The COURAGE of CAPTAIN PLUM
Contents
List of Illustrations
"I Am Going to Take You fromthe Island!"
His Fingers Twined About thePurplish Throat.
THE COURAGE OF CAPTAIN PLUM
CHAPTER I
On an afternoon in the early summer of 1856 Captain NathanielPlum, master and owner of the sloop Typhoon was engaged innothing more important than the smoking of an enormous pipe. Cloudsof strongly odored smoke, tinted with the lights of the settingsun, had risen above his head in unremitting volumes for the lasthalf hour. There was infinite contentment in his face,notwithstanding the fact that he had been meditating on a subjectthat was not altogether pleasant. But Captain Plum was, in a way, aphilosopher, though one would not have guessed this fact from hisappearance. He was, in the first place, a young man, not more thaneight or nine and twenty, and his strong, rather thin face, tannedby exposure to the sea, was just now lighted up by eyes that shonewith an unbounded good humor which any instant might take the formof laughter.
At the present time Captain Plum's vision was confined to onedirection, which carried his gaze out over Lake Michigan. Earlierin the day he had been able to discern the hazy outline of theMichigan wilderness twenty miles to the eastward. Straight ahead,shooting up rugged and sharp in the red light of the day's end,were two islands. Between these, three miles away, the sloopTyphoon was strongly silhouetted in the fading glow. Beyondthe islands and the sloop there were no other objects for CaptainPlum's eyes to rest upon. So far as he could see there was no othersail. At his back he was shut in by a dense growth of trees andcreeping vines, and unless a small boat edged close in around theend of Beaver Island his place of concealment must remainundiscovered. At least this seemed an assured fact to CaptainPlum.
In the security of his position he began to whistle softly as hebeat the bowl of his pipe on his boot-heel to empty it of ashes.Then he drew a lon