"A fine one _you_!" I breaks out--"where's Sam?"

"Gi'me a chance now, skipper," says Gillis, and orders a little
something, and when the waiter was gone: "Sam's not far away. I left him
up to Antone's rolling dice for turkeys. We came over, him and me, on a
little French packet. Sam guessed you'd come back to Saint Pierre, and
if you did he knew you'd drop in here. Sam'll be here soon, he guessed
you'd come here. We've been tryin' to find out about the _Aurora_. She's
in the harbor, and they're going to put out to-night."

"For where?"

"Well, it's a fishin' trip she's cleared for, but she's got more than
offshore bait in her hold."

Archie had been talking straight down at his plate. Now he stood up, and
from behind his napkin said: "There's the skipper o' the
_Aurora_--tryin' to collect his gang together. Don't look around. But
he'll have hard work, 'cause Sam and me spent most of th' afternoon
gettin' 'em drunk--specially Sam. An' Sam says don't notice him when you
see him come in, for the new _Aurora_ gang don't know yet that we was
any of your crew." Gillis tossed his napkin down and strolled over to
the bar.

By and by I heard a familiar voice at the door--could 'a' heard it a
block--and pretty soon Sam himself comes rolling in. He was carrying a
monstrous turkey, and he spied Archie first thing. And, "Hullo, Archie
boy," he shouts. "Throw your binnacle lights on that, will you? Thirty
pounds he weighs--like you see him--and twenty-five he'll weigh, or I'm
no fancy poultry raiser, when he's ready for the oven."

Gillis poked his finger into the breast of the turkey. "I wish we had
him for to-morrow, Sammie. He'd make a nice little lunch, that lad."

"Well, we'll have him, Archie, for to-morrow. We'll have him--the
biggest turkey ever sailed out of ol' Sain' Peer. A whale, look at him."

"Aye, some tonnage to him. But y' never won him here, Sammie?"

"Win _him_ here? _Here_? In Argand's? Ever know anybody win anything
here? No, sir. I won him up to ol' Antone's. Twenty-seven throws at
twenty-five cents a throw."

"Twenty-seven! You could 'a' bought two of 'em for that."

"Bought? Of course I could 'a' bought; but who wants to buy a turkey
Christmas time? Why, any fat old shuffle-footed loafer can take a basket
under his arm and go down t' the market and pay down his money and come
away with a turkey or anything else he wants. 'Tain't the _getting_ him.
Archie--it's the winnin' him from a lot of hot s