Billy Topsail, M.D.. Duncan Norman
his complaint.
"I wisht," said he, "the wind would switch t' sea. Once on a time my grand – "
"Never you mind about that."
"Once on a time my grandfather was cotched by the snow in a gale o' wind off – "
"Ah, you watch how clever I is at makin' a fire on the ice! Never you mind about the will o' the wind. 'Tis a foolish habit t' fall into."
Billy Topsail made the fire. The dogs squatted in the offing. Every eye was on the operation. It was interesting, of course. Nothing escaped notice. Attention was keen and inclusive. It would flare high – a thrill ran through the wide-mouthed, staring circle – and expire in disappointment. Interesting, to be sure: yet going into camp on the ice was nothing out of the way. The man would spend the night where he was – that was all. It portended no extraordinary departure from the customs – no opportunity. And the man was alert and capable. No; nothing stimulating in the situation – nothing to be taken advantage of.
Billy Topsail was laughing. Teddy Brisk chattered all the while. Neither was in difficulty. Nor was either afraid of anything. It was not an emergency. There was no release of authority. And when the circumstances of the affair, at last, had turned out to be usual in every respect, interest lapsed, as a matter of course; and the pack, having presently exhausted the distraction of backbiting, turned in to sleep, helped to this good conduct by a crack of the whip.
"Not another word out o' you!" Billy Topsail scolded. "You'll be fed full the morrow."
Almost at once it fell very dark. The frost increased; the snow turned to dry powder and the wind jumped to half a gale, veering to the sou'west. Teddy Brisk, with the bread and tea and molasses stowed away where bread and tea and molasses best serve such little lads as he, was propped against the komatik, wrapped up in his dogskin robes as snug as you like. The fire was roaring, and the circle of the night was safe and light and all revealed, in its flickering blaze and radiant, warm red glow.
Billy Topsail fed the fire hot; and Billy Topsail gave Teddy Brisk riddles to rede; and Billy Topsail piped Teddy Brisk a song or two – such a familiar song of the coast as this:
'Way down on Pigeon Pond Island,
When daddy comes home from swilein'
Maggoty fish hung up in the air,
Fried in maggoty butter;
Cakes an' tea for breakfast,
Pork an' duff for dinner,
Cakes an' tea for supper —
'Way down on Pigeon Pond Island,
When daddy comes home from swilein'.1
Whatever was bitter and inimical in the wind and dark and driving mist of snow was chased out of mind by the warm fire and companionable behaviour.
It was comfortable on the ice: it was a picnic – a bright adventure; and Teddy Brisk was as cozy and dry and content as —
"I likes it, Billy," said he. "I jus' fair loves it here!"
"You does, b'y? I'm proud o' you!"
"'Way out here on the ice. Mm-m! Yes, sirree! I'm havin' a wonderful happy time, Billy."
"I'm glad o' that now!"
"An' I feels safe – "
"Aye, b'y!"
"An' I'm's warm – "
"Sure, you is!"
"An' I'm's sleepy – "
"You go t' sleep, lad."
"My mother says, if the wind – "
"Never you mind about that. I'll take care o' you – never fear!"
"You would, in a tight place, wouldn't you, Billy, b'y?"
"Well, I 'low I would!"
"Yes, sirree! You'd take care o' me!"
"You go t' sleep, lad, an' show yourself an old hand at stoppin' out overnight."
"Aye, Billy; but my mother says – "
"Never you mind about that."
"Ah, well, my mother – "
And Teddy Brisk fell asleep.
CHAPTER V
In Which the Wind Goes to Work, the Ice Behaves in an Alarming Way, Billy Topsail Regrets, for Obvious Reasons, Having to Do with the Dogs, that He Had Not Brought an Axe, and Teddy Brisk Protests that His Mother Knew Precisely What She was Talking About
Well, now, Teddy Brisk fell asleep, and presently, too, Billy Topsail, in his wolfskin bag, got the better of his anxious watch on the wind and toppled off. The dogs were already asleep, each covered with a slow-fashioning blanket of snow – ten round mounds, with neither snout nor hair to show. The fire failed: it was dark; and the wind blew up – and higher. A bleak place, this, on Schooner Bay, somewhere between the Thimble and the Scotchman's Breakfast of Ginger Head; yet there was no hardship in the night – no shivering, blue agony of cold, but full measure of healthful comfort. The dogs were warm in their coverings of snow and Billy Topsail was warm in his wolfskin bag; and Teddy Brisk, in his dogskin robes, was in a flush and soft sweat of sound sleep, as in his cot in the cottage by Jack-in-the-Box, at Tight Cove.
It was a gale of wind by this time. The wind came running down the bay from Rattle Brook; and it tore persistently at the ice, urging it out. It was a matter of twenty miles from the Thimble, across Schooner Bay, to the Scotchman's Breakfast of Ginger Head, and a matter of thirty miles inland to Rattle Brook – wherefrom you may compute the area of the triangle for yourself and bestir your own imagination, if you can, to apply the pressure of a forty-mile gale to the vast rough surface of the bay.
Past midnight the ice yielded to the irresistible urge of the wind.
Crack! The noise of the break zigzagged in the distance and approached, and shot past near by, and rumbled away like a crash of brittle thunder. Billy Topsail started awake. There was a crackling confusion – in the dark, all roundabout, near and far – like the crumpling of an infinitely gigantic sheet of crisp paper: and then nothing but the sweep and whimper of the wind – those familiar, unportentous sounds, in their mild monotony, like dead silence in contrast with the first splitting roar of the break-up.
Billy Topsail got out of his wolfskin bag. The dogs were up; they were terrified – growling and bristling; and they fawned close to Billy, as dogs will to a master in a crisis of ghostly fear. Billy drove them off; he whipped them into the dark. The ice had broken from the cliffs and was split in fields and fragments. It would move out and go abroad with the high southwest wind. That was bad enough, yet not, perhaps, a mortal predicament – the wind would not run out from the southwest forever; and an escape ashore from a stranded floe would be no new thing in the experience of the coast. To be marooned on a pan of ice, however, with ten famishing dogs of unsavoury reputation, and for God only knew how long – it taxed a man's courage to contemplate the inevitable adventure!
A man could not corner and kill a dog at a time; a man could not even catch a dog – not on a roomy pan of ice, with spaces for retreat. Nor could a man escape from a dog if he could not escape from the pan; nor could a man endure, in strength and wakefulness, as long as a dog. Billy Topsail saw himself attempt the death of one of the pack – the pursuit of Cracker, for example, with a club torn from the komatik. Cracker would easily keep his distance and paw the ice, head down, eyes alert and burning; and Cracker would withdraw and dart out of reach, and swerve away. And Smoke and Tucker and Scrap, and the rest of the pack, would all the while be creeping close behind, on the lookout for a fair opportunity.
No; a man could not corner and kill a dog at a time. A man could not beat a wolf in the open; and these dogs, which roamed the timber and sprang from it, would maneuver like wolves – a patient waiting for some lapse from caution or the ultimate moment of weakness; and then an overwhelming rush. Billy Topsail knew the dogs of his own coast. He knew his own dogs; all he did not know about his own dogs was that Cracker had been concerned in a dubious affair on the ice off the
Sealing.