_In Which Teddy Brisk Escapes From the Wolfskin Bag and Determines
to Use His Crutch and Billy Topsail Comes to the Conclusion that "It
Looks Bad"_
Next day the dogs hung close. They were now almost desperately ravenous.
It was agony for them to be so near the satisfaction of their hunger and
in inhibitive terror of seizing it. Their mouths dripped. They were in
torture--they whimpered and ran restless circles; but they did not dare.
They would attack when the quarry was weak or unaware. Occasionally
Billy Topsail sallied on them with his club and a loud, intimidating
tongue, to disclose his strength and teach them discretion; and the dogs
were impressed and restrained by this show. If Billy Topsail could catch
and kill a dog he would throw the carcass to the pack and thus stave off
attack. Having been fed, the dogs would be in a mild humour. Billy might
then entice and kill another--for himself and Teddy Brisk.
[Illustration: THE DOGS WERE DESPERATELY RAVENOUS]
Cracker was alive and still masterful. Billy went out in chase of Smoke.
It was futile. Billy cut a ridiculous figure in the pursuit. He could
neither catch the dog nor overreach him with blandishments; and a cry of
alarm from the boy brought him back to his base in haste to drive off
Cracker and Tucker and Sling, who were up to the wolf's trick of
flanking. The dogs had reverted. They were wolves again--as nearly as
harbour dogs may be. Billy perceived that they could no longer be dealt
with as the bond dogs of Tight Cove.
In the afternoon Billy slept. He would need to keep watch through the
night.
Billy Topsail had husbanded the fragments of the komatik. A fire burned
all that night--a mere glow and flicker of light. It was the last of the
wood. All that remained was the man's club and the boy's crutch. Now,
too, the last of the food went. There was nothing to eat. What Billy had
brought, the abundant provision of a picnic, with something for
emergencies--the bread and tea and molasses--had been conserved, to be
sure, and even attenuated. There was neither a crumb nor a drop of it
left.
What confronted Billy Topsail now, however, and alarmed his hope and
courage, was neither wind nor frost, nor so much the inevitable pangs of
starvation, which were not immediate, as a swift abatement of his
strength. A starved man cannot long continue at bay with a club. Billy
could beat off the dogs that night perhaps--after all, they were the
dogs of Tight Cove, Cracker and Smoke and Tucker and Sling; but
to-morrow night--he would not be so strong to-morrow night.
The dogs did not attack that night. Billy heard them close--the sniffing
and whining and restless movement in the dark that lay beyond the light
of his feeble fire and was accentuated by it. But that was all.
* * * * *
It was now clear weather and the dark of the moon. The day was bright
and warm. When night fell again it was starlight--every star of them all
twinkling its measure of pale light to the floe. The dogs were plain as
shifting, shadowy creatures against the white field of ice. Billy
Topsail fought twice that night. This was between midnight and dawn.
There was no maneuvering. The dogs gathered openly, viciously, and
delivered a direct attack. Billy beat them off. He was gasping and
discouraged, though, at the end of the encounter. They would surely come
again--and they did. They waited--an hour, it may have been; and then
they came.
There was a division of the pack. Six dogs--Spunk and Biscuit and Hero
in advance--rushed Billy Topsail. It was a reluctant assault. Billy
disposed of the six--after all, they were dogs of Tight Cove, not wolves
from the rigours of the timber; and Billy was then attracted to the
rescue of Teddy Brisk, who was tied up in the wolfskin bag, by the boy's
muffled screams. Cracker and Smoke and Tucker and Sling were worrying
the wolfskin bag and dragging it off. They dropped it and took flight
when Billy came roaring at them with a club.
When Billy released him from the wolfskin bag the boy was still
screaming. He was not quieted--his cries and sobbing--until the day was
broad.
"Gimme my crutch!" said he. "I'll never go in that bag no more!"
"Might as well wield your crutch," Billy agreed.
To survive another night was out of the question. Another night came in
due course, however, and was to be faced.
* * * * *
It was a gray day. Sky and ice and fields of ruffled water had no warmth
of colour. All the world was both cold and drear. A breeze was stirring
down from the north and would be bitter in the dusk. It cut and
disheartened the castaways. It portended, moreover, a black night.
Teddy cried a good deal that day--a little whimper, with tears. He was
cold and hungry--the first agony of starvation--and frightened and
homesick. Billy fancied that his spirit was broken. As for Billy
himself, he watched the dogs, which watched him patiently near by--a
hopeless vigil for the man, for the dogs were fast approaching a pass of
need in which hunger would dominate the fear of a man with a club. 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. 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.
That was the full extent of his admission.