CHAPTER XXXIV
_In Which Archie and Billy Resolve Upon a Deed of Their Own Doing, and are Challenged by Ha-Ha Shallow of Rattle Water_
Neither boy slept very much. In Samuel Jolly's spare bed (it was calleda spare bed)--where they had tumbled in together--they did more talkingthan sleeping. And that could not be helped. It was a situation thatappealed to the imagination of two chivalrous boys--a woman all alone onPoor Luck Barrens with a madman. When morning came they were up with thefirst peep of the light; and they were in a nervous condition of such asort that neither would hesitate over a reckless chance if it shouldconfront them in an attempt to help the writer of the letter of thecleft stick.
"Who is she?" Archie demanded of Samuel Jolly.
"Jinny Tulk, sir--Trapper George's daughter."
"How does she come to be at Poor Luck Barrens?"
"Trapper George has a trappin' tilt there, sir. They're both from thisharbour. They goes trappin' on Poor Luck Barrens in the winter. Jinnykeeps house for her pop."
"All alone?"
"Ay, sir; there's nobody livin' near."
Archie turned to Billy.
"Look here, Billy," said he, anxiously, "we've _got_ to go. I can't bearit here--with that poor girl all alone----"
"Doctor Luke----"
"We can't wait for Doctor Luke."
"That's jus' what I was goin' t' say," said Billy. "We'll leave word forDoctor Luke that we've gone. He can follow. An' when we gets there, wecan keep Trapper George quiet until Doctor Luke comes."
"When shall we start?"
"Now!"
* * * * *
Outbound from Bread-and-Butter, fortified with instructions, BillyTopsail and Archie Armstrong made along the shore of Skeleton Arm, bythe long trail, and were halted before noon at Rattle Water. The ice hadgone out of Rattle Water. At the ford the stream was deep, swift, bittercold--manifestly impassable; and above, beyond Serpent Bend, the waterof Ha-ha Shallow, which was the alternative crossing, was in a turmoil,swelling and foaming over the boulders in its wide, shallow bed.
Except where the current eddied, black, flecked with froth, Ha-haShallow was not deep. A man might cross--submerged somewhat above theknees, no more; but in the clinging grip and tug of the current hisfooting would be delicately precarious, and the issue of a misstep, astumble, a lost balance, would be a desperate chance, with the wagerheavily on grim Death.
It was perilous water--the noisy, sucking white rush of it, frothingover the boulders, and running, icy cold, in choppy, crested waves,where the channel was a bed of stones and gravel. Yet the path to thetilt at Poor Luck Barrens lay across and beyond Ha-ha Shallow of RattleWater.
Billy Topsail and Archie Armstrong surveyed the rapids in a dubioussilence.
"Hum!" Archie coughed.
Billy Topsail chuckled.
"You've no fancy for the passage?" he inquired.
"I have not. Have you?"
"I don't hanker for it, Archie. No, sir--not me!"
"Can it be done?"
"No, b'y."
"No; it can't be done," Archie declared. "You're right."
They stared at the tumultuous stream.
"Come along," said Archie, with decision, his teeth set; "we'll try thatice below again."
Below Ha-ha Shallow, where the stream dropped into a deep, long pool,lying between low cliffs, fringed with the spruce of that stuntedwilderness, Rattle Water was bridged with ice. There had been floodwater in the early spring break-up--a rush of broken ice, a jam in BlackPool, held by the rocks of its narrow exit; and the ice had been caughtand sealed by the frosts of a swift spell of bitter weather.
The subsidence of Rattle Water, when the ice below Black Pool ran offwith the current into the open reaches of Skeleton Arm, had left the jamsuspended. It was a bridge from shore to shore, lifted a little from thewater; but in the sunshine and thaw and warm rain of the subsequentinterval it had gone rotten. Its heavy collapse was imminent.
And of this Billy Topsail and Archie had made sure on the way up-streamfrom the impassable ford to the impassable white water of Ha-ha Shallow.The ice-bridge could not be crossed. It awaited the last straw--a rain,a squall of wind, another day of sunshine and melting weather. Billy hadventured, on pussy-feet, and had withdrawn, threatened by a crack, hishair on end.
A second trial of the bridge had precisely the same result. Archie casta stone. It plumped through.
"Soft 's cheese," said Billy.
Another stone was cast.
"Hear that, Billy?"
"Clean through, Archie."
"Yes; clean through. It's all rotten. We can't cross. Give me a hand.I'll try it."
With a hand from Billy Topsail, Archie let himself slip over the edge ofthe cliff to an anxious footing on the ice.
He waited--expectant.
"Cautious, Archie!" Billy warned.
Nothing happened.
"Cautious!" Billy repeated. "You'll drop through, b'y!"
Archie took one step--and dropped, crashing, with a section of thebridge, which momentarily floated his weight. Billy caught his hand, asthe ice disintegrated under his feet, and dragged him ashore.
"It can't be done," said Archie.
"No, b'y; it can't."
"We'll try Ha-ha Shallow again. We've _got_ to get across."
A moment, however, Archie paused. A startling possibility possessed hisimagination. It was nothing remote, nothing vague; it was real,concrete, imminent. Standing on the brink of the rock at the point wherethe ice-bridge began, he contemplated the chances of Rattle Water. Witha crossing of Ha-ha Shallow immediately in prospect, there was somethingfor affrighted reflection in the current below. And the suggestion wasvivid and ugly.
There the water was flowing black, spread with creamy puffs of foam; andit ran swift and deep, in strong, straight lines, as it approached theBlack Pool ice and vanished beneath. There was a space between the iceand the fallen current--not much: two feet, perhaps; but it occurred toArchie, with sudden, shocking force, that two feet were too much. Andthe deep, oily, adherent flow of the current, and the space between theice and the water, and the cavernous shadow beneath the ice, and thegurgle and lapping of the pool, made the flesh of his back uneasy.
"A nasty fix," he observed.
"What's that, Archie?"
"If a man lost his feet in the current."
"He'd come down like a chip."
"He would. And he'd slip under the ice. Watch these puffs of foam. Whatwould happen to a man under there, Billy?"
"He'd drown in the pool. He couldn't get out."
"Right, Billy," Archie agreed, shortly. "He'd drown in the pool. Hecouldn't get out. The current would hold him in there. Come along."
"Shall we try it, Archie?"
"We'll look it over."
"An' if we think----"
"Then we'll do it!"
Billy laughed.
"Archie," said he, "I--I--I _likes_ you!"
"Shucks!" said Archie.
Archie walked the length of Ha-ha Shallow, from the swift water aboveBlack Pool to Loon Lake, and returned, still searching the rapid for agood crossing, to a point near the Black Pool ice, where a choppy ripplepromised a shallow, gravelled bottom. The stream was wide, shelvingslowly from the shore--it was prattling water; but there was afearsomely brief leeway of distance between the stretch of choppy rippleand the deep rush of the current as it swept into the shadows under theBlack Pool ice.
Directly below the ripple, Rattle Water narrowed and deepened; nearingBlack Pool, the banks were steep, and above the rising gorge, which thebanks formed, and running the length of it, the current swelled over ascattering of slimy boulders and swirled around them. It was a perilousplace to be caught. In the gravel-bottomed ripple, the water was tooswift, too deep, for an overbalanced boy to regain his feet; and in thefoaming, hurrying, deeper water below, the rough drift to Black Pool wasinevitable: for the boulders were water-worn and round, and the surfacewas a
s slippery as grease with slime.
Having stared long enough at the alluring stretch of choppy ripple,Archie Armstrong came to a conclusion.
Billy Topsail, M.D.: A Tale of Adventure With Doctor Luke of the Labrador Page 36