Christmas morning everybody was feeling better, all but Sam Leary and me.  I was thinking of my vessel, and Sam of his big turkey.  He wanted to get that turkey.  He wasn’t going to leave Saint Pierre till he got it back.  No, sir, he wasn’t.  And he had a pretty good notion just where it was then.  Up to Argand’s, cooking for Henri’s Christmas dinner.  Or maybe him gettin’ fifty cents a plate for it for customers’ dinners.  And he’d cut up for about forty platefuls.  And for forty plates at fifty cents or two francs a plate.  “Mong doo an’ sankantoon,” yells Sam all at once.  “Come on, Archie—­come on, fellows”—­and up the street went Sam and Archie and the four of the Lucy Foster’s crew to see about the turkey.

But that wasn’t getting me my vessel, and I went down to the water-front to look for her.  There she was, my lovely Aurora, to anchor in the stream, and there was me on the end of the dock looking at her, and that’s all I could do—­look at her.  She was lying to two anchors and with her mains’l standing.  A little further off shore and even her two anchors couldn’t ’ve kept her from dragging and piling up on the rocks with that mains’l up, for a rocky harbor is Saint Pierre, and now it was blowing a living gale of wind.

While I was standing there on the big dock, along comes the trader Miller with another chap.  He must ’ve seen me, but he pretended not, and I didn’t make any sign I saw him.  He pointed out the Aurora to the man, saying a few things in French.  And then he raised his voice.

“When it moderates she will depart—­and with a car-go,” he said—­the last in English, and by that I knew he meant it for me.  “Go on,” I grit out, “go on, have your fun.”

“Yes, I pur-chased her ver-ry cheap,” goes on Miller, and then a great racket, and down the dock on the run comes Sam with his big turkey, which was all cooked, I could see, fine and brown—­and Archie behind Sam and the four Lucy Foster men behind Archie and behind them again a bunch of Argand’s waiters and the gendarmes with the red trousers and swords.

There was a dory tied up to the end of the dock; I don’t know who owned it, but there it was.  “Come on, jump in.”  I yells, and all hands piled in, and we shoved off; all in one motion almost, and by the time Argand’s crowd got to the stringpiece we were a vessel length away, and pulling like homeward bound.

“Lay to it.”  I kept saying to them.

“Aye, lay to it, and we’ll eat that turkey for Christmas yet,” yells Sam.

“Lay to it, and we’ll have more than the turkey.”  I says.

“What’s that we’ll have, Alec?” hollers Sam.

“Pull to the Aurora and see.”  I hollers back.  It was blowing so hard we could hardly hear each other, and what with the chop we were driving the dory through we might well have been in swimming.

We made the Aurora, and, looking back as I leaped over her rail, I could see Miller running back up the dock.