_Billy Topsail is Shipped Upon Conditions, and the
Dictator, in a Rising Gale, is Caught in a Field of
Drift Ice, with a Growler to Leeward_
"WHERE'D you come aboard, b'y?" Captain Hand demanded.
"Long Tom, sir."
"Who shipped you?"
"I stowed away in a bunker, sir."
"You're from Ruddy Cove?" said the captain.
"Yes, sir. Me name's Billy, an' me father's a Labrador fisherman. Sure,
I've sailed t' the French Shore, sir, an' I'm a handy lad t' work, sir."
"Billy what?"
"Topsail, sir."
The captain raised his eyebrows; then dropped them, and stared at
the boy. He had been before the mast with old Tom Topsail on a South
American barque in years long gone.
"You'll work hard, b'y," said he, severely, for he had been bothered
with stowaways for thirty years, "an' I'll ship you regular, if you do
your duty. If you don't," and here the captain frowned tremendously,
"I'll have you thrashed at the post at Long Tom, an' you'll have no
share with the crew in the cargo."
"Ay, sir," said Billy, gladly. "Sure, I'll stand by it, sir."
When the captain turned his back, out came the belated chorus, with
young Billy Topsail leading:
"Sure, the chain 'e parted,
An' the schooner drove ashoare,
An' the wives o' the 'ands
Never saw un any moare.
No moare!
Never saw un any mo-o-o-are!"
"If he's like his dad," the captain chuckled to Archie, as they mounted
to the deck, "his name will be on the ship's books before the v'y'ge is
over, sure enough."
It appeared from the bridge that the gale was venting the utmost of its
force. The wind had veered a point or two to the north, and was driving
out of the darkness a vast field of broken ice. This, close packed and
grinding, was bearing down swiftly. It threatened to block the ship's
course--if not to surround her, take hold of her, and sweep her away.
In the northeast, dead over the bows, there loomed a great white mass,
a berg, grandly towering, with its peaks hidden in black, scudding
clouds. Beyond, and on either side, patches of white, vanishing and
reappearing, disclosed the whereabouts of other bergs.
"I was thinkin' about slowin' down," said the mate, when the captain
had scanned the prospect ahead.
With that, some part of Archie's alarm returned. It continued with him,
while the captain moved the lever of the signal box until the indicator
marked half speed, while the ship lost way, and the engines throbbed,
as though alive and breathing hard.
"Report, sir!"
This was Bill o' Burnt Bay, down from the crow's-nest, with his beard
frozen to his jacket and icicles hanging from his shaggy eyebrows.
"Well?"
"They's a big field o' ice bearin' down with the wind. 'Tis heavy,
an' comin' fast, an' 'tis stretchin' as far as I can see. They's five
good-sized bergs ahead, sir, with pan ice all about them. An'----"
"Growlers?" sharply.
"An' they's a big growler off the port bow. 'Twill soon be dead t'
leeward, if we keeps this course."
Bill o' Burnt Bay lumbered down the ladder and made for the forecastle
to thaw out. Meantime, the captain devoted himself to giving the
growler a wide berth; for a growler is a berg which trembles on the
verge of toppling over, and he had no wish to be caught between it and
the advancing floe. He had once lost a schooner that way; the adventure
was one of his most vivid recollections.
"We'll have t' get out o' this, Mr. Ackell," he said, "or we may get
badly nipped. We'll tie up t' the first steady berg we come to. Here,
b'y," sharply, to Archie, "you'll not go t' bed for a while. Keep near
me--but keep out o' the way."
"Ay, ay, sir!"
"Turn out all hands!"
The cry of "All hands on deck!" was passed fore and aft. It ran through
the ship like an alarm. The men trooped from below, wondering what had
occasioned it. Once on deck, a swift glance into the driving night
apprised these old sealers of the situation. They placed the ice hooks
and tackle in handy places; for the work in hand was plain enough.
The ship was swinging wide of the growler, against which the wind beat
with mighty force. A vast surface was exposed to the gale; and upon
every square foot a varying pressure was exerted. As the vessel drew
nearer, Archie could see the iceberg yield and sway. It was evident
that its submerged parts had been melted and worn until the equilibrium
of the whole was nearly overset. A sudden, furious gust might turn the
scale; and in that event a near-by vessel would surely be overwhelmed.
Captain Hand kept a watchful eye on the ice pack, which had now come
within a hundred fathoms, and was hurrying upon the advancing ship.
The vessel was between the floe and the growler: a situation not to
be escaped, as the captain had foreseen. The danger was clear: if the
rush of the floe should be too great for the steamer to withstand, she
would be swept, broadside on, against the berg, which, being of greater
weight and depth, moved sluggishly. Stout as she was, she could not
survive the collision.
The captain turned her bow to the pack; then he signalled full speed
ahead. There was a moment of waiting.
"Grab the rail, b'y," said the captain.
"Ay, ay, sir!"
The floe divided before the ship; the shock was hardly perceptible. For
a moment, where, at the edge, the ice was loose, she maintained her
speed. But the floe thickened. The fragments were packed tight. It was
as though the face of the sea were covered with a solid sheet of ice,
lying ahead as far as sight carried into the night. The ship laboured.
Her speed diminished, gradually, but perceptibly--vividly so! Her
progress was soon at the rate of half speed. In a moment it was even
slower than that. Would it stop altogether?
Archie was on the port side of the bridge. The captain walked over to
him and slapped him heartily on the back.
"Well, b'y," he cried, "how do you like the sealin' v'y'ge?"
That was a clever thought of the captain! Here was a man in desperate
case who could await the issue in light patience. The boy took heart at
the thought of it; and he needed that encouragement.
"I knew what it was when I started," he replied, with a gulp.
"Will she make it, think you?"
Another clever ruse of this great heart! He wanted the boy to have a
part in the action. Archie felt the blood stirring in his veins once
again.
"She's pretty near steady, sir, I think," he replied, after a pause.
The two leaned over the rail and looked intently at the ice sweeping
past.
"Are we losing, sir?" asked the boy.
"I think we're holdin' our own," said the captain, elatedly.
The boy turned to the great growler, now vague of outline in the dark.
The ice floe had swept over the limit of vision. He wondered if it
had struck the base of the berg. Then all at once the heap of cloudy
white swayed forth and back before his eyes. For a moment it was like
a gigantic curtain waving in the wind. It vanished of a sudden. A
mountain of broken water shot up in its place--as high as its topmost
pinnacle had been; and, following close upon its fall, another berg,
with a worn outline, reared itself, dripping streams of water.
Thus far there had been no sound; but the sound beat its way against
the wind, at last, and it was a thunderous noise--"like the growlin' of
a million dogs," the captain said afterwards. The growler had capsized.
"Look!" the boy cried, overcome.
"Turned turtle, ain't she?" remarked the skipper, calmly.
"The pack might have carried us near it!"
"Oh," said the captain, lightly, "but it didn't. She's a good ship, the
_Dictator_. What's more," he added, "she's makin' her way right through
the pack."
Another berg had taken form over the port quarter. The captain shaped
a course for it, eyeing it carefully as he drew near. It was low--not
higher than the ship's spars--and broad, with the impression of
stability strong upon it.
"See that berg, b'y?" said the captain. "Well," decisively, "we'll lie
in the lee o' that in half an hour. You see, b'y," he went on, "the
wind makes small bother for a solid berg. It whips the pan ice along,
easy enough, but the bergs float their own way, quiet as you please. In
the lee of every big fellow like that, there's open water. We'll lie
there, tied up, till mornin'."
In half an hour, the ship broke from the ice into the lee of the berg.
The floe raced past under the force of the gale, which left the lee air
and water untouched by its violence. Skillful seamanship brought the
vessel broadside to the ice. A wild commotion ensued: orders roared
from the bridge, signal bells, the shouts of the line men, the hiss of
steam, and the churning of the screw. Archie saw young Billy Topsail
scramble to the ice like a cat, with the first line in his hand: then
Bill o' Burnt Bay and half a dozen others, with axes and hooks.
In twenty minutes the engines were at rest, the ship was lying like a
log in a mill pond, the watch paced the deck in solitude, and Archibald
Armstrong was asleep in his berth in the captain's cabin--dreaming that
the mate was wrong and the captain right: that the gale had abated in
the night, and the morning had broken sunny.