Billy Topsail, M.D.: A Tale of Adventure With Doctor Luke of the Labrador
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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 PoorLuck Barrens until the cure of Trapper George was accomplished. In viewof 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 toBread-and-Butter Tickle alone, and thence down the coast to Our Harbour,as best they could manage, carrying news of Doctor Luke's detention andthe cause of it. They were sorry to say good-bye to Doctor Luke; andDoctor Luke was sorry to say good-bye to them. When the time came, BillyTopsail, who had come to love and respect the man for his warm qualitiesand the work that he did, sought for words to express his feeling andhis thanks; but being a simple, robust fellow, not accustomed to thefrank expression of feeling, not used to conventional forms, he couldmanage but poorly. Archie Armstrong would have been ready, fluent, andsincere in the same situation. But Billy Topsail could only stutter andflush and come to an awkward full stop.
What Billy wanted to say was clear enough in his own mind. He had beenwith Doctor Luke a good deal. They had been in tight places together.But it was not that. "Tight places" are only relative, after all; whatis an adventure in one quarter of the world may be a mild incident inanother. And that Billy Topsail and Doctor Luke had been in dangertogether was not particularly impressive: Billy Topsail was used todanger--to peril of that sort--and had grown to regard it as among thecommonplaces of life.
That aspect of his experience with Doctor Luke to which Billy Topsailhad responded was the habit of service--the instant, willing, efficientanswer to the call of helpless need. Indeed, Doctor Luke appeared toBilly Topsail to be a very great man--the greatest man, in hispersonality and life, Billy Topsail had ever known, not excepting SirArchibald Armstrong. And Billy Topsail had come definitely to theconclusion that what he wanted to do with his life was precisely whatDoctor Luke was doing with his.
It was this that he wanted to tell Doctor Luke; and it was this that hefailed 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 atwork and happy in his work. They made Bread-and-Butter Tickle; theytravelled down the coast without incident; they shook hands with TeddyBrisk, who was still telling his adventures on the ice-floe, his leg assound as any leg; and they came safe to Our Harbour, where they waiteduntil Cap'n Saul put in with the _Rough and Tumble_. And then Archiewould 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 andTumble_, 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 tohis home at Ruddy Cove and arrive there long before the Labradormail-boat would be north on her first voyage.
And so the boys boarded the _Rough and Tumble_ together, fell in withBill o' Burnt Bay, Jonathan Farr and little Toby once more, and put tosea. The _Rough and Tumble_ was not loaded; she had more seals to killand stow away, and Cap'n Saul was resolved to "put back loaded"--adesirable end towards which his active crew, in conjunction with his ownsealing 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. Nota gaff was out, not a gun; not a man put foot on the floe. The _Roughand Tumble_ killed no seals. It was not the custom. All that day she laymade fast to the ice, fretting for midnight. Cap'n Saul kept to hiscabin. Time and quiet weather went wasting away. Quiet weather--quietenough that day: a draught of westerly wind blowing, the sky overcastand blank, and a flurry of snow in the afternoon, which failed, beforedusk, a black, still midnight drawing on.
On the first stroke of the midnight bell, for which he had waited sincethe dawn of that dull day, Cap'n Saul popped out of the cabin, like ajack-in-the-box, and stamped the bridge, growling and bawling hisorders, in a week-day temper, until he had dropped the First Watch, andwas under way through the floe, a matter of twenty miles, to land theSecond 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. Blackdark 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 asad dawn. A slow glower and lift of thin, gray light: no warmth ofcolour in the east--no rosy flush and glow. When day broke, at last, thecrew made into the herds, mad to be warm, and began to kill. Still, itwas done without heart. There was less blithe slaughter, that day, thanunseemly brooding and weather-gazing. It was a queer thing, too. Therewas no alarm of foul weather that any man could see.
A drear, gray day it was, day drawing near noon. Archie and Billy alwaysremembered that. Yet there was no frost to touch a man's heart, no needto cower and whine in the wind, no snow to make a man afraid. A scowl inthe northeast--a low, drab, sulky sky, mottled with blue-black and smokywhite. They recalled it afterwards. But that was all. And Bill o' BurntBay fancied, then, with the lives of his crew in mind, that the weatherquarter was doubtless in a temper, but no worse, and was no more thanhalf-minded to kick up a little pother of trouble before day ran overthe 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 thenorthwest with a nasty notion of misbehaviour. It was all in a moment. Agust of wind, cold as death, went swirling past. They chilled to thebones in it. And then a bitter blast of weather came sweeping down. Thefloe began to pack and drive. Bill o' Burnt Bay gathered and numberedhis watch. And then they waited for the ship. No sign. And the dayturned thick. Dusk fell before its time. It was not yet midway of theafternoon. 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 flungout of the black northwest like flour from a shaken sack.
The men were afraid. They knew that weather. It was a blizzard. Therewas a night of mortal peril in it. There might be a night and a day--aday and two nights. And they knew what would happen to them if Cap'nSaul failed to find them before the pack nipped him and the night shutdown. It had happened before to lost crews. It would happen again. Mengone stark mad in the wind--the floe strewn with drifted corpses. Theyhad heard tales. And now they had visions. Dead men going intoport--ship's flag at half-mast, and dead men going into port, frozenstiff 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--hadfrightened him.
"It is!" he declared.
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