_In Which Billy Topsail Sets Sail for the Labrador, the
Rescue Strikes an Iceberg, and Billy is Commanded to
Pump for His Life_
IT was early in the spring--a time of changeable weather when, in
the northern seas, the peril of drift-ice, bergs, snow, wind and the
dark must sometimes be met with short warning. The schooner _Rescue_,
seventy tons, Job Small, master, had supplied the half-starved Labrador
fishermen with flour and pork, and was bound back to Ruddy Cove, in
ballast, to load provisions and shop goods for the straits trade.
Billy Topsail was aboard. "I 'low, dad," he had said to his father,
when the skipper of the _Rescue_ received the Government commission to
proceed North with supplies, "that I'd like t' _see_ the Labrador."
"You'll see it many a time, lad," his father had replied, "afore you're
done with it."
"An' Skipper Job," Billy had persisted, "says he'll take me."
The end of it was that Billy was shipped.
The _Rescue_ had rounded the cape at dawn, with all sails set, even
to her topmast-staysail, which the Newfoundlanders call the "Tommy
Dancer"; but now, with the night coming down, she was laboriously
beating into a head wind under jib and reefed mainsail.
"I'm fair ashamed t' have the canvas off her," said Skipper Job, after
a long look to windward. "'Tis no more than a switch, an' we're clewed
up for a snorter."
"They's no one t' see, sir," said the cook. "That's good; an' sure I
hopes that nothin' heaves in sight t' shame us."
"Leave us shake the reef out o' the mains'l, sir, an' give her the
fores'l," said the first hand.
"We're not in haste, b'y," the skipper replied. "She's doin' well as
she is. We'll not make harbour this night, an' I've no mind t' be in
the neighbourhood o' the Break-heart Rocks afore mornin'. Let her bide."
The weather thickened. With the night came a storm of snow in heavy
flakes, which the wind swept over the deck in clouds. There was nothing
to relieve the inky darkness. The schooner reeled forth and back on the
port and starboard tacks, beating her way south as blind as a bat.
There was no rest for the crew. The skipper was at the wheel, the first
hand on the lookout forward, the cook and the two other hands standing
by on deck for emergencies.
So far as the wind, the sea and the drift-ice were concerned, the
danger was slight, for the _Rescue_ was stoutly built; but the sea
was strewn with vast fields and mountains of Arctic ice,--the glacier
icebergs which drift out of the north in the spring--and in their
proximity, in their great mass and changing position, lay a dreadful
danger.
"Sure, I wisht you could chart icebergs," said the skipper to the cook.
"But," he added, anxiously, "you can't. They moves so fast an' so
peculiar that--that--well, I wisht they didn't."
"I wisht they wasn't none," said the cook.
"Ay, lad," said the skipper. "But they might be a wonderful big one
sixty fathom dead ahead at this minute. We couldn't see it if they was."
"I hopes they isn't, sir," said the cook, with a shiver.
The snow ceased before morning; but at the peep of dawn a thick fog
came up with the wind, and when the light came it added nothing to the
range of vision from the bow. The night had been black; the dawn was
gray. It was so thick that the man at the wheel could not see beyond
the foremast. The lookout was lost in the fog ahead. Eyes were now of
no more use than in the depths of a cloudy night.
But the schooner had weathered the night; and when the first light of
day broke in the east, Skipper Job gave the wheel to the second hand,
and went below with the cook to have a cup of tea.
"I've no mind t' lose her," said he, "so I'll leave her bowl along
under short sail. If we strike, 'twill be so much the easier."
"'Twould be a sad pity t' lose her," said the cook, "when you've got
her so near paid for."
"Ay, that's it," said the skipper.
The _Rescue_ had been built for young Skipper Job, after Skipper Job's
own model, by the Ruddy Cove trader. The trader was to share in the
voyages--whether for Labrador fish or in the Shore trade--until she was
paid for. Then she would belong to Skipper Job--to the young skipper,
who had married the parson's daughter, and now had a boy of his own for
whom to plan and dream.
That was the spring of his energy and caution--that little boy, who
could no more than toddle over the kitchen floor and gurgle a greeting
to the lithe young fellow who bounded up the path to catch him in his
arms. The schooner was the fortune of the lad and the mother; and she
was now all so nearly Job's own that another voyage or two--a mere four
months--might see the last dollar of the obligation paid over.
"No," Skipper Job repeated, absently, when he had thought of the
toddler and the tender, smiling mother, "I've no mind t' lose this here
schooner."
Job dreamed of the lad while he sipped his tea. They must make a parson
of him, if he had the call, the skipper thought; or a doctor, perhaps.
Whatever, that baby must never follow the sea. No, no! He must never
know the hardship and anxiety of such a night as that just past. He
must be----
A scream of warning broke into the dream:
"Har-rd-a-lee!"
Skipper Job heard the fall of the feet of a man leaping back from the
bow. There was meaning in the step, in the haste and length of the
leaps--the imminence of a collision with the ice.
"All hands!"
The skipper had no more than leaped to his feet when there was a
stunning crash overhead, followed on the instant by a shock that
stopped the schooner dead and made her quiver from stem to stern. The
bowsprit was rammed into the forecastle, the deck planks were ripped
up, the upper works of the bows were crushed in, the cook's pots and
pans were tumbled about, the lamp was broken and extinguished. Job was
thrown from his feet.
When he recovered, it was to the horror of this darkness and
confusion--to a second crash and shock, to screams and trampling
overhead, and to a rain of blows upon the deck. He cried to the cook to
follow him on deck, and felt his way in mad haste to the ladder; but
there he stopped, of a sudden, with his foot on the lowest step, for
the cook had made no reply.
"Cook, b'y!" he shouted.
There was no answer. It was apparent that the man had been killed or
desperately injured. The skipper knew the danger of delay. They had
struck ice; the berg might overturn, some massive peak might topple
over, the ship might fill and sink. But, as a matter of course, and
with no thought of himself as a hero, he turned and made a groping
search for the cook, until he found the poor fellow lying unconscious
among his own pots and pans. Thence he carried him to the deck, and
stretched him out on the fore hatch, with the foreboom and sail to
protect him from the fragments of ice, which fell as in a shower each
time the schooner struck the berg.
Billy Topsail caught the skipper by the arm in a strong grip.
"We're lost!" he cried.
The roaring wind, the hiss of the seas, the shock and wreck, the
sudden, dreadful peril, had thrown the lad into a panic. The skipper
perceived his distress, and acted promptly to restore him to his
manhood.
"Leave me free!" he shouted, with a scowl.
But Billy tightened his grip on the skipper's arm, and sobbed and
whined. The skipper knocked him down with a blow on the breast; then
jerked him to his feet and pointed to the pump.
"Pump for your life!" he commanded, knowing well that what poor Billy
needed was work, of whatever kind, to give him back his courage.