CHAPTER XIX
_In Which Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail Hesitate in Fear on the Brink of Tickle-my-Ribs_
Dolly West's mother still sat rocking by the kitchen fire. It was longpast midnight now. Once more Uncle Joe West tiptoed in from the frostynight.
"Is she sleepin' still?" he whispered.
"Hush! She've jus' toppled off again. She's havin' a deal o' pain, Joe.An' she've been bleedin' again."
"Put her down on the bed, dear."
The woman shook her head. "I'm afeared 'twould start the wounds, Joe.I'm not wantin' t' start un again. Any sign o' Doctor Luke yet, Joe?"
"Not yet."
"He'll come soon."
"No; 'tis not near time. 'Twill be dawn afore he----"
"Soon, Joe."
"He'll be delayed by snow. The moon's near gone. 'Twill be black darkin half an hour. I felt a flake o' snow as I come in. An' he'll maybewait at Mad Harry----"
"He's comin' by the Bight, Joe."
Dolly stirred--cried out--awakened with a start--and lifted her bandagedhead a little.
She did not open her eyes.
"Is that you, Doctor Luke, sir?" she plainted.
"Hush!" the mother whispered. "'Tis not the Doctor yet."
"When----"
"He's comin'."
"I'll take a look," said Joe.
He went out again and stumbled down the path to Blow-me-Down Dick byTickle-my-Ribs.
* * * * *
Doctor Luke lay still and expectant in the pool of water near thepan-ice and rocks of the Little Spotted Horse. He waited. Nothinghappened. It was encouraging. But he did not dare stand up. Nor would hedare to get to his knees and crawl.
There was no help to be had from the agonized Billy Topsail.
Both knew it.
"Shall I come, sir?" Billy called.
"Stay where you are," Doctor Luke replied, "or we'll both drop through.Don't move."
"Ay, sir."
Presently Doctor Luke ventured delicately to take off a mitten--toextend his hand, to sink his finger-nails in the ice and attempt to drawhimself forward. He tried again. It was a failure. His finger-nails weretoo short. He could merely scratch the ice. He reflected that if he didnot concentrate his weight--that if he kept it distributed--he would notbreak through. And once more he tried to make use of his finger-nails.
There was no snow on this ice. It was a smooth, hard surface. It wasdry. It turned out that the nails of the other hand were longer. DoctorLuke managed to gain half an inch before they slipped.
They slipped again--and again and again. It was hopeless. Doctor Lukelay still--pondering.
Billy Topsail's agony of anxiety increased.
"Is you safe, sir?"
"Stay where you are!"
"Ay, sir!"
Doctor Luke could not continue to lie still. Presently he would befrozen in the pool of water. In emergencies he was used to indulging ina simple philosophical reflection: A man can lose his life but once. Nowhe shot his gaff towards the pan-ice, to be rid of the incumbrance ofit, and lifted himself on his palms and toes. By this the distributionof his weight was not greatly disturbed. It was not concentrated uponone point. It was divided by four and laid upon four points.
And there were no fearsome consequences. It was a hopeful experiment.Doctor Luke stepped by inches on his hands towards the pan-ice--dragginghis toes. In this way he came to the line of solid ice under the cliffsof the Little Spotted Horse and gained the refuge of it. And then hedirected the crossing of Billy Topsail, who was much lighter, andcrossed safely. Whereupon they set out for the point of the LittleSpotted Horse and the passage of Tickle-my-Ribs. And they wereheartened.
* * * * *
A country physician might say of a muddy, midnight call, in the wind anddark of a wet night in the fall of the year, that the roads were bad.Doctor Luke would have said of the way from Our Harbour to the LittleSpotted Horse that he had been "in a bit of a mess." Thus far there hadbeen nothing extravagantly uncommon in the night's experience. DoctorLuke and Billy Topsail had merely encountered and survived the familiardifficulties of a passage of Anxious Bight in a period of criticalweather in the spring of the year.
A folded floe and six miles of rubber ice were not sufficiently out ofthe way to constitute an impressive incident. Doctor Luke had faredbetter and worse in his time. So had Billy Topsail. All this was not aclimax. It was something to be forgotten in a confusion of experiencesof the same description. It would not remain very long in the memory ofeither. In what lay ahead, however--the passage of Tickle-my-Ribs--therewas doubtless an adventure.
"She'll be heavin' in this wind," Billy Topsail said.
"We'll get across," Doctor Luke replied, confidently. "Come along!"
Tickle-my-Ribs was heaving. The sea had by this time eaten its way clearthrough the passage from the open to the first reaches of Anxious Bightand far and wide beyond. The channel was half a mile long--in width aquarter of a mile at the narrowest. Doctor Luke's path was determined.It must lead from the point of the island to the base of Blow-me-DownDick and the adjoining fixed and solid ice of the narrows to Ragged RunHarbour. And ice choked the channel loosely from shore to shore.
It was a thin sheet of fragments--running through from the open. Therewas only an occasional considerable pan. A high sea ran outside. Wavesfrom the open slipped under this field of little pieces and lifted it inrunning swells. In motion Tickle-my-Ribs resembled a vigorously shakencarpet. No single block of ice was at rest. The crossing would have beenhazardous in the most favourable circumstances. And now aloft the moonand the ominous bank of black cloud had come close together.
Precisely as a country doctor might petulantly regard a stretch ofhub-deep cross-road, Doctor Luke, the outport physician, when he came tothe channel between the Little Spotted Horse and Blow-me-Down Dick ofthe Ragged Run coast, regarded the passage of Tickle-my-Ribs. Not manyof the little pans would bear the weight of either himself or BillyTopsail. They would sustain it momentarily. Then they would tip or sink.There would be foothold only through the instant required to chooseanother foothold and leap towards it.
Always, moreover, the leap would have to be taken from sinking ground.When they came, by good chance, to a pan that would bear them up for amoment, they would have instantly to discover another heavy block towhich to shape their agitated course. There would be no rest--nocertainty beyond the impending moment. But leaping thus--alert and agileand daring--a man might----
Might? Mm-m--a man _might_! And he might _not_! There werecontingencies. A man might leap short and find black water where he haddepended upon a footing of ice--a man might land on the edge of a panand fall slowly back for sheer lack of power to obtain a balance--a manmight misjudge the strength of a pan to bear him up--a man might find noice near enough for the next immediately imperative leap--a man mightconfront the appalling exigency of a lane of open water.
As a matter of fact, a man might be unable either to go forward orretreat. A man might be submerged and find the shifting floe closed overhis head. A man might easily lose his life in the driving, swelling rushof the shattered floe through Tickle-my-Ribs. And there was the light toconsider. A man might be caught in the dark. He would be in hopelesscase if caught in the dark. And the light might----
Light was imperative. Doctor Luke glanced aloft.
"Whew!" he whistled. "What do you think, Billy?"
Billy was flat.
"I'd not try it!" said he.
"No?"
"No, sir!"
The moon and the ominous bank of black cloud were very close. There wassnow in the air. A thickening flurry ran past.
* * * * *
Uncle Joe West was not on the lookout when Doctor Luke opened thekitchen door at Ragged Run Cove, and strode in, with Billy Topsail athis heels, and with the air of a man who had survived difficulties andwas proud of it. Uncle Joe West was sitting by the fire,
his face inhis hands; and the mother of Dolly West--with Dolly still restlesslyasleep in her arms--was rocking, rocking, as before. And Doctor Luke setto work without delay or explanation--in a way so gentle, with a voiceso persuasive, with a hand so tender and sure, with a skill and wisdomso keen, that little Dolly West, who was brave enough, in any case, asyou know, yielded the additional patience and courage that the simplemeans at hand for her relief required. Doctor Luke laved Dolly West'sblue eyes until she could see again, and sewed up her wounds, thatnight, so that no scar remained, and in the broad light of the next daypicked out grains of powder until not a single grain was left todisfigure the child.
Billy Topsail, M.D.: A Tale of Adventure With Doctor Luke of the Labrador Page 21