Not at all! At any rate, Josiah Cove was to take
that old basket to the Labrador for the last cruise of the season.

Jimmie Grimm laughed at Archie.

"What you laughing at?" Archie demanded, with a grin.

Jimmie couldn't quite tell; but the truth was that the fisherman's lad
could never get used to the airy, confident, masterful way of a rich
man's son and a city-bred boy.

"Look you, Archie!" said Billy Topsail, "where in time is you goin' t'
get that schooner?"

"The _On Time_," was the prompt reply. "We'll call her the _Spot
Cash_."

Billy realized that the _On Time_ might be had. Also that she might be
called the _Spot Cash_. She had lain idle in the harbour since her
skipper had gone off to the mines at Sidney to make more money in
wages than he could take from the sea. But how charter her?

"Where you goin' t' get the stock?" Jimmie Grimm inquired.

"Don't know whether I can or not," said Archie; "but I'm going to try
my level best."

Archie Armstrong left for St. John's by the next mail-boat. He was
not the lad to hesitate. What his errand was the Ruddy Cove boys knew
well enough; but concerning the prospect of success, they could only
surmise. However, Archie wouldn't be long. Archie wasn't the lad to be
long about anything. What he undertook to do he went right _at_!

"If he can only do it," Billy Topsail said.

Jimmie Grimm and Donald North and Bagg stared at Billy Topsail like a
litter of eager and expectant little puppies. And Bill o' Burnt Bay
stood like a wise old dog behind. If only Archie could!

-----

[5] As related in "The Adventures of Billy Topsail."

CHAPTER XXIII

_In Which Sir Archibald Armstrong Is Almost Floored By a
Business Proposition, But Presently Revives, and Seems to
be About to Rise to the Occasion_

Sir Archibald Armstrong was a colonial knight. His decoration--one of
Her late Majesty's birthday honours--had come to him for beneficent
political services to the colony in time of trouble and ruin. He was a
Newfoundlander born and bred (though educated in the English schools);
and he was fond of saying in a pleasantly boastful way and with a
little twinkle of amusement in his sympathetic blue eyes: "I'm a
fish-merchant, sir--a Newfoundland fish-merchant!" This was quite
true, of course; but it was only half the truth. Directly or
indirectly, Sir Archibald's business interests touched every port in
Newfoundland, every harbour of the Labrador, the