Billy Topsail, M.D.: A Tale of Adventure With Doctor Luke of the Labrador

by Norman Duncan

  CHAPTER XIII

  _In Which Doctor Luke Undertakes a Feat of Daring and Endurance and Billy Topsail Thinks Himself the Luckiest Lad in the World_

  Returning from a call at Tumble Tickle, in clean, sunlit weather, withnothing more tedious than eighteen miles of wilderness trail and roughfloe ice behind him, Doctor Luke was chagrined to discover himself a bitfagged. He had come heartily down the trail from Tumble Tickle in theearly hours of that fine, windy morning, fit and eager for thetrudge--as a matter of course; but on the ice, in the shank of theday--there had been eleven miles of the floe--he had lagged. A mancannot practice medicine out of a Labrador outport harbour and not knowwhat it means to stomach a physical exhaustion. Doctor Luke had beentired before. He was not disturbed by that. But being human, he lookedforward to rest; and in the drear, frosty dusk, when he rounded theheads of Home, opened the lights of Our Harbour, and caught the warm,yellow gleam of the lamp in the surgery window, he was glad to be nearhis supper and his bed.

  And so he told Billy Topsail, whom he found in the surgery, replenishingthe fire.

  "Ha, Billy!" said he. "I'm glad to be home."

  Afterwards, when supper had been disposed of, and Doctor Luke was withBilly in the surgery, the rest of the family being elsewhere occupied,there was a tap on the surgery door. Doctor Luke called: "Comein!"--with some wonder as to the event. It was no night to be abroad onthe ice. Yet the tap on the surgery door could mean but onething--somebody was in trouble; and as he called "Come in!" and while hewaited for the door to open, Doctor Luke considered the night andwondered what strength he had left.

  A youngster--he had been dripping wet and was now sparkling all overwith frost and ice in the light of the surgery lamp--intruded.

  "Thank-the-Lord Cove?"

  "No, sir."

  "Mad Harry?"

  "Ragged Run, sir."

  "Bad-Weather West's lad?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Been in the water?"

  The boy grinned. He was ashamed of himself. "Yes, sir. I falled throughthe ice, sir."

  "Come across the Bight?"

  The boy stared. "No, sir. A cat couldn't cross the Bight the night, sir.'Tis all rotten. I come alongshore by Mad Harry an' Thank-the-Lord. Idropped through all of a sudden, sir, in Thank-the Lord Cove."

  "Who's sick?"

  "Uncle Joe's gun went off, sir."

  Doctor Luke rose. "Uncle Joe's gun went off! Who was in the way?"

  "Dolly, sir."

  "And Dolly in the way! And Dolly----"

  "She've gone blind, sir. An' her cheek, sir--an' one ear, sir----"

  "What's the night?"

  "Blowin' up, sir. There's a scud. An' the moon----"

  "You didn't cross the Bight? Why not?"

  "'Tis rotten from shore t' shore. I'd not try the Bight, sir, thenight."

  "No?"

  "No, sir." The boy was very grave.

  "Mm-m."

  All this while Doctor Luke had been moving about the surgery in surehaste--packing a waterproof case with little instruments and vials andwhat-not. And now he got quickly into his boots and jacket, pulled downhis coonskin cap, pulled up his sealskin gloves, handed Bad-WeatherWest's boy over to the family for supper and bed, and was about to closethe surgery door upon himself when Billy Topsail interrupted him.

  "I say, sir!"

  Doctor Luke halted.

  "Well, Billy?"

  "Take me, sir! Won't you?"

  "What for?"

  "I wants t' go."

  "I go the short way, Billy."

  "Sure, you does! I knows _you_, sir!"

  Doctor Luke laughed.

  "Come on!" said he.

  Billy Topsail thought himself the luckiest lad in the world. And perhapshe was.