going anywhere near Newfoundland
that winter, but the word was passed to me from old John Rose of Folly
Cove that if I thought of running down for a load of herrin', then he'd
ought to have a couple o' thousand barrels, by the looks o' things, fine
and fat in pickle, against Christmas Day, and old John Rose being a
great friend of mine, and the market away up, I kissed the wife and baby
good-by and put out for Placentia Bay in the _Aurora_.

Now if anybody'd come to me before I left Gloucester that trip and asked
me to turn a smuggling trick, why, I'd 'a' said: "Go away, boy, you're
crazy." But on the way down I put into Saint Pierre. You know Saint
Pierre? In the Miquelons, yes, where in the spring the fishing vessels
from France put in--big vessels, bark-rigged mostly, and carrying forty
or fifty in a crew--they put in to fit out for the Grand Banks fishing.
And they come over with wine mostly for ballast. And in the fall they
sail back home, but without the wine.

And, of course, somethin's got to be done with that wine, and though
wine's as cheap in Saint Pierre as 'tis to any port in France, yet
'tisn't all drunk in Saint Pierre--not quite. The truth is, those people
in Saint Pierre aren't much in the drinking line. One American shacking
crew will come in there and put away more in one night than that whole
winter population will in a week--that is, they would if they could get
the kind they wanted. But that Saint Pierre wine isn't the kind of booze
that our fellows are looking for after hauling trawls for a month o'
winter days on the Banks. No, what they want is something with more bite
in it. And what becomes of it? H-m--if you knew that you'd know what a
lot of people'd like to know.

Well, I put into Saint Pierre, for I knew old John Rose and his gang of
herring netters would cert'nly relish a drink of red rum now and again
on a cold winter's night, and, going ashore, I runs into a sort of fat,
black lad about forty-five, half French, half English, that was a great
trader there, named Miller. 'Twas off him I bought my keg of rum for old
John Rose. I'd heard of this Miller before, and a slick, smooth one he
was reported to be, with a warehouse on one of the docks.

He'd been looking at my vessel, he said, had noticed her come to anchor,
and a splendid vessel she was--fast and weatherly, no doubt of that.
Well, that was all right, for, take it from me, the _Aurora_ was all
that anybody could say of her that w