Billy Topsail

“ 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!" ”

“ Doctor Luke was completely aware of the difficulties of Anxious Bight, and so was Billy Topsail—the way from Our Harbour to Ragged Run: the treacherous reaches of young ice, bending under the weight of a man, and the veiled black water, and the labour, the crevices, the snow-crust of the Arctic pans and hummocks, and the broken field and wash of the sea beyond the lesser island of the Spotted Horses. ”

“ Had not Sir Archibald said so?
So in the harbours of the Shore Bill o’ Burnt Bay once more tussled valiantly with “The Lost Pirate,” and the flags flew, and the phonograph ground out inviting music, and Bobby North 267 shook the hornpipe out of his active toes, and Bagg double-shuffled, and the torches flared, and “Kandy for Kids” and “Don’t be Foolish and Fully Fooled” persuaded the populace, and Signor Fakerino created mystification, and Billy Topsail employed his sweet little pipe most wistfully in the old ballad of the coast:
It was all to good purpose. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The business with Tog happened before old Jim Grimm moved south to Ruddy Cove of the Newfoundland coast, disgusted with the fishing of Buccaneer. It was before Jimmie Grimm had fallen in with Billy Topsail and Donald North, before he had ever clapped eyes on Bagg, the London gutter-snipe, or had bashfully pawed the gloved hand of Archie Armstrong, Sir Archibald’s son. It was before Donald North cured himself of fear and the First Venture had broken into a blaze in a gale of wind off the Chunks. ”

“ 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. ”

“ BILLY STAGGERED INTO THE CIRCLE OF LIGHT.
Watt blundered to his feet. Without a word he fumbled in the snow until he found what he sought. It was the axe. He handed it to Topsail.
"Do it, Tom!" he said, thickly. "I'm near gone."
Topsail attacked the boat. It was like murder, he thought. He struck blow after blow, blindly, viciously; gathered the splinters, made a little heap of them and set them afire. The fire blazed brightly. Soon it was roaring. The ice all around was lighted up. Above, the snow reflected the lurid glow.
Warmth and a cheerful light put life in the men. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the clog were taken off, as it was almost sure to be, it meant sport in the water. Then Skipper would paw the ground and whine until the stick was flung out for him. But best of all he loved to dive for stones.
At the peep of many a day, too, he went out in the punt to the fishing-grounds with Billy Topsail, and there kept the lad good company all the day long. It was because he sat on the little cuddy in the bow, as if keeping a lookout ahead, that he was called Skipper.
"Sure, 'tis a clever dog, that!" was Billy's boast. "He would save life—that dog would!" ”

“ THE trading-schooner Tax of Ruddy Cove had come down from the Labrador. She was riding at anchor in the home harbour, with her hold full of salt fish and the goods in her cabin run sadly low. Billy Topsail, safely back from Feather's Folly, and doomed by the wreck of the Fish Killer to spend the summer in the quieter pursuits of Ruddy Cove, had gone aboard to greet the crew. There was hot tea on the forecastle table, and the crew was yarning to a jolly, brown grinning lot of Ruddy folk, who had come aboard. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some of the "pans" were acres in size; others were not big enough to bear the weight of a man; all were floating free, rising and falling with the ground swell.
The wind was light, the sea quiet, the sky thinly overcast. Had it not been for the threat of heavy weather in the northeast, it would have been an ideal day for the hunt. The punt and the rodney, the latter far in the lead, ran quietly out from the harbour, with their little sails all spread. From the punt Billy Topsail could soon see the small, scattered pack of seals—black dots against the white of the ice. ”

“ If the sea is a northern sea, full of ice and swept by big gales, if the adventures are real, if the hero is not a prig, if the tale concerns itself with heroic deeds and moves like a full-rigged ship with all sail spread to a rousing breeze, the boy will say “Bully!” and read the story again. “The Adventures of Billy Topsail” is a book to be chummy with. It is crowded with adventure, every page of it, from the time young Billy is nearly drowned by his dog, until in a big blizzard, lost on an ice-floe, he rescues Sir Archibald’s son, and the old Dictator weathers the gale. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ He was a fisherman's son, born at Ruddy Cove, which is a fishing harbour on the bleak northeast coast of Newfoundland; and there was nothing else for it. All Newfoundland boys have adventures; but not all Newfoundland boys survive them. And there came, in the course of the day's work and play, to Billy Topsail, many adventures. The first—the first real adventure in which Billy Topsail was abandoned to his own wit and strength—came by reason of a gust of wind and his own dog. It was not strange that a gust of wind should overturn Billy Topsail's punt ”

“ It was still spring at Ruddy Cove––two weeks or more after Bagg came back to his real home––when Donald North’s friends, Billy Topsail and Jimmie Grimm, fell into considerable peril in a gale of wind off the Chunks. Even they––used to such adventures as they were––called it a narrow escape.
“No more o’ that for me,” said Billy Topsail, afterwards.
“Nor me,” said Jimmie Grimm.
“You’ll both o’ you take all that comes your way,” Bill o’ Burnt Bay put in, tartly.
It was aboard the First Venture, which Bill o’ Burnt Bay had as master-builder built at Ruddy Cove for himself. ”

“ TIM TUTTLE'S design against the honour of Captain Hand and of the firm of Armstrong & Son promised well. The following day broke fine; and, early in the morning, the crew of the Dictator was turned out to load the "fat" which had been left on the floe over night. About one hundred men were sent to the ice; the rest were kept on the ship to stow away the "tows" as they came aboard. Among the latter was young Billy Topsail, who was ordered to the hold the moment he appeared on deck.
The party under Bill o' Burnt Bay was first on the ground. Presently, the men from the Lucky Star arrived. ”

“ But it was not that. "Tight places" are only relative, after all; what is an adventure in one quarter of the world may be a mild incident in another. And that Billy Topsail and Doctor Luke had been in danger together was not particularly impressive: Billy Topsail was used to danger—to peril of that sort—and had grown to regard it as among the commonplaces of life. ”

“ Billy Topsail ignored the sob and whimper from the depths of the dogskin robes.
"The lad haves t' be hardened," he reflected.
Dawn was windy. It was still snowing—a [59] frosty mist of snow. Billy Topsail put the dogs in the traces and stowed Teddy Brisk away in the komatik. The dogs were uneasy. Something out of the way? What the mischief was the matter? They came unwillingly. It seemed they must be sensing a predicament. Billy Topsail whipped them to their work and presently they bent well enough to the task.
Snow fell all that day. There were glimpses of Ginger Head. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In Which the Wind Goes to Work, the Ice Behaves in an Alarming Way, Billy Topsail Regrets, for Obvious Reasons, Having to Do with the Dogs, that He Had Not Brought an Axe, and Teddy Brisk Protests that His Mother Knew Precisely What She was Talking About
Well, now, Teddy Brisk fell asleep, and presently, too, Billy Topsail, in his wolfskin bag, got the better of his anxious watch on the wind and toppled off. The dogs were already asleep, each covered with a slow-fashioning blanket of snow—ten round mounds, with neither snout nor hair to show. ”

“ Yet Billy Topsail was confused and lost. Snow and dusk were impenetrable; the barricades and cliffs of Ginger Head, to which he was bound, lay somewhere in the snow beyond—a mere general direction. It is nothing, however, to be lost. Daylight and clearing weather infallibly disclose the lay of the land.
A general direction is good enough; a man proceeds confidently on the meager advantage.
It was interesting for the dogs—this rowdy pack from Tight Cove. ”

“ The young one, the pup, must lie near. The boys stood stock still until the seals had clambered to the pack. Then they advanced swiftly. Billy Topsail was armed with a gaff, which is a pole shod with iron at one end and having a hook at the other; and Archie was provided with a sealing club. They came upon the dog hood before he could escape to the water. ”

“ 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. ”