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.
"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."
[pg 59]
"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."