e 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 terbakker. 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;