Norman Duncan

“ It was a matter of twenty miles from the Thimble, across Schooner Bay, to the Scotchman's Breakfast of Ginger Head, and a matter of thirty miles inland to Rattle Brook—wherefrom you may compute the area of the triangle for yourself and bestir your own imagination, if you can, to apply the pressure of a forty-mile gale to the vast rough surface of the bay.
Past midnight the ice yielded to the irresistible urge of the wind.
Crack! The noise of the break zigzagged in the distance and approached, and shot past near by, and rumbled away like a crash of brittle thunder. Billy Topsail started awake. ”

“ Nobody was mad at Poor Luck Barrens. But somebody was in a raving delirium of fever. And that was big George Tulk—Trapper George of Bread-and-Butter Tickle. It was a tight little tilt on the edge of the timber—winter quarters: a log shanty, with a turf roof, deep in a drift of snow, to which a rising cloud of smoke attracted the attention of Archie and Billy Topsail. No; what was alarming at Poor Luck Barrens was not a frenzy of insanity—it was the delirium of pneumonia.
Jinny Tulk was glad enough to receive the help of Billy Topsail and Archie Armstrong. ”

“ The ice had broken from the cliffs and was split in fields and fragments. It would move out and go abroad with the high southwest wind. That was bad enough, yet not, perhaps, a mortal predicament—the wind would not run out from the southwest forever; and an escape ashore from a stranded floe would be no new thing in the experience of the coast. To be marooned on a pan of ice, however, with ten famishing dogs of unsavoury reputation, and for God only knew how long—it taxed a man's courage to contemplate the inevitable adventure! ”

“ What Billy Topsail and Doctor [6] Luke encounter, however, is precisely what the Deep Sea Mission workers must encounter. It should be said, too, that as the tale is told of the spring of the year, when the ice breaks up and the floes come drifting out of the north with great storms, Newfoundland presents herself in her worst mood. Yet the sun shines in Newfoundland, tender enough in summer weather—there are flowers on the hills and warm winds on the sea; and such as learn to know the land come quickly to love her for her beauty and for her friendliness. ”

“ Once more, then, when day was full broken, Archie and Billy came on Jonathan Farr and Toby.
The old man was sheathed in snow and frozen [295] spindrift. A hairy old codger he was—icicles of his own frozen breath clinging to his long white beard and icicles hanging from his bushy brows. And he was beating Toby without mercy: for the lad would fall down, worn out, and whimper and squirm; and the old man would jerk and cuff him to his feet, and drive him on with cuffs from behind, stumbling and whimpering and bawling. ”

“ He rose, gasped, sank—came breathless to the surface; and self-possessed again, and fighting for life against hope, instinctively, but yet with determined intelligence, grasping breath when he could and desperately seeking handhold, foothold—fighting thus he was dragged a bruising course through the narrowing channel towards Black Pool and at last momentarily arrested his drift with a failing grip of a boulder.
Archie Armstrong ran down-stream. No expedient was in his horrified mind. The impulse was to plunge in and rescue Billy if he could. That was all. ”

“ It began to snow, too. And it was a frosty cloud of snow. It blinded—it stifled. It was flung out of the black northwest like flour from a shaken sack.
The men were afraid. They knew that weather. It was a blizzard. There was a night of mortal peril in it. There might be a night and a day—a day and two nights. And they knew what would happen to them if Cap'n Saul failed to find them before the pack nipped him and the night shut down. It had happened before to lost crews. It would happen again. Men gone stark mad in the wind—the floe strewn with drifted corpses. ”

“ Returning from a call at Tumble Tickle, in clean, sunlit weather, with nothing more tedious than eighteen miles of wilderness trail and rough floe ice behind him, Doctor Luke was chagrined to discover himself a bit fagged. He had come heartily down the trail from Tumble Tickle in the early hours of that fine, windy morning, fit and eager for the trudge—as a matter of course; but on the ice, in the shank of the day—there had been eleven miles of the floe—he had lagged. A man cannot practice medicine out of a Labrador outport harbour and not know what it means to stomach a physical exhaustion. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There it was—the roar of the stream below: the deep, narrow rush of it, swelling over the boulders, curling around them, plunging irresistibly towards the Black Pool ice, and vanishing into the stifling gloom beneath, in a swift, black, silent stream, flecked with creamy puffs of foam. A misstep, a false stone, a lost balance—a man would then drift fast and helpless, bruised by the bottom, flung against the boulders and stunned, smothered by the water, cast into Black Pool and left to sink in still water. ”

“ A simple thing to splash into the first shallow inches of Rattle Water and there deliberate an advance—true enough; but Billy Topsail was in earnest about crossing. He would venture far and perilously before he turned back—venture to the brink of safety, and tentatively, definitely into the dragging grip of the deeper current beyond. A boy who proposes to go as far as he can is in the way of overreaching himself. ”

“ No; a man could not corner and kill a dog at a time. A man could not beat a wolf in the open; and these dogs, which roamed the timber and sprang from it, would maneuver like wolves—a patient waiting for some lapse from caution or the ultimate moment of weakness; and then an overwhelming rush. Billy Topsail knew the dogs of his own coast. He knew his own dogs; all he did not know about his own dogs was that Cracker had been concerned in a dubious affair on the ice off the Tall Old Man. ”

“ Many of the men wore out before dawn and were fordone: hands frozen, feet frozen, lips and throat frozen—heart frozen. And many a man dropped in his tracks, limp and spiritless as rags, and lay still, every man in his own drift of snow; and his soul sped away as though glad to be gone. Brothers, some, and fathers and sons—the one beating the other with frozen hands, and calling to him to rouse and stand up lest he die.
Dawn came. It was just a slow, dirty dusk. And day was no better than dusk. Still they walked blind and tortured in a frosty smother and driving whirlwind of snow. ”

“ A man might cross—submerged somewhat above the knees, no more; but in the clinging grip and tug of the current his footing would be delicately precarious, and the issue of a misstep, a stumble, a lost balance, would be a desperate chance, with the wager heavily on grim Death.
It was perilous water—the noisy, sucking white rush of it, frothing over the boulders, and running, icy cold, in choppy, crested waves, where the channel was a bed of stones and gravel. Yet the path to the tilt at Poor Luck Barrens lay across and beyond Ha-ha Shallow of Rattle Water. ”

“ Billy Topsail was heartened. He determined privately that he would not turn to look back—that if the worst came to the worst, and he could manage to do so, he would jerk the lad into the water and let him drown. The snarling tumult of the onset would warn him when the worst had come to the worst.
And then he stripped stark naked, quickly stowed away his clothes in the midst of the boy's dogskin robes, tied the end of the seal-leather line round his waist, and ran to the edge of the pan.
"If you drowns—" the boy began.
"Keep them dogs off!" Billy Topsail roared. "I'll not drown!" ”

“ Skinflint Sam—they call him. Conscience? Oh, yes, he has a conscience! And his conscience—as he calls it—has made him rich as riches go in these parts. No, of course not! You wouldn't expect a north-coast trader to have a conscience; and you wouldn't expect a north-coast trader with a conscience to be rich!"
Billy Topsail agreed with this.
"Ah, well," Doctor Luke went on, "conscience is much like the wind. It blows every which way (as they say) ; and if a man does but trim his sails to suit, he can bowl along in any direction without much wear and tear of the spirit. ”

“ Yet you are not to think of Newfoundland in visions wholly of wind and snow and ice. Newfoundland is not an Arctic country by any means. Nor does the wind blow all the while; nor is the sea all the while in a turmoil. It is a lovely coast [312] after all; and the folk who live there are simple, self-respecting, cheerful—a lovable, admirable folk. ”

“ There on the ice the situation was completely disclosed and beyond control. Nothing was to be manipulated. Nothing threatened, at any rate, for the moment. Consequently Billy Topsail was not afraid. Had he discovered himself all at once alone in a city; had he been required to confront a garter snake—he had never clapped eyes on a snake——
Placidly reflecting on the factors of danger to be dealt with subsequently, Billy Topsail caught ear, he thought, of a sob and whimper from the midst of Teddy Brisk's dogskin robes. ”

“ By this time the men had been more than twenty-four hours on the ice. And they had no food. Hungry? No. They were cold. No man famished in that gale. And they had yet a night of that gale to win through, though they knew nothing about that at the time. They began to stray wide. And they began to go blind. And some men fell in the water and were drowned. Billy Topsail saw John Temple, of Heart's Island, drop through a crust of snow and go down for good and all; and he saw Tom Crutch, of Seldom-Come-By, stumble over the edge of a pan, and heard him screech for help. ”

“ The floe, in the grip of the wind, drifted towards the land and came in contact with it before night fell.
Archie had a long, stumbling search for the cottages of Amen. That was the most trying aspect of his experience. In the end, however, pretty well worn out, but triumphant, he caught sight of the light in Tom Lute's cottage; and he knocked on the door and pushed into the kitchen just when Doctor Luke, having lanced Terry Lute's finger, and having been informed that Terry Lute's fiddle was a jew's-harp, had joined Billy Topsail in the hearty laughter that the amazing disclosure excited. ”

“ There were six feet of this slush, perhaps—a depth of six feet and a width of thirty.
It was as coarse as cracked ice in a freezer. [194] It was a quicksand. Should a man's leg go deep enough he would not be able to withdraw it; and once fairly caught—both feet gripped—he would inevitably drop through. It would be a slow and horrible descent—like sinking in a quicksand.
It was near dark. The snow—falling thicker—was fast narrowing the circle of vision.
"I might get across," said Doctor Luke.
"You'll not try, sir," Billy Topsail declared, positively. "You'll start back t' Candlestick Cove." ”

“ And Billy was acutely aware of this much—that nothing but the habitual fear of a man with a club had hitherto restrained the full fury and strength of the pack.
That fury, breaking with determination, would be irresistible. No man could beat off the attack of ten dogs that were not, in the beginning, already defeated and overcome by awe of him. [75] In the dark—in the dark of that night Billy could easily be dragged down; and the dogs were manifestly waiting for the dark to fall.
It was to be the end.
"It looks bad—it do so, indeed!" Billy Topsail thought. ”

“ It was not fit weather for any man to be abroad—a biting wind, a frost as cold as death, and a black threat of snow; but Doctor Luke, on this desperate business of healing, was in haste, and the patients on the komatik were in need too urgent for any dawdling for rest by the way. Schooner Bay ice was to cross; he would put up for the night—that was all; he must be off at dawn, said he in his quick, high way.
From this news little Teddy Brisk's mother returned to the lamp-lit cottage by Jack-in-the-Box. It was with Teddy Brisk's mother that Billy Topsail was housed for the winter. ”

“ Not a gaff was out, not a gun; not a man put foot on the floe. The Rough and Tumble killed no seals. It was not the custom. All that day she lay made fast to the ice, fretting for midnight. Cap'n Saul kept [283] to his cabin. Time and quiet weather went wasting away. Quiet weather—quiet enough that day: a draught of westerly wind blowing, the sky overcast and blank, and a flurry of snow in the afternoon, which failed, before dusk, a black, still midnight drawing on. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And over the side went the crew for punishment. There were more than two hundred men. And not a man was spared. Cap'n Saul sent the ship's doctor after malingerers, and the mate and the haft of a sealing gaff after lurkers; and he kept them capering and balancing for dear life on that dirty floe, sopping and shivering, all in a perilous way, until dusk was in the way of catching some of them unaware.
It was then that Archie and Bill o' Burnt Bay fell in with old Jonathan Farr of Jolly Harbour. Bill o' Burnt Bay knew the old man well. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail confronted the only ice that was still in contact with the shore. At no time had the floe extended far beyond Deep Water Head. A high sea, rolling in from the northeast, had played under the ice; and this had gone on for three days—the seas running in and subsiding: all the while casting the ice ponderously against the rocks.
Heavy Arctic ice—fragments of many glacial bergs—had caught the lesser, more brittle drift-pans of the floe against the broken base and submerged face of Deep Water Cliff and ground them slowly to slush in the swells. ”