CHAPTER XVIII
In Which Discretion Urges Doctor Luke to Lie Still in a Pool of Water
It was a mean light – this intermittent moonlight: with the clouds slow and thick, and the ominous bank of black cloud rising all the while from the horizon. A man should go slow in a light like that! But Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail must make haste. And by and by they caught ear of the sea breaking under the wind beyond the Little Spotted Horse. They were nearing the limits of the ice. In full moonlight the whitecaps flashed news of a tumultuous open. A rumble and splash of breakers came down with the gale from the point of the island. It indicated that the sea was working in the passage between the Spotted Horses and Blow-me-Down Dick of the Ragged Run coast. The waves would run under the ice – would lift it and break it. In this way the sea would eat its way through the passage. It would destroy the young ice. It would break the pans to pieces and rub them to slush.
Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail must make the Little Spotted Horse and cross the passage between the island and the Ragged Run coast.
"Come on!" said the Doctor again.
Whatever the issue of haste, they must carry on and make the best of a bad job. Otherwise they would come to Tickle-my-Ribs, between the Little Spotted Horse and Blow-me-Down Dick of Ragged Run, and be marooned from the mainshore. And there was another reason. It was immediate and desperately urgent. As the sea was biting off the ice in Tickle-my-Ribs so too it was encroaching upon the body of the ice in Anxious Bight.
Anxious Bight was breaking up. The scale of its dissolution was gigantic. Acres of ice were wrenched from the field at a time and then broken up by the sea. What was the direction of this swift melting? It might take any direction. And a survey of the sky troubled Doctor Luke no less than Billy Topsail. All this while the light had diminished. It was failing still. It was failing faster. There was less of the moon. By and by it would be wholly obscured.
"If we're delayed," Doctor Luke declared, "we'll be caught by the dark."
"Hear that, sir!" Billy exclaimed.
They listened.
"Breaking up fast!" said the Doctor.
Again there was a splitting crash. Another great fragment of the ice had broken away.
"Come on!" cried Billy, in alarm.
At first prolonged intervals of moonlight had occurred. Masses of cloud had gone driving across a pale and faintly starlit sky. A new proportion was disclosed. Now the stars were brilliant in occasional patches of deep sky. A glimpse of the moon was rare. From the northeast the ominous bank of black cloud had risen nearly overhead. It would eventually curtain both stars and moon and make a thick black night of it.
A man would surely lose his life on the ice in thick weather – on one or other of the reaches of new ice. And thereabouts the areas of young ice were wider. They were also more tender. Thin ice is a proverb of peril and daring. To tiptoe across the yielding film of these dimly visible stretches was instantly and dreadfully dangerous. It was horrifying. A man took his life in his hand every time he left a pan.
Doctor Luke was not insensitive. Neither was Billy Topsail. They began to sweat – not with labour, but with fear. When the ice bent under them, they gasped and held their breath. They were in livid terror of being dropped through into the sea. They were afraid to proceed – they dared not stand still; and they came each time to the solid refuge of a pan with breath drawn, teeth set, faces contorted, hands clenched – a shiver in the small of the back. This was more exhausting than the labour of the folded floe. Upon every occasion it was like escaping an abyss.
To achieve safety once, however, was not to win a final relief – it was merely to confront, in the same circumstances, a precisely similar peril. Neither Doctor Luke nor Billy Topsail was physically exhausted. Every muscle that they had was warm and alert. Yet they were weak. A repetition of suspense had unnerved them. A full hour of this and sometimes they chattered and shook in a nervous chill.
In the meantime they had approached the rocks of the Little Spotted Horse.
They rested a moment.
"Now for it, boy!" said the Doctor, then.
"Ay, ay, sir!"
"Sorry you came, Billy?"
Billy was a truthful boy – and no hero of the melodrama.
"I wisht we was across, sir," said he.
"So do I," the Doctor agreed. "Come," he added, heartily; "we'll go across!"
In the lee of the Little Spotted Horse the ice had gathered as in a back-current. It was close packed alongshore to the point of the island. Between this solidly frozen press of pans and the dissolving field in Anxious Bight there had been a lane of ruffled open water before the frost fell. It measured perhaps fifty yards. It was now black and still – sheeted with new ice which had been delayed in forming by the ripple of that exposed situation.
Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail had encountered nothing as doubtful. They paused on the brink. A long, thin line of solid pan-ice, ghostly white in the dusk beyond, was attached to the rocks of the Little Spotted Horse. It led all the way to Tickle-my-Ribs. They must make that line of solid ice. They must cross the wide lane of black, delicately frozen new ice that lay between and barred their way. And there was no way out of it.
Doctor Luke waited for the moon. When the light broke – a thin, transient gleam – he started.
"Wait," said he, "until I'm across."
A few fathoms forth the ice began to yield. A moment later Doctor Luke stopped short and recoiled. There was a hole – gaping wide and almost under his feet. He stopped. The water overflowed and the ice cracked. He must not stand still. To avoid a second hole he twisted violently to the right and almost plunged into a third opening. It seemed the ice was rotten from shore to shore.
And it was a long way across. Doctor Luke danced a zigzag towards the pan-ice under the cliffs – spurting forward and retreating and swerving. He did not pause. Had he paused he would have dropped through. When he was within two fathoms of the pan-ice a foot broke through and tripped him flat on his face. With his weight thus distributed he was momentarily held up. Water squirted and gurgled out of the break – an inch of water, forming a pool.
Doctor Luke lay still and expectant in this pool.
CHAPTER XIX
In Which Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail Hesitate in Fear on the Brink of Tickle-my-Ribs
Dolly West's mother still sat rocking by the kitchen fire. It was long past midnight now. Once more Uncle Joe West tiptoed in from the frosty night.
"Is she sleepin' still?" he whispered.
"Hush! She've jus' toppled off again. She's havin' a deal o' pain, Joe. An' she've been bleedin' again."
"Put her down on the bed, dear."
The woman shook her head. "I'm afeared 'twould start the wounds, Joe. I'm not wantin' t' start un again. Any sign o' Doctor Luke yet, Joe?"
"Not yet."
"He'll come soon."
"No; 'tis not near time. 'Twill be dawn afore he – "
"Soon, Joe."
"He'll be delayed by snow. The moon's near gone. 'Twill be black dark in half an hour. I felt a flake o' snow as I come in. An' he'll maybe wait at Mad Harry – "
"He's comin' by the Bight, Joe."
Dolly stirred – cried out – awakened with a start – and lifted her bandaged head a little.
She did not open her eyes.
"Is that you, Doctor Luke, sir?" she plainted.
"Hush!" the mother whispered. "'Tis not the Doctor yet."
"When – "
"He's comin'."
"I'll take a look," said Joe.
He went out again and stumbled down the path to Blow-me-Down Dick by Tickle-my-Ribs.
Doctor Luke lay still and expectant in the pool of water near the pan-ice and rocks of the Little Spotted Horse. He waited. Nothing happened. It was encouraging. But he did not dare stand up. Nor would he dare to get to his knees and crawl.
There was no help to be had from the agonized Billy Topsail.
Both knew it.
"Shall I come, sir?" Billy called.
"Stay where you are," Doctor Luke replied, "or we'll both drop through. Don't move."
"Ay, sir."
Presently Doctor Luke ventured delicately to take off a mitten – to extend his hand, to sink his finger-nails in the ice and attempt to draw himself forward. He tried again. It was a failure. His finger-nails were too short. He could merely scratch the ice. He reflected that if he did not concentrate his weight – that if he kept it distributed – he would not break through. And once more he tried to make use of his finger-nails.
There was no snow on this ice. It was a smooth, hard surface. It was dry. It turned out that the nails of the other hand were longer. Doctor Luke managed to gain half an inch before they slipped.
They slipped again – and again and again. It was hopeless. Doctor Luke lay still – pondering.
Billy Topsail's agony of anxiety increased.
"Is you safe, sir?"
"Stay where you are!"
"Ay, sir!"
Doctor Luke could not continue to lie still. Presently he would be frozen in the pool of water. In emergencies he was used to indulging in a simple philosophical reflection: A man can lose his life but once. Now he shot his gaff towards the pan-ice, to be rid of the incumbrance of it, and lifted himself on his palms and toes. By this the distribution of his weight was not greatly disturbed. It was not concentrated upon one point. It was divided by four and laid upon four points.
And there were no fearsome consequences. It was a hopeful experiment. Doctor Luke stepped by inches on his hands towards the pan-ice – dragging his toes. In this way he came to the line of solid ice under the cliffs of the Little Spotted Horse and gained the refuge of it. And then he directed the crossing of Billy Topsail, who was much lighter, and crossed safely. Whereupon they set out for the point of the Little Spotted Horse and the passage of Tickle-my-Ribs. And they were heartened.
A country physician might say of a muddy, midnight call, in the wind and dark of a wet night in the fall of the year, that the roads were bad. Doctor Luke would have said of the way from Our Harbour to the Little Spotted Horse that he had been "in a bit of a mess." Thus far there had been nothing extravagantly uncommon in the night's experience. Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail had merely encountered and survived the familiar difficulties of a passage of Anxious Bight in a period of critical weather in the spring of the year.
A folded floe and six miles of rubber ice were not sufficiently out of the way to constitute an impressive incident. Doctor Luke had fared better and worse in his time. So had Billy Topsail. All this was not a climax. It was something to be forgotten in a confusion of experiences of the same description. It would not remain very long in the memory of either. In what lay ahead, however – the passage of Tickle-my-Ribs – there was doubtless an adventure.
"She'll be heavin' in this wind," Billy Topsail said.
"We'll get across," Doctor Luke replied, confidently. "Come along!"
Tickle-my-Ribs was heaving. The sea had by this time eaten its way clear through the passage from the open to the first reaches of Anxious Bight and far and wide beyond. The channel was half a mile long – in width a quarter of a mile at the narrowest. Doctor Luke's path was determined. It must lead from the point of the island to the base of Blow-me-Down Dick and the adjoining fixed and solid ice of the narrows to Ragged Run Harbour. And ice choked the channel loosely from shore to shore.
It was a thin sheet of fragments – running through from the open. There was only an occasional considerable pan. A high sea ran outside. Waves from the open slipped under this field of little pieces and lifted it in running swells. In motion Tickle-my-Ribs resembled a vigorously shaken carpet. No single block of ice was at rest. The crossing would have been hazardous in the most favourable circumstances. And now aloft the moon and the ominous bank of black cloud had come close together.
Precisely as a country doctor might petulantly regard a stretch of hub-deep cross-road, Doctor Luke, the outport physician, when he came to the channel between the Little Spotted Horse and Blow-me-Down Dick of the Ragged Run coast, regarded the passage of Tickle-my-Ribs. Not many of the little pans would bear the weight of either himself or Billy Topsail. They would sustain it momentarily. Then they would tip or sink. There would be foothold only through the instant required to choose another foothold and leap towards it.
Always, moreover, the leap would have to be taken from sinking ground. When they came, by good chance, to a pan that would bear them up for a moment, they would have instantly to discover another heavy block to which to shape their agitated course. There would be no rest – no certainty beyond the impending moment. But leaping thus – alert and agile and daring – a man might —
Might? Mm-m – a man might! And he might not! There were contingencies. A man might leap short and find black water where he had depended upon a footing of ice – a man might land on the edge of a pan and fall slowly back for sheer lack of power to obtain a balance – a man might misjudge the strength of a pan to bear him up – a man might find no ice near enough for the next immediately imperative leap – a man might confront the appalling exigency of a lane of open water.
As a matter of fact, a man might be unable either to go forward or retreat. A man might be submerged and find the shifting floe closed over his head. A man might easily lose his life in the driving, swelling rush of the shattered floe through Tickle-my-Ribs. And there was the light to consider. A man might be caught in the dark. He would be in hopeless case if caught in the dark. And the light might —
Light was imperative. Doctor Luke glanced aloft.
"Whew!" he whistled. "What do you think, Billy?"
Billy was flat.
"I'd not try it!" said he.
"No?"
"No, sir!"
The moon and the ominous bank of black cloud were very close. There was snow in the air. A thickening flurry ran past.
Uncle Joe West was not on the lookout when Doctor Luke opened the kitchen door at Ragged Run Cove, and strode in, with Billy Topsail at his heels, and with the air of a man who had survived difficulties and was proud of it. Uncle Joe West was sitting by the fire, his face in his hands; and the mother of Dolly West – with Dolly still restlessly asleep in her arms – was rocking, rocking, as before. And Doctor Luke set to work without delay or explanation – in a way so gentle, with a voice so persuasive, with a hand so tender and sure, with a skill and wisdom so keen, that little Dolly West, who was brave enough, in any case, as you know, yielded the additional patience and courage that the simple means at hand for her relief required. Doctor Luke laved Dolly West's blue eyes until she could see again, and sewed up her wounds, that night, so that no scar remained, and in the broad light of the next day picked out grains of powder until not a single grain was left to disfigure the child.
CHAPTER XX
In Which Skinflint Sam of Ragged Run Finds Himself in a Desperate Predicament and Bad-Weather Tom West at Last Has What Skinflint Sam Wants
Well, now, when all this had been accomplished, and when Dolly had gone to bed with her mother, it occurred to Doctor Luke that he had not clapped eyes on Dolly's father, Bad-Weather Tom West.
"Where's Tom?" said he.
Joe started.
"Wh-wh-where's Tom?" he stammered.
"Ay."
"Have you not heard about Tom?"
Doctor Luke was puzzled.
"No," said he; "not a word."
Joe commanded himself for the tale he had to tell.
"Skipper Tom West," Joe began, "made a wonderful adventure of life in the end. I doubt if ever a man done such a queer thing afore. 'Twas queer enough, sir, I'll be bound, an' you'll say so when I tells you; but 'twas a brave, kind thing, too, though it come perilous close t' the line o' foul play – but that's how you looks at it. Bad-Weather Tom," he went on, "come back from seein' you, sir, in a silent mood. An' no wonder! You told un, sir – well, you told un what you told un, about what he was to expect in this life; an' the news lay hard on his mood. He told nobody here what that news was; nor could the gossips gain a word from his wife.
"'What's the matter with Bad-Weather Tom?' says they.
"'Ask Tom,' says she.
"An' they asked Tom.
"'Tom,' says they, 'what's gone along o' you, anyhow?'
"'Well,' says Tom, 'I found out something I never knowed afore. That's all that's the matter with me.'
"'Did Doctor Luke tell you?'
"'When I talks with Doctor Luke,' says Tom, 'I always finds out something I never knowed afore.'
"Whatever you told un, sir – an' I knows what you told un – it made a changed man o' Bad-Weather Tom. He mooned a deal, an' he would talk no more o' the future, but dwelt upon the shortness of a man's days an' the quantity of his sin, an' laboured like mad, an' read the Scriptures by candle-light, an' sot more store by going to church and prayer-meetin' than ever afore. Labour? Ecod, how that poor man laboured – after you told un. While there was light! An' until he fair dropped in his tracks o' sheer weariness!
"'Twas back in the forest – haulin' fire-wood with the dogs an' storin' it away back o' this little cottage under Lend-a-Hand Hill.
"'Dear man!' says Skinflint Sam; 'you've fire-wood for half a dozen winters.'
"'They'll need it,' says Tom.
"'Ay,' says Sam; 'but will you lie idle next winter?'
"'Nex' winter?' says Tom. An' he laughed. 'Oh, nex' winter,' says he, 'I'll have another occupation.'
"'Movin' away, Tom?'
"'Well,' says Tom, 'I is an' I isn't.'
"There come a day not long ago when seals was thick on the floe off Ragged Run. You mind the time, sir?" Billy Topsail "minded" the time well enough. And so did Doctor Luke. It was the time when Billy Topsail and Teddy Brisk were carried to sea with the dogs on the ice. "Well, you could see the seals with the naked eye from Lack-a-Day Head. A hundred thousand black specks swarmin' over the ice three miles an' more to sea. Ragged Run went mad for slaughter – jus' as it did yesterday, sir. 'Twas a fair time for offshore sealin', too: a blue, still day, with the look an' feel o' settled weather.
"The ice had come in from the current with a northeasterly gale, a wonderful mixture o' Arctic bergs and Labrador pans, all blindin' white in the spring sun; an' 'twas a field so vast, an' jammed so tight against the coast, that there wasn't much more than a lane or two an' a Dutchman's breeches of open water within sight from the heads. Nobody looked for a gale o' offshore wind t' blow that ice t' sea afore dawn o' the next day.
"'A fine, soft time, lads!' says Skinflint Sam. 'I 'low I'll go out with the Ragged Run crew.'
"'Skipper Sam,' says Bad-Weather Tom, 'you're too old a man t' be on the ice.'
"'Ay,' says Sam; 'but I wants t' bludgeon another swile afore I dies.'
"'But you creaks, man!'
"'Ah, well,' says Sam; 'I'll show the lads I'm able t' haul a swile ashore.'
"'Small hope for such as you on a movin' floe!'
"'Last time, Tom,' says Sam.
"'Last time, true enough,' says Tom, 'if that ice starts t' sea with a breeze o' wind behind!'
"'Oh, well, Tom,' says Sam, 'I'll creak along out an' take my chances. If the wind comes up I'll be as spry as I'm able.'
"It come on to blow in the afternoon. But 'twas short warnin' o' offshore weather. A puff o' gray wind come down: a saucier gust went by; an' then a swirl o' galeish wind jumped off the heads an' come scurrying over the pans. At the first sign o' wind, Skinflint Sam took for home, lopin' over the ice as fast as his lungs an' old legs would take un when pushed, an' nobody worried about he any more. He was in such mad haste that the lads laughed behind un as he passed.
"Most o' the Ragged Run crew followed, draggin' their swiles; an' them that started early come safe t' harbour with the fat. But there's nothin' will master a man's caution like the lust o' slaughter. Give a Newfoundlander a club, an' show un a swile-pack, an' he'll venture far from safety. 'Twas not until a flurry o' snow come along of a sudden that the last o' the crew dropped what they was at an' begun t' jump for shore like a pack o' jack-rabbits.
"With snow in the wind 'twas every man for himself. An' that means no mercy an' less help.
"By this time the ice had begun t' feel the wind. 'Twas restless. An' a bad promise. The pans crunched an' creaked as they settled more at ease. The ice was goin' abroad. As the farther fields drifted off t' sea, the floe fell loose inshore. Lanes an' pools opened up. The cake-ice tipped an' went awash under the weight of a man. Rough goin', ecod! There was no tellin' when open water would cut a man off where he stood.
"An' the wind was whippin' offshore, an' the snow was like dust in a man's eyes an' mouth, an' the landmarks o' Ragged Run was nothin' but shadows in a mist o' snow t' windward.
"Nobody knowed where Skinflint Sam was. Nobody thought about Sam. An' wherever poor old Skinflint was – whether safe ashore or creakin' shoreward against the wind on his last legs – he must do for himself. 'Twas no time t' succour rich or poor. Every man for himself an' the devil take the hindmost!
"Bound out, in the mornin', Bad-Weather Tom had fetched his rodney through the lanes. By luck an' good conduct he had managed t' get the wee boat a fairish way out. He had beached her there on the floe – a big pan, close by a hummock which he marked with care. And 'twas for Tom West's little rodney that the seven last men o' Ragged Run was jumpin'. With her afloat – an' the pack loosenin' inshore under the wind – they could make harbour well enough afore the gale worked up the water in the lee o' the Ragged Run hills.
"But she was a mean, small boat. There was room for six, with safety – but room for no more. There was no room for seven. 'Twas a nasty mess, t' be sure. You couldn't expect nothin' else. But there wasn't no panic. Ragged Run men is accustomed t' tight places. An' they took this one easy. Them that got there first launched the boat an' stepped in. No fight: no fuss.
"It just happened t' be Eleazer Butt that was left. 'Twas Eleazer's ill-luck. An' Eleazer was up in years an' had fell behind comin' over the ice.
"'No room for me?' says he.
"'Twas sure death t' be left on the ice. The wind begun t' taste o' frost. An' 'twas jumpin' up. 'Twould carry the floe far an' scatter it broadcast.
"'See for yourself, lad,' says Tom.
"'Pshaw!' says Eleazer. 'That's too bad!'
"'You isn't no sorrier than me, b'y.'
"Eleazer tweaked his beard. 'Dang it!' says he. 'I wisht there was room. I'm hungry for my supper.'
"'Let un in,' says one of the lads. ''Tis even chances she'll float it out.'
"'Well,' says Eleazer, 'I doesn't want t' make no trouble – '
"'Come aboard,' says Tom. 'An' make haste.'
"'If she makes bad weather,' says Eleazer, 'I'll get out.'
"We pushed off from the pan. 'Twas failin' dusk by this time. The wind blowed black. The frost begun t' bite. Snow come thick – just as if, ecod, somebody up aloft was shakin' the clouds, like bags, in the gale! An' the rodney was deep an' ticklish.
"Had the ice not kep' the water flat in the lanes an' pools, either Eleazer would have had to get out, as he promised, or she would have swamped like a cup. As it was, handled like dynamite, she done well enough; an' she might have made harbour within the hour had she not been hailed by Skinflint Sam from a small pan o' ice midway between."
Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail were intent on the tale.
"Go on," said Doctor Luke.
"A queer finish, sir."
"What happened?"