Billy Topsail & Company: A Story for Boys

“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 morning that Bagg, the London gutter-snipe, having been landed at Ruddy Cove from the mail-boat the night before–this being in the fall before Donald North played ferryman between the standing edge and the floe–it was on such a foggy morning, I say, that Bagg made the acquaintance of Billy Topsail and Jimmie Grimm.

“Hello!” said Billy Topsail.

“Hello!” Jimmie Grimm echoed.

“You blokes live ’ere?” Bagg whined.

“Uh-huh,” said Billy Topsail.

“This yer ’ome?” pursued Bagg.

Billy nodded.

“Wisht I was ’ome!” sighed Bagg. “I say,” he added, “which way’s ’ome from ’ere?”

“You mean Skipper ’Zekiel’s cottage?”

“I mean Lun’on,” said Bagg.

“Don’t know,” Billy answered. “You better ask Uncle Tommy Luff. He’ll tell you.”

Bagg had been exported for adoption. The gutters of London are never exhausted of their product of malformed little bodies and souls; they provide waifs for the remotest colonies of the empire. So, as it chanced, Bagg had been exported to Newfoundland–transported from his native alleys to this vast and lonely place. Bagg was scrawny and sallow, with bandy legs and watery eyes and a fantastic cranium; and he had a snub nose, which turned blue when a cold wind struck it. But when he was landed from the mail-boat he found a warm welcome, just the same, from Ruth Rideout, Ezekiel’s wife, by whom he had been taken for adoption.

Later in the day, old Uncle Tommy Luff, just in from the fishing grounds off the Mull, where he had been jigging for stray cod all day long, had moored his punt to the stage-head, and he was now coming up the path with his sail over his shoulder, his back to the wide, flaring sunset. Bagg sat at the turn to Squid Cove, disconsolate. The sky was heavy with glowing clouds, and the whole earth was filled with a glory such as he had not known before.

“Shall I arst the ol’ beggar when ’e gets ’ere?” mused Bagg.

Uncle Tommy looked up with a smile.

“I say, mister,” piped Bagg, when the old man came abreast, “which way’s ’ome from ’ere?”

“Eh, b’y?” said Uncle Tommy.

“’Ome, sir. Which way is ’ome from ’ere?”

In that one word Bagg’s sickness of heart expressed itself–in the quivering, wistful accent.

“Is you ’Zekiel Rideout’s lad?” said Uncle Tommy.

“Don’t yer make no mistake, mister,” said Bagg, somewhat resentfully. “I ain’t nothink t’ nobody.”

“I knowed you was that lad,” Uncle Tommy drawled, “when I seed the size o’ you. Sure, b’y, you knows so well as me where ’Zekiel’s place is to. ’Tis t’ the head o’ Burnt Cove, there, with the white railin’, an’ the tater patch aft o’ the place where they spreads the fish. Sure, you knows the way home.”

“I mean Lun’on, mister,” Bagg urged.

“Oh, home!” said Uncle Tommy. “When I was a lad like you, b’y, just here from the West Country, me fawther told me if I steered a course out o’ the tickle an’ kept me starn fair for the meetin’-house, I’d sure get home t’ last.”

“Which way, mister?”

Uncle Tommy pointed out to sea–to that far place in the east where the dusk was creeping up over the horizon.

“There, b’y,” said he. “Home lies there.”

Then Uncle Tommy shifted his sail to the other shoulder and trudged on up the hill; and Bagg threw himself on the ground and wept until his sobs convulsed his scrawny little body.

“I want to go ’ome!” he sobbed. “I want to go ’ome!”

No wonder that Bagg, London born and bred, wanted to go home to the crowd and roar and glitter of the streets to which he had been used. It was fall in Ruddy Cove, when the winds are variable and gusty, when the sea is breaking under the sweep of a freshening breeze and yet heaving to the force of spent gales. Fogs, persistently returning with the east wind, filled the days with gloom and dampness. Great breakers beat against the harbour rocks; the swish and thud of them never ceased, nor was there any escape from it.

Bagg went to the fishing grounds with Ezekiel Rideout, where he jigged for the fall run of cod; and there he was tossed about in the lop, and chilled to the marrow by the nor’easters. Many a time the punt ran heeling and plunging for the shelter of the harbour, with the spray falling upon Bagg where he cowered amidships; and once she was nearly undone by an offshore gale. In the end Bagg learned consideration for the whims of a punt and acquired an unfathomable respect for a gust and a breaking wave.

Thus the fall passed, when the catching and splitting and drying of fish was a distraction. Then came the winter–short, drear days, mere breaks in the night, when there was no relief from the silence and vasty space round about, and the dark was filled with the terrors of snow and great winds and loneliness. At last the spring arrived, when the ice drifted out of the north in vast floes, bearing herds of hair-seal within reach of the gaffs of the harbour folk, and was carried hither and thither with the wind.

Then there came a day when the wind gathered the dumpers and pans in one broad mass and jammed it against the coast. The sea, where it had lain black and fretful all winter long, was now covered and hidden. The ice stretched unbroken from the rocks of Ruddy Cove to the limit of vision in the east. And Bagg marvelled. There seemed to be a solid path from Ruddy Cove straight away in the direction in which Uncle Tommy Luff had said that England lay.

Notwithstanding the comfort and plenty of his place with Aunt Ruth Rideout and Uncle Ezekiel, Bagg still longed to go back to the gutters of London.

“I want to go ’ome,” he often said to Billy Topsail and Jimmie Grimm.

“What for?” Billy once demanded.

“Don’t know,” Bagg replied. “I jus’ want to go ’ome.”

At last Bagg formed a plan.

CHAPTER VIII

In Which Bagg, Unknown to Ruddy Cove, Starts for Home, and, After Some Difficulty, Safely Gets There

Uncle Tommy Luff, coming up the hill one day when the ice was jammed against the coast and covered the sea as far as sight carried, was stopped by Bagg at the turn to Squid Cove.

“I say, mister,” said Bagg, “which way was you tellin’ me Lun’on was from ’ere?”

Uncle Tommy pointed straight out to the ice-covered sea.

“That way?” asked Bagg.

“Straight out o’ the tickle with the meetin’-house astarn.”

“Think a bloke could ever get there?” Bagg inquired.

Uncle Tommy laughed. “If he kep’ on walkin’ he’d strike it some time,” he answered.

“Sure?” Bagg demanded.

“If he kep’ on walkin’,” Uncle Tommy repeated, smiling.

This much may be said of the ice: the wind which carries it inshore inevitably sweeps it out to sea again, in an hour or a day or a week, as it may chance. The whole pack–the wide expanse of enormous fragments of fields and glaciers–is in the grip of the wind, which, as all men know, bloweth where it listeth. A nor’east gale sets it grinding against the coast, but when the wind veers to the west the pack moves out and scatters.

If a man is caught in that great rush and heaving, he has nothing further to do with his own fate but wait. He escapes if he has strength to survive until the wind blows the ice against the coast again–not else. When the Newfoundlander starts out to the seal hunt he makes sure, in so far as he can, that no change in the wind is threatened.

Uncle Ezekiel Rideout kept an eye on the weather that night.

“Be you goin’, b’y?” said Ruth, looking up from her weaving.

Ezekiel had just come in from Lookout Head, where the watchers had caught sight of the seals, swarming far off in the shadows.

“They’s seals out there,” he said, “but I don’t know as us’ll go the night. ’Tis like the wind’ll haul t’ the west.”

“What do Uncle Tommy Luff say?”

“That ’twill haul t’ the west an’ freshen afore midnight.”

“Sure, then, you’ll not be goin’, b’y?”

“I don’t know as anybody’ll go,” said he. “Looks a bit too nasty for ’em.”

Nevertheless, Ezekiel put some pork and hard-bread in his dunny bag, and made ready his gaff and tow-lines, lest, by chance, the weather should promise fair at midnight.

“Where’s that young scamp?” said Ezekiel, with a smile–a smile which expressed a fine, indulgent affection.

“Now, I wonder where he is?” said Ruth, pausing in her work. “He’ve been gone more’n an hour, sure.”

“Leave un bide where he is so long as he likes,” said he. “Sure he must be havin’ a bit o’ sport. ’Twill do un good.”

Ezekiel sat down by the fire and dozed. From time to time he went to the door to watch the weather. From time to time Aunt Ruth listened for the footfalls of Bagg coming up the path. After a long time she put her work away. The moon was shining through a mist; so she sat at the window, for from there she could see the boy when he rounded the turn to the path. She wished he would come home.

“I’ll go down t’ Topsail’s t’ see what’s t’ be done about the seals,” said Ezekiel.

“Keep a lookout for the b’y,” said she.

Ezekiel was back in half an hour. “Topsail’s gone t’ bed,” said he. “Sure, no one’s goin’ out the night. The wind’s hauled round t’ the west, an’ ’twill blow a gale afore mornin’. The ice is movin’ out slow a’ready. Be that lad out yet?”

“Yes, b’y,” said Ruth, anxiously. “I wisht he’d come home.”

“I–I–wisht he would,” said Ezekiel.

Ruth went to the door and called Bagg by name.

But there was no answer.

Offshore, four miles offshore, Bagg was footing it for England as fast as his skinny little legs would carry him. The way was hard–a winding, uneven path over the pack. It led round clumpers, over ridges which were hard to scale, and across broad, slippery pans. The frost had glued every fragment to its neighbour; for the moment the pack formed one solid mass, continuous and at rest, but the connection between its parts was of the slenderest, needing only a change of the wind or the ground swell of the sea to break it everywhere.

The moon was up. It was half obscured by a haze which was driving out from the shore, to which quarter the wind had now fairly veered. The wind was rising–coming in gusts, in which, soon, flakes of snow appeared. But there was light enough to keep to the general direction out from the coast, and the wind but helped Bagg along.

“I got t’ ’urry up,” thought he.

The boy looked behind. Ruddy Cove was within sight. He was surprised that the coast was still so near.

“Got t’ ’urry up a bit more,” he determined.

He was elated–highly elated. He thought that his old home was but a night’s journey distant; at most, not more than a night and a day, and he had more than food enough in his pockets to last through that. He was elated; but from time to time a certain regret entered in, and it was not easily cast out. He remembered the touch of Aunt Ruth’s lips, and her arm, which had often stolen about him in the dusk; and he remembered that Uncle Ezekiel had beamed upon him most affectionately, in times of mischief and good works alike. He had been well loved in Ruddy Cove.

“Wisht I’d told Aunt Ruth,” Bagg thought.

On he trudged–straight out to sea.

“Got t’ ’urry up,” thought he.

Again the affection of Aunt Ruth occurred to him. She had been very kind; and as for Uncle ’Zeke–why, nobody could have been kinder.

“Wisht I ’ad told Aunt Ruth,” Bagg regretted. “Might o’ said good-bye anyhow.”

The ice was now drifting out; but the wind had not yet risen to that measure of strength wherewith it tears the pack to pieces, nor had the sea attacked it. There was a gap of two hundred yards between the coast rocks and the edge of the ice, but that was far, far back, and hidden from sight. The pack was drifting slowly, smoothly, still in one compact mass. Its motion was not felt by Bagg, who pressed steadily on toward England, eager again, but fast growing weary.

“Got t’ ’urry up,” thought he.

But presently he must rest; and while he rested the wind gathered strength. It went singing over the pack, pressing ever with a stronger hand upon its dumpers and ridges–pushing it, everywhere, faster and faster out to sea. The pack was on the point of breaking in pieces under the strain, but the wind still fell short of the power to rend it. There was a greater volume of snow falling; it was driven past in thin, swirling clouds. Hence the light of the moon began to fail. Far away, at the rim of the pack, the sea was eating its way in, but the swish and crash of its work was too far distant to be heard.

“I ain’t nothink t’ nobody but Aunt Ruth,” Bagg thought, as he rose to continue the tramp.

On he went, the wind lending him wings; but at last his legs gave out at the knees, and he sat down again to rest. This was in the lee of a clumper, where he was comfortably sheltered. He was still warm–in a glow of heat, indeed–and his hope was still with him. So far he had suffered from nothing save weariness. So he began to dream of what he would do when he got home, just as all men do when they come near, once again, to that old place where they were born. The wind was now a gale, blowing furiously; the pack was groaning in its outlying parts.

“Nothink t’ nobody,” Bagg grumbled, on his way once more.

Then he stopped dead–in terror. He had heard the breaking of an ice-pan–a great clap and rumble, vanishing in the distance. The noise was repeated, all roundabout–bursting from everywhere, rising to a fearful volume: near at hand, a cracking; far off, a continuing roar. The pack was breaking up. Each separate part was torn from another, and the noise of the rending was great. Each part ground against its neighbour on every side. The weaker pans were crushed like egg-shells. Then the whole began to feel the heave of the sea.

“It’s a earthquake!” thought Bagg. “I better ’urry up.”

He looked back over the way he had come–searching the shadows for Ruddy Cove. But the coast was lost to sight.

“Must be near acrost, now,” he thought. “I’ll ’urry up.”

So he turned his back on Ruddy Cove and ran straight out to sea, for he thought that England was nearer than the coast he had left. He was now upon a pan, both broad and thick–stout enough to withstand the pressure of the pack. It was a wide field of ice, which the cold of the far North, acting through many years, it may be, had made strong. Elsewhere the pans were breaking–were lifting themselves out of the press and falling back in pieces–were being ground to finest fragments. This mighty confusion of noise and wind and snow and night, and the upheaval of the whole world roundabout, made the soul of Bagg shiver within him. It surpassed the terrors of his dreams.

“Guess I never will get ’ome,” thought he.

Soon he came to the edge of the pan. Beyond, where the pack was in smaller blocks, the sea was swelling beneath it. The ice was all heaving and swaying. He dared not venture out upon this shifting ground. So he ran up and down, seeking a path onward; but he discovered none. Meantime, the parts of the pack had fallen into easier positions; the noise of crunching, as the one ground against the other, had somewhat abated. The ice continued its course outward, under the driving force of the wind, but the pressure was relieved. The pans fell away from one another. Lakes and lanes of water opened up. The pan upon which Bagg chanced to find himself in the great break-up soon floated free. There was now no escape from it.

Bagg retreated from the edge, for the seas began to break there.

“Wisht I was ’ome again,” he sobbed.

This time he did not look towards England, but wistfully back to Ruddy Cove.

The gale wasted away in the night. The next day was warm and sunny on all that coast. An ice-pack hung offshore from Fortune Harbour. In the afternoon it began to creep in with a light wind. The first pans struck the coast at dusk. The folk of the place were on the Head, on the lookout for the sign of a herd of seal. Just before night fell they spied a black speck, as far out from shore as their eyes could see.

“They’ll be seals out there the morrow,” the men were all agreed.

So they went home and prepared to set out at dawn of the next day. In the night, the wind swept the whole pack in, to the last lagging pan. The ice was all jammed against the coast–a firm, vast expanse, stretching to the horizon, and held in place by the wind, which continued strong and steady. The men of Fortune Harbour went confidently out to the hunt. At noon, when they were ten miles off the shore, they perceived the approach of a small, black figure.

The meeting came soon afterwards, for the folk of Fortune Harbour, being both curious and quick to respond to need, made haste.

“I say, mister,” said Bagg, briskly, addressing old John Forsyth, “yer ’aven’t got no ’am, ’ave yer?”

The men of Fortune Harbour laughed.

“Or nothink else, ’ave yer?” Bagg continued, hopefully. “I’m a bit ’ungry.”

“Sure, b’y,” said Forsyth. “I’ve a biscuit an’ a bit o’ pork.”

“’Ave yer, now?” said Bagg. “Would yer mind giv–”

But his hands were already full. A moment later his mouth was in the same condition.

“How’d you come out here?” said Forsyth.

“Swep’ out,” said Bagg. “I say, mister,” he added, between munches, “which way would yer say my ’ome was from ’ere?”

“Where’s your home?”

“Ruddy Cove,” said Bagg.

“’Tis fifteen mile up the coast.”

“’Ow would you get there quickest if yer ’ad to?”

“We’ll take care o’ you, b’y,” said Forsyth. “We’ll put you t’ Ruddy Cove in a skiff, when the ice goes out. Seems t’ me,” he added, “you must be the boy Ezekiel Rideout took. Isn’t you Ezekiel Rideout’s boy?”

“Bet yer life I am,” said Bagg.

CHAPTER IX

In Which Jimmie Grimm and Billy Topsail, Being Added Up and Called a Man, Are Shipped For St. John’s, With Bill o’ Burnt Bay, Where They Fall In With Archie Armstrong, Sir Archibald’s Son, and Bill o’ Burnt Bay Declines to Insure the “First Venture”

Of course, Donald North, who had been ferryman to his father, had no foolishly romantic idea of his experience on that pan of ice; nor had Jimmie Grimm, nor had Billy Topsail. Donald North would not have called it an adventure, nor himself a hero; he would have said, without any affectation of modesty, “Oh, that was jus’ a little mess!” The thing had come in the course of the day’s work: that was all. Something had depended upon him, and, greatly to his elation, he had “made good.” It was no more to him than a hard tackle to a boy of the American towns. Any sound American boy–any boy of healthy courage and clean heart–would doubtless have taken Job North off the drifting floe; and Donald North, for his part, would no doubt have made the tackle and saved the goal–though frightened to a greenish pallor–had he ever been face to face with the necessity. Had he ever survived a football game, he would have thought himself a hero, and perhaps have boasted more than was pleasant; but to have taken a larger chance with his life on a pan of ice was so small and usual a thing as presently to be forgotten.

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