The Black Joke

by Farley Mowat

  “ ’Twouldn’t work, Peter, and ye knows it. Three of us agin five or six rum-runners? And only one shotgun betwixt us? Shake it out of yer mind. It’s crazy.”

  “All right,” Peter replied between his teeth. “Ye knows it all. But I tells ye one thing sure, I’m not goin’ back to bed while me father’s boat sails off for good. I’m goin’ to the wharf and I’ll figure somethin’ out or bust!”

  “Ye’ll git yourself into a real kettle of fish, that’s what ye’ll do,” replied Kye. “So I guess I’ll have to trot along to git ye out of it.”

  Jacques hesitated for a moment. “I think it will do no good at all,” he said at last. “But if you two go, so must I. I am certain my father has had trouble somehow, and now it is up to me to do what I can to help you. But we must be careful. We will stop at our fish store. There are many old clothes there. You two must dress to look like Basques, for even though it will be dark on the wharf, the Yankees might recognize you.” And he led off toward the Roulett fish store at a trot.

  12

  A Desperate Venture

  THE FISH store was pitch-dark and smelled strongly of codliver oil and old nets. Jacques cautiously lit a stump of candle and by its flickering light the three fitted themselves out with worn bits of fishermen’s gear. With dirty berets pulled firmly down over the sides of their heads, and their faces smeared with “cutch”–the reddish substance used to preserve the nets from rotting–in a dim light all three boys could now pass muster as three slightly built Basque fishermen.

  “By the time the schooner docks, the people will have started to haul the whiskey to the wharf on the pony carts,” Jacques explained. “There will be no lights on the wharf because they might be seen by one of the Terre Neuve customs’ cutters that sometimes lie off Miquelon at night hoping to catch one of your schooners with a load of contraband. There will be starlight–enough so that the men can see what they are about, but, if we are careful, no one will notice us.”

  “We better not go all together in a lump,” Peter interjected. “Best go one by one.”

  “I don’t see why we’re goin’ at all,” Kye grumbled. “What can we do when we gits there, ’cept pile up trouble?”

  Peter’s blood was up, “How can we know what we can do until we sees what’s goin’ on? We’ll mosey round for a bit, then in about a half-hour we’ll meet in the churchyard just back of the wharf. By then maybe we’ll have some ideas. Anyhow, it’s better’n lyin’ in bed, waitin’ for Black Joke to disappear forever.”

  Kye had no answer to that. “All right,” he muttered. “Let’s git it over with. I’ll go first, I guess.”

  The other two gave him five minutes start, then Peter followed and, after another interval, Jacques also left the fish store.

  It was a dark night, but the blaze of stars gave sufficient light so the boys could see that there was already a considerable bustle near the wharf, even though the schooner was not yet in sight. Five or six two-wheeled pony carts were lined up at the foot of the wharf, each cart laden high with whiskey cases. More pony carts were arriving from the direction of the warehouses. There was a good deal of noise. Ponies whinnied shrilly, and men shouted instructions and jokes at one another. Over this local hubbub the throb of the ship’s diesel was now plainly audible; and as Peter reached the foot of the wharf and ducked between two pony carts, he saw a black shadow thickening on the water and immediately recognized it as the silhouette of Black Joke. A wave of anger and frustration filled him, and forgetting caution he walked straight to the end of the dock where half a dozen men were waiting to take the schooner’s lines. No one paid him the slightest heed. The night was full of dim figures moving busily in all directions, and one more attracted no particular attention.

  The throb of the diesel ceased, and there was a gentle swish of water as the schooner came alongside. Someone yelled out in English, “Get them bleedin’ lines ashore. We ain’t got all night!”

  The lines had hardly been made fast when the clatter of pony-cart wheels showed that the whiskey was being brought out. Aboard the vessel there was a babel of confused curses and orders as hatch covers came off and as two or three of the schooner’s crew began heaving crates of salt cod up on deck.

  “Herd some of them Frogs on board,” bellowed a voice which Peter recognized, with a sting of fear, as that of Captain Smith. “Put ’em to work for their dough. Get the blankety fish off onto the dock and start that whiskey comin’ aboard!”

  A looming figure leapt from the ship and caught Peter by the arm.

  “Come on, you,” a rough voice said. “You heard the Captain. Git across there and start heavin’. Allez! Allez!”

  Almost before he knew what had happened, Peter found himself aboard Black Joke. Not knowing what else to do, he bent down and began shifting crates of salt cod. Somebody stepped on his feet, and someone else heaved a box that narrowly missed his head. There were too many men on deck for efficient work, and they were getting in each other’s way. Frightened by the tumult and by the danger of discovery, Peter began to work his way through the press of shouting, heaving men until he reached the rail not far from a brand-new wheelhouse which had been erected near the stern of the ship. Suddenly a flashlight shone full in his face and his heart nearly stopped; but the light moved on at once and then Smith’s voice bellowed almost in his ear.

  “You, Jake, you blindin’ idiot! You’ve got that cargo hoist rigged like a piece of knittin’. Don’t you Brooklyn cowboys know anything about a sailin’ ship? My God, if the engine ever quits, the lot of us’ll drown…!”

  There followed a string of profanity which made Peter’s hair lift, and which sent him skittering over the rail and running headlong down the wharf. He was brought up short by collision with a pony–doing the pony no harm, but knocking the wind out of himself. He decided he had had enough for the moment and, still gasping for breath, headed for the churchyard. He was almost there when inspiration struck him.

  “Kye…Jacques,” he whispered as he slid in amongst the tombstones. “Where ye at? It’s me, Peter.”

  “Over here,” someone whispered back. It was Kye, crouched in the shadow of a headstone.

  “I got aboard,” Peter whispered excitedly. “Right onto her. They’ve changed her quite a bit. Got a wheelhouse onto her and new hatches. But listen, I know how to fix ’em good and maybe git the schooner back ourselves…. Shhhh–someone’s sneakin’ through the grass.”

  The “someone” was Jacques, and in a few moments he was squatting beside the other two while Peter poured out his plan.

  “I heard Captain Smith talkin’ with the crew, callin’ ’em about forty red-hot names and sayin’ they didn’t know enough about a sailing ship to come across the harbor. He said if the engine ever quit, he figured they’d all drown. Well, I’m goin’ to stow away until they start, and then I’m goin’ to make that engine quit!”

  “What good’ll that do?” Kye asked skeptically.

  “Do? Why it’ll stop ’em cold! There ain’t enough wind tonight to sail a dory, supposin’ them robbers did know how to sail. If their engine quits after they git out in the bay they won’t be able to come back, and they won’t be able to go away neither. Now listen…Pierre’s bound to git back here sometime soon. He’s bound to, everybody says so. Jacques, ye tell him what I’ve done. Then he can come out with the dorymen and offer Smith a tow; and that’ll be the end of Smith.”

  Jacques interrupted. “I do not like to say it,” he said softly. “But I am very worried about my father. Maybe he does not come back. Maybe something bad has happened to him in St. Pierre. Then what will happen to you, eh?”

  Peter shook his head with wild impatience.

  “It don’t matter,” he almost shouted. “If their engine’s bust, they still can’t git far. Some other vessel’s bound to pass close aboard. Maybe one of the Newfoundland cutters even. And if I’m hid on board Black Joke and if I fires off a signal flare…That’ll do it…” His voice faded off, for he could not
really visualize what would follow such an action, even if it proved feasible.

  “Ye’re mad-crazy in the head,” Kye said. “If we knowed Pierre was comin’ for sure, it just might work. But if he don’t come and ye stow away, that’ll be the end of you. Maybe them fellers can’t sail good, but I bet they can put canvas onto her somehow. And where ye goin’ to git any signal flare? And what ye think they’ll do to ye, when they finds ye…and they’ll find ye certain sure. Ye and me’s supposed to be dead, remember? What’s to stop ’em makin’ ye real dead?”

  “Kye is right,” Jacques added. “It is too dangerous, it will not work. Where would you hide, eh? In so small a ship, there will be no place to hide. And how will you break the engine?”

  Although Peter’s common sense told him that the other two were right, he was so feverishly excited by the necessity of taking some action to regain possession of the ship that he refused to listen to reason. His face was set in hard lines that belonged to a much older person.

  “All right, it’s dangerous. But it will work. I can hide in the chain locker, and no one will ever know I’m there till I show myself. And I knows how to stop a diesel too. Ye only got to bust the fuel injectors with a hammer and the whole thing’s finished.

  “I’m goin’ to do it, ye hear me? And don’t try to stop me neither. You just tell Pierre what I done, and he’ll help me, even if you two won’t.”

  Peter sprang suddenly to his feet and was away, running into darkness, before the other two could move.

  “He’s gone potty as a puffin,” Kye cried. “C’mon, we got to stop him ’fore he gits hisself killed!”

  Stopping Peter was not so easy. He had vanished amongst the confusion of men and ponies on the wharf, and though the two boys searched for fifteen minutes they found no trace of him. Finally they bumped into each other, and Kye muttered in Jacques’ ear: “The blame fool must have done it. He must have gone aboard and into the locker. We can’t haul him out of there without lettin’ the whole world in on it–not if he won’t come on his own, and I figure he won’t.”

  “I think there is nothing we can do,” Jacques replied.

  Kye’s eyes glittered in the momentary illumination of a match, as someone lit a cigarette.

  “Well, there’s one thing I can do,” he said. “Go along with him. I got to do that much. I can’t let him try it alone. Thank’ee Jacques. Ye’ve been a good feller; and I sure hope for all our sakes ye’re dad gits back tonight.”

  Jacques clutched at Kye’s jacket in an attempt to stop him, but Kye wrenched free with one quick movement.

  He gained the deck without any difficulty. The salt fish had all been unloaded and a steady stream of whiskey boxes was being passed along from hand to hand by several men while others sweated below decks, stowing them away. There was less confusion on deck than when Peter had first come aboard, but there was still enough to mask Kye’s movements as he slipped forward, cautiously slid off the small hatch which gave access to the chain locker and slid himself through it. His feet touched the pile of anchor chain and instantly he was grabbed about the knees and thrown heavily down while someone began scrambling over him towards the still-open hatch.

  “Peter…Peter…lay off…it’s Kye,” he managed to gasp.

  “Kye! I thought ye was one of the crew, and I figured I was a gonner. Kye, I’m scared to death!”

  “Let’s git out of here quick then. I’m so scared I figure me hair’s turning green.”

  “No, Kye, I ain’t goin’. I’m goin’ to do what I said I’d do.”

  There was silence for a moment and then Kye sighed.

  “Well,” he said, “I guess that makes two of us. We’re in for it together. Might as well git comfortable and have a think.”

  The space they were in was right in the bow of the ship, and the only openings into it were the small hatch and the two hawsepipes which led the chain down from the windlass. There was not enough room to stand up nor to stretch out. As Kye put it, “There ain’t room to swing a mackerel.” No light could enter, and precious little air. The stink of bilge and of old harbor mud from the chain cable was almost suffocating. Nevertheless, the two boys made themselves as comfortable as they could, sitting cross-legged on the pile of rusty chain with their backs against the thin bulkhead which separated the chain locker from the forepeak. Once or twice they heard someone clatter down the ladder into the forepeak, then go on deck again.

  “We ain’t goin’ to be able to make no more noise than a butterfly in here,” muttered Kye, “else anyone in the forepeak’s bound to hear us.”

  “That’s so,” Peter replied, “but it works both ways. We’ll be able to hear ’em talkin’ in there, and that way we’ll know their plans.”

  Kye snorted. “Plans! We knows right now what their plans are. Sail this lot of whiskey over to the States. What we got to do is make some plans. How ye figure we can git at the engine anyway?”

  This was a detail which Peter had not yet considered.

  “Don’t know,” he admitted reluctantly.

  They sat in miserable silence for several minutes.

  Peter was remembering what he had seen of the changes made to the boat by the rum-runners–changes he had noticed during his brief tour as a cargo handler on deck.

  “Maybe after they git under way one of us can sneak aft,” he suggested tentatively. “They’ll be runnin’ without lights till they gits well clear of Miquelon. And more’n likely most of the crew’ll knock off to their bunks. We’ll know about that because we’ll hear ’em come down into the forepeak. The thing is, they’ve built a wheelhouse onto her, and it looked to me like the engine-room companion’s been shifted to abaft the wheelhouse. So once ye got past the helmsman there’d be no one to see ye slip down into the engine room.”

  The two boys were talking in almost normal tones now, for there was so much noise on deck that no one could have heard them in any case. In fact they could hardly hear each other. But suddenly Kye caught Peter’s arm in a hard grip.

  “Watch out,” he whispered sharply into his friend’s ear. “The hatch!”

  They both stared up. A slit of starlight showed where before there had been only darkness, for Peter had slid the hatch back into position immediately after he had recognized Kye.

  The slit got wider, then the hatch-opening darkened as a head and shoulders blocked the entrance. Almost afraid to breathe, the two boys waited for the moment of discovery.

  “Peter!” a voice whispered so softly they could hardly hear it. Trembling with relief, Peter and Kye scrambled to their feet and tried to push their faces out the hatch together.

  They almost bumped heads with Jacques.

  “Let me in. Quickly,” he said. “But take this bag; we will need it, I think.”

  In a moment he had slid down beside them and Kye had replaced the hatch.

  “One more scare like that and I’m just goin’ to give up and die,” Kye said shakily, when the three of them had got sorted out and had found room to sit in the cramped quarters. “What in the name of old Beelzebub are you doin’ here, Jacques?”

  “I think I do the same as you. You see, when you two run away I don’t know what I must do. Then I think I am your friend and also I know what my father will say if I let you go on the boat alone. So then I go to the fish store and light the candle and make a letter for my father. Only I have no paper so I write on a piece of wood. Then I take some things and put them in the bag. Then I go quick to the house and put the wood outside the door where my father or ma mère will see it when daylight comes. Then I come here.”

  “Well,” Kye said, “I guess that makes three crazy nuts. What’d ye bring with ye, anyway?”

  “I have one knife and some matches. I have also one bottle of wine and some ship biscuits mon père keep in the fish store for to take on the dory when he forget his lunch. Also a hammer for the engine. Also, Peter speaks of a signal flare, but there is none like that in the fish store so I bring instead a can of powder
my father use to fill his shotgun shells.”

  “Gunpowder! You figure to blow up the ship?”

  “But no, Kye. It will just burn very bright, and not make any bang unless it is in the cartridge case. It will be a good signal, you will see.”

  In the meanwhile things were progressing on deck. Only a few more cases of whiskey remained to be loaded–which was just as well, for Captain Benjamin Smith’s temper was becoming explosive. He wished to be clear away from the French islands and far out to seaward before the dawn revealed his presence in these waters.

  In his impatience he was not inclined to be polite. When a fisherman stumbled and dropped a case of whiskey so that it broke open, Smith was on him in two jumps and, picking him up by the scruff of his neck and the seat of his pants, he flung the unfortunate fellow headlong onto the wharf.

  There were ugly murmurs from those who had witnessed the incident, and all work came slowly to a halt. Smith did not know it, or perhaps he simply did not care, but to lay violent hands on a Basque is as dangerous as prodding a rattlesnake.

  Smith stepped to the rail and shone his flashlight over the fishermen.

  “C’mon, c’mon!” he yelled at them. “Get that stuff on board!”

  Not a man moved, and something of the menace in their silence began to seep through even Smith’s tough skin.

  “Okay,” he said loudly. “No work, no pay. Jake, have our boys sling the rest of those cases on the ship.”

  Two or three of the rum-runners stepped onto the wharf to obey the order, but the fishermen moved solidly forward and the surprised sailors suddenly found themselves back on board again.

  “You will pay what you owe, capitain,” said a voice from the crowd.

  “The blazes I will!” Smith replied. “Leave them last few cases lay, Jake. Cast off them lines. Greasy, get that engine going. Gabby! Gabby! Where in the name of darkness is that Frog pilot?”

  “I am on shore, capitain,” Gabby Morazi replied, “and I stay ashore. I am only a Frog, you see, and therefore I cannot possibly pilot your ship.”