Duncan Norman
The Adventures of Billy Topsail
CHAPTER XVI
Describing How Billy Topsail Set out for Ruddy Cove with Her Majesty's Mail and Met with Catastrophe
THROUGH the long, evil-tempered winter, when ice and high winds keep the coasting boats from the outports, the Newfoundland mails are carried by hand from settlement to settlement, even to the farthermost parts of the bleak peninsula to the north.
Arch Butt's link in the long chain was from Burnt Bay to Ruddy Cove. Once a week, come wind, blizzard or blinding sunlight, with four dollars and a half to reward him at the end of it, he made the eighty miles of wilderness and sea, back and forth, with the mail-bag on his broad back.
No man of the coast, save he, dared face that stretch in all weathers. It may be that he tramped a league, skated a league, sailed a league, sculled a league, groped his way through a league of night, breasted his way through a league of wind, picked his way over a league of shifting ice.
To be sure, he chose the way which best favoured his progress and least frayed the thread upon which his life hung.
"Seems t' me, b'y," he said to his mate from New Bay, when the great gale of '98 first appeared in the northeast sky – "seems t' me we may make Duck Foot Cove the night, safe enough."
"Maybe, lad," was the reply, after a long, dubious survey of the rising clouds. "Maybe we'll get clear o' the gale, but 'twill be a close call, whatever (at any rate)."
"Maybe," said Arch. "'Twould be well t' get Her Majesty's mail so far as Duck Foot Cove, whatever."
When Arch Butt made Duck Foot Cove that night, he was on the back of his mate, who had held to him, through all peril, with such courage as makes men glorious. Ten miles up the bay, his right foot had been crushed in the ice, which the sea and wind had broken into unstable fragments. Luff of New Bay had left him in the cottage of Billy Topsail's uncle, Saul Ride, by the Head, the only habitation in the cove, and made the best of his own way to the harbours of the west coast of the bay. Three days' delay stared the Ruddy Cove mailman in the face.
"Will you not carry the mail t' Ruddy Cove, Saul Ride?" he demanded, when he had dressed his foot, and failed, stout as he was, to bear the pain of resting his weight upon it.
"'Tis too far in a gale for my old legs," said Ride, "an' – "
"But 'tis Her Majesty's mail!" cried Arch. "Won't you try, b'y?"
"An I had a chance t' make it, I'd try, quick enough," said Ride sharply; "but 'twould be not only me life, but the mail I'd lose. The ice do be broken up 'tween here an' Creepy Bluff; an' not even Arch Butt, hisself, could walk the hills."
"Three days lost!" Arch groaned. "All the letters three days late! An' all – "
"Letters!" Ride broke in scornfully. "Letters, is it? Don't you fret about they. A love letter for the parson's daughter; the price o' fish from St. John's for the old skipper; an' a merchant's account for every fisherman t' the harbour: they be small things t' risk life for."
The mailman laid his hand on the leather bag at his side. He fingered the government seal tenderly and his eyes flashed splendidly when he looked up.
"'Tis Her Majesty's mail!" he said. "Her Majesty's mail! Who knows what they be in this bag. Maybe, b'y – maybe – maybe they's a letter for old Aunt Esther Bludgel. She've waited this three year for a letter from that boy," he continued. "Maybe 'tis in there now. Sure, b'y, an' I believe 'tis in there. Saul Ride, the mail must go!"
A touch of the bruised foot on the floor brought the mailman groaning to his chair again. If the mail were to go to Ruddy Cove that night, it was not to be carried on his back: that much was evident. Saul Ride gazed at him steadily for a moment. Something of the younger man's fine regard for duty communicated itself to him. There had been a time – the days of his strength – when he, too, would have thought of duty before danger. He went abstractly to the foot of the loft stair.
"Billy!" he called. "Billy!"
"Ay, Uncle Saul," was the quick response.
"I wants you, b'y."
Billy Topsail came swiftly down the stair. He was spending a week with his lonely Uncle Saul at Duck Foot Cove. A summons at that hour meant pressing service – need of haste. What was the call? Were they all well at home? He glanced from one man to the other.
"B'y," said Ride, with a gesture towards the mail-bag, "will you carry that bag to Ruddy Cove? Will – "
"Will you carry Her Majesty's mail t' Ruddy Cove?" Arch Butt burst out. His voice thrilled Billy, as he continued: "Her Majesty's mail!"
"'Tis but that black bag, b'y," Ride said quietly. "Will you take it t' Ruddy Cove t'-night? Please yourself about it."
"Ay," said Billy quickly. "When?"
"'Twill be light enough in four hours," said the mailman.
"Go back t' bed, b'y," Ride said. "I'll wake you when 'tis time t' be off."
Five minutes later the boy was sound asleep.
No Newfoundlander ventures out upon the ice without his gaff – a nine-foot pole, made of light, tough dog-wood, and iron-shod. It was with his own true gaff that Billy felt his way out of Duck Foot Cove as the night cleared away.
The sea had abated somewhat with the wind. In the bay beyond the cove, the broken ice was freezing into one vast, rough sheet, solid as the coast rocks on the pans, but unsafe, and deceptive over the channels between. The course was down the bay, skirting the shore, to Creepy Bluff, then overland to Ruddy Cove, which is a port of the open sea: in all, twenty-one miles, with the tail of the gale to beat against.
"Feel every step o' the way till the light comes strong," had been old Saul Ride's last word to the boy. "Strike hard with your gaff before you put your foot down."
Billy kept his gaff before him – feeling his way much as a blind man taps the pavement as he goes along a city street. The search for solid ice led him this way and that, but his progress towards Creepy Bluff, the shadowy outline of which he soon could see, steadily continued. He surmised that it was still blowing hard in the open, beyond the shelter of the islands; and he wondered if the wind would sweep him off his feet when he essayed to cross Sloop Run, down which it ran, unbroken, from the sea to the bluff.
"Her Majesty's mail!" he muttered, echoing the thrill in the mailman's voice. "Her Majesty's mail!"
When the light was stronger – but it was not yet break of day – he thought to make greater haste by risking more. Now and again he chanced himself on a suspicious-looking black sheet. Now and again he ran nimbly over many yards of rubber ice, which yielded and groaned, but did not break. Often he ventured where Arch Butt would not have dared take his massive body. All this he did, believing always that he should not delay the Gull Arm mailman, who might even then be waiting for him in Ruddy Cove.
But when he had covered six miles of the route, he came to a wide channel which was not yet frozen over. It lay between two large pans. How far he might have to diverge from his course to cross without risk, he could not tell. He was impressed with the fact that, once across, the way lay clear before him – a long stretch of solid ice.
"Sure, I must cross here," he thought.
He sought for a large cake of floating ice, that he might ferry himself across with his gaff. None great enough to bear his weight was to be seen – none, at least, within reach of his gaff. There were small cakes a-plenty; these were fragments heavy enough to bear him for but an instant. Could he cross on them? He thought he might leap from one to the other so swiftly that none would be called upon to sustain his full weight, and thus pass safely over.
With care he chose the path he would follow. Then, without hesitation, he leaped for the first cake – passed to the second – to the third – to the fourth – stepping so lightly from one to the other that the water did not touch the soles of his boots. In a moment, he was whistling on his way on the other side, leaving the channel ice bobbing excitedly behind him.
Soon he broke off whistling and began to sing. On he trudged, piping merrily:
'Way down on Pigeon Pond Island,
When daddy comes home from swilin',6
Cakes and tea for breakfast,
Pork and duff for dinner,
Cakes and tea for supper,
'Way down on Pigeon Pond Island.
At noon he came to an expanse of bad ice. He halted at the edge of it to eat a bit of the hard bread and dried venison in his nunny-bag. Then, forward again! He advanced with great caution, sounding every step, on the alert for thin places. A mile of this and he had grown weary. He was not so quick, not so sure, in his estimate of the strength of the ice. The wind, now blowing in stronger gusts, brought the water to his eyes and impaired his sight. He did not regret his undertaking, but he began ardently to wish that Creepy Bluff were nearer. Thus moved, his pace increased – with ever-increasing peril to himself. He must make haste!
What befell the boy came suddenly. He trusted his feet to a drift of snow. Quick as a flash, and all unready, he was submerged in the water beneath.
CHAPTER XVII
Billy Topsail Wrings Out His Clothes and Finds Himself Cut off From Shore by Thirty Yards of Heaving Ice
BILLY could swim – could swim like any Newfoundland dog bred in Green Bay. Moreover, the life he led – the rugged, venturesome calling of the shore fishermen – had inured him to sudden danger. First of all he freed himself from the cumbersome mail-bag. He would not have abandoned it had he not been in such case as when, as the Newfoundlanders say, it was "every hand for his life."
Then he made for the surface with swift, strong strokes. A few more strokes brought him to the edge of the ice. He clambered out, still gasping for breath, and turned about to account to himself for his predicament.
The drift of snow had collapsed; he observed that it had covered some part of a wide hole, and that the exposed water was almost of a colour with the ice beyond – a polished black. Hence, he did not bitterly blame himself for the false step, as he might have done had he plunged himself into obvious danger through carelessness. He did not wonder that he had been deceived.
Her Majesty's mail, so far as the boy could determine, was slowly sinking to the bottom of the bay.
There was no help in regret. To escape from the bitter wind and the dusk, now fast falling, was the present duty. He could think of all the rest when he had leisure to sit before the fire and dream. He took off his jacket and wrung it out – a matter of some difficulty, for it was already stiff with frost. His shirt followed – then his boots and his trousers. Soon he was stripped to his rosy skin. The wind, sweeping in from the open sea, stung him as it whipped past.
When the last garment was wrung out he was shivering, and his teeth were chattering so fast that he could not keep them still. Dusk soon turns to night on this coast, and the night comes early. There was left but time enough to reach the first of the goat-paths at Creepy Bluff, two miles away – not time to finish the overland tramp to Ruddy Cove – before darkness fell.
When he was about to dress, his glance chanced to pass over the water. The mail-bag – it could be nothing else – was floating twenty-yards off the ice. It had been prepared with cork for such accidents, which not infrequently befall it.
"'Tis Her Majesty's mail, b'y," Billy could hear the mailman say.
"But 'tis more than I can carry t' Ruddy Cove now," he thought.
Nevertheless, he made no move to put on his shirt. He continued to look at the mail-bag. "'Tis the mail – gov'ment mail," he thought again. Then, after a rueful look at the water: "Sure, nobody'll know that it floated. 'Tis as much as I can do t' get myself safe t' Gull Cove. I'd freeze on the way t' Ruddy Cove."
There was no comfort in these excuses. There, before him, was the bag. It was in plain sight. It had not sunk. He would fail in his duty to the country if he left it floating there. It was an intolerable thought!
"'Tis t' Ruddy Cove I'll take that bag this day," he muttered.
He let himself gingerly into the water, and struck out. It was bitter cold, but he persevered, with fine courage, until he had his arm safely linked through the strap of the bag. It was the country he served! In some vague form this thought sounded in his mind, repeating itself again and again, while he swam for the ice with the bag in tow.
He drew himself out with much difficulty, hauled the mail-bag after him, and proceeded to dress with all speed. His clothes were frozen stiff, and he had to beat them on the ice to soften them; but the struggle to don them sent the rich blood rushing through his body, and he was warmed to a glow.
On went the bag, and off went the boy. When he came to the firmer ice, and Creepy Bluff was within half a mile, the wind carried this cheery song up the bay:
Lukie's boat is painted green,
The finest boat that ever was seen;
Lukie's boat has cotton sails,
A juniper rudder and galvanized nails.
At Creepy Bluff, which the wind strikes with full force, the ice was breaking up inshore. The gale had risen with the coming of the night. Great seas spent their force beneath the ice – cracking it, breaking it, slowly grinding it to pieces against the rocks.
The Bluff marks the end of the bay. No ice forms beyond. Thus the waves swept in with unbroken power, and were fast reducing the shore cakes to a mass of fragments. Paul was cut off from the shore by thirty yards of heaving ice. No bit of it would bear his weight; nor, so fine had it been ground, could he leap from place to place as he had done before.
"'Tis sprawl I must," he thought.
The passage was no new problem. He had been in such case more than once upon his return from the offshore seal-hunt. Many fragments would together bear him up, where few would sink beneath him. He lay flat on his stomach, and, with the gaff to help support him, crawled out from the solid place, dragging the bag. His body went up and down with the ice. Now an arm was thrust through, again a leg went under water.
Progress was fearfully slow. Inch by inch he gained on the shore – crawling – crawling steadily. All the while he feared that the great pans would drift out and leave the fragments room to disperse. Once he had to spread wide his arms and legs and pause until the ice was packed closer.
"Two yards more – only two yards more!" he could say at last.
Once on the road to Ruddy Cove, which he well knew, his spirits rose; and with a cheery mood came new strength. It was a rough road, up hill and down again, through deep snowdrifts and over slippery rocks. Night fell; but there was light enough to show the way, save in the deeper valleys, and there he had to struggle along as best he might.
Step after step, hill after hill, thicket after thicket: cheerfully he trudged on; for the mail-bag was safe on his back, and Ruddy Cove was but three miles distant. Three was reduced to two, two to one, one to the last hill.
From the crest of Ruddy Rock he could look down on the lights of the harbour – yellow lights, lying in the shadows of the valley. There was a light in the post-office. They were waiting for him there – waiting for their letters – waiting to send the mail on to the north. In a few minutes he could say that Her Majesty's mail had been brought safe to Ruddy Cove.
"Be the mail come?"
Billy looked up from his seat by the roaring fire in the post-office. An old woman had come in. There was a strange light in her eyes – the light of a hope which survives, spite of repeated disappointment.
"Sure, Aunt Esther; 'tis here at last."
"Be there a letter for me?"
Billy hoped that there was. He longed to see those gentle eyes shine – to see the famished look disappear.
"No, Aunt Esther; 'tis not come yet. Maybe 'twill come next – "
"Sure, I've waited these three year," she said, with a trembling lip. "'Tis from me son – "
"Ha!" cried the postmaster. "What's this? 'Tis all blurred by the water. 'Missus E – s – B – l – g – e – l.' Sure, 'tis you, woman. 'Tis a letter for you at last!"
"'Tis from me son!" the old woman muttered eagerly. "'Tis t' tell me where he is, an' – an' – when he's comin' home. Thank God, the mail came safe the night."
What if Billy had left the mail-bag to soak and sink in the waters of the bay? What if he had failed in his duty to the people? How many other such letters might there not be in that bag for the mothers and fathers of the northern ports?
"Thank God," he thought, "that Her Majesty's mail came safe the night!"
Then he went off home, and met Bobby Lot on the way.
"Hello!" said Bobby. "Got back?"
"Hello yourself!" said Billy. "I did."
They eyed each other delightedly; they were too boyish to shake hands.
"How's the ice?" asked Bobby Lot.
"Not bad," said Billy.
CHAPTER XVIII
In Which Billy Topsail Joins the Whaler Viking and a School is Sighted
OF a sunny afternoon the Newfoundland coastal steamer Clyde dropped Billy Topsail at Snook's Arm, the lair of the whaler Viking: a deep, black inlet of the sea, fouled by the blood and waste flesh of forgotten victims, from the slimy edge of which, where a score of whitewashed cottages were squatted, the rugged hills lifted their heads to the clean blue of the sky and fairly held their noses. It was all the manager's doing. Billy had but given him direction through the fog from Mad Mull to the landing place of the mail-boat. This was at Ruddy Cove, in the spring, when the manager was making an annual visit to the old skipper.
"If you want a berth for the summer, Billy," he had said, "you can be ship's boy on the Viking."
On the Viking– the whaler! Billy was not in doubt. And so it came to pass, in due course of time, that the Clyde dropped him at Snook's Arm.
At half-past three of the next morning, when the dark o' night was but lightened by a rosy promise out to sea, the Viking's lines were cast off. At half speed the little steamer moved out upon the quiet waters of the Arm, where the night still lay thick and cold – slipped with a soft chug! chug! past the high, black hills; factory and cottages melting with the mist and shadows astern, and the new day glowing in the eastern sky. She was an up-to-date, wide-awake little monster, with seventy-five kills to her credit in three months, again composedly creeping from the lair to the hunt, equipped with deadly weapons of offense.
"'Low we'll get one the day, sir?" Billy asked the cook.
"Wonderful quiet day," replied the cook, dubiously. "'Twill be hard fishin'."
The fin-back whale is not a stupid, passive monster, to be slaughtered off-hand; nor is the sea a well-ordered shambles. Within the experience of the Viking's captain, one fin-back wrecked a schooner with a quick slap of the tail, and another looked into the forecastle of an iron whaler from below. The fin-back is the biggest, fleetest, shyest whale of them all; until an ingenious Norwegian invented the harpoon gun, they wallowed and multiplied in the Newfoundland waters undisturbed. They were quite safe from pursuit; no whaler of the old school dreamed of taking after them in his cockle shell – they were too wary and fleet for that.
"Ay," the cook repeated; "on a day like this a whale can play with the Viking."
The Viking was an iron screw-steamer, designed for chasing whales, and for nothing else. She was mostly engines, winches and gun. She could slip along, without much noise, at sixteen knots an hour; and she could lift sixty tons from the bottom of the sea with her little finger. Her gun – the swivel gun, with a three-inch bore, pitched at the bow, clear of everything – could drive a four-foot, 123-pound harpoon up to the hilt in the back of a whale if within range; and the harpoon itself – it protruded from the muzzle of the gun, with the rope attached to the shaft and coiled below – was a deadly missile. It was tipped with an iron bomb, which was designed to explode in the quarry's vitals when the rope snapped taut, and with half a dozen long barbs, which were to spread and take hold at the same instant.
"Well," Billy Topsail sighed, his glance on the gun and the harpoon, "if they hits a whale, that there arrow ought t' do the work!"
"It does," said the cook, quietly.
All morning long, they were all alive on deck – every man of that Norwegian crew, from the grinning man in the crow's nest, which was lashed to a stubby yellow mast, to the captain on the gun platform, with the glass to his eyes, and the stokers who stuck their heads out of the engine room for a breath of fresh air. The squat, grim little Viking was speeding across Notre Dame Bay, with a wide, frothy wake behind her, and the water curling from her bows. She was for all the world like a man making haste to business in the morning, the appointment being, in this case, off a low, gray coast, which the lifting haze was but then disclosing.
It was broad day: the sea was quiet, the sun shining brightly, the sky a cloudless blue; a fading breeze ruffled the water, and the ripples flashed in the sunlight. Dead ahead and far away, where the gray of the coast rocks shaded to the blue of the sea, little puffs of spray were drifting off with the light wind, like the puff of smoke from a distant rifle: they broke and drifted and vanished.
From time to time mirror-flashes of light – swift little flashes – struck Billy's eyes and darted away. Puff after puff of spray, flash after flash of light: the far-off sea seemed to be alive with the quarry. But where was the thrilling old cry of "There she blows!" or its Norwegian equivalent? The lookout had but spoken a quiet word to the captain, who, in turn, had spoken a quiet word to the steersman.
"W'ales," said the captain, whose English had its limitations. "Ho – far off!"
