CHAPTER XV
In Which Bad-Weather Tom West's Curious Financial Predicament is Explained
"Well, now," said Doctor Luke, continuing his tale, "Bad-Weather Tom West, of Ragged Run, has a conscience, too. But 'tis just a common conscience. Most men have that kind. It is not like Skinflint Sam's conscience. Nothing 'useful' ever comes of it. It is like yours and mine, Billy. It troubles Tom West to be honest and it keeps him poor. All Tom West's conscience ever aggravates him to do" – Doctor Luke was speaking in gentle irony now – "is just to live along in a religious sort of fashion, and rear his family, and be decently stowed away in the graveyard when his time is up if the sea doesn't catch him first.
"But 'tis a busy conscience for all that – and as sharp as a fish-prong. There is no rest for Tom West if he doesn't fatten his wife and crew of little lads and maids. There is no peace of mind for Tom if he doesn't labour! And so Tom labours, and labours, and labours. Dawn to dusk, in season, his punt is on the grounds off Lack-a-Day Head, taking fish from the sea to be salted and dried and passed into Skinflint Sam's storehouses.
"The tale began long ago, Billy. When Tom West was about fourteen years old, his father died. 'Twas of a Sunday afternoon, Tom says, that they stowed him away. He remembers the time: spring weather and a fair day, with the sun low, and the birds twittering in the alders just before turning in.
"Skinflint Sam caught up with young Tom on the road home from the little graveyard on Sunset Hill.
"'Well, lad,' said he, 'the old skipper's gone.'
"'Ay, sir, he's dead an' buried.'
"'A fine man,' said Skinflint. 'None finer.'
"With that young Tom broke out crying. 'He were a kind father t' we,' says he. 'An' now he's dead!'
"'You lacked nothin' in your father's life-time,' said Sam.
"'An' now he's dead!'
"'Well, well, you've no call t' be afeared o' goin' hungry on that account,' said Sam, putting an arm over the lad's shoulder. 'No; nor none o' the little crew over t' your house. Take up the fishin' where your father left it off, lad,' said he, 'an' you'll find small difference. I'll cross out your father's name on the books an' put down your own in its stead.'"
Billy Topsail interrupted.
"That was kind!" he snorted, in anger. "What a kind man this Skinflint is!"
And Doctor Luke continued:
"'I'm fair obliged,' said Tom. 'That's kind, sir.'
"'Nothin' like kindness t' ease sorrow,' said Skinflint Sam. 'Your father died in debt, lad.'
"'Ay, sir?'
"'Deep.'
"'How much, sir?'
"'I'm not able t' tell offhand,' said Sam. ''Twas deep enough. But never you care. You'll be able t' square it in course o' time. You're young an' hearty. An' I'll not be harsh. I'm no skinflint!'
"'That's kind, sir.'
"'You – you —will square it?'
"'I don't know, sir.'
"'What?' cried Sam. 'What! You're not knowin', eh? That's saucy talk. Didn't you have them there supplies?'
"'I 'low, sir.'
"'An' you guzzled your share, I'll be bound!'
"'Yes, sir.'
"'An' your mother had her share?'
"'Yes, sir.'
"'An' you're not knowin' whether you'll pay or not! Ecod! What is you? A scoundrel? A dead beat? A rascal? A thief? A jail-bird?'
"'No, sir.'
"''Tis for the likes o' you that jails was made.'
"'Oh, no, sir!'
"'Doesn't you go t' church? Is that what they learns you there? I'm thinkin' the parson doesn't earn what I pays un. Isn't you got no conscience?'
"'Twas just a little too much for young Tom. You see, Tom West had a conscience – a conscience as fresh and as young as his years. And Tom had loved his father well. And Tom honoured his father's name. And so when he had brooded over Skinflint Sam's words for a time – and when he had lain awake in the night thinking of his father's goodness – he went over to Skinflint's office and said that he would pay his father's debt.
"Skinflint gave him a clap on the back.
"'You are an honest lad, Tom West!' said he. 'I knowed you was. I'm proud t' have your name on my books!'
"And after that Tom kept hacking away on his father's debt.
"In good years Skinflint would say:
"'She's comin' down, Tom. I'll just apply the surplus.'
"And in bad he'd say:
"'You isn't quite cotched up with your own self this season, b'y. A little less pork this season, Tom, an' you'll square this here little balance afore next. I wisht this whole harbour was as honest as you. No trouble, then,' said he, 't' do business in a businesslike way.'
"When Tom got over the hill – fifty and more – his father's debt, with interest, according to Skinflint's figures, which Tom had no learning to dispute, was more than it ever had been; and his own was as much as he ever could hope to pay. And by that time Skinflint Sam was rich and Bad-Weather Tom was gone sour. One of these days – and not long, now – I shall make it my business to settle with Skinflint Sam. And I should have done so before, had I known of it."
"When did you find out, sir?"
"Bad-Weather Tom," Doctor Luke replied, "came to consult me about two months ago. He is in a bad way. I – well, I had to tell him so. And then he told me what I have told you – all about Skinflint Sam and his dealings with him. It was an old story, Billy. I have – well, attended to such matters before, in my own poor way. Bad-Weather Tom did not want me to take this up. 'You leave it to me,' said he; 'an' I'll fix it meself.' I wish he might be able to 'fix' it to his satisfaction."
"I hopes he does!" said Billy.
"Well, well," Doctor Luke replied, "it is Bad-Weather Tom's maid who is in need of us at Ragged Run."
Billy liked that "Us"!
CHAPTER XVI
In Which Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail Proceed to Accomplish What a Cat Would Never Attempt and Doctor Luke Looks for a Broken Back Whilst Billy Topsail Shouts, "Can You Make It?" and Hears No Answer
When they came to the Head and there paused to survey Anxious Bight in a flash of the moon Billy Topsail and Doctor Luke were tingling and warm and limber and eager. Yet they were dismayed by the prospect. No man could cross from the Head to Blow-me-Down Dick of Ragged Run Cove in the dark. Doctor Luke considered the light. Communicating masses of ragged cloud were driving low across Anxious Bight. Offshore there was a sluggish bank of black cloud. And Doctor Luke was afraid of that bank of black cloud. The moon was risen and full. It was obscured. The intervals of light were less than the intervals of shadow. Sometimes a wide, impenetrable cloud, its edges alight, darkened the moon altogether. Still – there was light enough. All that was definitely ominous was the bank of black cloud lying sluggishly offshore.
"I don't like that cloud, Billy," said Doctor Luke.
"No, sir; no more does I."
"It will cover the moon by and by."
"Sure, sir."
"There may be snow in it."
"Sure t' be, sir."
The longer Doctor Luke contemplated that bank of black cloud – its potentiality for catastrophe – the more he feared it.
"If we were to be overtaken by snow – "
Billy interrupted with a chuckle.
"'Twould be a tidy little fix," said he. "Eh, sir?"
"Well, if that's all you have to say," said Doctor Luke – and he laughed – "come right along!"
It was blowing high. There was the bite and shiver of frost in the wind. Half a gale ran in from the open sea. Midway of Anxious Bight it would be a saucy, hampering, stinging head-wind. And beyond the Head the ice was in doubtful condition. A man might conjecture: that was all. What was it Tommy West had said? "A cat couldn't cross!" It was mid-spring. Freezing weather had of late alternated with periods of thaw and rain. There had been windy days. Anxious Bight had even once been clear of ice. A westerly wind had broken the ice and swept it out beyond the heads; a punt had fluttered over from Ragged Run Cove.
In a gale from the northeast, however, these fragments had returned with accumulations of Arctic pans and hummocks from the Labrador Current; and a frosty night had caught them together and sealed them to the cliffs of the coast. It was a slender attachment – a most delicate attachment: one pan to the other and the whole to the rocks.
It had yielded somewhat – it must have gone rotten – in the weather of that day.
What the frost had accomplished since dusk could be determined only upon trial.
"Soft as cheese!" Doctor Luke concluded.
"Rubber ice," said Billy.
"Air-holes," said the Doctor.
There was another way to Ragged Run – the way by which Tommy West had come. It skirted the shore of Anxious Bight – Mad Harry and Thank-the-Lord and Little Harbour Deep – and something more than multiplied the distance by one and a half. Doctor Luke was completely aware of the difficulties of Anxious Bight, and so was Billy Topsail – the way from Our Harbour to Ragged Run: the treacherous reaches of young ice, bending under the weight of a man, and the veiled black water, and the labour, the crevices, the snow-crust of the Arctic pans and hummocks, and the broken field and wash of the sea beyond the lesser island of the Spotted Horses.
They knew, too, the issue of the disappearance of the moon – the desperate plight into which the sluggish bank of black cloud might plunge a man.
Yet they now moved out and shaped a course for the black bulk of the Spotted Horses.
This was in the direction of Blow-me-Down Dick of Ragged Run and the open sea.
"Come on!" said Doctor Luke.
"I'm comin', sir," Billy replied.
There was something between a chuckle and a laugh from Billy's direction.
Doctor Luke started.
"Laughing, Billy?" he inquired.
"I jus' can't help it, sir."
"Nothing much to laugh at."
"No, sir," Billy replied. "I don't feel like laughin', sir. But 'tis so wonderful dangerous out on the Bight that I jus' can't help laughin'."
Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail were used to travelling all sorts of ice in all sorts of weather. The returning fragments of the ice of Anxious Bight had been close packed for two miles beyond the entrance to Our Harbour by the northeast gale that had driven them back from the open. An alien would have stumbled helplessly and exhausted himself; by and by he would have begun to crawl – in the end he would have lost his life in the frost. This was rough ice. In the press of the wind the drifting floe had buckled. It had been a big gale. Under the whip of it, the ice had come down with a rush. And when it encountered the coast, the first great pans had been thrust out of the sea by the weight of the floe behind.
A slow pressure had even driven them up the cliffs of the Head and heaped them in a tumble below.
It was thus a folded, crumpled floe – a vast field of broken bergs and pans at angles.
No Newfoundlander would adventure on the ice without a gaff. A gaff is a lithe, iron-shod pole, eight or ten feet in length. Doctor Luke was as cunning and sure with the gaff as any old hand of the sealing fleet; and Billy Topsail always maintained that he had been born with a little gaff in his hand instead of a silver spoon in his mouth. They employed the gaffs now to advantage. They used them like vaulting poles. They walked less than they leaped. But this was no work for the half-light of an obscured moon. Sometimes they halted for light. And delay annoyed Doctor Luke. A peppery humour began to possess him. A pause of ten minutes – they squatted for rest meantime – threw him into a state of incautious irritability. At this rate it would be past dawn before they made the cottages of Ragged Run Cove.
It would be slow beyond – surely slow on the treacherous reaches of green ice between the floe and the Spotted Horses.
And beyond the Spotted Horses, whence the path to Ragged Run led – the crossing of Tickle-my-Ribs!
A proverb of Our Harbour maintains that a fool and his life are soon parted.
Doctor Luke invented the saying.
"'Twould be engraved on my stationery," he would declare, out of temper with recklessness, "if I had any engraved stationery!"
Yet now, impatient of precaution, when he thought of Dolly West, Doctor Luke presently chanced a leap. It was error. As the meager light disclosed the path, a chasm of fifteen feet intervened between the edge of the upturned pan upon which he and Billy Topsail stood and a flat-topped hummock of Arctic ice to which he was bound. There was footing for the tip of his gaff midway below. He felt for this footing to entertain himself whilst the moon delayed.
It was there. He was tempted. It was an encouragement to rash conduct. The chasm was critically deep for the length of the gaff. Worse than that, the hummock was higher than the pan. Doctor Luke peered across. It was not much higher. Was it too high? No. It would merely be necessary to lift stoutly at the climax of the leap. And there was need of haste – a little maid in hard case at Ragged Run and a rising cloud threatening black weather.
"Ah, sir, don't leap it!" Billy pleaded.
"Tut!" scoffed the Doctor.
"Wait for the moon, sir!"
A slow cloud covered the moon. It was aggravating. How long must a man wait? A man must take a chance – what? And all at once Doctor Luke gave way to impatience. He gripped his gaff with angry determination and projected himself towards the hummock of Arctic ice. In mid-air he was doubtful. A flash later he had regretted the hazard. It seemed he would come short of the hummock altogether. He would fall. There would be broken bones. He perceived now that he had misjudged the height of the hummock.
Had the gaff been a foot longer Doctor Luke would have cleared the chasm. It occurred to him that he would break his back and merit the fate of his callow mistake. Then his toes caught the edge of the flat-topped hummock. His boots were of soft seal-leather. He gripped the ice. And now he hung suspended and inert. The slender gaff bent under the prolonged strain of his weight and shook in response to the shiver of his arms.
Billy Topsail shouted:
"Can you make it, sir?"
There was no answer.
CHAPTER XVII
In Which Rubber Ice is Encountered and Billy Topsail is Asked a Pointed Question
Dolly West's mother, with Dolly in her arms, resting against her soft, ample bosom, sat by the kitchen fire. It was long after dark. The wind was up – the cottage shook in the squalls. She had long ago washed Dolly's eyes and temporarily staunched the terrifying flow of blood; and now she waited – and had been waiting, with Dolly in her arms, a long, long time; rocking gently and sometimes crooning a plaintive song of the coast to the restless child.
Uncle Joe West came in.
"Hush!"
"Is she sleepin' still?"
"Off an' on. She've a deal o' pain. She cries out, poor lamb!"
Dolly stirred and whimpered.
"Any sign of un, Joe?"
"'Tis not time."
"He might – "
"'Twill be hours afore he comes. I'm jus' wonderin' – "
"Hush!"
Dolly moaned.
"Ay, Joe?"
"Tommy's but a wee feller. I'm wonderin' if he – "
The woman was confident. "He'll make it," she whispered.
"Ay; but if he's delayed – "
"He was there afore dusk. An' Doctor Luke got underway across the Bight – "
"He'll not come by the Bight!"
"He'll come by the Bight. I knows that man. He'll come by the Bight – an' he'll – "
"Pray not!"
"I pray so."
"If he comes by the Bight, he'll never get here at all. The Bight's breakin' up. There's rotten ice beyond the Spotted Horses. An' Tickle-my-Ribs is – "
"He'll come. He'll be here afore – "
"There's a gale o' snow comin' down. 'Twill cloud the moon. A man would lose hisself – "
"He'll come."
Uncle Joe West went out again. This was to plod once more down the narrows to the base of Blow-me-Down Dick and search the vague light of the coast towards Thank-the-Lord and Mad Harry for the first sight of Doctor Luke. It was not time. He knew that. There would be hours of waiting. It would be dawn before a man could come by Thank-the-Lord and Mad Harry if he left Our Harbour even so early as dusk. And as for crossing the Bight – no man could cross the Bight. It was blowing up, too – clouds rising and a threat of snow abroad. Uncle Joe West glanced apprehensively towards the northeast. It would snow before dawn. The moon was doomed. A dark night would fall.
And the Bight – Doctor Luke would never attempt to cross the Bight —
Doctor Luke, hanging between the hummock and the pan, the gaff shivering under his weight, slowly subsided towards the hummock. It was a slow, cautious approach. He had no faith in his foothold. A toe slipped. He paused. It was a grim business. The other foot held. The leg, too, was equal to the strain. He wriggled his toe back to its grip of the edge of the ice. It was an improved foothold. He turned then and began to lift and thrust himself backward. And a last thrust on the gaff set him on his haunches on the Arctic hummock.
He turned to Billy Topsail.
"Thank God!" said he. And then: "Come on, Billy!"
There was a better light now. Billy Topsail chose a narrower space to leap. And he leaped it safely. And they went on; and on – and on! There was a deal of slippery crawling to do – of slow, ticklish climbing. Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail rounded bergs, scaled perilous inclines, leaped crevices. Sometimes they were bewildered for a space. When the moon broke they could glimpse the Spotted Horses from the highest elevations of the floe. In the depressions of the floe they could not descry the way at all.
It was as cold as death now. Was it ten below? The gale bit like twenty below.
"'Tis twenty below!" Billy Topsail insisted.
Doctor Luke ignored this.
"We're near past the rough ice," said he, gravely.
"Rubber ice ahead," said Billy.
Neither laughed.
"Ay," the Doctor observed; and that was all.
When the big northeast wind drove the ice back into Anxious Bight and heaped it inshore, the pressure had decreased as the mass of the floe diminished in the direction of the sea. The outermost areas had not felt the impact. They had not folded – had not "raftered." There had been no convulsion offshore as inshore when the rocks of Afternoon Coast interrupted the rush. The pans had come to a standstill and snuggled close.
When the wind failed they had subsided towards the open. As they say on the coast, the ice had "gone abroad." It was distributed. And after that the sea had fallen flat; and a vicious frost had caught the floe – wide-spread now – and frozen it fast. It was six miles from the edge of the raftered ice to the first island of the Spotted Horses. The flat pans were solid enough – safe and easy going; but this new, connecting ice – the lanes and reaches of it —
Doctor Luke's succinct characterization of the condition of Anxious Bight was also keen.
These six miles were perilous.
"Soft as cheese!"
All that day the sun had fallen hot on the young ice in which the scattered pans of the floe were frozen. Doctor Luke recalled that in the afternoon he had splashed through an occasional pool of shallow water on the floe between Tumble Tickle and the short-cut trail to Our Harbour. Certainly some of the wider patches of green ice had been weakened to the breaking point. Here and there they must have been eaten clear through. It occurred to Doctor Luke – contemplating an advance with distaste – that these holes were like open sores.
And by and by the first brief barrier of new ice confronted Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail. They must cross it. A black film – the colour of water in that light – bridged the way from one pan to another. Neither Doctor Luke nor Billy Topsail would touch it. They leaped it easily. A few fathoms forward a second space halted them. Must they put foot on it? With a running start a man could – well, they chose not to touch the second space, but to leap it.
Soon a third interval interrupted them. No man could leap it. Doctor Luke cast about for another way. There was none. He must run across. A flush of displeasure ran over him. He scowled. Disinclination increased.
"Green ice!" said he.
"Let me try it, sir!"
"No."
"Ay, sir! I'm lighter."
"No."
Billy Topsail crossed then like a cat before he could be stopped – on tiptoe and swiftly; and he came to the other side with his heart in a flutter.
"Whew!"
The ice had yielded without breaking. It had creaked, perhaps – nothing worse. Doctor Luke crossed the space without accident. It was what is called "rubber ice." There was more of it – there were miles of it. As yet the pans were close together. Always however the intervals increased. The nearer the open sea the more wide-spread was the floe. Beyond – hauling down the Spotted Horses, which lay in the open – the proportion of new ice would be vastly greater.
At a trot, for the time, over the pans, which were flat, and in delicate, mincing little spurts across the bending ice, Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail proceeded. In a confidence that was somewhat flushed – they had rested – Doctor Luke went forward. And presently, midway of a lane of green ice, he heard a gurgle, as the ice bent under his weight. Water washed his boots. He had been on the lookout for holes. This hole he heard – the spurt and gurgle of it. He had not seen it.
"Back!" he shouted, in warning.
Billy ran back.
"All right, sir?"
Safe across, Doctor Luke grinned. It was a reaction of relief.
"Whew! Whew!" he whistled. "Try below."
Billy crossed below.
"Don't you think, sir," said he, doubtfully, "that we'd best go back?"
"Do you think so?"
Billy reflected.
"No, sir," said he, flushing.
"Neither do I. Come on."