land: so I got some pull. An' like enough you c'd talk it
over with Black Bart."

"Nuh--uh! I don't like to."

"Why?"

"Well, I don't. He's all right."

"Yes, but we got to get 'em _together_!"

"Shore. But, my idea, he's hard to _get_ together if he gets a notion
he ain't had a square deal nohow, someways."

"Well, he ain't. So that makes my part the hardest. But you just go to
him, and tell him not to hurry, because you are informed the fair
captive is goin' to relent, pretty soon, if we just don't get in too
big a hurry and run away from a place like this--where the duck
shootin' is immense!"

"But kin you work _her_, Jimmy?"

"Well, I dunno. She's pretty set, if she thinks she ain't had a square
deal, too."

"Well now," argued Lafitte, "if that's the way they both feel, either
they're both wrong an' ought to shake hands, or else one of 'em's
wrong, and they either ought to get together an' find out which it
was, or else they ought to leave it to some one else to say which one
_was_ wrong. Ain't that so?"

"O' course it's so. So now, thing fer us fellows to do, is just to put
it before 'em plain, an' get 'em both to leave it to us two fellers
what's right fer 'em both to do. Now, _I_ think they'd ought to get
married, both of 'em--I mean to each other, you know. Folks _does_ get
married."

"Black Bart would," said Jean Lafitte. "I'll bet anything. The fair
captive, she's a heartless jade, but I seen Black Bart lookin' at her,
an'----"

"An' I seen her lookin' at him--leastways a picture--an' says she,
'Jimmy----'"

"Jimmy!" It was I, myself, red and angry, who now broke from my
unwilling eavesdropping.

The two boys turned to me innocently. I found it difficult to say
anything at all, and wisest to say nothing. "I was just going to ask
if you two wouldn't like to take the guns and go out after some more
ducks--especially the kind with red heads and flat noses, such as we
had yesterday. And I'll lend you Partial, so you can try for some more
of those funny little turtles. I'll have to go out to the ship, and
also over to the lighthouse, before long. The tide will turn, perhaps,
and at least the wind is offshore from the island now."

"Sure, we'll go." Jean spoke for both at once.

"Very well, then. And be careful. And you'd--you'd better leave your
auntie and her auntie alone, Jimmy--they'll want to sleep."

"You didn't hear us sayin' nothin', did you, Black Bart?" asked
L'Olonnois, suspicious