had
come a crew of men to take the _Aurora_ away, and this was the voice of
the man who gave me the keg of rum that night in Saint Pierre. And while
I was looking at him another man came alongside from the coast steamer,
and this was Miller himself. If the _Aurora_ had been within distance I
would have jumped aboard; but she had her lower sails up then and was
moving in pretty lively fashion out of the harbor.

I sat on a rock on the beach to think it over, and, "Alec Corning," I
said to myself at last--"they cert'nly tried you with the right kind o'
bait--and hooked you good."

And I wondered how I could get square with Miller. No use trying to stir
up Washington. There was an old skipper of mine, and they'd fined him
three thousand dollars once for just a difference of opinion and he
couldn't pay it, and his vessel at that moment was being used for a
light-ship, and all he'd been getting out of Washington were State
Department letters for ten years. And he had cert'nly as much political
pull as I had, for I had none.

No, no State Department for mine, I says at last, and ships my crew up
to John Rose to Folly Cove, telling them to help John with the herring,
and to tell him, too, to save the herring for me, that I'd get 'em back
to Gloucester some way, and myself takes passage next day on the mail
packet to Saint Pierre.

It was after dark of Christmas Eve when I landed at Saint Pierre. I went
up to Argand's Caffay, a place where all kinds of seafaring people used
to go to get a drink and a bite to eat. There were quite a few in there
now--French stokers from a steamer or two and half a dozen French
man-of-war's men from a French gun-boat that was lying in the harbor, I
remember.

I didn't see any American fishermen in Argand's, but I knew that some
of 'em would be drifting in before long. And by and by a few did, but me
saying nothing to any of them, only sitting over to a table in a corner
with a little bit of supper, and thinking that it was going to be a blue
kind of Christmas for me, and a blue Christmas at home, too, for by this
time Gloucester must've got the news of the seizure of the _Aurora_, and
somebody'd surely passed the word to the wife.

I was sitting there, in the corner, figuring things out and not
bothering much about the people coming and going, when somebody sits
down at my table, and no sooner down than I felt his boot pressing mine
under the table. I looked up, and it was Archie Gillis.