Billy Topsail & Company by Norman Duncan (ebook reader screen txt) 📖

/> "It is the only security you have?"

"Except mother," said Archie. "But," he added, hastily, "I wouldn't--I _won't_--drag a lady into this."

Sir Archibald threw back his head and roared.

"What you laughing at, dad?" Archie asked, a little offended, if a quick flush meant anything.

"I'm sure," his father replied, "that the lady wouldn't mind."

"No," said Archie, grave with his little problem of honour; "but I wouldn't let a lady in for a thing like that."

"Son," said Sir Archibald, now all at once turning very serious, "you have better security than your pony and sloop."

Archie looked up in bewilderment.

"It is your integrity," Sir Archibald explained, gently, "and your efficiency."

Archie flushed with pleasure.

"These are great things to possess," said Sir Archibald.

"Thank you, sir," said Archie, rising in acknowledgment of this hearty compliment.

The lad was genuinely moved.


CHAPTER XXIV


_In Which the Honour of Archie Armstrong Becomes Involved,
the First of September Becomes a Date of Utmost
Importance, He Collides With Tom Tulk, and a Note is Made
in the Book of the Future_


Sir Archibald began again to tap the desk with his finger-tips. Archie strayed to the broad window and looked out upon the wharves and harbour.

"Is that the _Black Eagle_ at the wharf?" he asked.

"The _Black Eagle_, sure enough!" Sir Archibald laughed. "She's the White Bay and French Shore trader."

"Trade enough for all," Archie returned.

"George Rumm, master," said Sir Archibald.

"Still?" Archie exclaimed.

The sailing reputation of Skipper George had been in question through the season. He had come within six inches of losing the _Black Eagle_ in a small gale of the last voyage.

"Who's clerk?" Archie asked.

"Tommy Bull, boy."

No friend of Archie!

"Sharp enough, anyhow," the boy thought.

Sir Archibald put his hands in his pockets again and began to pace the floor; his lips were pursed, his brows drawn. Archie waited anxiously at the window.

"When," demanded Sir Archibald, pausing abruptly in his walk--"when do you propose to liquidate this debt?"

"We'll sail the _Spot Cash_ into St. John's harbour, sir, on September first, or before."

"With three hundred quintals of fish in her hold, I suppose?"

Three hundred quintals of dry fish, at four dollars, roughly, a quintal, was twelve hundred dollars.

"More than that, sir," said Archie.

"Well, boy," said Sir Archibald, briskly, "the security I have spoken of is all right, and----"

"Not worth much at auction sale," Archie interrupted, grinning.

"There's no better security in the world," said Sir Archibald, "than youth, integrity and capacity."

Archie waited.

"I'll back you," said Sir Archibald, shortly.

"Father," Archie declared, his eyes shining with a little mist of delight and affection, "I'll stand by this thing for all I'm worth!"

They shook hands upon it.

* * * * *


Sir Archibald presently wrote a check and scribbled a few lines on a slip of paper. The check was for two hundred and fifty dollars; it was for running expenses and emergencies that Archie needed the hard cash. The slip of paper was an order upon the warehouses and shops for credit in the sum of seven hundred and fifty dollars.

"Now," said Sir Archibald, "it is explicitly understood between us that on or before the first of September you are to turn over to the firm of Armstrong & Company a sufficient quantity of properly cured fish to liquidate this account."

"Yes, sir," Archie replied, earnestly; "on or before the first day of September next."

"You perfectly understand the terms?" Sir Archibald insisted. "You know the nature of this obligation?"

"Yes, sir."

"Very well, son," said Sir Archibald; "your honour is involved."

Archie received the two slips of paper. It must be confessed that they burned his fingers a little. It was a good deal to come into possession of all at once--a good deal of money and an awe-inspiring responsibility. Sir Archibald watched the boy's face narrowly. He seemed to be pleased with what he found there--a little fear, a little anxiety, a great deal of determination. The veteran business man wondered if the boy would sleep as easily as usual that night. Would he wake up fresh and smiling in the morning? These were large cares to lie upon the shoulders of a lad.

"Shall I give you a--well--a receipt--or a note--or anything like that?" Archie asked.

"You are upon your honour," said his father.

Archie scratched his head in doubt.

"Your honour," Sir Archibald repeated, smiling.

"The first of September," Archie laughed. "I shan't forget that date."

In the end he had good cause to remember it.

* * * * *


Before Archie left the office Sir Archibald led him to the broad window behind the desk. Archie was used to this. It was his father's habit. The thing was not done in a spirit of boasting, as the boy was very well aware. Nor was it an attempt to impress the boy with a sense of his own importance and future wealth in the world. It was rather a well-considered and consistent effort to give him a sense of the reality and gravity of the obligations that would some day be his. From the broad window Archie looked out once more upon the various activities of his father's great business. There were schooners fitting out for the fishing cruise to the Labrador; there were traders taking in stores for the voyage to the Straits of Belle Isle, to the South Coast, to the French Shore; there were fore-and-afters outbound to the Grand Banks and waiting for a favourable wind; there were coastwise vessels, loading flour and pork for the outport merchants; there were barques awaiting more favourable weather in which to load salt-cod for the West Indies and Spain.

All this never failed to oppress Archie a little as viewed from the broad window of his father's office.

"Look!" said Sir Archibald, moving a hand to include the shipping and storehouses.

Archie gazed into the rainy day.

"What do you see?" his father asked, in a way half bantering, half grave.

"Your ships and wharves, sir."

"Some day," said Sir Archibald, "they will be yours."

"I wish you wouldn't say that, dad--at least, not just in that way," said Archie, turning away from the window. "It sort of frightens me."

Sir Archibald laughed and clapped him on the back. "You know what I mean," said he.

"You mean that the firm has a name," said Archie. "You mean that the name must never be disgraced. I know what you mean."

Sir Archibald nodded.

"I hope," said Archie, the suspicion of a quaver in his voice and a tremble in his lower lip, "that I'll never disgrace it."

"Nor the name of the little firm that goes into business this day," said Sir Archibald.

Archie's solemn face broke into a smile of amusement and surprise. "Why, dad," said he, "it hasn't got a name."

"Armstrong & Company, Junior?"

"Armstrong, Topsail, Grimm & Company," said Archie, promptly.

"Good luck to it!" wished Sir Archibald.

"No; that's not it at all," said Archie. "Billy Topsail schemed this thing out. Wish luck to the firm of Topsail, Armstrong, Grimm & Company."

"Build the firm," said Sir Archibald, "upon hard work and fair play."

Archie hurriedly said they would--and vanished.

"Son is growing up," thought Sir Archibald, when the boy had gone. "Son is decidedly growing up. Well, well!" he sighed; "son is growing up and in far more trouble than he dreams of. It's a big investment, too. However," he thought, well pleased and cheerful again, "let him go ahead and learn his daddy's business. And I'll back him," he declared, speaking aloud in his enthusiastic faith. "By Jove! I'll back him to win!"

* * * * *


At the foot of the stairway Archie collided full tilt with two men who were engaged in intimate conversation as they passed the door. The one was George Rumm, skipper of the _Black Eagle_--a timid, weak-mouthed, shifty-eyed man, with an obsequious drawl in his voice, a diffident manner, and, altogether, a loose, weak way. The other was old Tom Tulk of Twillingate. Archie leaped back with an apology to Skipper George. The boy had no word to say to Tom Tulk of Twillingate. Tom Tulk was notoriously a rascal whom the law was eager to catch but could never quite satisfactorily lay hands on. It did not occur to Archie that no wise skipper would put heads mysteriously together in a public place with old Tom Tulk of Twillingate. The boy was too full of his own concerns to take note of anything.

"Hello, Skipper George!" he cried, buoyantly. "I'll see you on the French Shore."

"Goin' north?" Skipper George drawled.

"Tradin'," said Archie.

Skipper George started. Tom Tulk scowled. "Goin' aboard the _Black Eagle_?" asked Skipper George.

"Tradin' on my own hook, Skipper George," said Archie; "and I'm bound to cut your throat on the Shore."

Tom Tulk and Skipper George exchanged glances as Archie darted away. There was something of relief in Skipper George's eyes--a relieved and teasing little smile. But Tom Tulk was frankly angry.

"The little shaver!" said he, in disgust.

It was written in the book of the future that Skipper George Rumm and Archie Armstrong should fall in with each other on the north coast before the summer was over.


CHAPTER XXV


_In Which Notorious Tom Tulk o' Twillingate and the
Skipper of the "Black Eagle" Put Their Heads Together Over
a Glass of Rum in the Cabin of a French Shore Trader_


There was never a more notorious rascal in Newfoundland than old Tom Tulk of Twillingate. There was never a cleverer rascal--never a man who could devise new villainies as fast and execute them as neatly. The law had never laid hands on him. At any rate not for a crime of importance. He had been clapped in jail once, but merely for debt; and he had carried this off with flying colours by pushing past the startled usher in church and squatting his great flabby bulk in the governor's pew of the next Sunday morning. He was a thief, a chronic bankrupt, a counterfeiter, an illicit liquor seller. It was all perfectly well known; but not once had a constable brought an offense home to him. He had once been arrested for theft, it is true, and taken to St. John's by the constables; but on the way he had stolen a watch from one and put it in the pocket of the other,