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 144 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. 145 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 146 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 147 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 148 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, 149 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. 150

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.