Billy Topsail & Company: A Story for Boys. Duncan Norman
all right, Don!”
Donald North, himself, stuck his hands in his pockets, threw out his chest, spat like a skipper and strutted like a rooster.
“I ’low I is!” said he.
And he was. And nobody decried his little way of boasting, which lasted only for a day; and everybody was glad that at last he was like other boys.
Job North, with Alexander Bludd and Bill Stevens, went out on the ice to hunt seal. The hunt led them ten miles offshore. In the afternoon of that day the wind gave some sign of changing to the west, and at dusk it was blowing half a gale offshore. When the wind blows offshore it sweeps all this wandering ice out to sea, and disperses the whole pack.
“Go see if your father’s comin’, b’y,” said Donald’s mother. “I’m gettin’ terrible nervous about the ice.”
Donald took his gaff–a long pole of the light, tough dogwood, two inches thick and shod with iron–and set out. It was growing dark. The wind, rising still, was blowing in strong, cold gusts. It began to snow while he was yet on the ice of the harbour, half a mile away from the pans and dumpers which the wind of the day before had crowded against the coast.
When he came to the “standing edge”–the stationary rim of ice which is frozen to the coast–the wind was thickly charged with snow. What with dusk and snow, he found it hard to keep to the right way. But he was not afraid for himself; his only fear was that the wind would sweep the ice-pack out to sea before his father reached the standing edge. In that event, as he knew, Job North would be doomed.
Donald went out on the standing edge. Beyond lay a widening gap of water. The pack had already begun to move out.
There was no sign of Job North’s party. The lad ran up and down, hallooing as he ran; but for a time there was no answer to his call. Then it seemed to him that he heard a despairing hail, sounding far to the right, whence he had come. Night had almost fallen, and the snow added to its depth; but as he ran back Donald could still see across the gap of water to the great pan of ice, which, of all the pack, was nearest to the standing edge. He perceived that the gap had considerably widened since he had first observed it.
“Is that you, father?” he called.
“Ay, Donald,” came an answering hail from directly opposite. “Is there a small pan of ice on your side?”
Donald searched up and down the standing edge for a detached cake large enough for his purpose. Near at hand he came upon a small, thin pan, not more than six feet square.
“Haste, b’y!” cried his father.
“They’s one here,” he called back, “but ’tis too small. Is there none there?”
“No, b’y. Fetch that over.”
Here was desperate need. If the lad were to meet it, he must act instantly and fearlessly. He stepped out on the pan and pushed off with his gaff. Using his gaff as a paddle–as these gaffs are constantly used in ferrying by the Newfoundland fishermen–and helped by the wind, he soon ferried himself to where Job North stood waiting with his companions.
“’Tis too small,” said Stevens. “’Twill not hold two.”
North looked dubiously at the pan. Alexander Bludd shook his head in despair.
“Get back while you can, b’y,” said North. “Quick! We’re driftin’ fast! The pan’s too small.”
“I thinks ’tis big enough for one man an’ me,” said Donald.
“Get aboard an’ try it, Alexander,” said Job. “Quick, man!”
Alexander Bludd stepped on. The pan tipped fearfully, and the water ran over it; but when the weight of the man and the boy was properly adjusted, it seemed capable of bearing them both across. They pushed off, and seemed to go well enough; but when Alexander moved to put his gaff in the water the pan tipped again. Donald came near losing his footing. He moved nearer the edge and the pan came to a level. They paddled with all their strength, for the wind was blowing against them, and there was need of haste if three passages were to be made. Meantime the gap had grown so wide that the wind had turned the ripples into waves, which washed over the pan as high as Donald’s ankles.
But they came safely across. Bludd stepped swiftly ashore, and Donald pushed off. With the wind in his favour he was soon once more at the other side.
“Now, Bill,” said North; “your turn next.”
“I can’t do it, Job,” said Stevens. “Get aboard yourself. The lad can’t come back again.
“We’re driftin’ out too fast. He’s your lad, an’ you’ve the right to–”
“Ay, I can come back,” said Donald. “Come on, Bill! Be quick!”
Stevens was a lighter man than Alexander Bludd; but the passage was wider, and still widening, for the pack had gathered speed. When Stevens was safely landed he looked back. A vast white shadow was all that he could see. Job North’s figure had been merged with the night.
“Donald, b’y,” he said, “you got t’ go back for your father, but I’m fair feared you’ll never–”
“Give me a push, Bill,” said Donald.
Stevens caught the end of the gaff and pushed the lad out.
“Good-bye, Donald,” he called.
When the pan touched the other side Job North stepped aboard without a word. He was a heavy man. With his great body on the ice-cake, the difficulty of return was enormously increased, as Donald had foreseen. The pan was overweighted. Time and again it nearly shook itself free of its load and rose to the surface. North was near the centre, plying his gaff with difficulty, but Donald was on the extreme edge. Moreover, the distance was twice as great as it had been at first, and the waves were running high, and it was dark.
They made way slowly. The pan often wavered beneath them; but Donald was intent upon the thing he was doing, and he was not afraid. Then came the time–they were but ten yards off the standing edge–when North struck his gaff too deep into the water. He lost his balance, struggled to regain it, failed–and fell off. Before Donald was awake to the danger, the edge of the pan sank under him, and he, too, toppled off.
Donald had learned to swim now. When he came to the surface, his father was breast-high in the water, looking for him.
“Are you all right, Donald?” said his father.
“Yes, sir.”
“Can you reach the ice alone?”
“Yes, sir,” said Donald, quietly.
Alexander Bludd and Bill Stevens helped them up on the standing edge, and they were home by the kitchen fire in half an hour.
“’Twas bravely done, b’y,” said Job.
So Donald North learned that perils feared 68 are much more terrible than perils faced. He had a courage of the finest kind, in the following days of adventure, now close upon him, had young Donald.
CHAPTER VII
In Which Bagg, Imported From the Gutters of London, Lands At Ruddy Cove From the Mail-Boat, Makes the Acquaintance of Jimmie Grimm and Billy Topsail, and Tells Them ’E Wants to Go ’Ome. In Which, Also, the Way to Catastrophe Is Pointed
The mail-boat comes to Ruddy Cove in the night, when the shadows are black and wet, and the wind, blowing in from the sea, is charged with a clammy mist. The lights in the cottages are blurred by the fog. They form a broken line of yellow splotches rounding the harbour’s edge. Beyond is deep night and a wilderness into which the wind drives. In the morning the fog still clings to the coast. Within the cloudy wall it is all glum and dripping wet. When a veering wind sweeps the fog away, there lies disclosed a world of rock and forest and fuming sea, stretching from the end of the earth to the summits of the inland hills–a place of ruggedness and hazy distances; of silence and a vast, forbidding loneliness.
It was on such a