Chapter 3

Throughout all the story Dalton had been sitting atop of the coffer-dam, hands with flat palms pressing down, and feet hanging, with heels drumming against the coffer-dam sides. After he had done he pushed himself up by the palms of his hands, rearranged his row of tin letter-files, shifted his electric bulkhead light, picked up a fat folk-lore volume and waited, with eyes twinkling down on us, for somebody to say something.

"And how long ago was that, Dallie?" asked somebody, at last.

"Five years."

"And never a word from the admiral?"

"Never a word."

"H-m-ph! Don't you suppose--"

"Suppose what, fat Reggie? D' y' mean to hint at conspiracy between a rear-admiral of the United States Navy and an enlisted man--a yeoman? Why, Reggie!"

"Of course not. But nothing more from anybody? Not from Washington, either?"

"Nothing, inquisitive child. But there's an old flat-footed friend of mine in the department--and he, whenever he writes me, never forgets to mention that every once in a while the chief clerk, or somebody or other in his division, is sure to look out the window and across the street at the White House grounds, as if trying to remember something; and whenever he takes a particularly long look he is always sure to turn around and say to the man at the nearest desk, 'What d' y' s'pose ever became of that hose-pipe spook used to haunt this place?' And the man at the nearest desk he'll look up and nibble at the end of his pen-holder, or maybe he'll get up and have a look out of the window at the Cabinet playing tennis, and after a while he'll say: 'That's so; I wonder what ever did become of that? But'--maybe another look across at the tennis court--'that'll turn up again, no fear.'

"But it won't," concluded the flag yeoman, with a smile we could have buried one of his tin letter-files in; "for we were two hundred miles out of Hong-kong at that time, steaming 14.6 miles an hour through the China Sea, and you know it's good and deep there. And now"--he rolled flat on his back, balanced his neck on the head-rest under the bulkhead light, and his fat book on his chest--"now I'm not advising anybody, and particularly not you, Fatty, but that's the way a competent yeoman, with a little advice from a couple of old shipmates, laid that hose-pipe ghost of other days. But mind, I'm not telling you to go and do anything like that."

"No, of course not," says our captain's yeoman, and rubs his fat chin. "Of course not."

"But if you do," says Dalton, and sets his head sideways to see how Reginald was taking it--"if you do, you'd make a hit with your skipper, you betcher--only he'd never tell you."

"Why wouldn't he, if he liked it?"

"Why? 'Twouldn't be regulations. And now, you fellows, beat it. Seven bells gone and the Old Man is due aboard at twelve o'clock. And sometimes he takes a notion to go cruising around the cabin country before he turns in. Besides, I want a chance to peruse a little improving literature before I turn in myself. So beat it, all of you."

And out into the passageways and up the hatchways we beat it; all but our captain's fat yeoman, who went back to his office at a grave thoughtful pace.

The Seizure of the "Aurora Borealis"

I had no notion in the beginning of going anywhere near Newfoundland that winter, but the word was passed to me from old John Rose of Folly Cove that if I thought of running down for a load of herrin', then he'd ought to have a couple o' thousand barrels, by the looks o' things, fine and fat in pickle, against Christmas Day, and old John Rose being a great friend of mine, and the market away up, I kissed the wife and baby good-by and put out for Placentia Bay in the _Aurora_.

Now if anybody'd come to me before I left Gloucester that trip and asked me to turn a smuggling trick, why, I'd 'a' said: "Go away, boy, you're crazy." But on the way down I put into Saint Pierre. You know Saint Pierre? In the Miquelons, yes, where in the spring the fishing vessels from France put in--big vessels, bark-rigged mostly, and carrying forty or fifty in a crew--they put in to fit out for the Grand Banks fishing. And they come over with wine mostly for ballast. And in the fall they sail back home, but without the wine.

And, of course, somethin's got to be done with that wine, and though wine's as cheap in Saint Pierre as 'tis to any port in France, yet 'tisn't all drunk in Saint Pierre--not quite. The truth is, those people in Saint Pierre aren't much in the drinking line. One American shacking crew will come in there and put away more in one night than that whole winter population will in a week--that is, they would if they could get the kind they wanted. But that Saint Pierre wine isn't the kind of booze that our fellows are looking for after hauling trawls for a month o' winter days on the Banks. No, what they want is something with more bite in it. And what becomes of it? H-m--if you knew that you'd know what a lot of people'd like to know.

Well, I put into Saint Pierre, for I knew old John Rose and his gang of herring netters would cert'nly relish a drink of red rum now and again on a cold winter's night, and, going ashore, I runs into a sort of fat, black lad about forty-five, half French, half English, that was a great trader there, named Miller. 'Twas off him I bought my keg of rum for old John Rose. I'd heard of this Miller before, and a slick, smooth one he was reported to be, with a warehouse on one of the docks.

He'd been looking at my vessel, he said, had noticed her come to anchor, and a splendid vessel she was--fast and weatherly, no doubt of that. Well, that was all right, for, take it from me, the _Aurora_ was all that anybody could say of her that was good. And when you believe that way, and a man comes along and begins to praise your vessel like that, whether you like his sail plans or not, why you just naturally can't help warming up to him. We took a walk up the street together.

And a master and a crew that knew how to handle her, too, Miller goes on. Now I blinked a little at that, straight to my face as it was, but after two or three more drinks I says to myself: "Oh, hell, what's the good o' suspectin' everybody that pays a compliment of trying to heave twine over you?" We got pretty friendly, and, talking about one thing and another, he finally asked me if I ever had a notion of selling my vessel. I only smiled at him, and asked him if he had any idea what she cost to build. I told him then. Fourteen thousand dollars to the day of her trial trip, and all the money my wife and I had in the world had gone into her. He had no idea she cost so much; but, on reflection, it must be so--of a certainty yes. A splen-did, a su-pairb vessel, so swift to sail, so perfect to manoeuvre. If he himself possessed such an enchanting vessel--well, he could use her to much profit. There was a way.

He said that so slyly that I had to ask him what that way was. He winked. "I deal in wines--what way can it be?" And, of course, I winked back to show that I was a deep one too. It's wonderful what things a man c'n get up to wind'ard of you after he's half filled you up. Well, no more then, but we left our caffay for a walk around the port, me looking for a little souvenir in the jewelry line for the baby. Christmas was comin', and though I didn't expect to be home till after New Year's, still I wanted the wife to know I hadn't forgotten the baby.

I was tellin' that to Miller, and a little more about them, of how I hadn't been but a couple of years married, and how I kissed her and the baby good-by on the steps, and her tellin' me the last thing not to go pilin' the vessel up on the rocks anywhere, that the baby's fortune was in her now, and so on.

Well, sir, that farewell scene, that adieu, was too touching for him--he insisted on picking out the souvenir himself, and he picked out a good one, a pretty brooch to fasten the baby's little collar, and he paid for it--forty francs--and I just had to take it.

Well, we had another drink and parted, me not expecting to see any more of him; but that night as I was down on the dock hailing the vessel for a dory to go aboard, a man stepped up to me and laid his hand on my arm. "Captain Corning?" he said, and I said yes.

Well, he was a friend of Mr. Miller--he had seen me talking to Mr. Miller, and learned that I was about to depart in the early morning, bound for Placentia Bay; he would like to ask me to do him a small favor. Could I take one package and land it on my way to Auvergne, where was one friend of his? A small matter, one five-gallon keg of rum, that rum which was of such trivial price in Saint Pierre, but on which the duty was so high in Newfoundland, and his friend was one poor man, one fisherman, who could not afford to pay the duty.

Now this Auvergne was twenty-five miles this side of any port of entry, and my first landing in Newfoundland, according to law, had to be at a port of entry. And so I told this chap that, and how I was liable to a heavy fine, and so on.

Yes, he discerned much truth in what I said, but consider that poor fisherman who could have his good rum merely for the landing--no other cost, none whatever--he, a friend of Mr. Miller, was sending it as a gift for the holiday Christmas time. And that rum--consider the piteously cold nights hauling the nets when a drink of good rum was so soothing, so grateful, so inspiring. And a little favor like that--the Colonial Government would not be--truly not--and if I did not take the rum that poor fisherman of Auvergne would have none in its stead. He could not afford it, the duty was so high--an impossible duty, as no doubt I knew.

I did know, and also I remembered many a drink of Saint Pierre rum I'd had on a cold night in Newfoundland and no duty paid on it, and many a cold night hauling herring when I didn't have it, but wished I had, and would've gone a long ways to get it, duty or no duty. And then I remembered how Miller had been pretty decent to me that day--the little brooch he'd bought for the baby I could even then feel in my vest pocket--and I said all right, and when half an hour later a dory slipped up to the side of the _Aurora_ and a keg was handed over the rail I didn't ask any questions, but took and stowed it under the cabin run.

Next morning we sailed, and, after a four hours' easy run, made Auvergne, a little port in Placentia Bay, tucked away between two headlands--one easterly, one westerly. Coming from Saint Pierre, it was, of course, the westward one we rounded. According to directions, I ground out two long and two short woofs on the fog-horn, at which a man pops from behind a big rock and waves a handkerchief three times.

Well, that was according to directions, too, and I drops a dory over the side with Sam Leary and Archie Gillis and the keg in it, and tells them to row over to the beach, ask the name of the lad that jumped from behind the rock, and if it was the same as on the tag to leave the keg with him. It was about a mile to the bit of beach, and the dory was almost there, when from behind the easterly headland comes the revenue-cutter. "That looks bad," I says, "but we'll say we've come for fresh water, that our tanks were leakin', and that we had to have fresh water to cook dinner, and Sam and Archie in the dory--'specially Sam--they'll have wit enough to empty the keg over the side and go on up as if they was really lookin' for water."

And that's what would 'a' happened if it'd not been for the thirst that Sam Leary and Archie Gillis most always had with them. They see the revenue-cutter, and they knew just what they oughter done, but they couldn't let go that keg without having one last drink out of it, and when they got that drink down they couldn't help thinking what a pity to waste so much good rum, and taking a look back at the cutter, and seeing she was still half a mile away--"Time enough," says Sam to Archie--"this lad behind the big rock'll have something to stow it in," and he and Archie walks without any hurry up to the rock where the man was hiding.

But instead of one man behind that rock, there was six, and right away there was a battle. Sam and Archie bowls over a couple and gets away up the beach and safe among rocks, but the revenue people got the keg. By that time the cutter was alongside us, and so they wouldn't get the little Christmas keg I had tucked away for John Rose I pulled the plug out of it in no time and let it drain into her bilge. And that was an awful waste of good liquor, and I knew John Rose would grieve when I told him.

They had a clean case against me, and I was taken with the _Aurora_ to Harbor Grace for trial. When they asked me what I had to say, I told 'em that I was simply bringing a little keg of rum from a man in Saint Pierre to his friend in Auvergne. They asked me the name of the man in Saint Pierre, and I said I didn't know. They asked me the name of the man in Auvergne, and I said I didn't know. "Was this the man?" they asks, and shows me the tag on the keg. I didn't answer. And they went on to show there was no man in Auvergne by that name, and what were they to understand by that?

I told them I didn't know--it was past me. And it cert'nly was. But they knew what to make of it, they said. There were people in Auvergne doing this illegal business under false names. And I had used a false name, and to try to tell the honorable court that I did not know the name of the man in Saint Pierre who gave me the rum, nor the man I was bringing it to--why, I knew very well who gave me the rum, and I knew who I was bringing it to, and if the truth were known, I knew a lot more about the rum-smuggling traffic. And they were going to put a stop to it.

And they laid a fine of twenty-five hundred dollars against my vessel. Maybe you might think that a pretty heavy fine, but that's nothing. Almost any little local magistrate down that way can soak an American skipper or owner for almost any amount and get away with it. And how's that? Well, we pay two or three dollars a barrel to Newfoundland fishermen for herring. Before we went down here the St. John's merchants used to pay them about fifty cents a barrel, and it's the St. John's merchants who have all the money and came pretty near running Newfoundland.

Well, when my little local magistrate fines me twenty-five hundred dollars I said I wouldn't pay it, that I'd stir things up at Washington, and so on, but they only laughed at me, and put her up for sale.

Now I'd 've bid her in myself if I'd had the money, but I only had a couple of hundred dollars in cash for running expenses with me. All my Newfoundland friends down that way were poor people--fishermen. If 'twas home we could 'a' raised plenty of money on her, but I was in Newfoundland, not Gloucester, and they rushed the thing through.

Well, the _Aurora_ was bid in for just the amount of the fine, and that was a shame, the vessel she was, and she was bid in by a man nobody seemed to know. I went to the man who bid her in and told him the whole story, of what the vessel meant to me, of how I came to bring the rum over, and asked him would he give me the chance to communicate with some business men in Gloucester and buy her back, but he only laughs at me, and laughs in a way to make me think I was a child.

And in one way I was sort of a child, then, but I didn't begin to realize how much of a child till I heard a voice giving orders to make sail on the _Aurora_. A coast steamer had just come in, and from her had come a crew of men to take the _Aurora_ away, and this was the voice of the man who gave me the keg of rum that night in Saint Pierre. And while I was looking at him another man came alongside from the coast steamer, and this was Miller himself. If the _Aurora_ had been within distance I would have jumped aboard; but she had her lower sails up then and was moving in pretty lively fashion out of the harbor.

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 Washington. 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-ship, and all he'd been getting out of Washington 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 ships 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 passage 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 passed 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 fishin' trip she's cleared for, but she's got more than offshore 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 cassy--"

"Twenty-seven drinks o' cassy! 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 glasses o' cassy 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."

"An' why not there as well as the next place? Why not there as well as here? Why not?" Sam glared down to the end of the bar, where Argand himself was taking in the cash, and his eyes, roaming round the room, caught mine and he winked. "A gen'l'man, ol' Antone, which every caffy keeper ain't--an' because he's a gen'l'man, and because some others ain't--" Sam looked around to see if Argand was getting that--"because some others ain't--because some others ain't, I say--an' I could name 'em, too, if I wanted--I could, yes."

I caught another flash from Sam's eyes, and, looking where his eyes pointed, I saw my _Aurora_ captain and three or four of his crew, who had just come in.

"Name him, Sammie--name him," urged Gillis. "Name the cross-breeded dog-fish--name 'im, Sammie, name 'im."

All this was foolish enough, perhaps, but not to Henri Argand, who ran this place. He didn't have reputation enough to be able to stand off and laugh at Sammie and Archie--probably not--for by and by, with four or five helpers, he comes with a rush and in ten seconds it was a mix-up. Sam and Gillis put their backs to the bar and gave battle. There were only the two of them, and the turkey, at first. A great bird a turkey--especially when you swing him by the ankles. Down went a waiter, and down went another waiter. Sam made a couple of tremendous swipes, and then down went the _Aurora's_ captain and one of his crew. The _Aurora's_ captain's head, I thought, would be knocked clean off, the way the turkey hit him. Then over went a row of French stokers, and, with a back-handed sweep of the turkey, down went the bartender behind. And Sam and Archie, I could see, were working over to finish the _Aurora's_ new crew, and would've got 'em, too, but Argand, inside the bar, picks up a bung-starter, sneaks down and gives Sam and Archie a couple of slick taps over the ear, and down they went--just slid feet first away from the bar and on to the floor, flat--and as they slid Argand reaches over and grabs the turkey out of Sam's hand.