CHAPTER XII
_In Which Billy Topsail's Agreeable Qualities Win a Warm Welcome with Doctor Luke at Our Harbour, There is an Explosion at Ragged Run, Tommy West Drops Through the Ice and Vanishes, and Doctor Luke is in a Way Never to Be Warned of the Desperate Need of His Services_
In Doctor Luke's little hospital at Our Harbour, Billy Topsail fell inwith a charming group--Doctor Luke and his friends; and being himself aboy of a good many attractive qualities, and of natural good manners,which association with his friend Archie Armstrong, of St. John's, SirArchibald's son, had helped to fashion--being a manly, good-mannered,humorous fellow, he was very soon warmly accepted. There was no mysteryabout Doctor Luke. He was an Englishman--a well-bred, cultured man; andhaving been wrecked on the coast, and having perceived the great need ofa physician in those parts, he had thrown in his lot for good and allwith the Labrador folk. And he was obviously happy--both busy andhappy. That he regretted his determination was a preposterous thing toassume; on the contrary, he positively did not regret it--he whistledand sang and laughed and laboured, and Billy Topsail was convinced thathe was not only the most useful man in the world, but the mostdelightful and best, and the happiest, too.
That Doctor Luke was useful was very soon evident to an astonishingdegree. Teddy Brisk's leg was scraped--it was eventually healed andbecame quite as sound as Billy Topsail's "off shank." But there was aperiod of convalescence, during which Billy Topsail had all theopportunity in the world to observe just how mightily useful Doctor Lukewas. The demands upon him were extraordinary; and his response tothem--his ready, cheerful, skillful, brave response--was moreextraordinary still.
Winter was not yet done with: summer delayed--there was more snow, morefrost; and the ice drifted in and out with the variable winds: so thattravelling in those parts was at its most dangerous period. Yet DoctorLuke went about with small regard for what might happen--afoot, with thedogs, and in a punt, when the ice, having temporarily drifted away,left open water. Up and down the coast, near and far, always on thewing: that was Doctor Luke--the busiest, happiest, most useful man BillyTopsail had ever known.
And Billy Topsail was profoundly affected by all this beneficentactivity. He wished to emulate it. This was a secret, to be sure; therewas no reason for Billy Topsail to think that a fisherman's son likehimself would ever be presented with the opportunity to "wield a knife"and be made master of the arts of healing--and consequently he saidnothing about the growing ambition. But the ambition flourished.
When Doctor Luke returned from his professional calls with tales ofillness cured and distress alleviated, and when Billy Topsail reflectedthat there would have been neither cure nor alleviation had it not beenfor Doctor Luke's skill and kindly heart, Billy Topsail wanted with allhis strength to be about that selfsame business. And there was a gooddeal in the performance of it to appeal to a lad like Billy Topsail--theadventure of the thing: for Doctor Luke seldom counted the chances, whenthey seemed not too unreasonably against him, and when the need wasurgent he did not count them at all.
Billy Topsail was just a little bit puzzled at first. Why should DoctorLuke do these things? There was no gain--no material gain worthconsidering; but it did not take Billy Topsail long to perceive thatthere was in fact great gain--far exceeding material gain: thesatisfaction in doing a good deed for what Doctor Luke called "the loveof God" and nothing else whatsoever. Doctor Luke was not attached to anyMission. His work was his own: his field was his own--nobody contributedto his activities; nobody helped him in any way. Yet his work was donein the spirit of the missionary; and that was what Billy Topsail likedabout it--the masterful, generous, high-minded quality of it.
Being an honest, healthy lad, Billy Topsail set Doctor Luke in thehero's seat and began to worship, as no good boy could very well helpdoing; it was not long, indeed, before Doctor Luke had grown to be asgreat a hero as Sir Archibald Armstrong, Archie's father--and that issaying a good deal. In the lap of the future there lay some adventuresin which Billy Topsail and Archie Armstrong were to be concerned; butBilly Topsail was not aware of that.
Billy Topsail was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet. Sometimes,however, he sighed:
"I wish Archie was here!"
And that wish was to come true.
* * * * *
Before Teddy Brisk was well enough to be sent home, something happenedat Ragged Run Cove, which lay across Anxious Bight, near by the hospitalat Our Harbour; and Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail were at once drawninto the consequences of the accident. It was March weather. There wassunshine and thaw. Anxious Bight was caught over with rotten ice fromRagged Run Cove to the heads of Our Harbour. A rumour of seals--a herdon the Arctic drift-ice offshore--had come in from the Spotted Horses.It inspired instant haste in all the cottages of Ragged Run--an eager,stumbling haste.
In Bad-Weather Tom West's wife's kitchen, somewhat after ten o'clock inthe morning, in the midst of this hilarious scramble to be off to thefloe, there was a flash and spit of fire, pale in the sunshine, and theclap of an explosion and the clatter of a sealing gun on the bare floor;and in the breathless, dead little interval, enduring between theappalling detonation and a man's groan of dismay and a woman's choke andscream of terror--in this shocked silence, Dolly West, Bad-Weather Tom'ssmall maid, and Joe West's niece, stood swaying, wreathed in gray smoke,her little hands pressed tight to her eyes.
She was a pretty little creature--she had been a pretty little creature:there had been yellow curls, in the Labrador way--and rosy cheeks andgrave blue eyes; but now of all this shy, fair loveliness----
"You've killed her!"
"Dear Lord--no!" cried Uncle Joe West, whose gun had exploded.
Dolly dropped her hands. She reached out, then, for something to grasp.
And she plainted:
"I ithn't dead, mother. I juth'--I juth' can't thee."
She extended her red hands.
"They're all wet!" she complained.
By this time the mother had the little girl gathered close in her arms.
She moaned:
"Doctor Luke--quick!"
Tommy West caught up his cap and mittens and sprang to the door.
"Not by the Bight!" Joe West shouted.
"No, sir."
Dolly West whimpered:
"It thmart-th, mother!"
"By Mad Harry an' Thank-the-Lord!"
"Ay, sir."
Dolly screamed--now:
"It hurt-th! Oh, oh, it hurt-th!"
"An' haste, lad!"
"Ay, sir."
There was of course no doctor at Ragged Run; there was a doctor, DoctorLuke, at Our Harbour, however--across Anxious Bight. Tommy West avoidedthe rotten ice of the Bight, which he dared not cross, and took the'longshore trail by way of Mad Harry and Thank-the-Lord. At noon he waspast Mad Harry, his little legs wearing well and his breath comingeasily through his expanded nostrils--he had not paused; and at fouro'clock--still on a dog-trot--he had hauled down the chimney smoke ofThank-the-Lord and was bearing up for Our Harbour. Early dusk caught himshort-cutting the doubtful ice of Thank-the-Lord Cove; and half an hourlater, midway of the passage to Our Harbour, with two miles left toaccomplish--dusk falling thick and cold, then, and a frosty windblowing--the heads of Our Harbour looming black and solid in the wintrynight beyond--he dropped through the ice and vanished. There was not asign of him left--some bubbles, perhaps: nothing more.
Billy Topsail, M.D.: A Tale of Adventure With Doctor Luke of the Labrador Page 14