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The Cruise Of The "Ninety-Nine"
by
The remedy was good. Tarboe’s eyes came again to their natural liveliness, and Bissonnette said:
“My throat’s like a piece of sand-paper.”
Tarboe handed over a brandy flask, after taking a pull himself, and then sitting down on one of the kegs, he said: “It is as you see, and now Angel Point very quick. To get it there safe, that’s the thing!” Then, scanning the sky closely: “It’s for a handsome day, and the wind goes to bear us up fine. Good! Well, for you, Bissonnette, there shall be a thousand dollars, you shall have the Belle Chatelaine Inn and the little lady at Point Pierrot. For the rest, you shall keep a quiet tongue, eh? If not, my Bissonnette, we shall be the best of strangers, and you shall not be happy. Hein?”
Bissonnette’s eyes flashed. “The Belle Chatelaine? Good! That is enough. My tongue is tied; I cannot speak; it is fastened with a thousand pegs.”
“Very good, a thousand gold pegs, and you shall never pull them. The little lady will have you with them, not without; and unless you stand by me, no one shall have you at any price–by God!”
He stood up, but Joan put out her hand. “You have been speaking, now it is my turn. Don’t cry cook till you have the venison home. What is more, I gave my word to Gobal, and I will keep it. I will be captain. No talking! When you’ve got the kegs in the cellar at Angel Point, good! But now–come, my comrades, I am your captain!”
She was making the thing a cheerful adventure, and the men now swung the kegs on their shoulders and carried them to the boat. In another half-hour they were under way in the gaudy light of an orange sunrise, a simmering wind from the sea lifting them up the river, and the grey-red coast of Labrador shrinking sullenly back.
About this time, also, a Government cutter was putting out from under the mountain-wall at Quebec, its officer in command having got renewed orders from the Minister to bring in Tarboe the smuggler. And when Mr. Martin, the inspector in command of the expedition, was ordered to take with him Mr. Orvay Lafarge and five men, “effectively armed,” it was supposed by the romantic Minister that the matter was as good as done.
What Mr. Orvay Lafarge did when he got the word, was to go straight to his hat-peg, then leave the office, walk to the little club where he spent leisure hours, called office hours by people who wished to be precise as well as suggestive,–sit down, and raise a glass to his lips. After which he threw himself back in his chair and said: “Well, I’m particularly damned!” A few hours later they were away on their doubtful exploit.
II. THE DEFENCE
On the afternoon of the second day after she left Labrador, the Ninety-Nine came rippling near Isle of Fires, not sixty miles from her destination, catching a fair wind on her quarter off the land. Tarboe was in fine spirits, Joan was as full of songs as a canary, and Bissonnette was as busy watching her as in keeping the nose of the Ninety-Nine pointing for Cap de Gloire. Tarboe was giving the sail full to the wind, and thinking how he would just be able to reach Angel Point and get his treasure housed before mass in the morning.
Mass! How many times had he laughed as he sat in church and heard the cure have his gentle fling at smuggling! To think that the hiding-place for his liquor was the unused, almost unknown, cellar of that very church, built a hundred years before as a refuge from the Indians, which he had reached by digging a tunnel from the shore to its secret passage! That was why the customs officers never found anything at Angel Point, and that was why Tarboe much loved going to mass. He sometimes thought he could catch the flavour of the brands as he leaned his forehead on the seat before him. But this time he would go to mass with a fine handful of those gold pieces in his pocket, just to keep him in a commendable mood. He laughed out loud at the thought of doing so within a stone’s throw of a fortune and nose-shot of fifty kegs of brandy.