_Describing How Billy Topsail Set out for Ruddy Cove with
Her Majesty's Mail and Met with Catastrophe_
THROUGH the long, evil-tempered winter, when ice and high winds keep
the coasting boats from the outports, the Newfoundland mails are
carried by hand from settlement to settlement, even to the farthermost
parts of the bleak peninsula to the north.
Arch Butt's link in the long chain was from Burnt Bay to Ruddy Cove.
Once a week, come wind, blizzard or blinding sunlight, with four
dollars and a half to reward him at the end of it, he made the eighty
miles of wilderness and sea, back and forth, with the mail-bag on his
broad back.
No man of the coast, save he, dared face that stretch in all weathers.
It may be that he tramped a league, skated a league, sailed a league,
sculled a league, groped his way through a league of night, breasted
his way through a league of wind, picked his way over a league of
shifting ice.
To be sure, he chose the way which best favoured his progress and
least frayed the thread upon which his life hung.
"Seems t' me, b'y," he said to his mate from New Bay, when the great
gale of '98 first appeared in the northeast sky--"seems t' me we _may_
make Duck Foot Cove the night, safe enough."
"Maybe, lad," was the reply, after a long, dubious survey of the rising
clouds. "Maybe we'll get clear o' the gale, but 'twill be a close call,
whatever (at any rate)."
"Maybe," said Arch. "'Twould be well t' get Her Majesty's mail so far
as Duck Foot Cove, whatever."
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.
"Will you not carry the mail t' Ruddy Cove, Saul Ride?" he demanded,
when he had dressed his foot, and failed, stout as he was, to bear the
pain of resting his weight upon it.
"'Tis too far in a gale for my old legs," said Ride, "an'----"
"But 'tis Her Majesty's mail!" cried Arch. "Won't you try, b'y?"
"An I had a chance t' make it, I'd try, quick enough," said Ride
sharply; "but 'twould be not only me life, but the mail I'd lose. The
ice do be broken up 'tween here an' Creepy Bluff; an' not even Arch
Butt, hisself, could walk the hills."
"Three days lost!" Arch groaned. "All the letters three days late! An'
all----"
"Letters!" Ride broke in scornfully. "Letters, is it? Don't you fret
about they. A love letter for the parson's daughter; the price o' fish
from St. John's for the old skipper; an' a merchant's account for every
fisherman t' the harbour: they be small things t' risk life for."
The mailman laid his hand on the leather bag at his side. He fingered
the government seal tenderly and his eyes flashed splendidly when he
looked up.
"'Tis Her Majesty's mail!" he said. "Her Majesty's mail! Who knows what
they be in this bag. Maybe, b'y--maybe--maybe they's a letter for old
Aunt Esther Bludgel. She've waited this three year for a letter from
that boy," he continued. "Maybe _'tis_ in there now. Sure, b'y, an' I
believe 'tis in there. Saul Ride, the mail must go!"
A touch of the bruised foot on the floor brought the mailman groaning
to his chair again. If the mail were to go to Ruddy Cove that night,
it was not to be carried on his back: that much was evident. Saul Ride
gazed at him steadily for a moment. Something of the younger man's fine
regard for duty communicated itself to him. There had been a time--the
days of his strength--when he, too, would have thought of duty before
danger. He went abstractly to the foot of the loft stair.
"Billy!" he called. "Billy!"
"Ay, Uncle Saul," was the quick response.
"I wants you, b'y."
Billy Topsail came swiftly down the stair. He was spending a week with
his lonely Uncle Saul at Duck Foot Cove. A summons at that hour meant
pressing service--need of haste. What was the call? Were they all well
at home? He glanced from one man to the other.
"B'y," said Ride, with a gesture towards the mail-bag, "will you carry
that bag to Ruddy Cove? Will----"
"Will you carry Her Majesty's mail t' Ruddy Cove?" Arch Butt burst out.
His voice thrilled Billy, as he continued: "Her Majesty's mail!"
"'Tis but that black bag, b'y," Ride said quietly. "Will you take it t'
Ruddy Cove t'-night? Please yourself about it."
"Ay," said Billy quickly. "When?"
"'Twill be light enough in four hours," said the mailman.
"Go back t' bed, b'y," Ride said. "I'll wake you when 'tis time t' be
off."
Five minutes later the boy was sound asleep.
* * * * *
No Newfoundlander ventures out upon the ice without his gaff--a
nine-foot pole, made of light, tough dog-wood, and iron-shod. It was
with his own true gaff that Billy felt his way out of Duck Foot Cove as
the night cleared away.
The sea had abated somewhat with the wind. In the bay beyond the cove,
the broken ice was freezing into one vast, rough sheet, solid as the
coast rocks on the pans, but unsafe, and deceptive over the channels
between. The course was down the bay, skirting the shore, to Creepy
Bluff, then overland to Ruddy Cove, which is a port of the open sea: in
all, twenty-one miles, with the tail of the gale to beat against.
"Feel every step o' the way till the light comes strong," had been old
Saul Ride's last word to the boy. "Strike hard with your gaff before
you put your foot down."
Billy kept his gaff before him--feeling his way much as a blind man
taps the pavement as he goes along a city street. The search for solid
ice led him this way and that, but his progress towards Creepy Bluff,
the shadowy outline of which he soon could see, steadily continued. He
surmised that it was still blowing hard in the open, beyond the shelter
of the islands; and he wondered if the wind would sweep him off his
feet when he essayed to cross Sloop Run, down which it ran, unbroken,
from the sea to the bluff.
"Her Majesty's mail!" he muttered, echoing the thrill in the mailman's
voice. "Her Majesty's mail!"
When the light was stronger--but it was not yet break of day--he
thought to make greater haste by risking more. Now and again he chanced
himself on a suspicious-looking black sheet. Now and again he ran
nimbly over many yards of rubber ice, which yielded and groaned, but
did not break. Often he ventured where Arch Butt would not have dared
take his massive body. All this he did, believing always that he should
not delay the Gull Arm mailman, who might even then be waiting for him
in Ruddy Cove.
But when he had covered six miles of the route, he came to a wide
channel which was not yet frozen over. It lay between two large pans.
How far he might have to diverge from his course to cross without risk,
he could not tell. He was impressed with the fact that, once across,
the way lay clear before him--a long stretch of solid ice.
"Sure, I must cross here," he thought.
He sought for a large cake of floating ice, that he might ferry himself
across with his gaff. None great enough to bear his weight was to be
seen--none, at least, within reach of his gaff. There were small cakes
a-plenty; these were fragments heavy enough to bear him for but an
instant. Could he cross on them? He thought he might leap from one to
the other so swiftly that none would be called upon to sustain his full
weight, and thus pass safely over.
With care he chose the path he would follow. Then, without hesitation,
he leaped for the first cake--passed to the second--to the third--to
the fourth--stepping so lightly from one to the other that the water
did not touch the soles of his boots. In a moment, he was whistling on
his way on the other side, leaving the channel ice bobbing excitedly
behind him.
Soon he broke off whistling and began to sing. On he trudged, piping
merrily:
'Way down on Pigeon Pond Island,
When daddy comes home from swilin',[6]
Cakes and tea for breakfast,
Pork and duff for dinner,
Cakes and tea for supper,
'Way down on Pigeon Pond Island.
At noon he came to an expanse of bad ice. He halted at the edge of it
to eat a bit of the hard bread and dried venison in his nunny-bag.
Then, forward again! He advanced with great caution, sounding every
step, on the alert for thin places. A mile of this and he had grown
weary. He was not so quick, not so sure, in his estimate of the
strength of the ice. The wind, now blowing in stronger gusts, brought
the water to his eyes and impaired his sight. He did not regret his
undertaking, but he began ardently to wish that Creepy Bluff were
nearer. Thus moved, his pace increased--with ever-increasing peril to
himself. He must make haste!
What befell the boy came suddenly. He trusted his feet to a drift of
snow. Quick as a flash, and all unready, he was submerged in the water
beneath.
FOOTNOTE:
[6] Sealing.