CHAPTER XVI
_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 aflash of the moon Billy Topsail and Doctor Luke were tingling and warmand limber and eager. Yet they were dismayed by the prospect. No mancould cross from the Head to Blow-me-Down Dick of Ragged Run Cove in thedark. Doctor Luke considered the light. Communicating masses of raggedcloud were driving low across Anxious Bight. Offshore there was asluggish bank of black cloud. And Doctor Luke was afraid of that bank ofblack cloud. The moon was risen and full. It was obscured. The intervalsof 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 thebank 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--itspotentiality 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 helaughed--"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 wouldbe a saucy, hampering, stinging head-wind. And beyond the Head the icewas in doubtful condition. A man might conjecture: that was all. Whatwas 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 ofice. A westerly wind had broken the ice and swept it out beyond theheads; a punt had fluttered over from Ragged Run Cove.
In a gale from the northeast, however, these fragments had returned withaccumulations of Arctic pans and hummocks from the Labrador Current; anda frosty night had caught them together and sealed them to the cliffs ofthe coast. It was a slender attachment--a most delicate attachment: onepan to the other and the whole to the rocks.
It had yielded somewhat--it must have gone rotten--in the weather ofthat day.
What the frost had accomplished since dusk could be determined only upontrial.
"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 hadcome. It skirted the shore of Anxious Bight--Mad Harry andThank-the-Lord and Little Harbour Deep--and something more thanmultiplied the distance by one and a half. Doctor Luke was completelyaware of the difficulties of Anxious Bight, and so was BillyTopsail--the way from Our Harbour to Ragged Run: the treacherous reachesof young ice, bending under the weight of a man, and the veiled blackwater, and the labour, the crevices, the snow-crust of the Arctic pansand hummocks, and the broken field and wash of the sea beyond the lesserisland of the Spotted Horses.
They knew, too, the issue of the disappearance of the moon--thedesperate plight into which the sluggish bank of black cloud mightplunge a man.
Yet they now moved out and shaped a course for the black bulk of theSpotted Horses.
This was in the direction of Blow-me-Down Dick of Ragged Run and theopen sea.
"Come on!" said Doctor Luke.
"I'm comin', sir," Billy replied.
There was something between a chuckle and a laugh from Billy'sdirection.
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 'tisso 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 icein all sorts of weather. The returning fragments of the ice of AnxiousBight had been close packed for two miles beyond the entrance to OurHarbour by the northeast gale that had driven them back from the open.An alien would have stumbled helplessly and exhausted himself; by and byhe would have begun to crawl--in the end he would have lost his life inthe frost. This was rough ice. In the press of the wind the driftingfloe had buckled. It had been a big gale. Under the whip of it, the icehad come down with a rush. And when it encountered the coast, the firstgreat pans had been thrust out of the sea by the weight of the floebehind.
A slow pressure had even driven them up the cliffs of the Head andheaped them in a tumble below.
It was thus a folded, crumpled floe--a vast field of broken bergs andpans at angles.
No Newfoundlander would adventure on the ice without a gaff. A gaff is alithe, iron-shod pole, eight or ten feet in length. Doctor Luke was ascunning and sure with the gaff as any old hand of the sealing fleet; andBilly Topsail always maintained that he had been born with a little gaffin his hand instead of a silver spoon in his mouth. They employed thegaffs now to advantage. They used them like vaulting poles. They walkedless than they leaped. But this was no work for the half-light of anobscured moon. Sometimes they halted for light. And delay annoyed DoctorLuke. A peppery humour began to possess him. A pause of tenminutes--they squatted for rest meantime--threw him into a state ofincautious irritability. At this rate it would be past dawn before theymade the cottages of Ragged Run Cove.
It would be slow beyond--surely slow on the treacherous reaches of greenice between the floe and the Spotted Horses.
And beyond the Spotted Horses, whence the path to Ragged Run led--thecrossing of Tickle-my-Ribs!
A proverb of Our Harbour maintains that a fool and his life are soonparted.
Doctor Luke invented the saying.
"'Twould be engraved on my stationery," he would declare, out of temperwith recklessness, "if I had any engraved stationery!"
Yet now, impatient of precaution, when he thought of Dolly West, DoctorLuke presently chanced a leap. It was error. As the meager lightdisclosed the path, a chasm of fifteen feet intervened between the edgeof the upturned pan upon which he and Billy Topsail stood and aflat-topped hummock of Arctic ice to which he was bound. There wasfooting for the tip of his gaff midway below. He felt for this footingto 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 thanthat, the hummock was higher than the pan. Doctor Luke peered across. Itwas not _much_ higher. Was it too high? No. It would merely be necessaryto lift stoutly at the climax of the leap. And there was need ofhaste--a little maid in hard case at Ragged Run and a rising cloudthreatening 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 manwait? A man must take a chance--what? And all at once Doctor Luke gaveway to impatience. He gripped his gaff with angry determination andprojected himself towards the hummock of Arctic ice. In mid-air he wasdoubtful. A flash later he had regretted the hazard. It seemed he wouldcome short of the hummock altogether. He would fall. There would bebroken bones. He perceived now that he had misjudged the height of thehummock.
Had the gaff been a foot longer Doctor Luke would have cleared thechasm. It occurred to him that he would break his back and merit thefate of his callow mistake. Then his toes caught the edge of theflat-topped hummock. His boots were of soft seal-leather. He gripped theice. And now he hung suspended and inert. The slende
r gaff bent underthe prolonged strain of his weight and shook in response to the shiverof his arms.
Billy Topsail shouted:
"Can you make it, sir?"
There was no answer.
Billy Topsail, M.D.: A Tale of Adventure With Doctor Luke of the Labrador Page 18