And they had their promised Christmas dinner. The turkey had only to be warmed up. After it was warmed up, it was fine to hear Sam telling about the recapturing of it. "He was in the kitchen—just been hauled out the oven—and the chef, he was standing over him with a big carving knife, when I spots the pair of 'em through the window. 'Stand by, fellows,' I hollers, and jumps through the window and grabs the carving knife and chases cheffie out the room with it. And back through the window comes me and the turk. An' they all hollers murder and comes after us. And look at him now! Twenty-five pounds he weighs—the biggest turkey, I'm tellin' you, ever sailed out of ol' Saint Peer. A whale, twenty-five pounds as he lies there. And four kinds of wine—four kinds. Cassie, champagne, claret, which you don't have to drink 'less you want to, and that red-colored wine I don't know the name of, but good stuff—I sampled it. And that's what I call a Christmas dinner."
[pg 72]
And I guess it was. Pretty soon they were hopping around like a lot of leaping goats. The best-natured crowd ever you see, mind, but it was Christmas Day, and they'd done a good job; the blood was running wild inside them, and I let them run a while. And then when I thinks it time to begin to straighten them out, I looks them over and finally picking out Archie Gillis I says, 'Archie, I think you're the drunkest! Take the wheel and soak it out.'
And Archie stood to the wheel, and up the cabin steps the rest of the gang kept passing him drinks of champagne when they thought I wasn't looking.
By dark of that Christmas we shot into Folly Cove in Placentia Bay and came to anchor off John Rose's wharf. And the Aurora's crew were there helping John, and there was the load of herring John had promised. And he thought I'd come for the herring, but I hadn't—not yet. I had a word in private with John, and he found a nice little place among the cliffs, and with John Rose and the Aurora's crew it didn't take long to stow those cases of wine where no stranger would find them in a hurry.
And when that was done I goes over the papers again. And sure enough, her papers read for a fishing trip to the Grand Banks. Her crew had been shipped for a fishing trip. Her gear, dories, [pg 73] bait (not much bait though) was all for a fishing trip. It was plain as could be, I had Miller under my lee. And so we put out again into the night, and before daylight we were back in Saint Pierre harbor again, and all hands ashore.
And when Miller woke up in the morning there was the Aurora laying to anchor in the stream just where she'd been the morning before. And we were having a nice little breakfast up to Antone's when Miller and the governor and the gun-boat captain comes to get me. And Miller was going to arrest me, put me in irons, not a minute's delay, not one, and I says "For what?" And Miller throws up his hands and repeats: "For what? He says for what? Mong Doo, for what?" And I says: "Yes, for what? What are you going to arrest me for? For a little excursion trip, a little run off shore, is it?—so's to eat our Christmas turkey in peace?" I see that my play lay with the French naval officer, so I turns to him. "There was a turkey. Old Antone here will tell you that it belonged to one of my men, Mr. Leary here—that he won it fairly, and that the same turkey was stolen from him in Henri Argand's. And Mr. Leary got it back. And they would not let him have it in peace, and so, to escape mistreatment, we jumped aboard the first vessel we saw in the stream and put out the harbor. You yourself [pg 74] doubtless, saw us." He nodded. "Your whole crew saw us. The whole harbor saw us. There was no concealment." I stopped for the French captain and the governor to get that. Miller was looking at me goo-goo-eyed, but both the officials nodded and said: "That is true."
"And when we found ourselves safe out to sea, we had our dinner, our Christmas dinner—in the peace we had sought. And surely these gentlemen"—I bowed my best to the gun-boat captain and the magistrate—"do not consider that a crime—to ask to be allowed to eat our Christmas dinner in peace."
Miller was fair up in the air by then—"You pi-rates—pi-rates."