in' to assoom
that you'll fetch down the _Spot Cash_ an' the tail an' fins of every
last tom-cod aboard that there craft.'

"An' I'm goin' t' _do_ it!" Skipper Bill roared in conclusion, with a
slap of the counter with his hairy fist that made the depleted stock
rattle on the shelves.

"Does you t-t-think you c-c-_can_ haul her off with your teeth?"
Donald North asked with staring eyes.

Bill o' Burnt Bay burst into a shout of laughter.

"We'll have no help from the Jolly Harbour folk," said Billy Topsail,
gravely. "They're good-humoured men," he added, "but they means t'
have this here schooner if they can."

"Never mind," said Skipper Bill, with an assumption of far more hope
than was in his honest, willing heart. "We'll get her off afore they
comes again."

"Wisht you'd 'urry up," said Bagg.

With the _Spot Cash_ high and dry--with a small crew aboard--with a
numerous folk, clever and unfriendly (however good-humoured they
were), bent on possessing that which they were fully persuaded it was
their right to have--with no help near at hand and small prospect of
the appearance of aid--the task which Archie Armstrong had set Bill o'
Burnt Bay was the most difficult one the old sea-dog had ever
encountered in a long career of hard work, self-dependence and tight
places. The Jolly Harbour folk might laugh and joke, they might even
offer sympathy, they might be the most hospitable, tender-hearted,
God-fearing folk in the world; but tradition had taught them that what
the sea cast up belonged righteously to the men who could take it, and
they would with good consciences and the best humour in the world
stand upon that doctrine. And Bill o' Burnt Bay would do no murder to
prevent them: it was not the custom of the coast to do murder in such
cases; and Archie Armstrong's last injunction had been to take no
lives.

Bill o' Burnt Bay declared in growing wrath to the boys that he would
come next door to murder.

"I'll pink 'em, anyhow," said he, as he loaded his long gun. "_I'll_
makes holes for earrings, ecod!"

Yes, sir; the skipper would show the Jolly Harbour folk how near a
venturesome man could come to letting daylight into a Jolly Harbour
hull without making a hopeless leak. Jus' t' keep 'em busy calking,
ecod! How much of this was mere loud and saucy words--with how much
real meaning the skipper spoke--even the skipper himself did not know.
But, yes, sir; he'd show 'em in the morning. It was night, now,
how