_In Which Archie Armstrong Joins a Piratical Expedition
and Sails Crested Seas to Cut Out the Schooner "Heavenly
Home"_
It was quite true that Archie Armstrong could speak French; it was
just as true, as Bill o' Burnt Bay observed, that he could jabber it
like a native. There was no detecting a false accent. There was no
hint of an awkward Anglo-Saxon tongue in his speech. There was no
telling that he was not French born and Paris bred. Archie's French
nurse and cosmopolitan-English tutor had taken care of that. The boy
had pattered French with the former since he had first begun to
prattle at all.
And this was why Bill o' Burnt Bay proposed a piratical expedition to
the French islands of Miquelon which lie off the south coast of
Newfoundland.
"Won't ye go, b'y?" he pleaded.
Archie laughed until his sides ached.
"Come, now!" Bill urged; "there's like t' be a bit of a shindy that
Sir Archibald hisself would be glad t' have a hand in."
"'Tis sheer piracy!" Archie chuckled.
"'Tis nothin' of the sort!" the indignant Skipper William protested.
"'Tis but a poor man takin' his own from thieves an' robbers."
"Have you ever been to Saint Pierre?" Archie asked.
"That I has!" Skipper Bill ejaculated; "an' much t' the grief o' Saint
Pierre."
"They've a jail there, I'm told."
"Sure 'tis like home t' me," said Skipper Bill. "I've been in it; an'
I'm told they've an eye open t' clap me in once more."
Archie laughed again.
"Jus' t' help a poor man take back his own without troublin' the
judges," Bill urged.
The lad hesitated.
"Sure, I've sore need o' your limber French tongue," said Bill. "Sure,
b'y, you'll go along with me, will you not?"
"Why don't you go to law for your own?" Archie asked, with a little
grin.
"Law!" Bill o' Burnt Bay burst out. "'Tis a poor show I'd have in a
court at Saint Pierre. Hut!" he snorted. "Law!--for a Newfoundlander
in Saint Pierre!"
"My father----" Archie began.
"I'll have the help o' no man's money nor brains nor influence in a
business so simple," Bill protested.
The situation was this: Bill o' Burnt Bay had chartered a schooner--his
antique schooner--the schooner that was forever on the point of
sinking with all hands--Bill had chartered the schooner _Heavenly
Home_ to Luke Foremast of Boney Arm to run a cargo from Saint Pierre.
But no sooner had the schooner appeared in French waters than she was
impounded for a debt that Luke Foremast unhappily owed Garnot & Cie,
of Saint Pierre. It was a high-handed proceeding, of course; and it
was perhaps undertaken without scruple because of the unpopularity of
all Newfoundlanders.
Luke Foremast protested in an Anglo-Saxon roar; but roar and bellow
and bark and growl as he would, it made no difference: the _Heavenly
Home_ was seized, condemned and offered for sale, as Bill o' Burnt Bay
had but now learned.
"'Tis a hard thing to do," Archie objected.
"Hut!" Bill exclaimed. "'Tis nothin' but goin' aboard in the dark an'
puttin' quietly out t' sea."
"Anyhow," Archie laughed, "I'll go."
Sir Archibald Armstrong liked to have his son stand upon his own feet.
He did not wish to be unduly troubled with requests for permission; he
fancied it a babyish habit for a well-grown boy to fall into. The boy
should decide for himself, said he, where decision was reasonably
possible for him; and if he made mistakes he would surely pay for them
and learn caution and wisdom. For this reason Archie had no hesitation
in coming to his own decision and immediately setting out with Bill o'
Burnt Bay upon an expedition which promised a good deal of highly
diverting and wholly unusual experience.
Billy Topsail and Jimmie Grimm wished the expedition luck when it
boarded the mail-boat that night.
* * * * *
Archie Armstrong did not know until they were well started that Bill
o' Burnt Bay was a marked man in Saint Pierre. There was no price on
his head, to be sure, but he was answerable for several offenses which
would pass current in St. John's for assault and battery, if not for
assault with intent to maim or kill (which Bill had never tried to
do)--all committed in those old days when he was young and wild and
loved a ruction better than a prayer-meeting.
They determined to make a landing by stealth--a wise precaution, as it
appeared to Archie. So in three days they were at La Maline, a small
fishing harbour on the south coast of Newfoundland, and a port of call
for the Placentia Bay mail-boat. The Iles Saint Pierre et Miquelon,
the remnant of the western empire of the French, lay some twenty miles
to the southwest, across a channel which at best is of uncertain mood,
and on this day was as forbidding a waste of waves and gray clouds as
it had been Archie's lot to venture out upon.
Bill o' Burnt Bay had picked up his ideal of a craft for the
passage--a skiff so cheap and rotten that "'twould be small loss, sir,
if she sank under us." And the skipper was in a roaring good humour as
with all sail set he drove the old hulk through that wilderness of
crested seas; and big Josiah Cove, who had been taken along to help
sail the _Heavenly Home_, as he swung the bail bucket, was not a whit
behind in glowing expectation--in particular, that expectation which
concerned an encounter with a gendarme with whom he had had the
misfortune to exchange nothing but words upon a former occasion.
As for Archie, at times he felt like a smuggler, and capped himself in
fancy with a red turban, at times like a pirate.
* * * * *
They made Saint Pierre at dusk--dusk of a thick night, with the wind
blowing half a gale from the east. They had no mind to subject
themselves to those formalities which might precipitate embarrassing
disclosures; so they ran up the harbour as inconspicuously as might
be, all the while keeping a covert lookout for the skinny old craft
which they had come to cut out. The fog, drifting in as they
proceeded, added its shelter to that of the night; and they dared to
make a search.
They found her at last, lying at anchor in the isolation of government
waters--a most advantageous circumstance.
"Take the skiff 'longside, skipper," said Josiah.
"'Tis a bit risky, Josiah, b'y," said Skipper Bill. "But 'twould be
good--now, really, 'twould--'twould be good t' tread her old deck for
a spell."
"An' lay a hand to her wheel," said Josiah, with a side wink so broad
that the darkening mist could not hide it.
"An' lay a hand to her wheel," repeated the skipper. "An' lay a hand
to her wheel!"
They ran in--full into the lee of her--and rounded to under the stern.
The sails of the skiff flapped noisily and the water slapped her
sides. They rested breathless--waiting an event which might warn them
to be off into hiding in the fog. But no disquieting sound came from
the schooner--no startled exclamation, no hail, no footfall: nothing
but the creaking of the anchor chain and the rattle of the blocks
aloft. A schooner loomed up and shot past like a shadow; then
silence.
Archie gave a low hail in French. There was no response from the
_Heavenly Home_; nor did a second hail, in a raised voice, bring forth
an answering sound. It was all silent and dark aboard. So Skipper Bill
reached out with the gaff and drew the boat up the lee side. He
chuckled a bit and shook himself. It seemed to Archie that he freed
his arms and loosened his great muscles as for a fight. With a second
chuckle he caught the rail, leaped from the skiff like a cat and
rolled over on the deck of his own schooner.
They heard the thud of his fall--a muttered word or two, mixed up with
laughter--then the soft fall of his feet departing aft. For a long
time nothing occurred to inform them of what the skipper was about.
They strained their ears. In the end they heard a muffled cry, which
seemed to come out of the shoreward cloud of fog--a thud, as though
coming from a great distance--and nothing more.
"What's that?" Archie whispered.
"'Tis a row aboard a Frenchman t' win'ard, sir," said Josiah. "'Tis a
skipper beatin' a 'prentice. They does it a wonderful lot."
Five minutes passed without a sign of the skipper. Then he came forward
on a run. His feet rang on the deck. There was no concealment.
"I've trussed up the watchman!" he chortled.
Archie and Josiah clambered aboard.