“Don’t know,” said Jimmie, seriously. “What you goin’ t’ do with yours, Donald?”
“I isn’t quite made up my mind,” said Donald, with an anxious frown. “I ’low I’ll wait an’ see what Archie does with his.”
The three boys stowed away in the little cabin of the Rescue very early that night. They were to set sail for Ruddy Cove at dawn of the next morning.
Archie Armstrong, now returned from the Miquelon Islands and relieved of his anxiety concerning that adventure by his father’s letter, was heart and soul for trading. But he scorned the little Rescue. It was merely that she was too small, he was quick to add; she was trim and fast and stout, she possessed every virtue a little craft could have, but as for trading, on any scale that half-grown boys could tolerate, she was far too small. If a small venture could succeed, why shouldn’t a larger one? What Archie wanted––what he determined they should have––was a thirty-ton schooner. Nothing less would do. They must have a thirty-ton fore-an’-after 192 with Bill o’ Burnt Bay to skipper her. The Heavenly Home? Not at all! At any rate, Josiah Cove was to take that old basket to the Labrador for the last cruise of the season.
Jimmie Grimm laughed at Archie.
“What you laughing at?” Archie demanded, with a grin.
Jimmie couldn’t quite tell; but the truth was that the fisherman’s lad could never get used to the airy, confident, masterful way of a rich man’s son and a city-bred boy.
“Look you, Archie!” said Billy Topsail, “where in time is you goin’ t’ get that schooner?”
“The On Time,” was the prompt reply. “We’ll call her the Spot Cash.”