"They deserve respectful and generous treatment at the hands of their employers. For that reason I want you to know them more intimately—to know them as shipmates know one another—that you may be in sympathy with them. I am confident that you will respect them, because I know that you love all manly qualities. And so for your good, and the good of the men, and the good of the firm, I have decided that——"
"That I may go sealing?" cried Archie.
"That you may go sealing."
Archie had gone sealing. And the adventure had made of him the man that he was.
Archie Armstrong had gone then to an English public school, having made the acquaintance of Billy Topsail on that first voyage, where the friendship had been founded in peril and a narrow escape. And he had come back unspoiled; and he had adventured with Billy Topsail again, and he had gone to England and returned to Newfoundland once more. In St. John's, with an English tutor, because of the illness of his mother, who had by that time recovered, he pleaded with Sir Archibald to be permitted once more to sail with the fleet.
There was objection. Archie was importunate. Sir Archibald relented and gave a reluctant consent. And it was determined that Archie should be shipped with Cap'n Saul Galt, commanding the Rough and Tumble, a stout ship, well manned, and, in the hands of Cap'n Saul, as safe a berth for a lad as any ship of the fleet could provide. That Archie was delighted goes without saying; and that he was all aflame with interest in the movements of the ice—inquisitive and talkative—goes without saying too.
As a matter of fact, a man might hear what he liked on the water-front about the movements of the ice. In the gathering places it was just the same. There were rumours of the ice all the way from the Straits of Belle Isle and the Labrador coast to the Funks and Cape Bonavist'. It was even held by some old sealing dogs that the floes had gone to the east in a spurt of westerly weather and would be found far to sea in the southerly drift.
All this while old Cap'n Saul, of the Rough and Tumble, with Archie usually at his elbow, cocked an ear and kept his counsel, putting two and two together, and arriving at the correct result of four, according to the old cock's habit.
"The ice is inside the Funks, Archie," said he. "I'll twist the Rough and Tumble t' the west an' shake off the fleet in the night. Havin' clung with profit t' my sealin' wisdom these ten sealin' seasons," he went on, "they'll follow me an they're able, an' pester my fellows an' steal my panned fat. They're all bit mad by the notion that the ice drove t' the east with the nor'west puff an' whisper o' wind we had. I'll fiddle their wits this year—mark me!"