In Which Billy Topsail Hears the Fur Trader's Story of a Jigger and a Cake of Ice in the Wind
"WOULDN'T think I'd been born on Cherry Hill, would you, now?" said the man with the fur cap.
The stranger had been landed at Ruddy Cove from Fortune Harbour. He had been in the far north, he said; and he was now waiting for the mail-boat to take him south. Billy Topsail and the lads of Ruddy Cove cocked their ears for a yarn.
"Fact!" said he, with a nod. "That's where I was born and bred. And do you know how I come to be away up here? No? Well, I'm a fur trader. I'm the man that bought the skin of that silver fox last winter for thirty dollars and sold it for two hundred and fifty. I'd rather be the man that bought it from me and sold it in London for six hundred. But I'm not."
"And you're bound for home, now?" the old skipper asked.
"Yes," he drawled. "I'm bound home for New York to see the folks. I've been away six years, and came nearer to leaving my bones up here in the north last spring than ever I did before. I've done some travelling in my time. You can take me at my word; I have."
The trader laughed uproariously. He was in a voluble mood. The old skipper knew that he needed but little encouragement to tell the story of his escape.
"It makes me think about that old riddle of the corked bottle," he said. "Ever hear it? This is it: If you had a bottle of ginger ale, how would you get the stuff out without breaking the bottle or drawing the cork? Can you answer that?"
"The answer doesn't strike me," said the skipper.