_In Which Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail Proceed to Accomplish What a
Cat Would Never Attempt and Doctor Luke Looks for a Broken Back
Whilst Billy Topsail Shouts, "Can You Make It?" and Hears No Answer_
When they came to the Head and there paused to survey Anxious Bight in a
flash of the moon Billy Topsail and Doctor Luke were tingling and warm
and limber and eager. Yet they were dismayed by the prospect. No man
could cross from the Head to Blow-me-Down Dick of Ragged Run Cove in the
dark. Doctor Luke considered the light. Communicating masses of ragged
cloud were driving low across Anxious Bight. Offshore there was a
sluggish bank of black cloud. And Doctor Luke was afraid of that bank of
black cloud. The moon was risen and full. It was obscured. The intervals
of light were less than the intervals of shadow. Sometimes a wide,
impenetrable cloud, its edges alight, darkened the moon altogether.
Still--there was light enough. All that was definitely ominous was the
bank of black cloud lying sluggishly offshore.
"I don't like that cloud, Billy," said Doctor Luke.
"No, sir; no more does I."
"It will cover the moon by and by."
"Sure, sir."
"There may be snow in it."
"Sure t' be, sir."
The longer Doctor Luke contemplated that bank of black cloud--its
potentiality for catastrophe--the more he feared it.
"If we were to be overtaken by snow----"
Billy interrupted with a chuckle.
"'Twould be a tidy little fix," said he. "Eh, sir?"
"Well, if that's all you have to say," said Doctor Luke--and he
laughed--"come right along!"
It was blowing high. There was the bite and shiver of frost in the wind.
Half a gale ran in from the open sea. Midway of Anxious Bight it would
be a saucy, hampering, stinging head-wind. And beyond the Head the ice
was in doubtful condition. A man might conjecture: that was all. What
was it Tommy West had said? "A cat couldn't cross!" It was mid-spring.
Freezing weather had of late alternated with periods of thaw and rain.
There had been windy days. Anxious Bight had even once been clear of
ice. A westerly wind had broken the ice and swept it out beyond the
heads; a punt had fluttered over from Ragged Run Cove.
In a gale from the northeast, however, these fragments had returned with
accumulations of Arctic pans and hummocks from the Labrador Current; and
a frosty night had caught them together and sealed them to the cliffs of
the coast. It was a slender attachment--a most delicate attachment: one
pan to the other and the whole to the rocks.
It had yielded somewhat--it must have gone rotten--in the weather of
that day.
What the frost had accomplished since dusk could be determined only upon
trial.
"Soft as cheese!" Doctor Luke concluded.
"Rubber ice," said Billy.
"Air-holes," said the Doctor.
There was another way to Ragged Run--the way by which Tommy West had
come. It skirted the shore of Anxious Bight--Mad Harry and
Thank-the-Lord and Little Harbour Deep--and something more than
multiplied the distance by one and a half. Doctor Luke was completely
aware of the difficulties of Anxious Bight, and so was Billy
Topsail--the way from Our Harbour to Ragged Run: the treacherous reaches
of young ice, bending under the weight of a man, and the veiled black
water, and the labour, the crevices, the snow-crust of the Arctic pans
and hummocks, and the broken field and wash of the sea beyond the lesser
island of the Spotted Horses.
They knew, too, the issue of the disappearance of the moon--the
desperate plight into which the sluggish bank of black cloud might
plunge a man.
Yet they now moved out and shaped a course for the black bulk of the
Spotted Horses.
This was in the direction of Blow-me-Down Dick of Ragged Run and the
open sea.
"Come on!" said Doctor Luke.
"I'm comin', sir," Billy replied.
There was something between a chuckle and a laugh from Billy's
direction.
Doctor Luke started.
"Laughing, Billy?" he inquired.
"I jus' can't help it, sir."
"Nothing much to laugh at."
"No, sir," Billy replied. "I don't _feel_ like laughin', sir. But 'tis
so wonderful dangerous out on the Bight that I jus' can't _help_
laughin'."
* * * * *
Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail were used to travelling all sorts of ice
in all sorts of weather. The returning fragments of the ice of Anxious
Bight had been close packed for two miles beyond the entrance to Our
Harbour by the northeast gale that had driven them back from the open.
An alien would have stumbled helplessly and exhausted himself; by and by
he would have begun to crawl--in the end he would have lost his life in
the frost. This was rough ice. In the press of the wind the drifting
floe had buckled. It had been a big gale. Under the whip of it, the ice
had come down with a rush. And when it encountered the coast, the first
great pans had been thrust out of the sea by the weight of the floe
behind.
A slow pressure had even driven them up the cliffs of the Head and
heaped them in a tumble below.
It was thus a folded, crumpled floe--a vast field of broken bergs and
pans at angles.
No Newfoundlander would adventure on the ice without a gaff. A gaff is a
lithe, iron-shod pole, eight or ten feet in length. Doctor Luke was as
cunning and sure with the gaff as any old hand of the sealing fleet; and
Billy Topsail always maintained that he had been born with a little gaff
in his hand instead of a silver spoon in his mouth. They employed the
gaffs now to advantage. They used them like vaulting poles. They walked
less than they leaped. But this was no work for the half-light of an
obscured moon. Sometimes they halted for light. And delay annoyed Doctor
Luke. A peppery humour began to possess him. A pause of ten
minutes--they squatted for rest meantime--threw him into a state of
incautious irritability. At this rate it would be past dawn before they
made the cottages of Ragged Run Cove.
It would be slow beyond--surely slow on the treacherous reaches of green
ice between the floe and the Spotted Horses.
And beyond the Spotted Horses, whence the path to Ragged Run led--the
crossing of Tickle-my-Ribs!
A proverb of Our Harbour maintains that a fool and his life are soon
parted.
Doctor Luke invented the saying.
"'Twould be engraved on my stationery," he would declare, out of temper
with recklessness, "if I had any engraved stationery!"
Yet now, impatient of precaution, when he thought of Dolly West, Doctor
Luke presently chanced a leap. It was error. As the meager light
disclosed the path, a chasm of fifteen feet intervened between the edge
of the upturned pan upon which he and Billy Topsail stood and a
flat-topped hummock of Arctic ice to which he was bound. There was
footing for the tip of his gaff midway below. He felt for this footing
to entertain himself whilst the moon delayed.
It was there. He was tempted. It was an encouragement to rash conduct.
The chasm was critically deep for the length of the gaff. Worse than
that, the hummock was higher than the pan. Doctor Luke peered across. It
was not _much_ higher. Was it too high? No. It would merely be necessary
to lift stoutly at the climax of the leap. And there was need of
haste--a little maid in hard case at Ragged Run and a rising cloud
threatening black weather.
"Ah, sir, don't leap it!" Billy pleaded.
"Tut!" scoffed the Doctor.
"Wait for the moon, sir!"
A slow cloud covered the moon. It was aggravating. How long must a man
wait? A man must take a chance--what? And all at once Doctor Luke gave
way to impatience. He gripped his gaff with angry determination and
projected himself towards the hummock of Arctic ice. In mid-air he was
doubtful. A flash later he had regretted the hazard. It seemed he would
come short of the hummock altogether. He would fall. There would be
broken bones. He perceived now that he had misjudged the height of the
hummock.
Had the gaff been a foot longer Doctor Luke would have cleared the
chasm. It occurred to him that he would break his back and merit the
fate of his callow mistake. Then his toes caught the edge of the
flat-topped hummock. His boots were of soft seal-leather. He gripped the
ice. And now he hung suspended and inert. The slender gaff bent under
the prolonged strain of his weight and shook in response to the shiver
of his arms.
Billy Topsail shouted:
"Can you make it, sir?"
There was no answer.