Now if anybody’d come to me before I left Gloucester that trip and asked me to turn a smuggling trick, why, I’d ‘a’ said:  “Go away, boy, you’re crazy.”  But on the way down I put into Saint Pierre.  You know Saint Pierre?  In the Miquelons, yes, where in the spring the fishing vessels from France put in—­big vessels, bark-rigged mostly, and carrying forty or fifty in a crew—­they put in to fit out for the Grand Banks fishing.  And they come over with wine mostly for ballast.  And in the fall they sail back home, but without the wine.

And, of course, somethin’s got to be done with that wine, and though wine’s as cheap in Saint Pierre as ’tis to any port in France, yet ’tisn’t all drunk in Saint Pierre—­not quite.  The truth is, those people in Saint Pierre aren’t much in the drinking line.  One American shacking crew will come in there and put away more in one night than that whole winter population will in a week—­that is, they would if they could get the kind they wanted.  But that Saint Pierre wine isn’t the kind of booze that our fellows are looking for after hauling trawls for a month o’ winter days on the Banks.  No, what they want is something with more bite in it.  And what becomes of it?  H-m—­if you knew that you’d know what a lot of people’d like to know.

Well, I put into Saint Pierre, for I knew old John Rose and his gang of herring netters would cert’nly relish a drink of red rum now and again on a cold winter’s night, and, going ashore, I runs into a sort of fat, black lad about forty-five, half French, half English, that was a great trader there, named Miller.  ’Twas off him I bought my keg of rum for old John Rose.  I’d heard of this Miller before, and a slick, smooth one he was reported to be, with a warehouse on one of the docks.

He’d been looking at my vessel, he said, had noticed her come to anchor, and a splendid vessel she was—­fast and weatherly, no doubt of that.  Well, that was all right, for, take it from me, the Aurora was all that anybody could say of her that was good.  And when you believe that way, and a man comes along and begins to praise your vessel like that, whether you like his sail plans or not, why you just naturally can’t help warming up to him.  We took a walk up the street together.

And a master and a crew that knew how to handle her, too, Miller goes on.  Now I blinked a little at that, straight to my face as it was, but after two or three more drinks I says to myself:  “Oh, hell, what’s the good o’ suspectin’ everybody that pays a compliment of trying to heave twine over you?” We got pretty friendly, and, talking about one thing and another, he finally asked me if I ever had a notion of selling my vessel.  I only smiled at him, and asked him if he had any idea what she cost to build.  I told him then.  Fourteen thousand dollars to the day of her trial trip, and all the money my wife and I had in the world had gone into her.  He had no idea she cost so much; but, on reflection, it must be so—­of a certainty yes.  A splen-did, a su-pairb vessel, so swift to sail, so perfect to manoeuvre.  If he himself possessed such an enchanting vessel—­well, he could use her to much profit.  There was a way.