CHAPTER XXIII
In Which the Clerk of the Trader Tax Yarns of a Madman in the Cabin
THE trading-schooner Tax of Ruddy Cove had come down from the Labrador. She was riding at anchor in the home harbour, with her hold full of salt fish and the goods in her cabin run sadly low. Billy Topsail, safely back from Feather's Folly, and doomed by the wreck of the Fish Killer to spend the summer in the quieter pursuits of Ruddy Cove, had gone aboard to greet the crew. There was hot tea on the forecastle table, and the crew was yarning to a jolly, brown grinning lot of Ruddy folk, who had come aboard. It was Cook, the clerk, a merry, blue-eyed little man, who told the story of the madman in the cabin.
"We were lying in Shelter Harbour," said he, "waiting for a fair wind to Point-o'-Bay. It was coming close to night when they saw him leaping along shore and kicking a tin kettle as though 'twas a football. I was in the cabin, putting the stock to rights after the day's trade. I heard the hail and the skipper's answering, 'Ay ay! This is the trader Tax from Ruddy Cove.' Then the skipper sung out to know if I wanted a customer. Customer? To be sure I wanted one!
"'If he has a gallon of oil or a pound of fish,' said I, 'fetch him aboard.'
"'He looks queer,' said the skipper.
"'Queer he may look,' said I, 'and queer he may be, but his fish will be first cousins to the ones in the hold, and I'll barter for them.'
"With that the skipper put off in the punt to fetch the customer; but when he drew near shore he lay on his oars, something puzzled, I'm thinking, for the customer was dancing a hornpipe on a flat rock at the water's edge, by the first light of the moon.