Billy Topsail & Company: A Story for Boys

The boat sank very slowly, gently swaying from side to side. Bagg and Jimmie could see nothing, and all they could hear was the gurgle and hissing of the water as it curled over the gunwales and eddied in the bottom of the boat. Bagg felt the water rise over his legs–creep to his waist–rise to his chest–and still ascend. Through those seconds he was incapable of action. He did not think; he just waited.

Jimmie wondered where the shore was. A yard or a mile away? In which direction would it be best to strike out? How could he help Bagg? He must not leave Bagg to drown. But how could he help him? What was the use of trying, anyhow? If he could not row ashore, how could he manage to swim ashore? And if he could not get ashore himself, how could he help Bagg ashore?

Nothing was said. Neither boy breathed. Both waited. And it seemed to both that the water was slow in coming aboard. But the water came. It came slowly, perhaps–but surely. It rose to Bagg’s shoulders–to his chin–it seemed to be about to cover his mouth and nostrils. Bagg already had a stifled sensation–a frantic fear of smothering; a wish to breathe deep. But he did not stir; he could not rise.

The boys felt a slight shock. The water rose no more. There was a moment of deep silence.

“I–I–I ’low we’ve grounded!” Jimmie Grimm stuttered.

The silence continued.

“We sure is!” Jimmie cried.

“Wh-wh-where ’ave we got to?” Bagg gasped, his teeth chattering with the fright that was not yet passed.

Silence again.

“Ahoy, there!” came a voice from near at hand in the foggy night. “What you boys doin’ out there?”

“We’re in Burnt Cove,” said Jimmie, in amazement, to Bagg. “’Tis Uncle Zeke’s voice–an’, ay, look!–there’s the cottage light on the hill.”

“We’re comin’ ashore, Uncle Zeke,” Bagg shouted.

The boat had grounded in less than three feet of water. Jimmie had brought her through the tickle without knowing it. The boys emptied her and dragged her ashore just as the rain and wind came rushing from the open sea.

That’s why Jimmie used to say with a laugh:

“Sixty seconds sometimes makes more than a minute.”

“Bet yer life!” Bagg would add.

CHAPTER XVI

In Which Archie Armstrong Joins a Piratical Expedition and Sails Crested Seas to Cut Out the Schooner “Heavenly Home”

It was quite true that Archie Armstrong could speak French; it was just as true, as Bill o’ Burnt Bay observed, that he could jabber it like a native. There was no detecting a false accent. There was no hint of an awkward Anglo-Saxon tongue in his speech. There was no telling that he was not French born and Paris bred. Archie’s French nurse and cosmopolitan-English tutor had taken care of that. The boy had pattered French with the former since he had first begun to prattle at all.

And this was why Bill o’ Burnt Bay proposed a piratical expedition to the French islands of Miquelon which lie off the south coast of Newfoundland.

“Won’t ye go, b’y?” he pleaded.

Archie laughed until his sides ached.

“Come, now!” Bill urged; “there’s like t’ be a bit of a shindy that Sir Archibald hisself would be glad t’ have a hand in.”

“’Tis sheer piracy!” Archie chuckled.

“’Tis nothin’ of the sort!” the indignant Skipper William protested. “’Tis but a poor man takin’ his own from thieves an’ robbers.”

“Have you ever been to Saint Pierre?” Archie asked.

“That I has!” Skipper Bill ejaculated; “an’ much t’ the grief o’ Saint Pierre.”

“They’ve a jail there, I’m told.”

“Sure ’tis like home t’ me,” said Skipper Bill. “I’ve been in it; an’ I’m told they’ve an eye open t’ clap me in once more.”

Archie laughed again.

“Jus’ t’ help a poor man take back his own without troublin’ the judges,” Bill urged.

The lad hesitated.

“Sure, I’ve sore need o’ your limber French tongue,” said Bill. “Sure, b’y, you’ll go along with me, will you not?”

“Why don’t you go to law for your own?” Archie asked, with a little grin.

“Law!” Bill o’ Burnt Bay burst out. “’Tis a poor show I’d have in a court at Saint Pierre. Hut!” he snorted. “Law!–for a Newfoundlander in Saint Pierre!”

“My father–” Archie began.

“I’ll have the help o’ no man’s money nor brains nor influence in a business so simple,” Bill protested.

The situation was this: Bill o’ Burnt Bay had chartered a schooner–his antique schooner–the schooner that was forever on the point of sinking with all hands–Bill had chartered the schooner Heavenly Home to Luke Foremast of Boney Arm to run a cargo from Saint Pierre. But no sooner had the schooner appeared in French waters than she was impounded for a debt that Luke Foremast unhappily owed Garnot & Cie, of Saint Pierre. It was a high-handed proceeding, of course; and it was perhaps undertaken without scruple because of the unpopularity of all Newfoundlanders.

Luke Foremast protested in an Anglo-Saxon roar; but roar and bellow and bark and growl as he would, it made no difference: the Heavenly Home was seized, condemned and offered for sale, as Bill o’ Burnt Bay had but now learned.

“’Tis a hard thing to do,” Archie objected.

“Hut!” Bill exclaimed. “’Tis nothin’ but goin’ aboard in the dark an’ puttin’ quietly out t’ sea.”

“Anyhow,” Archie laughed, “I’ll go.”

Sir Archibald Armstrong liked to have his son stand upon his own feet. He did not wish to be unduly troubled with requests for permission; he fancied it a babyish habit for a well-grown boy to fall into. The boy should decide for himself, said he, where decision was reasonably possible for him; and if he made mistakes he would surely pay for them and learn caution and wisdom. For this reason Archie had no hesitation in coming to his own decision and immediately setting out with Bill o’ Burnt Bay upon an expedition which promised a good deal of highly diverting and wholly unusual experience.

Billy Topsail and Jimmie Grimm wished the expedition luck when it boarded the mail-boat that night.

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 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.