_In Which Attack is Threatened and Billy Topsail Strips Stark Naked
in the Wind in Pursuit of a Desperate Expedient and with Small
Chance of Success_
Teddy Brisk kept watch for a skiff from Our Harbour or Come-Again Bight.
He depended for the inspiration of this rescue on his mother's anxious
love and sagacity. She would leave nothing to the indifferent dealings
and cold issue of chance; it was never "more by good luck than good
conduct" with her, ecod!
"I knows my mother's ways!" he sobbed, and he repeated this many times
as the gray day drew on and began to fail. "I tells you, Billy, I knows
my mother's ways!"
And they were not yet beyond sight of the coast. Scotchman's Breakfast
of Ginger Head was a wee white peak against the drab of the sky in the
southwest; and the ragged line of cliffs running south and east was a
long, thin ridge on the horizon where the cottages of Walk Harbour and
Our Harbour were.
No sail fluttered between--a sail might be confused with the colour of
the ice, however, or not yet risen into view; but by and by, when the
misty white circle of the sun was dropping low, the boy gave up hope,
without yielding altogether to despair. There would be no skiff along
that day, said he; but there would surely be a sail to-morrow, never
fear--Skipper Thomas and a Tight Cove crew.
In the light airs the floe had spread. There was more open water than
there had been. Fragments of ice had broken from the first vast pans
into which Schooner Bay ice had been split in the break-up. These
lesser, lighter pans moved faster than the greater ones; and the wind
from the north--blown up to a steady breeze by this time--was driving
them slowly south against the windward edge of the more sluggish fields
in that direction.
At sunset--the west was white and frosty--a small pan caught Billy
Topsail's eye and instantly absorbed his attention. It had broken from
the field on which they were marooned and was under way on a diagonal
across a quiet lane of black water, towards a second great field lying
fifty fathoms or somewhat less to the south.
Were Billy Topsail and the boy aboard that pan the wind would ferry them
away from the horrible menace of the dogs. It was a small pan--an area
of about four hundred square feet; yet it would serve. It was not more
than fifteen fathoms distant. Billy could swim that far--he was pretty
sure he could swim that far, the endeavour being unencumbered; but the
boy--a little fellow and a cripple--could not swim at all.
Billy jumped up.
"We've got t' leave this pan," said he, "an' forthwith too."
"Have you a notion, b'y?"
Billy laid off his seal-hide overjacket. He gathered up the dogs'
traces--long strips of seal leather by means of which the dogs had drawn
the komatik, a strip to a dog; and he began to knot them
together--talking fast the while to distract the boy from the incident
of peculiar peril in the plan.
The little pan in the lane--said he--would be a clever ferry. He would
swim out and crawl aboard. It would be no trick at all. He would carry
one end of the seal-leather line. Teddy Brisk would retain the other.
Billy pointed out a ridge of ice against which Teddy Brisk could brace
his sound leg. They would pull, then--each against the other; and
presently the little pan would approach and lie alongside the big
pan--there was none too much wind for that--and they would board the
little pan and push off, and drift away with the wind, and leave the
dogs to make the best of a bad job.
It would be a slow affair, though--hauling in a pan like that; the light
was failing too--flickering out like a candle end--and there must be
courage and haste--or failure.
Teddy Brisk at once discovered the interval of danger to himself.
"I'll be left alone with the dogs!" he objected.
"Sure, b'y," Billy coaxed; "but then you see----"
"I won't stay alone!" the boy sobbed. He shrank from the direction of
the dogs towards Billy. At once the dogs attended. "I'm afeared t' stay
alone!" he screamed. "No, no!"
"An we don't leave this pan," Billy scolded, "we'll be gobbled up in the
night."
That was not the immediate danger. What confronted the boy was an
immediate attack, which he must deal with alone.
"No! No! No!" the boy persisted.
"Ah, come now----"
"That Cracker knows I'm a cripple, Billy. He'll turn at me. I can't keep
un off."
Billy changed front.
"Who's skipper here?" he demanded.
"You is, sir."
"Is you takin' orders or isn't you?"
The effect of this was immediate. The boy stopped his clamour.
"I is, sir," said he.
"Then stand by!"
"Aye, sir!"--a sob and a sigh.
* * * * *
It was to be bitter cold work in the wind and water. Billy Topsail
completed his preparations before he began to strip. He lashed the end
of the seal-leather line round the boy's waist and put the club in his
hand.
All this while he gave directions: The boy was to face the dogs; he was
not to turn round for hints of Billy's progress or to be concerned at
all with that; he was not to lose courage; he was to feint and scold;
he was to let no shadow of fear cross his face--no tremor of fear must
touch his voice; he was not to yield an inch; he was not to sob and
cover his eyes with his hands--in short, he was to mind his own task of
keeping the dogs away and leave Billy to accomplish his.
And the boy answered: "Yes, sir!" and "Aye, sir!" and "Very well,
sir!"--like an old hand of the coast.
It was stimulating. Billy Topsail was heartened. He determined privately
that he would not turn to look back--that if the worst came to the
worst, and he could manage to do so, he would jerk the lad into the
water and let him drown. The snarling tumult of the onset would warn him
when the worst had come to the worst.
And then he stripped stark naked, quickly stowed away his clothes in the
midst of the boy's dogskin robes, tied the end of the seal-leather line
round his waist, and ran to the edge of the pan.
"If you drowns--" the boy began.
"Keep them dogs off!" Billy Topsail roared. "I'll not drown!"
He slipped into the water and struck out.