CHAPTER XXXV
In Which Billy Topsail Takes His Life in His Hands and Ha-Ha Shallow Lays Hold of It With the Object of Snatching It Away
"Well," said Archie, "I'll try it."
"You won't!" said Billy.
"I will!"
"You won't!"
Archie looked Billy in the eye.
"Why not?" he inquired.
"I'm goin' t' try it myself."
"You're not!"
"I am!"
Both boys burst into a laugh. It was an amiable thing to do. And there could have been no better preparation for the work in hand.
"Look here, Billy – " Archie began.
"No," Billy insisted; "it won't do. You haves your way always, Archie. An' now I'm goin' t' have my turn at it. I'll try it first. An' if I gets across you can follow."
"You might stumble."
"I know that."
"Look here, Billy – "
"No, no, b'y! I'm goin' first. I won't make a fool o' myself. We got t' get across this stream if we can. An' we've got t' get on t' Poor Luck Barrens. But I won't make a fool o' myself, Archie. I promise you that. I'll go jus' as far as I can. I'll go with care – jus' as far as I can. An' if 'tis no use tryin' any more, I'll come back. That's a promise. I'll come back. An' then – "
"Ay, Billy?"
"I'll try somewhere else."
"Billy," said Archie, "I – I – I likes you!"
"Stop your jawin'!" said Billy.
Then Archie said:
"If you fall in the current I'll pull you out, Billy. You trust me."
Billy spoke gravely:
"You'll do no such thing."
"What!" cried Archie. "Not try to save – "
"No."
"Why, Billy," Archie protested, "you're just plain foolish to ask me not to – "
"No," said Billy, again; "it isn't foolish. I won't have it."
Archie said nothing.
"Now," said Billy, "I'll try my hand at it."
The gravity and untoward chances of the attempt were not ignored. Both boys were aware of them. A simple thing to splash into the first shallow inches of Rattle Water and there deliberate an advance – true enough; but Billy Topsail was in earnest about crossing. He would venture far and perilously before he turned back – venture to the brink of safety, and tentatively, definitely into the dragging grip of the deeper current beyond. A boy who proposes to go as far as he can is in the way of overreaching himself. Beyond his utmost, whatever his undertaking, lies a mocking, entreating temptation to his courage – an inch or two more.
"Billy!" said Archie.
"Ay?"
"Do you think that if you fall in the current I'll stand by and – "
"I hopes you will, Archie, If I loses my feet, I goes down-stream. That's plain. No man could catch his feet in that water. An' if I goes all the way down-stream, I goes clean under Black Pool ice. An' if I goes under Black Pool ice, I can't get out, because the current will hold me there. That's plain, too. You couldn't pull me out o' the stream. If you could do that, I could get out alone. You'd jus' go down with me. So you leave me go."
"Billy, I – "
"Oh, I isn't goin' t' fall anyhow, Archie. An' if I does, I'll make a fight. If I can grab anything on the way down; an' if I can hang in the stream, we'll talk it over again."
"Billy – "
"That's all, Archie."
With that Billy Topsail, the pack of food on his back (since if he won the other bank he must have sustenance for the chances of his journey to Poor Luck Barrens), waded into the water.
Presently Billy Topsail was ankle deep in the stream. The water foamed to his calves. Suspense aggravated him. He splashed on – impatient to come to the crisis that challenged him. It was a stony bed – loose, round, slippery stones; and a stone turned – and Billy Topsail tottered in the deeper suck of the current. It was nothing to regain his balance in that shallow. And he pushed on. But by and by – time being relative to suspense, it seemed a long, long time to Archie Armstrong, waiting on the snowy bank – by and by Billy Topsail was knee deep and anxiously engaged; and mid-stream, where the ripple was dancing down in white-capped, choppy waves, was still proportionately far distant.
Billy paused, then, to settle his feet. The footing was treacherous; the water was white to his thighs – the swift, dizzy, noisy passage was confusing. For a new advance he halted to make good his grip of the bottom and to brace and balance himself against the insistent push of the current.
Archie shouted:
"You're doing fine, Billy!"
In the bawling rush of the stream it was hard to hear Archie. Still, Billy heard. And he nodded – but did not dare to turn.
"Go slow," Archie called, "and you'll make it!"
Billy thought so too. He was doing well – it seemed a reasonable expectation. And he ventured his right foot forward and established it. It was slow, cautious work, thrusting through that advance, feeling over the bottom and finding a fixed foundation; and dragging the left foot forward, in resistance to the current, was as slow and as difficult. A second step, accomplished with effort; a third, achieved at greater risk; a fourth, with the hazard still more delicate – and Billy Topsail paused again.
It was deeper. The broken waves washed his thighs; the heavy body of the water was above his knees; he was wet to the waist with spray; and in the deeper water, by the law of displacement, he had lost weight. The water tended to lift him: the impulse was up to the surface – the pressure down-stream. In this respect the current was like a wrestler who lifts his opponent off his feet before he flings him down.
And in the meantime the current tightened its hold.
CHAPTER XXXVI
In Which Ha-Ha Shallow is Foiled, Archie Armstrong Displays Swift Cunning, of Which He is Well Aware, and Billy Topsail, Much to His Surprise, and not Greatly to His Distaste, is Kissed by a Lady of Poor Luck Barrens
Another advance of the right foot; an increased depth of two inches; a sudden, upward thrust of the water; a rolling stone: Billy Topsail tottered – struggled for balance, like a man on a tight-rope, and caught and held it; but in the wrenching effort his pack had shifted and disturbed his natural poise. He faced up-stream, feet spread, body bent, arms extended; and in this awkward posture, at a disadvantage, he swayed dangerously, incommoded by the pack, his legs quivering in the current.
Deliberately, then, Billy contorted himself until the pack slipped from his shoulder to its place on his back; and upright again, established once more, he dragged his left foot by inches against the current, set it above the right, forced it into place, and turned to face the opposite shore. He was fairly mid-stream, now. Another confident, successful step – a moment more of cool behaviour and intelligent procedure – and the grip of the current would begin to fail.
All this while the tumbling water had worked its inevitable effect. It was noisy; it ran swift; it troubled Billy Topsail – the speed and clatter of it. And he was now confused and dizzy. Now, too, he was conscious of the roar of the stream below. More clamorously, more vividly, it asserted itself – reiterated and magnified its suggestion of disaster. It could not be ignored. Billy Topsail abstracted his attention. It returned to the menace.
There it was – the roar of the stream below: the deep, narrow rush of it, swelling over the boulders, curling around them, plunging irresistibly towards the Black Pool ice, and vanishing into the stifling gloom beneath, in a swift, black, silent stream, flecked with creamy puffs of foam. A misstep, a false stone, a lost balance – a man would then drift fast and helpless, bruised by the bottom, flung against the boulders and stunned, smothered by the water, cast into Black Pool and left to sink in still water. It was the logical incident of failure.
Aware of the cumulative effect of fear, conscious of the first creeping paralysis of it, Billy Topsail instantly determined upon the next step. It must be taken – it must be taken at once. Already the weakness and confusion of terror was a crippling factor to be dealt with. He must act – venture. He moved in haste; there was a misstep, an incautious faith in the foothold, a blind chance taken – and the current caught him, lifted him, tugged at him, and he lost his feet, flung his arms in the air, toppled over, drifted off with the current, submerged, and was swept like driftwood into the deep rush below.
He rose, gasped, sank – came breathless to the surface; and self-possessed again, and fighting for life against hope, instinctively, but yet with determined intelligence, grasping breath when he could and desperately seeking handhold, foothold – fighting thus he was dragged a bruising course through the narrowing channel towards Black Pool and at last momentarily arrested his drift with a failing grip of a boulder.
Archie Armstrong ran down-stream. No expedient was in his horrified mind. The impulse was to plunge in and rescue Billy if he could. That was all. But the current was swifter than he; he was outstripped – stumbling along the rocky, icy shore. When he came abreast of Billy, who was still clinging to the rock in mid-stream, he did plunge in; but he came at once to a full stop, not gone a fathom into the current, and stood staring.
Billy Topsail could not catch the bottom in the lee of the rock. Even there the current was too strong, the depth of water too great, the lee too narrow, the rock too small for a wide, sufficient backwater. Black Pool was within twenty fathoms. Billy's clutch was breaking. In a moment he would be torn away. Yet there was a moment – a minute or more of opportunity. And having assured himself of this grace, Archie Armstrong splashed ashore, without a word or a sign, scaled the bank and ran down-stream to the bridge of Black Pool ice.
The bridge was rotten. It was rotten from bank to bank. It would not bear the weight of a man. Archie Armstrong knew it. Its fall was imminent. It awaited the last straw – a dash of rain, a squall of wind. The ice was thick; there was a foot of it. And the bridge was heavy; its attachment to the low cliffs was slight; in a day – next day, perhaps – it would fall of its own weight, lie inert in the pool, drift slowly away to the open reaches of Skeleton Arm and drive to sea.
Archie Armstrong, hanging by his hands from the edge of the low cliff, broke a great fragment from the rock and thus reduced the stability of the whole; and hanging from the edge of the same low cliff, a few fathoms below, grasping the roots of the spruce, he broke a second fragment loose with his weight – a third and a fourth. And the structure collapsed. It fell in thick, spacious fragments on the quiet water of the pool, buoyant and dry, and covered the face of the water, held imprisoned by the rocks of the narrow exit.
When Billy Topsail came drifting down, Archie Armstrong, waiting on the ice, helped him out and ashore.
"Better build a fire, Archie," said Billy, presently.
"I'm doing that very thing, Billy."
"Thanks, Archie."
"Cold, b'y?"
"I'll take no harm from the wettin'."
"Harm! A hardy kid like you! I laugh!"
Billy grinned.
"When I'm rested," said he, "I'll wring out my clothes. By the time we've had a snack o' soggy grub I'll be dry. An' then we'll go on."
"On it is!"
Billy looked up.
"Archie," said he, "that was marvellous – clever!"
"Clever?" inquired Archie. "What was clever?"
And Archie Armstrong grinned. He knew well enough what was clever.
Nobody was mad at Poor Luck Barrens. But somebody was in a raving delirium of fever. And that was big George Tulk – Trapper George of Bread-and-Butter Tickle. It was a tight little tilt on the edge of the timber – winter quarters: a log shanty, with a turf roof, deep in a drift of snow, to which a rising cloud of smoke attracted the attention of Archie and Billy Topsail. No; what was alarming at Poor Luck Barrens was not a frenzy of insanity – it was the delirium of pneumonia.
Jinny Tulk was glad enough to receive the help of Billy Topsail and Archie Armstrong.
By and by Billy asked:
"Was it you put the letter in the cleft stick?"
Jinny smiled.
"Ay," said she.
"I found it," said Billy.
With that Jinny Tulk kissed Billy Topsail before he could stop her. She was old enough for that; and she was so wholesome and pretty that when Billy had reflected upon the incident he determined that he would not try to stop her should she attempt it again.
"How'd you like it?" Archie teased him, privately, when Doctor Luke had arrived and Trapper George was resting.
Billy blushed.
"'Twasn't so awful," was his stout reply.
Archie burst out laughing. Billy blushed again. Then he, too, laughed.
"I 'low I got my reward," said he.
By that time Trapper George was doing well. Doctor Luke was watchfully at work. And Doctor Luke and Jinny Tulk, with the help of a spell of frosty weather and an abundance of healing fresh air, and assisted by the determined constitution of Trapper George Tulk himself, who had formed the fixed habit of surviving adverse conditions – Doctor Luke and Jinny Tulk worked an improvement, which passed presently into a state of convalescence and ultimately became a cure. It was no easy matter. Trapper George Tulk put one foot over the border – took a long look into the final shadows. But Doctor Luke was a good fighter. And he happened to win.
CHAPTER XXXVII
In Which Archie Armstrong Rejoins the "Rough and Tumble," With Billy Topsail for Shipmate, and They Seem Likely to be Left on the Floe, While Toby Farr, With the Gale Blowing Cold as Death and Dark Falling, Promises to Make a Song About the Ghosts of Dead Men, but is Entreated Not to Do So
Archie Armstrong and Billy Topsail did not wait with Doctor Luke at Poor Luck Barrens until the cure of Trapper George was accomplished. In view of Archie's wish to return to St. John's with Cap'n Saul aboard the Rough and Tumble, it was arranged that the boys should go back to Bread-and-Butter Tickle alone, and thence down the coast to Our Harbour, as best they could manage, carrying news of Doctor Luke's detention and the cause of it. They were sorry to say good-bye to Doctor Luke; and Doctor Luke was sorry to say good-bye to them. When the time came, Billy Topsail, who had come to love and respect the man for his warm qualities and the work that he did, sought for words to express his feeling and his thanks; but being a simple, robust fellow, not accustomed to the frank expression of feeling, not used to conventional forms, he could manage but poorly. Archie Armstrong would have been ready, fluent, and sincere in the same situation. But Billy Topsail could only stutter and flush and come to an awkward full stop.
What Billy wanted to say was clear enough in his own mind. He had been with Doctor Luke a good deal. They had been in tight places together. But it was not that. "Tight places" are only relative, after all; what is an adventure in one quarter of the world may be a mild incident in another. And that Billy Topsail and Doctor Luke had been in danger together was not particularly impressive: Billy Topsail was used to danger – to peril of that sort – and had grown to regard it as among the commonplaces of life.
That aspect of his experience with Doctor Luke to which Billy Topsail had responded was the habit of service – the instant, willing, efficient answer to the call of helpless need. Indeed, Doctor Luke appeared to Billy Topsail to be a very great man – the greatest man, in his personality and life, Billy Topsail had ever known, not excepting Sir Archibald Armstrong. And Billy Topsail had come definitely to the conclusion that what he wanted to do with his life was precisely what Doctor Luke was doing with his.
It was this that he wanted to tell Doctor Luke; and it was this that he failed to tell him.
"Good-bye, sir," he said.
"Good-bye, Billy."
"Th-th-thanks, sir."
"Thanks?" cried Doctor Luke. "For what, Billy? I'm the debtor."
"Th-th-thanks, sir."
"Thank you, Billy, boy, for your most excellent company."
And so Billy and Archie left Doctor Luke at Poor Luck Barrens – hard at work and happy in his work. They made Bread-and-Butter Tickle; they travelled down the coast without incident; they shook hands with Teddy Brisk, who was still telling his adventures on the ice-floe, his leg as sound as any leg; and they came safe to Our Harbour, where they waited until Cap'n Saul put in with the Rough and Tumble. And then Archie would hear of nothing but Billy's company to St. John's – Billy must go to St. John's, and he would go to St. John's on the Rough and Tumble, ecod, or Archie would put him in irons and carry him there! Billy had no sound objection. From St. John's he could travel easily to his home at Ruddy Cove and arrive there long before the Labrador mail-boat would be north on her first voyage.
And so the boys boarded the Rough and Tumble together, fell in with Bill o' Burnt Bay, Jonathan Farr and little Toby once more, and put to sea. The Rough and Tumble was not loaded; she had more seals to kill and stow away, and Cap'n Saul was resolved to "put back loaded" – a desirable end towards which his active crew, in conjunction with his own sealing wisdom, was fast approaching.
"I'll load in a week!" he boasted.
And then —
Sunday, then – and that a brooding day. It was a dull, dragging time. Not a gaff was out, not a gun; not a man put foot on the floe. The Rough and Tumble killed no seals. It was not the custom. All that day she lay made fast to the ice, fretting for midnight. Cap'n Saul kept to his cabin. Time and quiet weather went wasting away. Quiet weather – quiet enough that day: a draught of westerly wind blowing, the sky overcast and blank, and a flurry of snow in the afternoon, which failed, before dusk, a black, still midnight drawing on.
On the first stroke of the midnight bell, for which he had waited since the dawn of that dull day, Cap'n Saul popped out of the cabin, like a jack-in-the-box, and stamped the bridge, growling and bawling his orders, in a week-day temper, until he had dropped the First Watch, and was under way through the floe, a matter of twenty miles, to land the Second Watch and the Third – feeling a way through the lanes.
Before dawn Bill o' Burnt Bay's watch, with Archie and Billy Topsail, was on the ice. Cap'n Saul put back to stand by the First Watch. Black dark yet. It was bleak on the floe! They shivered in the frost and dark. And the light lagged, as the light will, when it is waited for. It was a sad dawn. A slow glower and lift of thin, gray light: no warmth of colour in the east – no rosy flush and glow. When day broke, at last, the crew made into the herds, mad to be warm, and began to kill. Still, it was done without heart. There was less blithe slaughter, that day, than unseemly brooding and weather-gazing. It was a queer thing, too. There was no alarm of foul weather that any man could see.
A drear, gray day it was, day drawing near noon. Archie and Billy always remembered that. Yet there was no frost to touch a man's heart, no need to cower and whine in the wind, no snow to make a man afraid. A scowl in the northeast – a low, drab, sulky sky, mottled with blue-black and smoky white. They recalled it afterwards. But that was all. And Bill o' Burnt Bay fancied, then, with the lives of his crew in mind, that the weather quarter was doubtless in a temper, but no worse, and was no more than half-minded to kick up a little pother of trouble before day ran over the west.
And Bill was at ease about that.
"She'll bide as she is," he thought, "'til Cap'n Saul gets back."
Bill o' Burnt Bay was wrong. It came on to blow. The wind jumped to the northwest with a nasty notion of misbehaviour. It was all in a moment. A gust of wind, cold as death, went swirling past. They chilled to the bones in it. And then a bitter blast of weather came sweeping down. The floe began to pack and drive. Bill o' Burnt Bay gathered and numbered his watch. And then they waited for the ship. No sign. And the day turned thick. Dusk fell before its time. It was not yet midway of the afternoon. And the wind began to buffet and bite. It began to snow, too. And it was a frosty cloud of snow. It blinded – it stifled. It was flung out of the black northwest like flour from a shaken sack.
The men were afraid. They knew that weather. It was a blizzard. There was a night of mortal peril in it. There might be a night and a day – a day and two nights. And they knew what would happen to them if Cap'n Saul failed to find them before the pack nipped him and the night shut down. It had happened before to lost crews. It would happen again. Men gone stark mad in the wind – the floe strewn with drifted corpses. They had heard tales. And now they had visions. Dead men going into port – ship's flag at half-mast, and dead men going into port, frozen stiff and blue, and piled forward like cord-wood.
"I'll make a song about this," said Toby Farr.
"A song!" Archie Armstrong exclaimed.
"'Tis about the gray wraiths o' dead men that squirm in the night."
"I'd not do it!" Jonathan protested.
"They drift like snow in the black wind," said Toby.
"Ah, no!" said Jonathan. "I'd make no songs the night about dead men an' wraiths."
"Ay, but I'm well started – "
"No, lad!"
"I've a bit about cold fingers an' the damp touch – "
"I'd not brood upon that."
"An it please you, sir – "
"No."
"Ah, well," Toby agreed, "I'll wait 'til I'm cozy an' warm aboard ship."
"That's better," said Archie.
Billy Topsail shuddered. Toby's imagination – ghosts and dead men – had frightened him.
"It is!" he declared.