Part 3 (1/2)

I sat on a rock on the beach to think it over, and, ”Alec Corning,” I said to myself at last--”they cert'nly tried you with the right kind o'

bait--and hooked you good.”

And I wondered how I could get square with Miller. No use trying to stir up Was.h.i.+ngton. There was an old skipper of mine, and they'd fined him three thousand dollars once for just a difference of opinion and he couldn't pay it, and his vessel at that moment was being used for a light-s.h.i.+p, and all he'd been getting out of Was.h.i.+ngton were State Department letters for ten years. And he had cert'nly as much political pull as I had, for I had none.

No, no State Department for mine, I says at last, and s.h.i.+ps my crew up to John Rose to Folly Cove, telling them to help John with the herring, and to tell him, too, to save the herring for me, that I'd get 'em back to Gloucester some way, and myself takes pa.s.sage next day on the mail packet to Saint Pierre.

It was after dark of Christmas Eve when I landed at Saint Pierre. I went up to Argand's Caffay, a place where all kinds of seafaring people used to go to get a drink and a bite to eat. There were quite a few in there now--French stokers from a steamer or two and half a dozen French man-of-war's men from a French gun-boat that was lying in the harbor, I remember.

I didn't see any American fishermen in Argand's, but I knew that some of 'em would be drifting in before long. And by and by a few did, but me saying nothing to any of them, only sitting over to a table in a corner with a little bit of supper, and thinking that it was going to be a blue kind of Christmas for me, and a blue Christmas at home, too, for by this time Gloucester must've got the news of the seizure of the _Aurora_, and somebody'd surely pa.s.sed the word to the wife.

I was sitting there, in the corner, figuring things out and not bothering much about the people coming and going, when somebody sits down at my table, and no sooner down than I felt his boot pressing mine under the table. I looked up, and it was Archie Gillis.

”A fine one _you_!” I breaks out--”where's Sam?”

”Gi'me a chance now, skipper,” says Gillis, and orders a little something, and when the waiter was gone: ”Sam's not far away. I left him up to Antone's rolling dice for turkeys. We came over, him and me, on a little French packet. Sam guessed you'd come back to Saint Pierre, and if you did he knew you'd drop in here. Sam'll be here soon, he guessed you'd come here. We've been tryin' to find out about the _Aurora_. She's in the harbor, and they're going to put out to-night.”

”For where?”

”Well, it's a fis.h.i.+n' trip she's cleared for, but she's got more than offsh.o.r.e bait in her hold.”

Archie had been talking straight down at his plate. Now he stood up, and from behind his napkin said: ”There's the skipper o' the _Aurora_--tryin' to collect his gang together. Don't look around. But he'll have hard work, 'cause Sam and me spent most of th' afternoon gettin' 'em drunk--specially Sam. An' Sam says don't notice him when you see him come in, for the new _Aurora_ gang don't know yet that we was any of your crew.” Gillis tossed his napkin down and strolled over to the bar.

By and by I heard a familiar voice at the door--could 'a' heard it a block--and pretty soon Sam himself comes rolling in. He was carrying a monstrous turkey, and he spied Archie first thing. And, ”Hullo, Archie boy,” he shouts. ”Throw your binnacle lights on that, will you? Thirty pounds he weighs--like you see him--and twenty-five he'll weigh, or I'm no fancy poultry raiser, when he's ready for the oven.”

Gillis poked his finger into the breast of the turkey. ”I wish we had him for to-morrow, Sammie. He'd make a nice little lunch, that lad.”

”Well, we'll have him, Archie, for to-morrow. We'll have him--the biggest turkey ever sailed out of ol' Sain' Peer. A whale, look at him.”

”Aye, some tonnage to him. But y' never won him here, Sammie?”

”Win _him_ here? _Here_? In Argand's? Ever know anybody win anything here? No, sir. I won him up to ol' Antone's. Twenty-seven throws at twenty-five cents a throw.”

”Twenty-seven! You could 'a' bought two of 'em for that.”

”Bought? Of course I could 'a' bought; but who wants to buy a turkey Christmas time? Why, any fat old shuffle-footed loafer can take a basket under his arm and go down t' the market and pay down his money and come away with a turkey or anything else he wants. 'Tain't the _getting_ him.

Archie--it's the winnin' him from a lot of hot sports that think they c'n roll dice. Twenty-seven throws I took and with every throw a free drink of good old ca.s.sy--”

”Twenty-seven drinks o' ca.s.sy! A lot you knew about what you was rollin'

by then, Sammie.”

”'Tain't what I knew, but what I _did_, that counted, Archie, and it takes more than twenty-seven gla.s.ses o' ca.s.sy to put my rail under.

_You_ oughter know that, Archie. I knew what I was doin'--don't worry.

An' that twenty-seventh rollin'! I shook 'em up--spittin' to wind'ard for luck--and lets 'em run. And out they comes a-bowlin'. Seventeen!

Cert'nly a fine run-off that, I says, and drops 'em in again, limbers my wrist a couple o' times, and then--two fives and a six--thirty-three! I gathers 'em in again, takes off my cardigan jacket, lays my cigar on the rail, jibes my elbows to each side--'Action,' I says. 'Action.' Yer could hear 'em breathin' a cable length all around me. I curls my fingers over the box, snaps her across an' back again. The len'th of the table they rolled. Three sixes--fifty-one. 'Mong doo,' yells ol'

Antone--'Sankantoon--not since fifteen year do I see such play.' Well, for another hour they rolled, but that fifty-one was still high-line. I took him away. And alongside this lad when we have him to-morrow, Archie, there'll be a special bottle o' wine--some red-colored wine. I don't know the name of it. Good stuff, though, and ol' Antone gave it to me--a special bottle.”

”An' well he might arter all the money you spent there, Sammie.”