I did know, and also I remembered many a drink of Saint Pierre rum I'd
had on a cold night in Newfoundland and no duty paid on it, and many a
cold night hauling herring when I didn't have it, but wished I had, and
would've gone a long ways to get it, duty or no duty. And then I
remembered how Miller had been pretty decent to me that day--the little
brooch he'd bought for the baby I could even then feel in my vest
pocket--and I said all right, and when half an hour later a dory slipped
up to the side of the _Aurora_ and a keg was handed over the rail I
didn't ask any questions, but took and stowed it under the cabin run.

Next morning we sailed, and, after a four hours' easy run, made
Auvergne, a little port in Placentia Bay, tucked away between two
headlands--one easterly, one westerly. Coming from Saint Pierre, it was,
of course, the westward one we rounded. According to directions, I
ground out two long and two short woofs on the fog-horn, at which a man
pops from behind a big rock and waves a handkerchief three times.

Well, that was according to directions, too, and I drops a dory over the
side with Sam Leary and Archie Gillis and the keg in it, and tells them
to row over to the beach, ask the name of the lad that jumped from
behind the rock, and if it was the same as on the tag to leave the keg
with him. It was about a mile to the bit of beach, and the dory was
almost there, when from behind the easterly headland comes the
revenue-cutter. "That looks bad," I says, "but we'll say we've come for
fresh water, that our tanks were leakin', and that we had to have fresh
water to cook dinner, and Sam and Archie in the dory--'specially
Sam--they'll have wit enough to empty the keg over the side and go on up
as if they was really lookin' for water."

And that's what would 'a' happened if it'd not been for the thirst that