Archie Armstrong did not know until they were well started that Bill o’ Burnt Bay was a marked man in Saint Pierre. There was no price on his head, to be sure, but he was answerable for several offenses which would pass current in St. John’s for assault and battery, if not 147 for assault with intent to maim or kill (which Bill had never tried to do)––all committed in those old days when he was young and wild and loved a ruction better than a prayer-meeting.
They determined to make a landing by stealth––a wise precaution, as it appeared to Archie. So in three days they were at La Maline, a small fishing harbour on the south coast of Newfoundland, and a port of call for the Placentia Bay mail-boat. The Iles Saint Pierre et Miquelon, the remnant of the western empire of the French, lay some twenty miles to the southwest, across a channel which at best is of uncertain mood, and on this day was as forbidding a waste of waves and gray clouds as it had been Archie’s lot to venture out upon.
Bill o’ Burnt Bay had picked up his ideal of a craft for the passage––a skiff so cheap and rotten that “’twould be small loss, sir, if she sank under us.” And the skipper was in a roaring good humour as with all sail set he drove the old hulk through that wilderness of crested seas; and big Josiah Cove, who had been taken along to help sail the Heavenly Home, as he swung the bail bucket, was not a whit behind in glowing expectation––in particular, that expectation which 148 concerned an encounter with a gendarme with whom he had had the misfortune to exchange nothing but words upon a former occasion.
As for Archie, at times he felt like a smuggler, and capped himself in fancy with a red turban, at times like a pirate.
They made Saint Pierre at dusk––dusk of a thick night, with the wind blowing half a gale from the east. They had no mind to subject themselves to those formalities which might precipitate embarrassing disclosures; so they ran up the harbour as inconspicuously as might be, all the while keeping a covert lookout for the skinny old craft which they had come to cut out. The fog, drifting in as they proceeded, added its shelter to that of the night; and they dared to make a search.
They found her at last, lying at anchor in the isolation of government waters––a most advantageous circumstance.
“Take the skiff ’longside, skipper,” said Josiah.
“’Tis a bit risky, Josiah, b’y,” said Skipper Bill. “But ’twould be good––now, really, ’twould––’twould be good t’ tread her old deck for a spell.”
“An’ lay a hand to her wheel,” said Josiah, 149 with a side wink so broad that the darkening mist could not hide it.