent,” said Morgan; “but it is
impossible. For a pirate of the Byronic order,
my dear Conrad, you are strangely unversed in the
ways of the sex which cheers but not inebriates.
We can no more ignore their presence upon this boat
than we can expect whales to spout kerosene.
In the first place, it would be excessively impolite
of us to cut them to decline to speak to
them if they should address us. We may be pirates,
ruffians, cutthroats, but I hope we shall never forget
that we are gentlemen.”
“The whole situation is rather
contrary to etiquette, don’t you think?”
suggested Conrad. “There’s nobody
to introduce us, and I can’t really see how
we can do otherwise than ignore them. I certainly
am not going to stand on deck and make eyes at them,
to try and pick up an acquaintance with them, even
if I am of a Byronic strain.”
“You forget,” said Kidd,
“two essential features of the situation.
These women are at present or shortly will
be, when they realize their situation in
distress, and a true gentleman may always fly to the
rescue of a distressed female; and, the second point,
we shall soon be on the seas, and I understand that
on the fashionable transatlantic lines it is now considered
de rigueur to speak to anybody you choose to.
The introduction business isn’t going to stand
in my way.”
“Well, may I ask,” put
in Abeuchapeta, “just what it is that is worrying
you? You said something about feeding them, and
dressing them, and keeping them in bonnets. I
fancy there’s fish enough in the sea to feed
’em; and as for their gowns and hats, they can
make ’em themselves. Every woman is a milliner
at heart.”
“Exactly, and we’ll have
to pay the milliners. That is what bothers me.
I was going to lead this expedition to London, Paris,
and New York, admiral. That is where the money
is, and to get it you’ve got to go ashore, to
headquarters. You cannot nowadays find it on the
high seas. Modern civilization,” said Kidd,
“has ruined the pirate’s business.
The latest news from the other world has really opened
my eyes to certain facts that I never dreamed of.
The conditions of the day of which I speak are interestingly
shown in the experience of our friend Hawkins here.
Captain Hawkins, would you have any objection to stating
to these gentlemen the condition of affairs which
led you to give up piracy on the high seas?”
“Not the slightest, Captain
Kidd,” returned Captain Hawkins, who was a recent
arrival in Hades. “It is a sad little story,
and it gives me a pain for to think on it, but none
the less I’ll tell it, since you ask me.
When I were a mere boy, fellow-pirates, I had but
one ambition, due to my readin’, which was confined
to stories of a Sunday-school nater to become
somethin’ different from the little Willies an’
the clever Tommies what I read about therein.
They was all good, an’ they went to their reward
too soon in life for me, who even in them days regarded
death as a stuffy an’ unpleasant diversion.
Learnin’ at an early period that virtue was its
only reward, an’ a-wish-in’ others, I
says to myself: ‘Jim,’ says I, ’if
you wishes to become a magnet in this village, be
sinful. If so be as you are a good boy, an’
kind to your sister an’ all other animals, you’ll
end up as a prosperous father with fifteen hundred
a year sure, with never no hope for no public preferment
beyond bein’ made the superintendent of the
Sunday-school; but if so be as how you’re bad,
you may become famous, an’ go to Congress, an’
have your picture in the Sunday noospapers.’
So I looks around for books tellin’ how to get
‘Famous in Fifty Ways,’ an’ after
due reflection I settles in my mind that to be a pirate’s
just the thing for me, seein’ as how it’s
both profitable an’ healthy. Passin’
over details, let me tell you that I became a pirate.
I ran away to sea, an’ by dint of perseverance,
as the Sunday-school books useter say, in my badness
I soon became the centre of a evil lot; an’ when
I says to ’em, ’Boys, I wants to be a
pirate chief,’ they hollers back, loud like,
’Jim, we’re with you,’ an’
they was. For years I was the terror of the Venezuelan
Gulf, the Spanish Main, an’ the Pacific seas,
but there was precious little money into it.
The best pay I got was from a Sunday noospaper, which
paid me well to sign an article on ‘Modern Piracy’
which I didn’t write. Finally business
got so bad the crew began to murmur, an’ I was
at my wits’ ends to please ’em; when one
mornin’, havin’ passed a restless night,
I picks up a noospaper and sees in it that ’Next
Saturday’s steamer is a weritable treasure-ship,
takin’ out twelve million dollars, and the jewels
of a certain prima donna valued at five hundred
thousand.’ ’Here’s my chance,’
says I, an’ I goes to sea and lies in wait for
the steamer. I captures her easy, my crew bein’
hungry, an’ fightin’ according like.
We steals the box a-hold-in’ the jewels an’
the bag containin’ the millions, hustles back
to our own ship, an’ makes for our rondyvoo,
me with two bullets in my leg, four o’ my crew
killed, and one engin’ of my ship disabled
by a shot but happy. Twelve an’
a half millions at one break is enough to make anybody
happy.”
“I should say so,” said
Abeuchapeta, with an ecstatic shake of his head.
“I didn’t get that in all my career.”
“Nor I,” sighed Kidd. “But
go on, Hawkins.”
“Well, as I says,” continued
Captain Hawkins, “we goes to the rondyvoo to
look over our booty. ’Captain ‘Awkins,’
says my valet for I was a swell pirate,
gents, an’ never travelled nowhere without a
man to keep my clothes brushed and the proper wrinkles
in my trousers ’this ’ere twelve
millions,’ says he, ‘is werry light,’
says he, carryin’ the bag ashore. ’I
don’t care how light it is, so long as it’s
twelve millions, Henderson,’ says I; but my
heart sinks inside o’ me at his words, an’
the minute we lands I sits down to investigate right
there on the beach. I opens the bag, an’
it’s the one I was after but the twelve
millions!”
“Weren’t there?” cried Conrad.
“Yes, they was there,”
sighed Hawkins, “but every bloomin’ million
was represented by a certified check, an’ payable
in London!”
“By Jingo!” cried Morgan.
“What fearful luck! But you had the prima
donna’s jewels.”
“Yes,” said Hawkins, with
a moan. “But they was like all other prima
donna’s jewels for advertisin’
purposes only, an’ made o’ gum-arabic!”
“Horrible!” said Abeuchapeta.
“And the crew, what did they say?”
“They was a crew of a few words,”
sighed Hawkins. “Werry few words, an’
not a civil word in the lot mostly adjectives
of a profane kind. When I told ’em what
had happened, they got mad at Fortune for a-jiltin’
of ’em, an’ well, I came here.
I was ’sas’inated that werry night!”
“They killed you?” cried Morgan.
“A dozen times,” nodded
Hawkins. “They always was a lavish lot.
I met death in all its most horrid forms. First
they stabbed me, then they shot me, then they clubbed
me, and so on, endin’ up with a lynchin’ but
I didn’t mind much after the first, which hurt
a bit. But now that I’m here I’m
glad it happened. This life is sort of less responsible
than that other. You can’t hurt a ghost
by shooting him, because there ain’t nothing
to hurt, an’ I must say I like bein’ a
mere vision what everybody can see through.”
“All of which interesting tale
proves what?” queried Abeuchapeta.
“That piracy on the sea is not
profitable in these days of the check banking system,”
said Kidd. “If you can get a chance at real
gold it’s all right, but it’s of no earthly
use to steal checks that people can stop payment on.
Therefore it was my plan to visit the cities and do
a little freebooting there, where solid material wealth
is to be found.”
“Well? Can’t we do it now?”
asked Abeuchapeta.
“Not with these women tagging
after us,” returned Kidd. “If we went
to London and lifted the whole Bank of England, these
women would have it spent on Regent Street inside
of twenty-four hours.”
“Then leave them on board,” said Abeuchapeta.
“And have them steal the ship!”
retorted Kidd. “No. There are but two
things to do. Take ’em back, or land them
in Paris. Tell them to spend a week on shore
while we are provisioning. Tell ’em to shop
to their hearts’ content, and while they are
doing it we can sneak off and leave them stranded.”
“Splendid!” cried Morgan.
“But will they consent?” asked Abeuchapeta.
“Consent! To shop? In Paris?
For a week?” cried Morgan.
“Ha, ha!” laughed Hawkins. “Will
they consent! Will a duck swim?”
And so it was decided, which was the
first incident in the career of the
House-boat upon which the astute Mr. Sherlock Holmes
had failed to count.