_In Which Billy Topsail Hears the Fur Trader's Story of a
Jigger and a Cake of Ice in the Wind_
"WOULDN'T think I'd been born on Cherry Hill, would you, now?" said the
man with the fur cap.
The stranger had been landed at Ruddy Cove from Fortune Harbour. He
had been in the far north, he said; and he was now waiting for the
mail-boat to take him south. Billy Topsail and the lads of Ruddy Cove
cocked their ears for a yarn.
"Fact!" said he, with a nod. "That's where I was born and bred. And do
you know how I come to be away up here? No? Well, I'm a fur trader. I'm
the man that bought the skin of that silver fox last winter for thirty
dollars and sold it for two hundred and fifty. I'd rather be the man
that bought it from me and sold it in London for six hundred. But I'm
not."
"And you're bound for home, now?" the old skipper asked.
"Yes," he drawled. "I'm bound home for New York to see the folks. I've
been away six years, and came nearer to leaving my bones up here in the
north last spring than ever I did before. I've done some travelling in
my time. You can take me at my word; I have."
The trader laughed uproariously. He was in a voluble mood. The old
skipper knew that he needed but little encouragement to tell the story
of his escape.
"It makes me think about that old riddle of the corked bottle," he
said. "Ever hear it? This is it: If you had a bottle of ginger ale, how
would you get the stuff out without breaking the bottle or drawing the
cork? Can you answer that?"
"The answer doesn't strike me," said the skipper.
"That's just it," the trader burst out. "The way to do it doesn't
'strike you.' But if you had the bottle in your hands now and wanted
the ginger ale, it would 'strike' you fast enough to push the cork
in. Well, that was my case. You think of yourself on a little pan of
ice, drifting straight out to sea with a strong offshore wind, water
all round you and no paddle--just think of yourself in that case,
and a way of getting ashore might not 'strike' you. But once you're
there--once you're right on that pan of ice, with the hand of death on
your collar--you'll think like lightning of all the things you can do.
Yes, that was my case."
The listeners said nothing to interrupt the stocky, hard-featured,
ill-clad little man while he mused.
"'Don't you be fool enough to try to cross the bay this evening,' says
I to myself," he went on.
"But I'm a hundred-mile man, and I'd gone my hundred miles. I can
carry grub on my back to last me just that far; and my grub was out.
From what I knew of winds and ice, I judged that the ice would be
four or five miles out to sea by dawn of the next day. So I didn't
start out with the idea that the trip would be as easy as a promenade
over Brooklyn Bridge of a moonlight night. Oh, no! I knew what I was
doing. But it was a question of taking the risk or dragging myself into
the settlement at Racquet Harbour in three days' time as lean as a
car-horse from starvation. You see, it was forty miles round that bay
and four across; and--my grub was out. Many a man loses his life in
these parts by looking at the question in just that way.
[Illustration: "JUMPED LIKE A STAG FOR THE SECOND PAN."]
"'Oh, no!' says I to myself. 'You'd much better take your chance of
starving, and walk round.'
"It wasn't in human nature, though, to do it. Not when I knew that
there was grub and a warm fire waiting for me at Racquet Harbour. Says
I, 'I'll take the long chance and stand to win.' Don't you run away
with the idea that the ice was a level field stretching from shore to
shore, fitting the rocks, and kept as neat as a baseball diamond. It
wasn't. Some day in the winter the wind had jammed the bay full of big
rough chunks--they call them pans in this country--and the frost had
stuck them all together. When the spring came, of course the sun began
to melt that glue, and the whole floe was just ready to fall apart when
I had the bad luck to make the coast. I was a day too late. I knew it.
And I knew that the offshore wind would sweep the ice to sea the minute
it broke up.
"I made the first hundred yards in ten minutes; the second in fifteen
more. In half an hour I'd made half a mile. The ice was rough enough
and flimsy enough to take the nerve out of any man. But that wasn't the
worst; the worst was that there were hundreds of holes covered with
a thin crust of snow--all right to look at, but treacherous. I knew
that if I made the mistake of stepping on a crust instead of solid ice,
I'd go through and down.
"I had four otter skins, some martens and ten fine fox skins in the
pack on my back. To do anything in the water with that handicap was
too much for me. So I wasn't at all particular about making time until
I found that the night would catch me if I didn't wag along a little
faster.
"No, sir!" the trader said. "I didn't want to be caught out there in
the dark.
"By good luck, I struck some big pans about half-way over. Then I took
to a dog-trot, and left the yards behind me in a way that cheered me
up. Just before dusk I got near enough to the other side to feel proud
of myself, and I began to think of what a fool I'd have been if I'd
taken the shore route. A minute later I changed my mind. I felt the
pack moving! Well, in a flash I said good-bye to Cherry Hill and the
boys. Not many men are caught twice in a place like that. They never
have the second chance.
"There I was, aboard a rotten floe and bound out to the big, lonely
ocean at the rate of four miles an hour.
"'Oh, you might as well get ready to go, Jim,' thinks I. But I didn't
give up. I loped along shoreward in a way that didn't take snow crust
or air-holes into account. And I made the edge of the floe before the
black hours of the night had come.
"There was a couple of hundred yards of cold water between me and the
shore.
"'This is the time you think more of your life than your fur,' thinks I.
"There was a stray pan or two--little rafts of things--lying off the
edge of the floe; and beyond them, scattered between the shore and me,
half a dozen other pans were floating. How to get from one to the other
was the puzzle. They were fifty or sixty yards apart, most of them,
and I had no paddle. It was foolish to think of making a shift with my
jacket for a sail; the wind was out, not in, and I had no rudder.
"What had I? Nothing that I could think of. It didn't _strike_ me, as
you say. I wish it had.
"'Anyhow,' says I to myself, 'I'll get as far as I can.'
"It was a short leap from the floe to the first pan. I made it easily.
The second pan was farther off, but I thought I could jump the water
between. So I took off my pack and threw it on the ice beside me. It
almost broke my heart to do it, for I'd walked five hundred miles in
the dead of winter for that fur; I'd been nearly starved and frozen,
and I'd paid out hard-earned money. I put down my pack, took a short
run, and jumped like a stag for the second pan.
"I landed on the spot I'd picked out. I can't complain of missing the
mark, but instead of stopping there, I shot clear through and down into
the water.
"Surprised? I was worse than that. I was dead scared. For a minute I
thought I was going to rise under the ice and drown right there.
"How it happened I don't know; but I came up between the pans, and
struck out for the one I'd left. I got to the pan, all right, and
climbed aboard. There I was, on a little pan of ice, beyond reach of
the floe and leaving the shore behind me, and cold and pretty well
discouraged.
"There's the riddle of the corked bottle," said the trader,
interrupting his narrative. "Now how do I happen to be sitting here?"
"I'm sure I can't tell," said the skipper.
"No more you should," said he, "for you don't know what I carried in my
pack. But you see I had the bottle in my hands, and I wanted the ginger
ale bad; so I thought fast and hard.
"It struck me that I might do something with my line and jigger.[4]
Don't you see the chance the barbed steel hooks and the forty fathom of
line gave me? When I thought of that jigger I felt just like the man
who is told to push the cork in when he can't draw it out. I'd got back
to the pan where I'd thrown down my pack, you know; so there was the
jigger, right at hand.
"It was getting dark by this time--getting dark fast, and the pans were
drifting farther and farther apart.
"It was easy to hook the jigger in the nearest pan and draw my pan over
to it; for that pan was five times the weight of the one I was on. The
one beyond was about the same size; they came together at the half-way
point. Of course this took time. I could hardly see the shore then, and
it struck me that I might not be able to find it at all, when I came
near enough to cast my jigger for it.
"About fifty yards off was a big pan. I swung the jigger round and
round and suddenly let the line shoot through my fingers. When I hauled
it in the jigger came too, for it hadn't taken hold. That made me feel
bad. I felt worse when it came back the second time. But I'm not one of
the kind that gives up. I kept right on casting that jigger until it
landed in the right spot.
"My pan crossed over as I hauled in the line. That was all right; but
there was no pan between me and the shore.
"'All up!' thinks I.
"It was dark. I could see neither pan nor shore. Before long I couldn't
see a thing in the pitchy blackness.
"All the time I could feel the pan humping along towards the open sea.
I didn't know how far off the shore was. I was in doubt about just
where it was.
"'Is this pan turning round?' thinks I. Well, I couldn't tell; but I
thought I'd take a flier at hooking a rock or a tree with the jigger.
"The jigger didn't take hold. I tried a dozen times, and every time I
heard it splash the water. But I kept on trying--and would have kept
on till morning if I'd needed to. You can take me at my word, I'm not
the kind of fool that gives up--I've been in too many tight places for
that. So, at last, I gave the jigger a fling that landed it somewhere
where it held fast; but whether ice or shore I couldn't tell. If shore,
all right; if ice, all wrong; and that's all I could do about it.
"'Now,' thinks I, as I began to haul in, 'it all depends on the fishing
line. Will it break, or won't it?'
"It didn't. So the next morning, with my pack on my back, I tramped
round the point to Racquet Harbour."
"What was it?" was Billy Topsail's foolish question. "Shore or ice?"
"If it hadn't been shore," said the trader, "I wouldn't be here."
FOOTNOTE:
[4] A jigger is a lead fish, about three inches long, which spreads
into two large barbed hooks at one end; the other end is attached to
about forty fathoms of stout line. Jiggers are used to jerk fish from
the water where there is no bait.