The Adventures of Billy Topsail

by Norman Duncan

  CHAPTER XIII

  _In Which Billy Topsail Sets Sail for the Labrador, the Rescue Strikes an Iceberg, and Billy is Commanded to Pump for His Life_

  IT was early in the spring--a time of changeable weather when, inthe northern seas, the peril of drift-ice, bergs, snow, wind and thedark must sometimes be met with short warning. The schooner _Rescue_,seventy tons, Job Small, master, had supplied the half-starved Labradorfishermen with flour and pork, and was bound back to Ruddy Cove, inballast, to load provisions and shop goods for the straits trade.

  Billy Topsail was aboard. "I 'low, dad," he had said to his father,when the skipper of the _Rescue_ received the Government commission toproceed North with supplies, "that I'd like t' _see_ the Labrador."

  "You'll see it many a time, lad," his father had replied, "afore you'redone with it."

  "An' Skipper Job," Billy had persisted, "says he'll take me."

  The end of it was that Billy was shipped.

  The _Rescue_ had rounded the cape at dawn, with all sails set, evento her topmast-staysail, which the Newfoundlanders call the "TommyDancer"; but now, with the night coming down, she was laboriouslybeating into a head wind under jib and reefed mainsail.

  "I'm fair ashamed t' have the canvas off her," said Skipper Job, aftera long look to windward. "'Tis no more than a switch, an' we're clewedup for a snorter."

  "They's no one t' see, sir," said the cook. "That's good; an' sure Ihopes that nothin' heaves in sight t' shame us."

  "Leave us shake the reef out o' the mains'l, sir, an' give her thefores'l," said the first hand.

  "We're not in haste, b'y," the skipper replied. "She's doin' well asshe is. We'll not make harbour this night, an' I've no mind t' be inthe neighbourhood o' the Break-heart Rocks afore mornin'. Let her bide."

  The weather thickened. With the night came a storm of snow in heavyflakes, which the wind swept over the deck in clouds. There was nothingto relieve the inky darkness. The schooner reeled forth and back on theport and starboard tacks, beating her way south as blind as a bat.There was no rest for the crew. The skipper was at the wheel, the firsthand on the lookout forward, the cook and the two other hands standingby on deck for emergencies.

  So far as the wind, the sea and the drift-ice were concerned, thedanger was slight, for the _Rescue_ was stoutly built; but the seawas strewn with vast fields and mountains of Arctic ice,--the glaciericebergs which drift out of the north in the spring--and in theirproximity, in their great mass and changing position, lay a dreadfuldanger.

  "Sure, I wisht you could chart icebergs," said the skipper to the cook."But," he added, anxiously, "you can't. They moves so fast an' sopeculiar that--that--well, I wisht they didn't."

  "I wisht they wasn't none," said the cook.

  "Ay, lad," said the skipper. "But they might be a wonderful big onesixty fathom dead ahead at this minute. We couldn't see it if they was."

  "I hopes they isn't, sir," said the cook, with a shiver.

  The snow ceased before morning; but at the peep of dawn a thick fogcame up with the wind, and when the light came it added nothing to therange of vision from the bow. The night had been black; the dawn wasgray. It was so thick that the man at the wheel could not see beyondthe foremast. The lookout was lost in the fog ahead. Eyes were now ofno more use than in the depths of a cloudy night.

  But the schooner had weathered the night; and when the first light ofday broke in the east, Skipper Job gave the wheel to the second hand,and went below with the cook to have a cup of tea.

  "I've no mind t' lose her," said he, "so I'll leave her bowl alongunder short sail. If we strike, 'twill be so much the easier."

  "'Twould be a sad pity t' lose her," said the cook, "when you've gother so near paid for."

  "Ay, that's it," said the skipper.

  The _Rescue_ had been built for young Skipper Job, after Skipper Job'sown model, by the Ruddy Cove trader. The trader was to share in thevoyages--whether for Labrador fish or in the Shore trade--until she waspaid for. Then she would belong to Skipper Job--to the young skipper,who had married the parson's daughter, and now had a boy of his own forwhom to plan and dream.

  That was the spring of his energy and caution--that little boy, whocould no more than toddle over the kitchen floor and gurgle a greetingto the lithe young fellow who bounded up the path to catch him in hisarms. The schooner was the fortune of the lad and the mother; and shewas now all so nearly Job's own that another voyage or two--a mere fourmonths--might see the last dollar of the obligation paid over.

  "No," Skipper Job repeated, absently, when he had thought of thetoddler and the tender, smiling mother, "I've no mind t' lose this hereschooner."

  Job dreamed of the lad while he sipped his tea. They must make a parsonof him, if he had the call, the skipper thought; or a doctor, perhaps.Whatever, that baby must never follow the sea. No, no! He must neverknow the hardship and anxiety of such a night as that just past. Hemust be----

  A scream of warning broke into the dream:

  "Har-rd-a-lee!"

  Skipper Job heard the fall of the feet of a man leaping back from thebow. There was meaning in the step, in the haste and length of theleaps--the imminence of a collision with the ice.

  "All hands!"

  The skipper had no more than leaped to his feet when there was astunning crash overhead, followed on the instant by a shock thatstopped the schooner dead and made her quiver from stem to stern. Thebowsprit was rammed into the forecastle, the deck planks were rippedup, the upper works of the bows were crushed in, the cook's pots andpans were tumbled about, the lamp was broken and extinguished. Job wasthrown from his feet.

  When he recovered, it was to the horror of this darkness andconfusion--to a second crash and shock, to screams and tramplingoverhead, and to a rain of blows upon the deck. He cried to the cook tofollow him on deck, and felt his way in mad haste to the ladder; butthere he stopped, of a sudden, with his foot on the lowest step, forthe cook had made no reply.

  "Cook, b'y!" he shouted.

  There was no answer. It was apparent that the man had been killed ordesperately injured. The skipper knew the danger of delay. They hadstruck ice; the berg might overturn, some massive peak might toppleover, the ship might fill and sink. But, as a matter of course, andwith no thought of himself as a hero, he turned and made a gropingsearch for the cook, until he found the poor fellow lying unconsciousamong his own pots and pans. Thence he carried him to the deck, andstretched him out on the fore hatch, with the foreboom and sail toprotect him from the fragments of ice, which fell as in a shower eachtime the schooner struck the berg.

  Billy Topsail caught the skipper by the arm in a strong grip.

  "We're lost!" he cried.

  The roaring wind, the hiss of the seas, the shock and wreck, thesudden, dreadful peril, had thrown the lad into a panic. The skipperperceived his distress, and acted promptly to restore him to hismanhood.

  "Leave me free!" he shouted, with a scowl.

  But Billy tightened his grip on the skipper's arm, and sobbed andwhined. The skipper knocked him down with a blow on the breast; thenjerked him to his feet and pointed to the pump.

  "Pump for your life!" he commanded, knowing well that what poor Billyneeded was work, of whatever kind, to give him back his courage.