“‘You‘ll find it the longest, sir,’ said he.
“I repeated my directions as to the treatment of little Billy, then gave the man good-night, and stepped out on the ice, gaff in hand. The three hours following were charged with more terror and despair than, doubtless, any year of my life to come shall know. I am not morbidly afraid of death. It was not that—not the simple, natural fear of death that made me suffer. It was the manner of its coming—in the night, with the harbour folk, all ignorant of my extremity, peacefully sleeping around me—the slow, cruel approach of it, closing in upon every hand, lying all about me, and hidden from me by the night.”
The doctor paused. He looked over the quiet water of the harbour.
“Yes,” he said, repeating the short, nervous laugh, “it was a narrow escape. The sun of the afternoon—it had shone hot and bright—had weakened the ice, and a strong, gusty wind, such a wind as breaks up the ice every spring, was blowing down the harbour to the sea. It had overcast the sky with thick clouds. The night was dark. Nothing more of the opposite shore than the vaguest outline of the hills—a blacker shadow in a black sky—was to be seen.
“But I had the lamp in the surgery window to guide me, and I pushed out from the shore, resolute and hopeful. I made constant use of my gaff to sound the ice. Without it I should have been lost before I had gone twenty yards. From time to time, in rotten places, it broke through the ice with but slight pressure; then I had to turn to right or left, as seemed best, keeping to the general direction as well as I could all the while.
“As I proceeded, treading lightly and cautiously, I was dismayed to find that the condition of the ice was worse than the worst I had feared.
“‘Ah,’ thought I, with a wistful glance towards the light in the window, ‘I’ll be glad enough to get there.’
“There were lakes of open water in my path; there were flooded patches, sheets of thin, rubbery ice, stretches of rotten ‘slob.’ I was not even sure that a solid path to my surgery wound through these dangers; and if path there were, it was a puzzling maze, strewn with pitfalls, with death waiting upon a misstep.
“Had it been broad day, my situation would have been serious enough. In the night, with the treacherous places all covered up and hidden, it was desperate. I determined to return; but I was quite as unfamiliar with the lay of the ice behind as with the path ahead. A moment of thought persuaded me that the best plan was the boldest—to push on for the light in the window. I should have, at least, a star to guide me.
“‘I have not far to go,’ I thought. ‘I must proceed with confidence and a common-sense sort of caution. Above all, I must not lose my nerve.’
“It was easy to make the resolve; it was hard to carry it out. When I was searching for solid ice and my gaff splashed water, when the ice offered no more resistance to my gaff than a similar mass of sea-foam, when my foothold bent and cracked beneath me, when, upon either side, lay open water, and a narrowing, uncertain path lay ahead, my nerve was sorely tried.
“At times, overcome by the peril I could not see, I stopped dead and trembled. I feared to strike my gaff, feared to set my foot down, feared to quit the square foot of solid ice upon which I stood. Had it not been for the high wind—high and fast rising to a gale—I should have sat down and waited for the morning. But there were ominous sounds abroad, and, although I knew little about the ways of ice, I felt that the break-up would come before the dawn. There was nothing for it but to go on.
“And on I went; but at last—the mischance was inevitable—my step was badly chosen. My foot broke through, and I found myself, of a sudden, sinking. I threw myself forward, and fell with my arms spread out; thus I distributed my weight over a wider area of ice and was borne up.
“For a time I was incapable of moving a muscle; the surprise, the rush of terror, the shock of the fall, the sudden relief of finding myself safe for the moment had stunned me. So I lay still, hugging the ice; for how long I cannot tell, but I know that when I recovered my self-possession my first thought was that the light was still burning in the surgery window—an immeasurable distance away. I must reach that light, I knew; but it was a long time before I had the courage to move forward.
“Then I managed to get the gaff under my chest, so that I could throw some part of my weight upon it, and began to crawl. The progress was inch by inch—slow and toilsome, with no moment of security to lighten it. I was keenly aware of my danger; at any moment, as I knew, the ice might open and let me in.
“I had gained fifty yards or more, and had come to a broad lake, which I must round, when the light in the window went out.
“‘Elizabeth has given me up for the night,’ I thought in despair. ‘She has blown out the light and gone to bed.’
“There was now no point of light to mark my goal. It was very dark; and in a few minutes I was lost. I had the wind to guide me, it is true; but I soon mistrusted the wind. It was veering, it had veered, I thought; it was not possible for me to trust it implicitly. In whatever direction I set my face I fancied that the open sea lay that way.
“Again and again I started, but upon each occasion I had no sooner begun to crawl than I fancied that I had mischosen the way. Of course I cried for help, but the wind swept my frantic screams away, and no man heard them. The moaning and swish of the gale, as it ran past the cottages, drowned my cries. The sleepers were not alarmed.
“Meanwhile that same wind was breaking up the ice. I could hear the cracking and grinding long before I felt the motion of the pan upon which I lay. But at last I did feel that mass of ice turn and gently heave, and then I gave myself up for lost.
“‘Doctor! Doctor!’
“The voice came from far to windward. The wind caught my answering shout and carried it out to sea.
“‘They will not hear me,’ I thought. ‘They will not come to help me.’
“The light shone out from the surgery window again. Then lights appeared in the neighbouring houses, and passed from room to room. There had been an alarm. But my pan was breaking up! Would they find me in time? Would they find me at all?
“Lanterns were now gleaming on the rocks back of my wharf. Half a dozen men were coming down on the run, bounding from rock to rock of the path. By the light of the lanterns I saw them launch a boat on the ice and drag it out towards me. From the edge of the shore ice they let it slip into the water, pushed off and came slowly through the opening lanes of water, calling my name at intervals.
“The ice was fast breaking and moving out. When they caught my hail they were not long about pushing the boat to where I lay. Nor, you may be sure, was I long about getting aboard.”
The doctor laughed nervously.
“Doctor,” said the stranger, “how did they know that you were in distress?”
“Oh,” said the doctor, “it was Billy’s father. He was worried, and walked around by the shore. When he found that I was not home, he roused the neighbours.”
“As the proverb runs,” said the stranger, “the longest way round is sometimes the shortest way home.”
“Yes,” said the doctor, “I chose the longest way.”
CHAPTER XVI
Describing How Billy Topsail Set out for Ruddy Cove with Her Majesty’s Mail and Met with Catastrophe
Through the long, evil-tempered winter, when ice and high winds keep the coasting boats from the outports, the Newfoundland mails are carried by hand from settlement to settlement, even to the farthermost parts of the bleak peninsula to the north.
Arch Butt’s link in the long chain was from Burnt Bay to Ruddy Cove. Once a week, come wind, blizzard or blinding sunlight, with four dollars and a half to reward him at the end of it, he made the eighty miles of wilderness and sea, back and forth, with the mail-bag on his broad back.
No man of the coast, save he, dared face that stretch in all weathers. It may be that he tramped a league, skated a league, sailed a league, sculled a league, groped his way through a league of night, breasted his way through a league o
f wind, picked his way over a league of shifting ice.
To be sure, he chose the way which best favoured his progress and least frayed the thread upon which his life hung.
“Seems t’ me, b’y,” he said to his mate from New Bay, when the great gale of ’98 first appeared in the northeast sky—“seems t’ me we may make Duck Foot Cove the night, safe enough.”
“Maybe, lad,” was the reply, after a long, dubious survey of the rising clouds. “Maybe we’ll get clear o’ the gale, but ’twill be a close call, whatever (at any rate).”
“Maybe,” said Arch. “’Twould be well t’ get Her Majesty’s mail so far as Duck Foot Cove, whatever.”
When Arch Butt made Duck Foot Cove that night, he was on the back of his mate, who had held to him, through all peril, with such courage as makes men glorious. Ten miles up the bay, his right foot had been crushed in the ice, which the sea and wind had broken into unstable fragments. Luff of New Bay had left him in the cottage of Billy Topsail’s uncle, Saul Ride, by the Head, the only habitation in the cove, and made the best of his own way to the harbours of the west coast of the bay. Three days’ delay stared the Ruddy Cove mailman in the face.
“Will you not carry the mail t’ Ruddy Cove, Saul Ride?” he demanded, when he had dressed his foot, and failed, stout as he was, to bear the pain of resting his weight upon it.
“’Tis too far in a gale for my old legs,” said Ride, “an’—”
“But ’tis Her Majesty’s mail!” cried Arch. “Won’t you try, b’y?”
“An I had a chance t’ make it, I’d try, quick enough,” said Ride sharply; “but ’twould be not only me life, but the mail I’d lose. The ice do be broken up ’tween here an’ Creepy Bluff; an’ not even Arch Butt, hisself, could walk the hills.”
“Three days lost!” Arch groaned. “All the letters three days late! An’ all—”
“Letters!” Ride broke in scornfully. “Letters, is it? Don’t you fret about they. A love letter for the parson’s daughter; the price o’ fish from St. John’s for the old skipper; an’ a merchant’s account for every fisherman t’ the harbour: they be small things t’ risk life for.”
The mailman laid his hand on the leather bag at his side. He fingered the government seal tenderly and his eyes flashed splendidly when he looked up.
“’Tis Her Majesty’s mail!” he said. “Her Majesty’s mail! Who knows what they be in this bag. Maybe, b’y—maybe—maybe they’s a letter for old Aunt Esther Bludgel. She’ve waited this three year for a letter from that boy,” he continued. “Maybe ’tis in there now. Sure, b’y, an’ I believe ’tis in there. Saul Ride, the mail must go!”
A touch of the bruised foot on the floor brought the mailman groaning to his chair again. If the mail were to go to Ruddy Cove that night, it was not to be carried on his back: that much was evident. Saul Ride gazed at him steadily for a moment. Something of the younger man’s fine regard for duty communicated itself to him. There had been a time—the days of his strength—when he, too, would have thought of duty before danger. He went abstractly to the foot of the loft stair.
“Billy!” he called. “Billy!”
“Ay, Uncle Saul,” was the quick response.
“I wants you, b’y.”
Billy Topsail came swiftly down the stair. He was spending a week with his lonely Uncle Saul at Duck Foot Cove. A summons at that hour meant pressing service—need of haste. What was the call? Were they all well at home? He glanced from one man to the other.
“B’y,” said Ride, with a gesture towards the mail-bag, “will you carry that bag to Ruddy Cove? Will—”
“Will you carry Her Majesty’s mail t’ Ruddy Cove?” Arch Butt burst out. His voice thrilled Billy, as he continued: “Her Majesty’s mail!”
“’Tis but that black bag, b’y,” Ride said quietly. “Will you take it t’ Ruddy Cove t’-night? Please yourself about it.”
“Ay,” said Billy quickly. “When?”
“’Twill be light enough in four hours,” said the mailman.
“Go back t’ bed, b’y,” Ride said. “I’ll wake you when ’tis time t’ be off.”
Five minutes later the boy was sound asleep.
* * * *
No Newfoundlander ventures out upon the ice without his gaff—a nine-foot pole, made of light, tough dog-wood, and iron-shod. It was with his own true gaff that Billy felt his way out of Duck Foot Cove as the night cleared away.
The sea had abated somewhat with the wind. In the bay beyond the cove, the broken ice was freezing into one vast, rough sheet, solid as the coast rocks on the pans, but unsafe, and deceptive over the channels between. The course was down the bay, skirting the shore, to Creepy Bluff, then overland to Ruddy Cove, which is a port of the open sea: in all, twenty-one miles, with the tail of the gale to beat against.
“Feel every step o’ the way till the light comes strong,” had been old Saul Ride’s last word to the boy. “Strike hard with your gaff before you put your foot down.”
Billy kept his gaff before him—feeling his way much as a blind man taps the pavement as he goes along a city street. The search for solid ice led him this way and that, but his progress towards Creepy Bluff, the shadowy outline of which he soon could see, steadily continued. He surmised that it was still blowing hard in the open, beyond the shelter of the islands; and he wondered if the wind would sweep him off his feet when he essayed to cross Sloop Run, down which it ran, unbroken, from the sea to the bluff.
“Her Majesty’s mail!” he muttered, echoing the thrill in the mailman’s voice. “Her Majesty’s mail!”
When the light was stronger—but it was not yet break of day—he thought to make greater haste by risking more. Now and again he chanced himself on a suspicious-looking black sheet. Now and again he ran nimbly over many yards of rubber ice, which yielded and groaned, but did not break. Often he ventured where Arch Butt would not have dared take his massive body. All this he did, believing always that he should not delay the Gull Arm mailman, who might even then be waiting for him in Ruddy Cove.
But when he had covered six miles of the route, he came to a wide channel which was not yet frozen over. It lay between two large pans. How far he might have to diverge from his course to cross without risk, he could not tell. He was impressed with the fact that, once across, the way lay clear before him—a long stretch of solid ice.
“Sure, I must cross here,” he thought.
He sought for a large cake of floating ice, that he might ferry himself across with his gaff. None great enough to bear his weight was to be seen—none, at least, within reach of his gaff. There were small cakes a-plenty; these were fragments heavy enough to bear him for but an instant. Could he cross on them? He thought he might leap from one to the other so swiftly that none would be called upon to sustain his full weight, and thus pass safely over.
With care he chose the path he would follow. Then, without hesitation, he leaped for the first cake—passed to the second—to the third—to the fourth—stepping so lightly from one to the other that the water did not touch the soles of his boots. In a moment, he was whistling on his way on the other side, leaving the channel ice bobbing excitedly behind him.
Soon he broke off whistling and began to sing. On he trudged, piping merrily:
‘Way down on Pigeon Pond Island,
When daddy comes home from swilin’,6
Cakes and tea for breakfast,
Pork and duff for dinner,
Cakes and tea for supper,
‘Way down on Pigeon Pond Island.
At noon he came to an expanse of bad ice. He halted at the edge of it to eat a bit of the hard bread and dried venison in his nunny-bag. Then, forward again! He advanced with great caution, sounding every step, on the alert for thin places. A mile of this and he had grown weary. He was not so quick, not so sure, in his estimate of the strength of the ice. The wind, now blowing in stronger gusts, brought the water to his eyes and impaired his sight. He did not regret his undertaking, but he began
ardently to wish that Creepy Bluff were nearer. Thus moved, his pace increased—with ever-increasing peril to himself. He must make haste!
What befell the boy came suddenly. He trusted his feet to a drift of snow. Quick as a flash, and all unready, he was submerged in the water beneath.
CHAPTER XVII
Billy Topsail Wrings Out His Clothes and Finds Himself Cut off From Shore by Thirty Yards of Heaving Ice
Billy could swim—could swim like any Newfoundland dog bred in Green Bay. Moreover, the life he led—the rugged, venturesome calling of the shore fishermen—had inured him to sudden danger. First of all he freed himself from the cumbersome mail-bag. He would not have abandoned it had he not been in such case as when, as the Newfoundlanders say, it was “every hand for his life.”
Then he made for the surface with swift, strong strokes. A few more strokes brought him to the edge of the ice. He clambered out, still gasping for breath, and turned about to account to himself for his predicament.
The drift of snow had collapsed; he observed that it had covered some part of a wide hole, and that the exposed water was almost of a colour with the ice beyond—a polished black. Hence, he did not bitterly blame himself for the false step, as he might have done had he plunged himself into obvious danger through carelessness. He did not wonder that he had been deceived.
Her Majesty’s mail, so far as the boy could determine, was slowly sinking to the bottom of the bay.
There was no help in regret. To escape from the bitter wind and the dusk, now fast falling, was the present duty. He could think of all the rest when he had leisure to sit before the fire and dream. He took off his jacket and wrung it out—a matter of some difficulty, for it was already stiff with frost. His shirt followed—then his boots and his trousers. Soon he was stripped to his rosy skin. The wind, sweeping in from the open sea, stung him as it whipped past.
When the last garment was wrung out he was shivering, and his teeth were chattering so fast that he could not keep them still. Dusk soon turns to night on this coast, and the night comes early. There was left but time enough to reach the first of the goat-paths at Creepy Bluff, two miles away—not time to finish the overland tramp to Ruddy Cove—before darkness fell.
The Sea-Story Megapack: 30 Classic Nautical Works Page 20