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Page 41
"Ain't it?" said Harvey, who was drawing water (he had learned
just how to wiggle the bucket), after an unusually long
dressing-down. "Shouldn't mind striking some poor ground for a
change, then."
"All the graound I want to see--don't want to strike her--is Eastern
Point," said Dan. "Say, Dad, it looks's if we wouldn't hev to lay
more'n two weeks on the Shoals. You'll meet all the comp'ny you
want then, Harve. That's the time we begin to work. No reg'lar
meals fer no one then. 'Mug-up when ye're hungry, an' sleep when
ye can't keep awake. Good job you wasn't picked up a month later
than you was, or we'd never ha' had you dressed in shape fer the
Old Virgin."
Harvey understood from the Eldridge chart that the Old Virgin and
a nest of curiously named shoals were the turning-point of the
cruise, and that with good luck they would wet the balance of their
salt there. But seeing the size of the Virgin (it was one tiny dot), he
wondered how even Disko with the hog-yoke and the lead could
find her. He learned later that Disko was entirely equal to that and
any other business and could even help others. A big four-by-five
blackboard hung in the cabin, and Harvey never understood the
need of it till, after some blinding thick days, they heard the
unmelodious tooting of a foot-power fog-horn--a machine whose
note is as that of a consumptive elephant.
They were making a short berth, towing the anchor under their
foot to save trouble. "Square-rigger bellowin' fer his latitude," said
Long Jack. The dripping red head-sails of a bark glided out of the
fog, and the 'We're Here' rang her bell thrice, using sea shorthand.
The larger boat backed her topsail with shrieks and shoutings.
"Frenchman," said Uncle Salters, scornfully. "Miquelon boat from
St. Malo." The farmer had a weatherly sea-eye. "I'm 'most outer
'baccy, too, Disko."
"Same here," said Tom Platt. "Hi! Backez vous--backez vous!
Standez awayez, you butt-ended mucho-bono! Where you from--
St. Malo, eh?"
"Ah, ha! Mucho bono! Oui! oui! Clos Poulet--St. Malo! St. Pierre
et Miquelon," cried the other crowd, waving woollen caps and
laughing. Then all together, "Bord! Bord!"
"Bring up the board, Danny. Beats me how them Frenchmen fetch
anywheres, exceptin' America's fairish broadly. Forty-six
forty-nine's good enough fer them; an' I guess it's abaout
right, too."
Dan chalked the figures on the board, and they hung it in the
main-rigging to a chorus of mercis from the bark.
"Seems kinder uneighbourly to let 'em swedge off like this,"
Salters suggested, feeling in his pockets.
"Hev ye learned French then sence last trip?" said Disko. "I don't
want no more stone-ballast hove at us 'long o' your callin'
Miquelon boats 'footy cochins,' same's you did off Le Have."
"Harmon Rush he said that was the way to rise 'em. Plain United
States is good enough fer me. We're all dretful short on tearakker.
Young feller, don't you speak French?"
"Oh, yes," said Harvey valiantly; and he bawled:
"Hi! Say! Arretez vous! Attendez! Nous sommes venant pour
tabac."
"Ah, tabac, tabac!" they cried, and laughed again.
"That hit 'em. Let's heave a dory over, anyway," said Tom Platt. "I
don't exactly hold no certificates on French, but I know another
lingo that goes, I guess. Come on, Harve, an' interpret."
The raffle and confusion when he and Harvey were hauled up the
bark's black side was indescribable. Her cabin was all stuck round
with glaring coloured prints of the Virgin--the Virgin of
Newfoundland, they called her. Harvey found his French of no
recognized Bank brand, and his conversation was limited to nods and
grins. But Tom Platt waved his arms and got along swimmingly. The
captain gave him a drink of unspeakable gin, and the opera-comique
crew, with their hairy throats, red caps, and long knives, greeted
him as a brother. Then the trade began. They had tobacco, plenty of
it--American, that had never paid duty to France. They wanted
chocolate and crackers. Harvey rowed back to arrange with the cook
and Disko, who owned the stores, and on his return the cocoa-tins
and cracker-bags were counted out by the Frenchman's wheel. It
looked like a piratical division of loot; but Tom Platt came out of
it roped with black pigtail and stuffed with cakes of chewing and
smoking tobacco. Then those jovial mariners swung off into the mist,
and the last Harvey heard was a gay chorus:
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