Chapter 4

That sort of put it up to our national pride--there was six or seven American fishermen in the place--and we waded in, and the French man-of-war's men, they waded in, and it was one fine battle for maybe ten minutes, with nothing in the way of empty bottles, or full ones either, being overlooked. And when we couldn't reach any more chairs or table legs we pulled off our sea boots, and, believe me, a big red jack with a three-quarter-inch sole and an inch and a half of heel--you grab a sea boot o' that size--it don't weigh more than four pounds or so--you grab it by the ears and get a full healthy swing on it and let it hit a man anywhere above the water-line, and he won't mistake it for any sofa cushion.

It was a fine fight, and I think we'd 'a' won out only for the re-enforcements from outside. A liberty party of French man-of-war's men come first, and then the police lads with the red trousers and the swords, and out we went into the street.

And when they got us out they locked the doors and barred the windows.

While I was pulling on my red jacks again, out under the lamp, on the corner of the street, up comes Sam and Archie. "Say, Alec," begins Sam, "but you cert'nly laid 'em out with your sea boot."

I thought Sam and Archie would be pretty well smashed up, but there wasn't a mark on 'em except a couple of lumps behind their ears.

"Not us," explained Sam. "Nothin' happened to us except bein' stepped on a few dozen times. But did y' land the rest o' the _Aurora's_ crew, Alec?"

"I don't know. I swung for 'em, Sam."

"You got 'em all right, and that'll put it out o' their heads to bother with the _Aurora_ to-night, though"--he cocked up an ear to the whistle of a rising breeze--"it begins to feel like they wouldn't 'a' gone out anyway--it's breezing up so."

"Where's she layin'?"

"Off the end o' the big dock. An' if it keeps on breezin' they won't be goin' out in the mornin' either. A bad time anyway to put out on a cruise--Christmas Day. But what d'y' say, Alec, if we take a look around the place?"

We'd got a pretty good start for Christmas Eve, and around Saint Pierre we went, Sam and Archie and four men of the _Lucy Foster's_ crew who'd been in the mix-up. They were ready to tear things up, but there wasn't much to tear up, because everybody heard us coming, and whenever we'd get to a place, we'd find the doors locked and the windows barred. The only place not locked that night was the little cathedral, and by and by, when we found there was no place else to go, we all went in there.

It was a midnight mass being celebrated, and it was the sound of the choir voices coming from there that got us, and, Catholics or no, no matter, we all went in and heard mass, too, and when we came out, not feeling like trouble any more, we all went down to old Antone's and turned in.

Christmas morning everybody was feeling better, all but Sam Leary and me. I was thinking of my vessel, and Sam of his big turkey. He wanted to get that turkey. He wasn't going to leave Saint Pierre till he got it back. No, sir, he wasn't. And he had a pretty good notion just where it was then. Up to Argand's, cooking for Henri's Christmas dinner. Or maybe him gettin' fifty cents a plate for it for customers' dinners. And he'd cut up for about forty platefuls. And for forty plates at fifty cents or two francs a plate. "Mong doo an' sankantoon," yells Sam all at once. "Come on, Archie--come on, fellows"--and up the street went Sam and Archie and the four of the _Lucy Foster's_ crew to see about the turkey.

But that wasn't getting me my vessel, and I went down to the water-front to look for her. There she was, my lovely _Aurora_, to anchor in the stream, and there was me on the end of the dock looking at her, and that's all I could do--look at her. She was lying to two anchors and with her mains'l standing. A little further off shore and even her two anchors couldn't 've kept her from dragging and piling up on the rocks with that mains'l up, for a rocky harbor is Saint Pierre, and now it was blowing a living gale of wind.

While I was standing there on the big dock, along comes the trader Miller with another chap. He must 've seen me, but he pretended not, and I didn't make any sign I saw him. He pointed out the _Aurora_ to the man, saying a few things in French. And then he raised his voice.

"When it moderates she will depart--and with a car-go," he said--the last in English, and by that I knew he meant it for me. "Go on," I grit out, "go on, have your fun."

"Yes, I pur-chased her ver-ry cheap," goes on Miller, and then a great racket, and down the dock on the run comes Sam with his big turkey, which was all cooked, I could see, fine and brown--and Archie behind Sam and the four _Lucy Foster_ men behind Archie and behind them again a bunch of Argand's waiters and the gendarmes with the red trousers and swords.

There was a dory tied up to the end of the dock; I don't know who owned it, but there it was. "Come on, jump in." I yells, and all hands piled in, and we shoved off; all in one motion almost, and by the time Argand's crowd got to the stringpiece we were a vessel length away, and pulling like homeward bound.

"Lay to it." I kept saying to them.

"Aye, lay to it, and we'll eat that turkey for Christmas yet," yells Sam.

"Lay to it, and we'll have more than the turkey." I says.

"What's that we'll have, Alec?" hollers Sam.

"Pull to the Aurora and see." I hollers back. It was blowing so hard we could hardly hear each other, and what with the chop we were driving the dory through we might well have been in swimming.

We made the _Aurora_, and, looking back as I leaped over her rail, I could see Miller running back up the dock.

"Hurry, fellows." I yells to them, "Miller's gone to head us off."

As we drops onto the _Aurora's_ deck a head pops out of the fo'c's'le companion-way. He looked like he'd just come out of a fine sleep. "You," I yelled, "allay you--rauss--beat it," and rushed him to the dory we'd just come aboard in. He looks up at me in the most puzzled way. Two more heads popped up out of the companion-way. "And allay you two," yells Sam and Archie, and grabs 'em and heaves 'em into the dory, casts off her painter, and they drifts off like men in a trance. One minute they were sound asleep in their bunks and the next adrift and half-dressed in a dory in the middle of the harbor with a gale of wind roaring in their ears and a choppy sea wetting 'em down.

"In with her chain-anchor slack," I calls, "and then up with her jibs," which they did. "And now her fores'l--up with her fores'l." Then we broke out her chain-anchor. I was to the wheel and knew the second the anchor was clear of the bottom by the way she leaped under me. "Don't stop to cat-head that anchor," I calls, "but cut her hawser." They cut her hawser free, and with the big anchor-rope kinking through the hawse-hole, away went the _Aurora_, picking up, as she went, the chain-anchor with its eight or ten fathoms of chain still out and tucking it under her bilge; and there that anchor stayed, jammed hard against her bottom planking, while she rushed across the harbor.

"Now," I said, "let's see if we c'n work out of this blessed pocket without somebody having to notify the insurance companies afterward."

All along the water-front the people by now were crowding to look at us. All they saw was an American fishing schooner with a crazy American crew trying to pick her way through a crowded harbor with her four lowers set in a living gale.

We were across the harbor in no time. "Stand by now--stand by sheets," I sung out. Steady as statues they waited for the word, and when they got it--"Har-r-d a-lee-e!" Whf-f the steam came out of them, and the busiest of all was Sam Leary, with the big turkey between his feet.

As she came around I was afraid her anchor would take bottom and her way be checked. It did touch, but the _Aurora_ spun on her toes so quick that before that anchor knew it was down she was off and flying free again.

All this time I was looking around for Miller and at last I saw him in a little power boat. He had the French gun-boat in mind that was sure, but his craft was making heavy weather of it, and before he was half-way to the gun-boat we were under her stern, on our shoot for the harbor entrance, and from the gun-boat's deck they were peeping down on us, grinning and yelling the same as everybody else, waiting to see us pile up on the rocks somewhere.

But no rocks for the _Aurora_ that Christmas Day. She knew what we wanted of her. There's a spindle beacon in Saint Pierre harbor, white-painted slats on a white-painted rock sticking out of the water, and there was a French packet lying to the other side. We had to go between. I knew they were betting a hundred to one we'd hit one or the other.

We weathered the packet and squeezed by the beacon. The end of our long bowsprit did hit the white-painted slats, gave 'em a good healthy wallop, but that wasn't any surprise--we figured on going close. We were by and safe, and looking back from the wheel to mark her wake swashing over the very rock itself, I had to whisper _to_ her:

"_Aurora_, girl, you're all I ever said you were." But if you'd seen her, the big spars of her, the set of her rigging, the fine-fitting sails, the beautiful line of the rail, and the straight flat deck, you'd have to admit it wasn't any surprise. You couldn't 've done it with every vessel--but the _Aurora!_ A great bit of wood, the _Aurora!_

And looking past her wake, I picked out Miller's motor boat along inside the French gun-boat. But no gun-boat was worrying me then. They might chase me, but the gun-boat wasn't afloat that could 've chased and caught the _Aurora_ in that gale. A man didn't need to be a French captain to know that.

But for fear they might chase us, I kept her going. And after we'd had time to get our breath, we took a peek into her hold. And it was loaded with cases--wine, brandy--liquors of all kinds. And the gang said: "How about it, skipper?" And I said: "Help yourself--you've earned it," and they helped themselves.

And they had their promised Christmas dinner. The turkey had only to be warmed up. After it was warmed up, it was fine to hear Sam telling about the recapturing of it. "He was in the kitchen--just been hauled out the oven--and the chef, he was standing over him with a big carving knife, when I spots the pair of 'em through the window. 'Stand by, fellows,' I hollers, and jumps through the window and grabs the carving knife and chases cheffie out the room with it. And back through the window comes me and the turk. An' they all hollers murder and comes after us. And look at him now! Twenty-five pounds he weighs--the biggest turkey, I'm tellin' you, ever sailed out of ol' Saint Peer. A whale, twenty-five pounds as he lies there. And four kinds of wine--four kinds. Cassie, champagne, claret, which you don't have to drink 'less you want to, and that red-colored wine I don't know the name of, but good stuff--I sampled it. And that's what I call a Christmas dinner."

And I guess it was. Pretty soon they were hopping around like a lot of leaping goats. The best-natured crowd ever you see, mind, but it was Christmas Day, and they'd done a good job; the blood was running wild inside them, and I let them run a while. And then when I thinks it time to begin to straighten them out, I looks them over and finally picking out Archie Gillis I says, 'Archie, I think you're the drunkest! Take the wheel and soak it out.'

And Archie stood to the wheel, and up the cabin steps the rest of the gang kept passing him drinks of champagne when they thought I wasn't looking.

By dark of that Christmas we shot into Folly Cove in Placentia Bay and came to anchor off John Rose's wharf. And the _Aurora's_ crew were there helping John, and there was the load of herring John had promised. And he thought I'd come for the herring, but I hadn't--not yet. I had a word in private with John, and he found a nice little place among the cliffs, and with John Rose and the _Aurora's_ crew it didn't take long to stow those cases of wine where no stranger would find them in a hurry.

And when that was done I goes over the papers again. And sure enough, her papers read for a fishing trip to the Grand Banks. Her crew had been shipped for a fishing trip. Her gear, dories, bait (not much bait though) was all for a fishing trip. It was plain as could be, I had Miller under my lee. And so we put out again into the night, and before daylight we were back in Saint Pierre harbor again, and all hands ashore.

And when Miller woke up in the morning there was the _Aurora_ laying to anchor in the stream just where she'd been the morning before. And we were having a nice little breakfast up to Antone's when Miller and the governor and the gun-boat captain comes to get me. And Miller was going to arrest me, put me in irons, not a minute's delay, not one, and I says "For what?" And Miller throws up his hands and repeats: "For what? He says for what? Mong Doo, for what?" And I says: "Yes, for what? What are you going to arrest me for? For a little excursion trip, a little run off shore, is it?--so's to eat our Christmas turkey in peace?" I see that my play lay with the French naval officer, so I turns to him. "There was a turkey. Old Antone here will tell you that it belonged to one of my men, Mr. Leary here--that he won it fairly, and that the same turkey was stolen from him in Henri Argand's. And Mr. Leary got it back. And they would not let him have it in peace, and so, to escape mistreatment, we jumped aboard the first vessel we saw in the stream and put out the harbor. You yourself doubtless, saw us." He nodded. "Your whole crew saw us. The whole harbor saw us. There was no concealment." I stopped for the French captain and the governor to get that. Miller was looking at me goo-goo-eyed, but both the officials nodded and said: "That is true."

"And when we found ourselves safe out to sea, we had our dinner, our Christmas dinner--in the peace we had sought. And surely these gentlemen"--I bowed my best to the gun-boat captain and the magistrate--"do not consider that a crime--to ask to be allowed to eat our Christmas dinner in peace."

Miller was fair up in the air by then--"You pi-rates--pi-rates."

I leaps to my feet. "Pirates--to me? To these men? Simple honest fishermen who know only toil? Who toils harder than they? Pirates--to them! Why, if they were anything but the simplest and honestest set of men, they would have taken that vessel out of my hands and sold her--sold her in the States--and what could you or I or anybody have done about it? But did they--or I? No, sir. As soon as we had finished our Christmas dinner we brought her back."

"But the wine?" shrieks Miller.

"What wine?"

"The wine--the wine--her cargo of wine."

"Wine? Cargo of wine--what's he talking about?" I looks at my crowd, and they all says: "Wine? Cargo of wine?--he's crazy."

I turns impatiently to the governor and French captain. "Gentlemen, this is a serious accusation, but easily settled. If there was wine in that vessel, surely her papers will say something of it. It will be on her manifest, that is certain."

Now these two, the governor and the French naval officer, were honest men. "That is so," they said. "He is quite right--quite right," and looked at Miller, and Miller, with his eyes like door-knobs, looks at me. And I gives him a wink with my wind'ard eye and he near blew up.

But he begins to see a thing or two, so he goes off with the French officials, but before we had finished smoking our after-breakfast pipeful he comes back--alone now--and says: "What do you propose?" And I said: "Within a thousand miles of here is a friend of mine with a lot of wine--as good a lot as the _Aurora_ had in her hold yesterday--maybe a couple of dozen quarts shy--you know, a Christmas dinner, and so on--and only last night my friend was figuring it up, and he thought there was twenty thousand dollars' worth in this lot of his, and that without figuring in the duty--but he don't care for wine much--but he does love a good Vessel, and he was looking the _Aurora_ over and he said he'd be willing to exchange all that wine for the _Aurora_. I told him that the _Aurora_ only cost you twenty-five hundred, but he said, 'No matter, I have a weakness for the _Aurora_,' this friend of mine. Of course there'll be a few little extra expenses you'll have to pay for, like the hawser and the big anchor cut away and the keep of a crew for a week over in Newfoundland, and so on, but that won't be much--five hundred dollars ought to cover it all."

And Miller gave back the _Aurora_ and paid over the five hundred, and I gave him an order on John Rose for the wine. And then I took the little baby's brooch out of my pocket and handed it back to him.

And then I sailed over to Placentia Bay in the _Aurora_ and took twenty-one hundred barrels of herring off John Rose and put out, and, getting the first of a stiff easterly, the _Aurora_ carried it all the way to Gloucester. And I was home to the wife and baby by New Year's. And the baby got a good brooch. I could afford it. From the profits of twenty-one hundred barrels of fine fat herring I could well afford it.

I haven't seen Miller since, but they say he's shyer than he used to be of simple American fishermen.

>Light-Ship 67

Perrault was the good old Frenchman who kept the general store just across from the Navy Yard gate, and Baldwin was the chief boson's mate, U.S.N., who commanded the _Whist_, the little tug which was used as a general utility boat by the Navy Yard people.

Old Perrault was born in Paris, and, in God's goodness, hoped yet to die there. And Baldwin had been in Paris, more than once in his cruising youth, and could converse of Paris; and to converse of Paris, in such loving language, was it not to win one's heart?

Old Perrault had never dissembled his regard for the sailor. A pity he viewed life so carelessly, the brave-hearted Baldwin. So excellent in many respects, if he had but a little ambition for himself! If he but hearkened a little for the world's opinion. But such a man! Sometimes old Perrault wished that his motherless Claire would disregard all his wordly homilies, fall in love with the rugged Baldwin, and marry him.

Baldwin himself maintained no such exalted hopes. A fine husband he'd make after his riotous years! But he had a friend, recently detailed to the yard, and warmly recommended by the boson's mate, this friend Harty, chief wireless operator, soon came to be the most regular of all the Saturday night attendants at old Perrault's store. It was on Saturday nights that the unmarried foreman on the breakwater job came up to see old Perrault. If you stood well with the old fellow, like as not he would ask you to the house of a Sunday afternoon, and then you could sit around and rest your eyes on the lovely Claire while she played the piano.

One might think that old Perrault, who so casually picked his company, was a careless sort of parent; but not so, as witness his questioning of Baldwin, when it began to dawn on him that this wireless operator was becoming a distinguished member of the Sunday afternoon parties; and the boson's mate, who revered old Perrault, but who also thought a lot of his friend Harty, spoke judiciously.

"He's all right," he replied to old Perrault, "all right. Yes, I know he used to drink an' was generally wild once; but he's over that. Oh, sure, all over that now."

It was beginning to look like Harty for Perrault's son-in-law, when Bowen came along. Bowen was the expert who came to overhaul the wireless plant in the yard. An easy-going, but wide-awake sort, Bowen, who seemed to have been everywhere and who could talk of where he had been, talk without end, and always with the intimate little touches which you never found in the guidebooks. He captured old Perrault at the first assault. Old Perrault from behind his counter happening to catch a stray word, listened, looked up, and, noting the animated features, hastily signalled the new-comer to come out of the crowd. One minute later he had put the vital question: Had Mr. Bowen ever been to Paris?

To Paris! Bowen started to touch the end of a finger for every time he had been to Paris. Old Perrault could not wait for him to finish. "And the Champs Élysées, Mister Bowen, you have been there?"

"The Champs Élysées? If I had a dollar, M'sieu Perrault--"

"Eh?" The old man wanted to hear him say that "M'sieu" in just that way again--"if you had one dollar, Mister Bowen?"

Bowen understood. "Yes, if I had a dollar, M'sieu, for every time I sat on one of those chairs inside the sidewalk--in under the trees, you know, M'sieu--and watched the autos go by! Talk about autos!--there's the place for autos, coming down from that big Napoleon Arch. Some arch, that, isn't it? Yes, sir--down from there to the Place de la Concorde and back again, around the Arch and on to the Bois. And there's a sight for a man, too! To sit out on the Bois sidewalk, M'sieu, your chair almost under the bushes, and watch those cabs and autos in the late afternoon, coming on dark. Count them? No more than you could count fire-flies of an evening in the West Indies--like one string of light."

"Mon Dieu! Come to the inner room, if you please, sir, and tell me more. What a good angel which has sent you here! Twenty-five years since I have seen my Paris. And the Tuileries, my friend, is it yet the same?"

"Just the same, M'sieu, a million bare-legged children with short white socks running wild, and another half a million nurses with white caps running wild after them. And the Eiffel Tower! But that's since your time, M'sieu Perrault?"

"Ah--h, but have I not heard? Continue, continue, if you please, sir. You bring a strange joy to my heart. The Louvre, for example--you have been there, yes?"

"Been there? Yes, and 'most googoo-eyed from looking at the pictures there--miles of 'em, aren't there?"

"Oh-h! and Mona Lisa--yes!"

"That dark one with the queer kind of a smile? She must have had green eyes, that one--green eyes with lights in them. And she kept them all guessing, I'll bet a hat, when she was alive--" and Bowen ran on till every blessed breakwater man silently stole away. Bowen and old Perrault had a three o'clock session that first night; and within the year he had married Claire.

II

Having completed his work on the wireless plant at the Navy Yard, Bowen thought himself due for a lay-off. And he did want to be home for a while, but orders came to have installed before the end of the year an experimental plant on Light-ship 67, which guarded Tide Rip Shoal to the eastward.

Bowen, with his two helpers and his apparatus, took passage with Baldwin on the wheezy little _Whist_ to where, twenty miles east by south from the end of the breakwater, lay the tossing light-ship.

Baldwin was well acquainted with old 67. Every once in a while the commandant would order Baldwin to make this trip for the accommodation of somebody or other in the yard. "But a wonder," he observed now, as he had observed a score of times before on nearing her--"a wonder they wouldn't put one of those new class o' steam lightships out here. If I was you, Bowen, I'd have an eye to the life-boat you see hanging to her stern there."

"Why?"

"Well, if the old hooker went adrift, you might need it."

"What's her sails for?"

"I dunno. I often wondered, though. They've been tied up, just like you see 'em now--stopped snug and neat between gaffs and booms--for, oh, I dunno--twenty years now, I reckon. I know I've yet to see 'em hoisted. But when'll I come and get you?"

"I'll send word to the yard station by wireless, to Harty or whoever's on watch there, when we get it rigged."