What Mr. Orvay Lafarge did when he got the word, was to go straight to his hat-peg, then leave the office, walk to the little club where he spent leisure hours, called office hours by people who wished to be precise as well as suggestive,—sit down, and raise a glass to his lips. After which he threw himself back in his chair and said: “Well, I’m particularly damned!” A few hours later they were away on their doubtful exploit.
II. THE DEFENCE
On the afternoon of the second day after she left Labrador, the Ninety-Nine came rippling near Isle of Fires, not sixty miles from her destination, catching a fair wind on her quarter off the land. Tarboe was in fine spirits, Joan was as full of songs as a canary, and Bissonnette was as busy watching her as in keeping the nose of the Ninety-Nine pointing for Cap de Gloire. Tarboe was giving the sail full to the wind, and thinking how he would just be able to reach Angel Point and get his treasure housed before mass in the morning.
Mass! How many times had he laughed as he sat in church and heard the cure have his gentle fling at smuggling! To think that the hiding-place for his liquor was the unused, almost unknown, cellar of that very church, built a hundred years before as a refuge from the Indians, which he had reached by digging a tunnel from the shore to its secret passage! That was why the customs officers never found anything at Angel Point, and that was why Tarboe much loved going to mass. He sometimes thought he could catch the flavour of the brands as he leaned his forehead on the seat before him. But this time he would go to mass with a fine handful of those gold pieces in his pocket, just to keep him in a commendable mood. He laughed out loud at the thought of doing so within a stone’s throw of a fortune and nose-shot of fifty kegs of brandy.
As he did so, Bissonnette gave a little cry. They were coming on to Cap de Gloire at the moment, and Tarboe and Joan, looking, saw a boat standing off towards the mainland, as if waiting for them. Tarboe gave a roar, and called to Joan to take the tiller. He snatched a glass and levelled it.
“A Government tug!” he said, “and tete de Diable! there’s your tall Lafarge among ‘em, Joan! I’d know him by his height miles off.”
Joan lost colour a trifle and then got courage. “Pshaw,” she said, “what does he want?”
“Want? Want? He wants the Ninety-Nine and her cargo; but by the sun of my soul, he’ll get her across the devil’s gridiron! See here, my girl, this ain’t any sport with you aboard. Bissonnette and I could make a stand for it alone, but what’s to become of you? I don’t want you mixed up in the mess.”
The girl was eyeing the Government boat. “But I’m in it, and I can’t be out of it, and I don’t want to be out now that I am in. Let me see the glass.” She took it in one hand. “Yes, it must be M’sieu’ Lafarge,” she said, frowning. “He might have stayed out of this.”
“When he’s got orders, he has to go,” answered her father; “but he must look out, for a gun is a gun, and I don’t pick and choose. Besides, I’ve no contraband this cruise, and I’ll let no one stick me up.”