The Sea-Story Megapack

by Jack Williamson

  They were jagged on top and strewn with bits of broken bottle imbedded in the mortar.

  “But,” thought Archie, “why cut one’s hands when it is so easy to throw a jacket over the glass and save the pain?”

  The walls apparently served no good purpose except to frighten the populace with their frowns.

  As big Deschamps, the jailer, led Archie through the musty corridors and cells the boy perceived that the old building had long ago gone to wrack. It was a place of rust and dust and dry rot, of crumbling masonry, of rotted casements, of rust-eaten bars, of creaking hinges and broken locks. He had the impression that a strong man could break in the doors with his fist and tumble the walls about his ears with a push.

  “This way, monsieur,” said Deschamps, at last. “Come! I will show you the pig of a Newfoundlander who half killed a gendarme. He is a terrible fellow.”

  He had Skipper Bill safe enough—thrown into a foul-aired, windowless cell with an iron-bound door, from which there was no escape. To release him was impossible, whatever the condition of the jail in other parts. Archie had hoped to find a way; but when he saw the cell in which Skipper Bill was confined he gave up all idea of a rescue. And at that moment the skipper came to the narrow grating in the door. He scowled at the jailer and looked the boy over blankly.

  “Pah!” exclaimed Deschamps, screwing his face into a look of disgust.

  “You wait ’til I cotches you!” the skipper growled.

  “What does the pig say, monsieur?” Deschamps asked.

  “He has not yet repented,” Archie replied, evasively.

  “Pah!” said Deschamps again. “Come, monsieur; we shall continue the inspection.”

  Archie was taken to the furthermost cell of the corridor. It was isolated from that part of the building where the jailer had his living quarters, and it was a light, roomy place on the ground floor. The window bars were rusted thin and the masonry in which they were sunk was falling away. It seemed to Archie that he himself could wrench the bars away with his hands; but he found that he could not when he tried them. He looked out; and what he saw made him regret that Skipper Bill had not been confined in that particular cell.

  “This cell, monsieur,” said Deschamps, importantly, “is where I confine the drunken Newfoundland sailors when—”

  Archie looked up with interest.

  “When they make a great noise, monsieur,” Deschamps concluded. “I have the headache,” he explained. “So bad and so often I have the headache, monsieur. I cannot bear the great noise they make. It is fearful. So I put them here, and I go to sleep, and they do not trouble me at all.”

  “Is monsieur in earnest?” Archie asked.

  Deschamps was flattered by this form of address from a young gentleman. “It is true,” he replied. “Compelled. That is the word. I am compelled to confine them here.”

  “Let us return to the Newfoundlander,” said Archie.

  “He is a pig,” Deschamps agreed, “and well worth looking at.”

  When they came to the door of Skipper Bill’s cell, Archie was endeavouring to evolve a plan for having a word with him without exciting Deschamps’ suspicion. The jailer saved him the trouble.

  “Monsieur is an American,” said Deschamps. “Will he not tell the pig of a Newfoundlander that he shall have no breakfast?”

  “Skipper Bill,” said Archie, in English, “when I leave here you howl until your throat cracks.”

  Bill o’ Burnt Bay nodded. “How’s the wind?” he asked.

  “What does the pig of a Newfoundlander say?” Deschamps inquired.

  “It is of no importance,” Archie replied.

  When Archie had inspected the guillotine in the garret, which Deschamps exhibited to every visitor with great pride, the jailer led him to the open air.

  “Do the prisoners never escape?” Archie asked.

  “Escape!” Deschamps cried, with reproach and indignation. “Monsieur, how could you suggest it? Escape! From me—from me, monsieur!” He struck his breast and extended his arms. “Ah, no—they could not! My bravery, monsieur—my strength—all the world knows of them. I am famous, monsieur. Deschamps, the wrestler! Escape! From me! Ah, no—it is impossible!”

  When Archie had more closely observed his gigantic form, his broad, muscular chest, his mighty arms and thick neck, his large, lowering face—when he had observed all this he fancied that a man might as well wrestle with a grizzly as oppose him, for it would come to the same thing in the end.

  “You are a strong man,” Archie admitted.

  “Thanks—thanks—monsieur!” the delighted Deschamps responded.

  At that moment, a long, dismal howl broke the quiet. It was repeated even more excruciatingly.

  “The pig of a Newfoundlander!” groaned Deschamps. “My head! It is fearful. He will give me the headache.”

  Archie departed. He was angry with Deschamps for having called Newfoundlanders pigs. After all, he determined, angrily, the jailer was deserving of small sympathy.

  CHAPTER XIX

  In Which Archie Armstrong Goes Deeper In and Thinks He Has Got Beyond His Depth. Bill o’ Burnt Bay Takes Deschamps By the Throat and the Issue Is Doubtful For a Time

  That afternoon, after a short conversation with Josiah Cove, who had thus far managed to keep out of trouble, Archie Armstrong spent a brief time on the Heavenly Home to attend to the health and comfort of the watchman, who was in no bad way. Perhaps, after all, Archie thought—if Deschamps’ headache would only cause the removal of Bill o’ Burnt Bay to the dilapidated cell on the ground floor—the Heavenly Home might yet be sailed in triumph to Ruddy Cove. He strutted the deck, when necessary, with as much of the insolence of a civic official as he could command, and no man came near to question his right. When the watchman’s friends came from the Voyageur he drove them away in excellent French. They went meekly and with apologies for having disturbed him.

  “So far, well enough,” thought Archie, as he rowed ashore, glad to be off the schooner.

  It was after dark when, by appointment, the lad met Josiah. Josiah had provided himself with a crowbar and a short length of line, which he said would be sure to come useful, for he had always found it so. Then the two set off for the jail together, and there arrived some time after the drums had warned all good people to be within doors.

  “What’s that?” said Josiah of a sudden.

  It was a hoarse, melancholy croak proceeding from the other side of the wall. The skipper’s cell had been changed, as Archie had hoped, and the skipper himself was doing his duty to the bitter end. The street was deserted. They acted quickly. Josiah gave Archie a leg. He threw his jacket over the broken glass and mounted the wall. Josiah made off at once; it was his duty to have the skiff in readiness. Archie dropped into the garden.

  “Is that you, b’y?” whispered Skipper Bill.

  Again Archie once more found it impossible to take the adventure seriously. He began to laugh. It was far too much like the romances he had read to be real. It was play, it seemed—just like a game of smugglers and pirates, played on a summer’s afternoon.

  “Is it you, Archie?” the skipper whispered again.

  Archie chuckled aloud.

  “Is the wind in the west?” the skipper asked.

  “Ay,” Archie replied; “and blowing a smart sailing breeze.”

  “Haste, then, lad!” said the skipper. “’Tis time t’ be off for Ruddy Cove.”

  The window was low. With his crowbar Archie wrenched a bar from its socket. It came with a great clatter. It made the boy’s blood run cold to hear the noise. He pried the second and it yielded. Down fell a block of stone with a crash. While he was feeling for a purchase on the third bar Skipper Bill caught his wrist.

  “Hist, lad!”

  It was a footfall in the corridor. Skipper Bill slipped into the darkness by the door—vanished like a shadow. Archie dropped to the ground. By what unhappy chance had Deschamps come upon this visitation? Could it have been the silence of S
kipper Bill? Archie heard the cover of the grating drawn away from the peep-hole in the door.

  “He’s gone!”

  That was Deschamps’ voice. Doubtless he had observed that two bars were missing from the window. Archie heard the key slipped into the lock and the door creak on its hinges. All the time he knew that Skipper Bill was crouched in the shadow—poised for the spring. The boy no longer thought of the predicament as a game. Nor was he inclined to laugh again. This was the ugly reality once more come to face him. There would be a fight in the cell. This he knew. And he waited in terror of the issue.

  There was a quick step—a crash—a quick-drawn breath—the noise of a shock—a cry—a groan. Skipper Bill had kicked the door to and leaped upon the jailer. Archie pried the third bar out and broke the fourth with a blow. Then he squirmed through the window. Even in that dim light—half the night light without—he could see that the struggle was over. Skipper Bill had Deschamps by the throat with his great right hand. He had the jailer’s waist in his left arm as in a vise, and was forcing his head back—back—back—until Archie thought the Frenchman’s spine would crack.

  “Don’t kill him!” Archie cried.

  Skipper Bill had no intention of doing so; nor had Deschamps, the wrestler, any idea of allowing his back to be broken.

  “Don’t kill him!” Archie begged again.

  Deschamps was tugging at that right arm of iron—weakly, vainly tugging to wrench it away from his throat. His eyes were starting from their sockets, and his tongue protruded. Back went the head—back—back! The arm was pitiless. Back—back! He was fordone. In a moment his strength departed and he collapsed. He had not had time to call for help, so quick had been Bill’s hand. They bound his limp body with the length of line Josiah had brought, and they had no sooner bound him than he revived.

  “You are a great man, monsieur,” he mumbled. “You have vanquished me—Deschamps! You will be famous—famous, monsieur. I shall send my resignation to His Excellency the Governor tomorrow. Deschamps—he is vanquished!”

  “What’s he talkin’ about?” the skipper panted.

  “You have beaten him.”

  “Let’s be off, b’y,” the skipper gasped.

  They locked the door on the inside, clambered through the window and scaled the wall. They sped through the deserted streets with all haste. They came to the landing-place and found the skiff tugging at her painter with her sails all unfurled. Presently they were under way for the Heavenly Home, and, having come safely aboard, hauled up the mainsail, set the jib and were about to slip the anchor. Then they heard the clang, clang, clang of a bell—a warning clang, clang, clang, which could mean but one thing: discovery.

  “Fetch up that Frenchman,” the skipper roared.

  The watchman was loosed and brought on deck.

  “Put un in his dory and cast off,” the skipper ordered.

  This done the anchor was slipped and the sheets hauled taut. The rest of the canvas was shaken out and the Heavenly Home gathered way and fairly flew for the open sea.

  If there was pursuit it did not come within sight. The old schooner came safely to Ruddy Cove, where Bill o’ Burnt Bay, Josiah Cove and Archie Armstrong lived for a time in sickening fear of discovery and arrest. But nothing was ever heard from Saint Pierre. The Heavenly Home had been unlawfully seized by the French; perhaps that is why the Ruddy Cove pirates heard no more of the Miquelon escapade. There was hardly good ground in the circumstances for complaint to the Newfoundland government. At any rate, Archie wrote a full and true statement of the adventure to his father in St. John’s; and his father replied that his letter had been received and “contents noted.”

  There was no chiding; and Archie breathed easier after he had read the letter.

  CHAPTER XX

  In Which David Grey’s Friend, the Son of the Factor at Fort Red Wing, Yarns of the Professor With the Broken Leg, a Stretch of Rotten River Ice and the Tug of a White Rushing Current

  One quiet evening, after sunset, in the early summer, when the folk of Ruddy Cove were passing time in gossip on the wharf, while they awaited the coming of the mail-boat, old David Grey, who had told the tale of McLeod and the tomahawks, called to Billy Topsail and his friends. A bronzed, pleasant-appearing man, David’s friend, shook hands with the boys with the grip of a woodsman. Presently he drifted into a tale of his own boyhood at Fort Red Wing in the wilderness far back of Quebec. “You see,” said he, “my father had never fallen into the habit of coddling me. So when the lost Hudson Bay Geological Expedition made Fort Red Wing in the spring—every man exhausted, except the young professor, who had broken a leg a month back, and had set it with his own hands—it was the most natural thing in the world that my father should command me to take the news to Little Lake, whence it might be carried, from post to post, all the way to the department at Ottawa.

  “‘And send the company doctor up,’ said he. ‘The little professor’s leg is in a bad way, if I know anything about doctoring. So you’ll make what haste you can.’

  “‘Yes, sir,’ said I.

  “‘Keep to the river until you come to the Great Bend. You can take the trail through the bush from there to Swift Rapids. If the ice is broken at the rapids, you’ll have to go round the mountain. That’ll take a good half day longer. But don’t be rash at the rapids, and keep an eye on the ice all along. The sun will be rotting it by day now. It looks like a break-up already.’

  “‘Shall I go alone, sir?’ said I.

  “‘No,’ said my father, no doubt perceiving the wish in the question. ‘I’ll have John go with you for company.’

  “John was an Indian lad of my own age, or thereabouts, who had been brought up at the fort—my companion and friend. I doubt if I shall ever find a stancher one.

  “With him at my heels and a little packet of letters in my breast pocket, I set out early the next day. It was late in March, and the sun, as the day advanced, grew uncomfortably hot.

  “‘Here’s easy going!’ I cried, when we came to the river.

  “‘Bad ice!’ John grunted.

  “And it proved to be so—ice which the suns of clear weather had rotted and the frosts of night and cold days had not repaired. Rotten patches alternated with spaces of open water and of thin ice, which the heavy frost of the night before had formed.

  “When we came near to Great Bend, where we were to take to the woods, it was late in the afternoon, and the day was beginning to turn cold.

  “We sped on even more cautiously, for in that place the current is swift, and we knew that the water was running like mad below us. I was ahead of John, picking the way; and I found, to my cost, that the way was unsafe. In a venture offshore I risked too much. Of a sudden the ice let me through.

  “It was like a fall, feet foremost, and when I came again to the possession of my faculties, with the passing of the shock, I found that my arms were beating the edge of ice, which crumbled before them, and that the current was tugging mightily at my legs.

  “‘Look out!’ I gasped.

  “The warning was neither heard nor needed. John was flat on his stomach, worming his way towards me—wriggling slowly out, his eyes glistening.

  “Meanwhile I had rested my arms on the edge, which then crumbled no more; but I was helpless to save myself, for the current had sucked my legs under the ice, and now held them securely there, sweeping them from side to side, all the while tugging as if to wrench me from my hold. The most I could do was to resist the pull, to grit my teeth and cling to the advantage I had. It was for John to make the rescue.

  “There was an ominous crack from John’s direction. When I turned my eyes to look he was lying still. Then I saw him wriggle out of danger, backing away like a crab.

  “‘John!’ I screamed.

  “The appeal seemed not to move him. He continued to wriggle from me. When he came to solid ice he took to his heels. I caught sight of him as he climbed the bank, and kept my eyes upon him until he disappeared over the crest. He had
left me without a word.

  “The water was cold and swift, and the strength of my arms and back was wearing out. The current kept tugging, and I realized, loath as I was to admit it, that half an hour would find me slipping under the ice. It was a grave mistake to admit it; for at once fancy began to paint ugly pictures for me, and the probabilities, as it presented them, soon flustered me almost beyond recovery.

  “‘I was chest-high out of the water,’ I told myself. ‘Chest-high! Now my chin is within four inches of the ice. I’ve lost three inches. I’m lost!’

  “With that I tried to release my feet from the clutch of the current, to kick myself back to an upright position, to lift myself out. It was all worse than vain. The water was running so swiftly that it dangled my legs as it willed, and the rotten ice momentarily threatened to let me through.

  “I lost a full inch of position. So I settled myself to wait for what might come, determined to yield nothing through terror or despair. My eyes were fixed stupidly upon the bend in the river, far down, where a spruce-clothed bluff was melting with the dusk.

  “What with the cold and the drain upon my physical strength, it may be that my mind was a blank when relief came. At any rate, it seemed to have been an infinitely long time in coming; and it was with a shock that John’s words restored me to a vivid consciousness of my situation.

  “‘Catch hold!’ said he.

  “He had crawled near me, although I had not known of his approach, and he was thrusting towards me the end of a long pole, which he had cut in the bush. It was long, but not long enough. I reached for it, but my hand came three feet short of grasping it.

  “John grunted and crept nearer. Still it was beyond me, and he dared venture no farther. He withdrew the pole; then he crept back and unfastened his belt. Working deliberately but swiftly, he bound the belt to the end of the pole, and came out again. He cast the belt within reach, as a fisherman casts a line. I caught it, clutched it, and was hauled from my predicament by main strength.

  “‘John,’ I said, as we drew near to the halfway cabin, ‘I know your blood, and it’s all very well to be careful not to say too much; but there’s such a thing as saying too little. Why didn’t you tell me where you were going when you started for that pole?’