Porto Bello gold

Arthur D. Howden Smith

Summary

I was in the counting-room, talking with Peter Corlaer, the chief of our fur-traders—he was that very day come down-river from the Iroquois country—when the boy, Darby, ran in from the street.
"The Bristol packet is in, Master Robert," he cried. "And, oh, sir, the watermen do say there be a pirate ship off the Hook!"
I remember I laughed at the combination of awe and delight in his face. He was a raw, bog-trotting bit of a gossoon we had bought at the last landing of bonded folk, and he talked with a brogue that thickened whenever he grew excited.
"For the packet, I do not doubt you, Darby," I answered. "But you must show me the pirate."
Peter Corlaer chuckled in his quiet, rumbling way, his huge belly waggling before him beneath his buckskin hunting-shirt, for all the world like a monster mold of jelly.
"Ja, ja, show us der pirates," he jeered.
Darby flared up in a burst of Irish temper that matched his tangled red hair.

Available since: 06/01/2023.

Contemporary Fiction

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