“Tradin’ on my own hook, Skipper George,” said Archie; “and I’m bound to cut your throat on the Shore.”
Tom Tulk and Skipper George exchanged glances as Archie darted away. There was something of relief in Skipper George’s eyes––a relieved and teasing little smile. But Tom Tulk was frankly angry.
“The little shaver!” said he, in disgust. 211
It was written in the book of the future that Skipper George Rumm and Archie Armstrong should fall in with each other on the north coast before the summer was over.
CHAPTER XXV
In Which Notorious Tom Tulk o’ Twillingate and the Skipper of the “Black Eagle” Put Their Heads Together Over a Glass of Rum in the Cabin of a French Shore Trader
There was never a more notorious rascal in Newfoundland than old Tom Tulk of Twillingate. There was never a cleverer rascal––never a man who could devise new villainies as fast and execute them as neatly. The law had never laid hands on him. At any rate not for a crime of importance. He had been clapped in jail once, but merely for debt; and he had carried this off with flying colours by pushing past the startled usher in church and squatting his great flabby bulk in the governor’s pew of the next Sunday morning. He was a thief, a chronic bankrupt, a counterfeiter, an illicit liquor seller. It was all perfectly well known; but not once had a constable brought an offense home to him. He had once been arrested for theft, it is true, and taken to St. John’s by the constables; but on the way he 213 had stolen a watch from one and put it in the pocket of the other, thereby involving both in far more trouble than they could subsequently involve him.
Add to these evil propensities a deformed body and a crimson countenance and you have the shadow of an idea of old Tom Tulk.