story, of what the vessel meant to me, of how I came to bring the rum
over, and asked him would he give me the chance to communicate with some
business men in Gloucester and buy her back, but he only laughs at me,
and laughs in a way to make me think I was a child.

And in one way I was sort of a child, then, but I didn't begin to
realize how much of a child till I heard a voice giving orders to make
sail on the _Aurora_. A coast steamer had just come in, and from her had
come a crew of men to take the _Aurora_ away, and this was the voice of
the man who gave me the keg of rum that night in Saint Pierre. And while
I was looking at him another man came alongside from the coast steamer,
and this was Miller himself. If the _Aurora_ had been within distance I
would have jumped aboard; but she had her lower sails up then and was
moving in pretty lively fashion out of the harbor.

I sat on a rock on the beach to think it over, and, "Alec Corning," I
said to myself at last--"they cert'nly tried you with the right kind o'
bait--and hooked you good."

And I wondered how I could get square with Miller. No use trying to stir
up Washington. There was an old skipper of mine, and they'd fined him
three thousand dollars once for just a difference of opinion and he
couldn't pay it, and his vessel at that moment was being used for a
light-ship, and all he'd been getting out of Washington were State
Department letters for ten years. And he had cert'nly as much political
pull as I had, for I had none.

No, no State Department for mine, I says at last, and ships my crew up
to John Rose to Folly Cove, telling them to help John with the herring,
and to tell him, too, to save the herring for me, that I'd get 'em back