The Sea-Story Megapack

by Jack Williamson

  Billy rested his left hand on the head of a powder keg, which stood on end on the counter beside him. His right stole towards the candlestick. There was a light in his blue eyes—a glitter or a twinkle—which might have warned the wreckers, had they known him better.

  “I order you ashore!” he said, slowly. “I order you all ashore. You’ve no right aboard this ship. If I had my gun—”

  “Sure, you left it on deck.”

  “If I had my gun,” Billy pursued, “I’d have the right t’ shoot you down.”

  The manner of the speech—the fierce intensity of it—impressed the wreckers. They perceived that the boy’s face had turned pale, that his eyes were flashing strangely. They were unused to such a depth of passion. It may be that they were reminded of a bear at bay.

  “I believe he’d do it,” said one.

  An uneasy quiet followed; and in that silence Billy heard the prow of another punt strike the ship. More footfalls came shuffling aft—other faces peered down the companionway. One man pushed his way through the group and made as if to come down the ladder.

  “Stand back!” Billy cried.

  The threat in that shrill cry brought the man to a stop. He turned; and that which he saw caused him to fall back upon his fellows. There was an outcry and a general falling away from the cabin door. Some men ran forward to the punts.

  “The lad’s gone mad!” said one. “Leave us get ashore!”

  Billy had whipped the stopper out of the hole in the head of the powder keg, had snatched the candle from the socket, carefully guarding its flame, and now sat, triumphantly gazing up, with the butt of the candle through the hole in the keg and the flame flickering above its depths.

  “Men,” said he, when they had gathered again at the door, “if I let that candle slip through my fingers, you know what’ll happen.” He paused; then he went on, speaking in a quivering voice: “My friends left me in charge o’ this here schooner, and I’ve been caught nappin’. If I’d been on deck, you wouldn’t have got aboard. But now you are aboard, and ’tis all because I didn’t do my duty. Do you think I care what becomes o’ me now? Do you think I don’t care whether I do my duty or not? I tell you fair that if you don’t go ashore I’ll drop the candle in the keg. If one o’ you dares come down that ladder, I’ll drop it. If I hear you lift the hatches off the hold, I’ll drop it. If I hear you strike a blow at the ship, I’ll drop it. Hear me?” he cried. “If you don’t go, I’ll drop it!”

  The candle trembled between Billy’s fingers. It slipped, fell an inch or more, but his fingers gripped it again before he lost it. The wreckers recoiled, now convinced that the lad meant no less than he said.

  “I guess you’d do it, b’y,” said the man who had attempted to descend. “Sure,” he repeated, with a glance of admiration for the boy’s pluck, “I guess you would.”

  “’Tis not comfortable here,” said another. “Sure, he might drop it by accident. Make haste, b’ys! Let’s get ashore.”

  “Good-night, skipper, sir!” said the first.

  “Good-night, sir!” said Billy, grimly.

  With that they went over the side. Billy heard them leap into the punts, push off, and row away. Then silence fell—broken only by the ripple of the water, the noise of the wind in the rigging, the swish of breakers drifting in. The boy waited a long time, not daring to venture on deck, lest they should be lying in wait for him at the head of the ladder. He listened for a footfall, a noise in the hold, the shifting of the deck cargo; but he heard nothing.

  When the candle had burned low, he lighted another, put the butt through the hole, and jammed it. At last he fell asleep, with his head resting on a pile of dress-goods; and the candle was burning unattended. He was awakened by a hail from the deck.

  “Billy, b’y, where is you?”

  It was Skipper Bill’s hearty voice; and before Billy could tumble up the ladder, the skipper’s bulky body closed the exit.

  “She’s all safe, sir!” said the boy.

  Skipper Bill at that moment caught sight of the lighted candle. He snatched it from its place, dropped it on the floor and stamped on it. He was a-tremble from head to foot.

  “What’s this foolery?” he demanded, angrily.

  Billy explained.

  “It was plucky, b’y,” said the skipper, “but ’twas wonderful risky.”

  “Sure, there was no call to be afraid.”

  “No call to be afraid!” cried the skipper.

  “No, sir—no,” said Billy. “There’s not a grain of powder in the keg.”

  “Empty—an empty keg?” the skipper roared.

  “Do you think,” said Billy, indignantly, “that I’d have risked the schooner that way if ’twas a full keg?”

  Skipper Bill stared; and for a long time afterwards he could not look at Billy without staring.

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  In Which Skipper Bill, as a Desperate Expedient, Contemplates the Use of His Teeth, and Archie Armstrong, to Save His Honour, Sets Sail in a Basket, But Seems to Have Come a Cropper

  Billy Topsail suddenly demanded:

  “Where’s the Grand Lake?”

  “The Grand Lake,” Skipper Bill drawled, with a sigh, “is somewheres t’ the s’uth’ard footin’ it for St. John’s.”

  “You missed her!” Billy accused.

  “Didn’t neither,” said the indignant skipper. “She steamed right past Hook-an’-Line without a wink in that direction.”

  This was shocking news.

  “Anyhow,” said little Donald North, as though it mattered importantly, “we seed her smoke.”

  Billy looked from Donald to Jimmie, from Jimmie to Bagg, from Bagg to the skipper; and then he stared about.

  “Where’s Archie?” he asked.

  “Archie,” the skipper replied, “is footin’ it for St. John’s, too. ‘Skipper Bill,’ says Archie, ‘Billy Topsail has kep’ that schooner safe. I knows he has. It was up t’ Billy Topsail t’ save the firm from wreckers an’ I’ll lay you that Billy Topsail has saved the firm. Now, Skipper Bill,’ says Archie, ‘you go back t’ Jolly Harbour an’ get that schooner off. You get her off somehow. Get her off jus’ as soon as you can,’ says he, ‘an’ fetch her to St. John’s.’

  “‘I can’t get her off,’ says I.

  “‘Yes, you can, too, Skipper Bill,’ says he. ‘I’ll lay you can get her off. I don’t know how you’ll do it,’ says he; ‘but I’ll lay you can!’

  “‘I’ll get her off, Archie,’ says I, ‘if I got t’ jump in the sea an’ haul her off with a line in my teeth.’

  “‘I knowed you would,’ says he; ‘an’ you got the best teeth, Skipper Bill,’ says he, ‘t’ be found on this here coast. As for me, skipper,’ says he, ‘I’m goin’ down t’ St. John’s if I got t’ walk on water. I told my father that I’d be in his office on the first o’ September—an’ I’m goin’ t’ be there. If I can’t be there with the fish I can be there with the promise o’ fish; an’ I can back that promise up with a motor boat, a sloop yacht an’ a pony an’ cart. I don’t know how I’m goin’ t’ get t’ St. John’s,’ says he, ‘an’ I don’t want t’ walk on a wet sea like this; but I’m goin’ t’ get there somehow by the first o’ September, an’ I’m goin’ to assoom’—yes, sir, ‘assoom, Skipper Bill,’ says Archie—‘I’m goin’ to assoom that you’ll fetch down the Spot Cash an’ the tail an’ fins of every last tom-cod aboard that there craft.’

  “An’ I’m goin’ t’ do it!” Skipper Bill roared in conclusion, with a slap of the counter with his hairy fist that made the depleted stock rattle on the shelves.

  “Does you t-t-think you c-c-can haul her off with your teeth?” Donald North asked with staring eyes.

  Bill o’ Burnt Bay burst into a shout of laughter.

  “We’ll have no help from the Jolly Harbour folk,” said Billy Topsail, gravely. “They’re good-humoured men,” he added, “but they means t’ have this here schooner if they can.”

  “Never mind,” said Skipper
Bill, with an assumption of far more hope than was in his honest, willing heart. “We’ll get her off afore they comes again.”

  “Wisht you’d ’urry up,” said Bagg.

  With the Spot Cash high and dry—with a small crew aboard—with a numerous folk, clever and unfriendly (however good-humoured they were), bent on possessing that which they were fully persuaded it was their right to have—with no help near at hand and small prospect of the appearance of aid—the task which Archie Armstrong had set Bill o’ Burnt Bay was the most difficult one the old sea-dog had ever encountered in a long career of hard work, self-dependence and tight places. The Jolly Harbour folk might laugh and joke, they might even offer sympathy, they might be the most hospitable, tenderhearted, God-fearing folk in the world; but tradition had taught them that what the sea cast up belonged righteously to the men who could take it, and they would with good consciences and the best humour in the world stand upon that doctrine. And Bill o’ Burnt Bay would do no murder to prevent them: it was not the custom of the coast to do murder in such cases; and Archie Armstrong’s last injunction had been to take no lives.

  Bill o’ Burnt Bay declared in growing wrath to the boys that he would come next door to murder.

  “I’ll pink ’em, anyhow,” said he, as he loaded his long gun. “I’ll makes holes for earrings, ecod!”

  Yes, sir; the skipper would show the Jolly Harbour folk how near a venturesome man could come to letting daylight into a Jolly Harbour hull without making a hopeless leak. Jus’ t’ keep ’em busy calking, ecod! How much of this was mere loud and saucy words—with how much real meaning the skipper spoke—even the skipper himself did not know. But, yes, sir; he’d show ’em in the morning. It was night, now, however—though near morning. Nobody would put out from shore before daybreak. They had been frightened off once. Skipper Bill’s wrath could simmer to the boiling point. But a watch must be kept. No chances must be taken with the Spot Cash, and—

  “Ahoy, Billy!” a pleasant voice called from the water.

  The crew of the Spot Cash rushed on deck.

  “Oh, ho!” another voice laughed. “Skipper’s back, too, eh?”

  “With a long—perfeckly trustworthy—loaded—gun,” Skipper Bill solemnly replied.

  The men in the punts laughed heartily.

  “Sheer off!” Skipper Bill roared.

  But in the protecting shadows of the night the punts came closer. And there was another laugh.

  It chanced at Hook-and-Line Harbour before night—Skipper Bill had then for hours been gone towards Jolly Harbour—that a Labrador fishing craft put in for water. She was loaded deep; her decks were fairly awash with her load of fish, and at best she was squat and old and rotten—a basket to put to sea in. Here was no fleet craft; but she was south-bound, at any rate, and Archie Armstrong determined to board her. To get to St. John’s—to open the door of his father’s office on the first of September as he had promised—to explain and to reassure and even to present in hard cash the value of a sloop yacht and a pony and a motor boat—was the boy’s feverish determination. He could not forget his father’s grave words: “Your honour is involved.” Perhaps he exaggerated the importance of them. His honour? The boy had no wish to be excused—had no liking for fatherly indulgence. He was wholly intent upon justifying his father’s faith and satisfying his own sense of honourable obligation. It must be fish or cash—fish or cash—and as it seemed it could not be fish it must therefore be cash.

  It must be hard cash—cash down—paid on the first of September over his father’s desk in the little office overlooking the wharves.

  “Green Bay bound,” the skipper of the Labrador craft replied to Archie’s question.

  That signified a landing at Ruddy Cove.

  “I’ll go along,” said Archie.

  “Ye’ll not,” the skipper snapped. “Ye’ll not go along until ye mend your manners.”

  Archie started in amazement.

  “You’ll go along, will ye?” the skipper continued. “Is you the owner o’ this here craft? Ye may ask t’ go along; but whether ye go or not is for me—for me, ye cub!—t’ say.”

  Archie straightened in his father’s way. “My name,” said he, shortly, “is Archibald Armstrong.”

  The skipper instantly touched his cap.

  “I’m sorry, skipper,” Archie went on, with a dignity of which his manner of life had long ago made him unconsciously master, “for having taken too much for granted. I want passage with you to Ruddy Cove, skipper, for which I’ll pay.”

  “You’re welcome, sir,” said the skipper.

  The Wind and Tide lay at Hook-and-Line that night in fear of the sea that was running. She rode so deep in the water, and her planks and rigging and sticks were at best so untrustworthy, that her skipper would not take her to sea. Next morning, however—and Archie subsequently recalled it—next morning the wind blew fair for the southern ports. Out put the old craft into a rising breeze and was presently wallowing her way towards Green Bay and Ruddy Cove. But there was no reckless sailing. Nothing that Archie could say with any appearance of propriety moved the skipper to urge her on. She was deep, she was old; she must be humoured along. Again, when night fell, she was taken into harbour for shelter. The wind still blew fair in the morning; she made a better day of it, but was once more safely berthed for the night. Day after day she crept down the coast, lurching along in the light, with unearthly shrieks of pain and complaint, and lying silent in harbour in the dark.

  “‘Wisht she’d ’urry up,’” thought Archie, with a dubious laugh, remembering Bagg.

  It was the twenty-ninth of August and coming on dark when the boy first caught sight of the cottages of Ruddy Cove.

  “Mail-boat day,” he thought, jubilantly. “The Wind and Tide will make it. I’ll be in St. John’s the day after tomorrow.”

  “Journey’s end,” said the skipper, coming up at that moment.

  “I’m wanting to make the mail-boat,” said Archie. “She’s due at Ruddy Cove soon after dark.”

  “She’ll be on time,” said the skipper. “Hark!”

  Archie heard the faint blast of a steamer’s whistle.

  “Is it she?” asked the skipper.

  “Ay,” Archie exclaimed; “and she’s just leaving Fortune Harbour. She’ll be at Ruddy Cove within the hour.”

  “I’m doubtin’ that we will,” said the skipper.

  “Will you not run up a topsail?” the boy pleaded.

  “Not for the queen o’ England,” the skipper replied, moving forward. “I’ve got my load—an’ I’ve got the lives o’ my crew—t’ care for.”

  Archie could not gainsay it. The Wind and Tide had all the sail she could carry with unquestionable safety. The boy watched the mail-boat’s lights round the Head and pass through the tickle into the harbour of Ruddy Cove. Presently he heard the second blast of her deep-toned whistle and saw her emerge and go on her way. She looked cozy in the dusk, he thought: she was brilliant with many lights. In the morning she would connect with the east-bound cross-country express at Burnt Bay. And meantime he—this selfsame boastful Archie Armstrong—would lie stranded at Ruddy Cove. At that moment St. John’s seemed infinitely far away.

  CHAPTER XXXV

  In Which Many Things Happen: Old Tom Topsail Declares Himself the Bully to Do It, Mrs. Skipper William Bounds Down the Path With a Boiled Lobster, the Mixed Accommodation Sways, Rattles, Roars, Puffs and Quits on a Grade in the Wilderness, Tom Topsail Loses His Way in the Fog and Archie Armstrong Gets Despairing Ear of a Whistle

  At Ruddy Cove, that night, when Archie was landed from the Wind and Tide, a turmoil of amazement instantly gave way to the very briskest consultation the wits of the place had ever known.

  “There’s no punt can make Burnt Bay the night,” Billy Topsail’s father declared.

  “Nor the morrow night if the wind changes,” old Jim Grimm added.

  “Nor the next in a southerly gale,” Job North put in.

  “There’s th
e Wind an’ Tide,” Tom Topsail suggested.

  “She’s a basket,” said Archie; “and she’s slower than a paddle punt.”

  “What’s the weather?”

  “Fair wind for Burnt Bay an’ a starlit night.”

  “I’ve lost the express,” said Archie, excitedly. “I must—I must, I tell you!—I must catch the mixed.”

  The Ruddy Cove faces grew long.

  “I must,” Archie repeated between his teeth.

  The east-bound cross-country express would go through the little settlement of Burnt Bay in the morning. The mixed accommodation would crawl by at an uncertain hour of the following day. It was now the night of the twenty-ninth of August. One day—two days. The mixed accommodation would leave Burnt Bay for St. John’s on the thirty-first of August.

  “If she doesn’t forget,” said Job North, dryly.

  “Or get tired an’ rest too often,” Jim Grimm added.

  Archie caught an impatient breath.

  “Look you, lad!” Tom Topsail declared, jumping up. “I’m the bully that will put you aboard!”

  Archie flung open the door of Mrs. Skipper William’s kitchen and made for the Topsail wharf with old Tom puffing and lumbering at his heels. Billy Topsail’s mother was hailed with the news. Before Tom had well made the punt shipshape for a driving cruise up the Bay she was on the wharf with a bucket of hardtack and a kettle of water. A frantic scream—perhaps, a shout—announced the coming of Mrs. Skipper William with a ham-bone and a greatcoat. These tossed inboard, she roared a command to delay, gathered up her skirts and fled into the night, whence she emerged, bounding, with a package of tea and a boiled lobster. She had no breath left to bid them Godspeed when Tom Topsail cast off; but she waved her great soft arms, and her portly person shook with the violence of her good wishes. And up went the sail—and out fluttered the little jib—and the punt heeled to the harbour breeze—and Tom Topsail and Archie Armstrong darted away from the lights of Ruddy Cove towards the open sea.