The Queen of the Pirate Isle | Page 5

it was,
it only settled in the child's mind that she must keep the awful secret to
herself and that no one could understand her.
The eventful day dawned without any unusual sign of importance. It
was one of the cloudless summer days of the Californian foothills,
bright, dry, and, as the morning advanced, hot in the white sunshine.
The actual, prosaic house in which the Pirates apparently lived was a
mile from a mining settlement on a beautiful ridge of pine woods
sloping gently towards a valley on the one side, and on the other falling
abruptly into a dark deep olive gulf of pine-trees, rocks, and patches of
red soil. Beautiful as the slope was, looking over to the distant snow
peaks which seemed to be in another world than theirs, the children
found a greater attraction in the fascinating depths of a mysterious gulf,
or canyon, as it was called, whose very name filled their ears with a
weird music. To creep to the edge of the cliff, to sit upon the brown
branches of some fallen pine, and, putting aside the dried tassels, to
look down upon the backs of wheeling hawks that seemed to hang in
mid-air was a never-failing delight. Here Polly would try to trace the
winding red ribbon of road that was continually losing itself among the
dense pines of the opposite mountains; here she would listen to the
far-off strokes of a woodman's axe, or the rattle of some heavy wagon,
miles away, crossing the pebbles of a dried-up watercourse. Here, too,
the prevailing colors of the mountains, red and white and green, most
showed themselves. There were no frowning rocks to depress the

children's fancy, but everywhere along the ridge pure white quartz
bared itself through the red earth like smiling teeth; the very pebbles
they played with were streaked with shining mica like bits of
looking-glass. The distance was always green and summer-like, but the
color they most loved, and which was most familiar to them, was the
dark red of the ground beneath their feet everywhere. It showed itself in
the roadside bushes; its red dust pervaded the leaves of the overhanging
laurel; it colored their shoes and pinafores; I am afraid it was often seen
in Indian-like patches on their faces and hands. That it may have often
given a sanguinary tone to their fancies I have every reason to believe.
It was on this ridge that the three children gathered at ten o'clock that
morning. An earlier flight had been impossible on account of Wan Lee
being obliged to perform his regular duty of blacking the shoes of Polly
and Hickory before breakfast,--a menial act which in the pure republic
of childhood was never thought inconsistent with the loftiest piratical
ambition. On the ridge they met one "Patsey," the son of a neighbor,
sun-burned, broad- brimmed hatted, red-handed, like themselves. As
there were afterwards some doubts expressed whether he joined the
Pirates of his own free will, or was captured by them, I endeavor to
give the colloquy exactly as it occurred:--
Patsey: "Hallo, fellers."
The Pirates: "Hello!"
Patsey: "Goin' to hunt bars? Dad seed a lot o' tracks at sun-up."
The Pirates (hesitating): "No--o--"
Patsey: "I am; know where I kin get a six-shooter?"
The Pirates (almost ready to abandon piracy for bear-hunting, but
preserving their dignity): "Can't! We've runn'd away for real pirates."
Patsey: "Not for good!"
The Queen (interposing with sad dignity and real tears in her round
blue eyes): "Yes!" (slowly and shaking her head). "Can't go back again.
Never! Never! Never! The--the--eye is cast!"
Patsey (bursting with excitement): "No-o! Sho'o! Wanter know."
The Pirates (a little frightened themselves, but tremulous with gratified
vanity): "The Perleese is on our track!"
Patsey: "Lemme go with yer!"
Hickory: "Wot'll yer giv?"
Patsey: "Pistol and er bananer."

Hickory (with judicious prudence): "Let's see 'em."
Patsey was off like a shot; his bare little red feet trembling under him.
In a few minutes he returned with an old-fashioned revolver known as
one of "Allen's pepper-boxes" and a large banana. He was at once
enrolled, and the banana eaten.
As yet they had resolved on no definite nefarious plan. Hickory,
looking down at Patsey's bare feet, instantly took off his own shoes.
This bold act sent a thrill through his companions. Wan Lee took off
his cloth leggings, Polly removed her shoes and stockings, but, with
royal foresight, tied them up in her handkerchief. The last link between
them and civilization was broken.
"Let's go to the Slumgullion."
"Slumgullion" was the name given by the miners to a certain soft,
half-liquid mud, formed of the water and finely powdered earth that
was carried off by the sluice-boxes during gold-washing, and
eventually collected in a broad pool or lagoon before