Under ordinary circumstances he would not have hesitated. It would have been Placentia Bay without question. But his situation was now decidedly out of the ordinary. He was in a hurry to fill his hold with cod before the other men out of Freekirk Head; first, for the larger prices he would get; and secondly, because he yearned to come to grapples with Nat Burns.
To seine for herring would lose him upward of a week; to buy it would take less than three days, including the round trip to St. Pierre.
But the money?
Code knew that in the French island herring seldom went below three dollars a barrel, and that the smallest amount he ought to buy would be twenty-five 162 barrels. Later on, if the fishing was good, he might send out a party to set the seines, but not now. He must buy. But the money!
Then he thought of the packet of money Elsa Mallaby had sent him. The cash was meant for any sailor who came to need it.
And the men with him were willing to fight to the last ditch and to take their lot ungrumblingly as fishermen early learn to do.
If he starved, they starved. So he decided he would not hesitate to use Elsa’s money when a dozen men and their families were dependent upon him and the success of the cruise.
Thus the matter was settled and the order roared down the decks:
“Set every stitch for St. Pierre; we’re going to bait up there. Lively, now!”
St. Pierre, Miquelon, is one of the quaintest towns in all of picturesque French Canada. It is on the island of the same name (there are three Miquelon islands), which is in itself a bold chunk of granite sticking up out of the ocean at a distance of some ten miles southwest of May Point, Newfoundland.