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Rush he said that was the way to rise 'em. Plain United States is good enough fer me. We're all dretful short on tearakker. Young feller, don't you speak French?"
"Oh, yes," said Harvey valiantly; and he bawled: "Hi! Say! Arretez vous! Attendez! Nous sommes venant pour tabac."
"Ah, tabac, tabac!" they cried, and laughed again.
"That hit 'em. Let's heave a dory over, anyway," said Tom Platt. "I don't exactly hold no certificates on French, but I know another lingo that goes, I guess. Come on, Harve, an' interpret."
The raffle and confusion when he and Harvey were hauled up the bark's black side was indescribable. Her cabin was all stuck round with glaring coloured prints of the Virgin--the Virgin of Newfoundland, they called her. Harvey found his French of no recognized Bank brand, and his conversation was limited to nods and grins. But Tom Platt waved his arms and got along swimmingly. The captain gave him a drink of unspeakable gin, and the opera-comique crew, with their hairy throats, red caps, and long knives, greeted him as a brother. Then the trade began. They had tobacco, plenty of it--American, that had never paid duty to France. They wanted chocolate and crackers. Harvey rowed back to arrange with the cook and Disko, who owned the stores, and on his return the cocoa-tins and cracker-bags were counted out by the Frenchman's wheel. It looked like a piratical division of loot; but Tom Platt came out of it roped with black pigtail and stuffed with cakes of chewing and smoking tobacco. Then those jovial mariners swung off into the mist, and the last Harvey heard was a gay chorus:
"Par derriere chez ma tante, il'y a un bois joli, Et le rossignol y chante Et le jour et la nuit....
Que donneriez vous, belle, Qui l'arnenerait ici? Je donnerai Quebec, Sorel et Saint Denis."
"How was it my French didn't go, and your sign-talk did?" Harvey demanded when the barter had been distributed among the We're Heres.
"Sign-talk!" Platt guffawed. "Well, yes, 'twas sign-tal