Billy Topsail & Company Part 19

Skipper Bill made his way to a quiet cafe of his acquaintance; and Josiah vanished in the fog to lie hidden with a shipmate of other days. Archie--depending upon his youth and air and accent and well-tailored dress to avert suspicion--went boldly to the Hotel Joinville and sat down to dinner. The dinner was good; he enjoyed it, and was presently delighting in the romance in which he had a part. It all seemed too good to be true. How glad he was he had come! To be here--in the French Islands of Miquelon--to have captured a schooner--to have a prisoner in the cabin--to be about to run off with the _Heavenly Home_. For the life of him, Archie could not take the thing seriously. He chuckled--and chuckled--and chuckled again.

Presently he walked abroad; and in the quaint streets and old customs of the little town, here remote from all the things of the present and of the new world as we know it in this day, he found that which soon lifted him into a dream of times long past and of doughty deeds for honour and a lady. Soft voices in the streets, forms flitting from shadow to shadow, priest and strutting gendarme and veiled lady, gabled roofs, barred windows, low doorways, the clatter of sabots, the pendant street lights, the rumble of the ten o'clock drums. These things, seen in a mist, were all of the days when bold ventures were made--of those days when a brave man would recover his own, come what might, if it had been wrongfully wrested from him. It was a rare dream--and not broken until he turned into the Quai de la Ronciere.

As he rounded the corner he was almost knocked from his feet by a burly fellow in a Basque cap who was breathless with haste.

"Monsieur--if he will pardon--it was not----" this fellow stammered, apologetically.

Men were hurrying past toward the Cafe d'Espoir, appearing everywhere from the mist and running with the speed of deep excitement. There was a clamorous crowd about the door--pushing, scuffling, shouting.

"What has happened?" Archie asked in French.

"An American has killed a gendarme, monsieur. A ter-rible fellow! Oh, fear-r-rful!"

"And why--what----"

"He was a ter-rible fellow, monsieur. The gendarmes have been on the lookout for him for three years. And when they laid hands on him he fought, monsieur--fought with the strength of a savage. It took five gendarmes to bind him--five, monsieur. Poor Louis Arnot! He is dead--killed, monsieur, by a pig of an American with his fist. They are to take the murderer to the jail. I am just now running to warn Deschamps to make ready the dungeon cell. If monsieur will but excuse me, I will----"

He was off; so Archie joined the crowd at the door of the cafe, which was that place to which Skipper Bill had repaired to hide. He hung on the outskirts of the crowd, unable to push his way further. The wrath of these folk was so noisy that he could catch no word of what went on within. He devoutly hoped that Skipper Bill had kept to his hiding-place despite the suspicious sounds in the cafe. Then he wormed his way to the door and entered. A moment later he had climbed on a barrel and was overlooking the squirming crowd and eagerly listening to the clamour. Above every sound--above the cries and clatter and gabble--rang the fighting English of Bill o' Burnt Bay.

It was no American; it was Skipper Bill whom the gendarmes had taken, and he was now so seriously involved, apparently, that his worst enemies could wish him no deeper in the mesh. They had him bound hand and foot and guarded with drawn swords, fearing, probably, that somewhere he had a crew of wild fellows at his back to make a rescue.

To attempt a rescue was not to be thought of. It did not enter the boy's head. He was overcome by grief and terror. He withdrew into a shadow until they had carried Skipper Bill out with a crowd yelping at his heels. Then, white and shaking, he went to a group in the corner where Louis Arnot, the gendarme, was stretched out on the floor.

Archie touched the surgeon on the shoulder. "Is he dead?" the boy asked, in French, his voice trembling.

"No, monsieur; he is alive."

"Will he live?"

"To be sure, monsieur!"

"Is there any doubt about it?" asked Archie.

"Doubt?" exclaimed the surgeon. "With _my_ skill, monsieur? It is impossible--he _cannot_ die! He will be restored in three days.

I--_I_--I will accomplish it!"

"Thank G.o.d for that!" thought Archie.

The boy went gravely home to bed; and as he lay down the adventure seemed less romantic than it had.

CHAPTER XVIII

_In Which Archie Inspects an Opera Bouffe Dungeon Jail, Where He Makes the Acquaintance of Dust, Dry Rot and Deschamps. In Which, Also, Skipper Bill o' Burnt Bay Is Advised to Howl Until His Throat Cracks_

In the morning Archie went as a tourist to the jail where Bill o'

Burnt Bay was confined. The wind was blowing fresh from the west and promised to hold true for the day. It was a fair, strong wind for the outward bound craft; but Archie Armstrong had no longer any interest in the wind or in the _Heavenly Home_. He was interested in captives and cells. To his astonishment he found that the Saint Pierre jail had been designed chiefly with the idea of impressing the beholder, and was builded long, long ago.

It was a low-walled structure situate in a quiet quarter of the town.

The outer walls were exceeding thick. One might work with a pick and shovel for a week and never tunnel them.

"But," thought Archie, "why tunnel them when it is possible to leap over them?"

They were jagged on top and strewn with bits of broken bottle imbedded in the mortar.

"But," thought Archie, "why cut one's hands when it is so easy to throw a jacket over the gla.s.s and save the pain?"

The walls apparently served no good purpose except to frighten the populace with their frowns.

As big Deschamps, the jailer, led Archie through the musty corridors and cells the boy perceived that the old building had long ago gone to wrack. It was a place of rust and dust and dry rot, of crumbling masonry, of rotted cas.e.m.e.nts, of rust-eaten bars, of creaking hinges and broken locks. He had the impression that a strong man could break in the doors with his fist and tumble the walls about his ears with a push.

"This way, monsieur," said Deschamps, at last. "Come! I will show you the pig of a Newfoundlander who half killed a gendarme. He is a terrible fellow."

He had Skipper Bill safe enough--thrown into a foul-aired, windowless cell with an iron-bound door, from which there was no escape. To release him was impossible, whatever the condition of the jail in other parts. Archie had hoped to find a way; but when he saw the cell in which Skipper Bill was confined he gave up all idea of a rescue.

And at that moment the skipper came to the narrow grating in the door.

He scowled at the jailer and looked the boy over blankly.

"Pah!" exclaimed Deschamps, s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g his face into a look of disgust.

"You wait 'til I cotches _you!_" the skipper growled.

"What does the pig say, monsieur?" Deschamps asked.

"He has not yet repented," Archie replied, evasively.

"Pah!" said Deschamps again. "Come, monsieur; we shall continue the inspection."

Archie was taken to the furthermost cell of the corridor. It was isolated from that part of the building where the jailer had his living quarters, and it was a light, roomy place on the ground floor.

The window bars were rusted thin and the masonry in which they were sunk was falling away. It seemed to Archie that he himself could wrench the bars away with his hands; but he found that he could not when he tried them. He looked out; and what he saw made him regret that Skipper Bill had not been confined in that particular cell.

"This cell, monsieur," said Deschamps, importantly, "is where I confine the drunken Newfoundland sailors when----"

Archie looked up with interest.

"When they make a great noise, monsieur," Deschamps concluded. "I have the headache," he explained. "So bad and so often I have the headache, monsieur. I cannot bear the great noise they make. It is fearful. So I put them here, and I go to sleep, and they do not trouble me at all."

"Is monsieur in earnest?" Archie asked.

Deschamps was flattered by this form of address from a young gentleman. "It is true," he replied. "Compelled. That is the word. I am compelled to confine them here."

"Let us return to the Newfoundlander," said Archie.

"He is a pig," Deschamps agreed, "and well worth looking at."