I looked up. Just at the bend, arrested now by hand anchorage to the overhanging alders, lay a small boat, occupied by two boys, neither of more than fourteen years, the younger seemingly not more than twelve. It was the latter who was clinging with one hand to the drooping bushes. His companion, apparently the leader in their present enterprise, was half crouching in the bow of the boat and he, evidently, was the one who had accosted me.

A second glance gave me even more surprise, for it showed that the boat, though not precisely long, low and rakish of build, evidently was of piratical intent. At least she was piratical in decoration. On each side of her bow there was painted—and the evening sun, shining through my larches, showed the paint still fresh—in more or less accurate design in black, the emblem of a skull and cross-bones. Above her, supported by a short staff, perhaps cut from my own willows, flew a black flag, and whatever may have been her stern-chaser equipment, her broadside batteries, or her deck carronades—none of which I could well make out, as her hull lay half concealed among the alders—her bow-chaser was certainly in commission and manned for action. The pirate captain, himself, was at the lanyard; and I perceived that he now rested an extraordinarily large six-shooter in the fork of a short staff, which was fixed in the bow. Along this, with a three-cornered gray eye, he now sighted at the lower button of my waistcoat, and in a fashion that gave me goose-flesh underneath the button, in spite of all my mingled emotions. Had I not “halted,” as ordered, to the extent of sitting on quietly as I was, he no doubt would have pulled the lanyard, with consequences such as I do not care to contemplate, and mayhap to the effect that this somewhat singular story would never have been written.

“Halt, Sirrah!” began the pirate leader again, “or I will blow you out of the water!”

I sat for a moment regarding him, my chin in my hand.

“No,” said I at last; “I already am out of the water, my friend. But, prithee, have a care of yonder lanyard, else, gadzooks! you may belike blow me off the bank and into the water.”

This speech of mine seemed as much to disconcert the pirate chieftain as had his me. He stood erect, shifting his Long Tom, to the great ease of my waistcoat button.

“Won’t you heave to, and put off a small boat for a parley?” I inquired.

CHAPTER II

IN WHICH I HOLD A PARLEY

THE two pirates turned to each other for consultation, irresolute, but evidently impressed by the fact that their prize did not purpose to hoist sail and make a run for it.

“What ho! mates?” demanded the captain, in as gruff a voice as he could compass: “Ye’ve heard his speech, and he has struck his flag.”

“Suppose the villain plays us false,” rejoined the “mates” or rather, the mate, in a voice so high or quavering that for a moment it was difficult for me to repress a smile; although these three years past I rarely had smiled at all.

The captain turned to one side, so that now I could see both him and his crew. The leader was as fine a specimen of boy as you could have asked, sturdy of bare legs, brown of face, red of hair, ragged and tumbled of garb. His crew was active though slightly less robust, a fair-haired, light-skinned chap, blue-eyed, and somewhat better clad than his companion. There was something winning about his face. At a glance I knew his soul. He was a dreamer, an idealist, an artist, in the bud. My heart leaped out to him instinctively in a great impulse of sympathy and understanding. Indeed, suddenly, I felt the blood tingle through my hair. I looked upon life as I had not these three years. The imagination of Youth, the glamour of Adventure, lay here before me; things I cruelly had missed these last few years, it seemed to me.

“How, now, shipmates?” I remarked mildly. “Wouldst doubt the faith of one who himself hath flown the Jolly Rover? Cease your fears and come aboard—that is to say, come ashore.”

“Git out, Jimmy,” I heard the captain say in a low voice, after a moment of indecision. “Keep him covered till I tie her up.”

Jimmy, the fair-haired pirate, hauled in on the alders and flung a grappling iron aboard my bank, which presently he ascended. As he stood free from the screening fringe of bushes, I saw that he was slender, and not very tall, one not wholly suited by nature to his stern calling. His once white jacket now was soiled, and one leg of his knickers was loose, from his scramble up the bank. He was belted beyond all earl-like need; wore indeed two belts, which supported two long hunting knives and a Malay kris, such as we now get from the Philippines; as well as a revolver large beyond all proportion to his own size. A second revolver of like dimensions now trembled in his hand, and even though its direction toward me was no more than general, I resumed the goose-flesh underneath my waistcoat, for no man could tell what might happen. In none of my works with dangerous big game have I felt a similar uneasiness; no, nor even in the little affair in China where the Boxers held us up, did I ever really consider the issue more in doubt. It pleased me, however, to make no movement of offense or defense; and luckily the revolver was not discharged.

When the two had topped the bank, and had approached me—taking cover behind trees in a way which made me suspect Boy Scout training, mingled with bandit literature—to a point where we could see each other’s features plainly, I moved over to one side of my bank, and motioned them to approach.

“Come alongside, brothers,” said I, pushing my fly-rod to one side; “make fast and come aboard. And tell me, what cheer?”

They drew up to me, stern of mien, bold of bearing, dauntless of purpose. At least, so I was convinced, each wished and imagined himself to seem; and since they wished so to be seen thus, seized by some sudden whim, I resolved to see them. How I envied them! Theirs all the splendor of youth, of daring, of adventure, of romance; things gone by from me, or for the most part, never known.

Frowning sternly, they seated themselves reluctantly on the grassy bank beside me, and gazed out in the dignity of an imagined manhood across my river, which now was lighted bravely by the retiring sun. Had I not felt with them, longed with them, they could never so splendidly have maintained their pretense. But between us, there in the evening on my stream with only the birds and the sun to see, it was not pretense. Upon the contrary, all cloaks were off, all masks removed, and we were face to face in the strong light of reality. As clearly as though I always had known them, I saw into the hearts of these; and what I saw made my own heart ache and yearn for something it had ever missed.

“What cheer, comrades?” I repeated at length. “Whither away, and upon what errand?”

Now a strange thing happened, which I do not explain, for that I can not. In plain fact, these two were obviously runaway boys, not the first, nor perhaps the last of runaway boys; and I was a man of means, a retired man, supposedly somewhat of a hermit, although really nothing of the sort; lately a lawyer, hard-headed and disillusioned, always a man of calm reason, as I prided myself; subject to no fancies, a student and a lover of science, a mocker at all superstition and all weak-mindedness. (Pardon me, that I must say all these things of myself.) Yet, let me be believed who