The Adventures of Billy Topsail

by Norman Duncan

  CHAPTER XXXI

  _The Dictator Charges an Ice Pan and Loses a Main Topmast_

  "CAST loose!" was the order from the bridge.

  The men scrambled to the berg and released the lines and ice-hooks.The pack was still loosening under the rising breeze. To the east,separating the sky from the ice, lay a long black streak--the waterof the open sea; a clear way to the broad, white fields. Once free ofthe floe, the ship would speed northward to the Yellow Islands andCape William coasts. In a day and a night, the weather continuingpropitious, it would be, "Ho! for the ice. Ho! for the seals."

  A lane of water opened up. "Go ahead," was the signal from the masteron the bridge, and the ship moved forward, with her nose turned to thesea.

  "Ha, Mr. Ackell!" exclaimed the captain, rubbing his horny hands."Looks t' be a fine time, man. We'll make the Yellow Islands at dawnt'-morrow, if all goes well."

  When the _Dictator_ had followed the lane to within one hundred yardsof free water, the advance was blocked by a great pan of ice, tightjammed in the pack on either side. So fast and vagrantly was the floeshifting its formation that what had been a clear path was now crossedby a mighty barrier. Here was no slob ice to be forged through at fullsteam, but a solid mass, like a bar of iron, lying across the path.

  The ship was taken to the edge of the obstruction, and the captain andmate went forward to the bow to gauge the strength of it. When theycame back to the bridge, the former had his teeth set.

  "It's stiff work for the old ship," said the mate.

  The captain growled as he pulled the signal lever for full speed astern.

  "Take half a day to cut a way through," he said. "We'll ram it. Here,b'y," to Archie, "get off the bridge. You're in the way."

  Archie joined Billy Topsail on the forward deck. Neither had yetexperienced a charge on a pan of ice; but both had listened, open eyed,to the sealing tales of daring that had brought disaster.

  "I feel queer," Archie remarked.

  "Cap'n Hand," said Billy, as though trying to revive his faith in theold skipper, "he's a clever one. 'Tis all right."

  "Make fast below," the captain shouted over the bridge rail.

  The word was passed in a lively fashion. Tackle, boats, and all thingsloose, were lashed in their places, as if for a great gale.

  "Stop!" was the next signal. Then: "Full speed ahead!"

  The blow had been launched! A moment later, the _Dictator_ wasploughing forward, charging the pan, which she must strike like abattering ram, and shiver to pieces. She was of solid oak, this goodship, and builded for such attacks; steel plates would buckle andspring under such shocks as she had many times triumphantly sustained.The men were silent while they awaited the event. There was not a soundsave the hiss of the water at the ship's prows, and the _chug-chug_ ofthe engines.

  Archie caught his breath. His eyes were fixed on the fast vanishingspace of water. The thrill of the adventure was manifest in BillyTopsail's sharp, quick breathing, and in his blue eyes, which were asthough about to pop out of their sockets.

  "Stop!"

  The engines abruptly ceased their labour. Only a fathom or two of waterlay ahead. The ship was about to strike. There was a long drawn instantof suspense. Then came the blow!

  It was a fearful shock. The vessel quivered, crushed her way on for aspace, and stopped dead, quivering still. A groan ran over her, fromstem to stern, as though she had been racked in every part. The maintopmast snapped and fell forward on the rigging with a crash.

  A volley of cracks sounded from the ice, like the discharge of athousand rifles, slowly subsiding. Dead silence fell and continued fora moment. Then the screw churned the water, and the ship backed off,sound, but beaten; for the pan of ice lay, unbroken and unchanged, inits place, with but a jagged bruise, where the blow had been struck.

  "Aloft, there, some o' you, an' cut away that spar!" the captainshouted. "Bill, get below, an' see if she's tight. Here, you, Dickson,call the watch t' make sail. Mr. Girth," to the second mate, "take acrew t' the ice. Blast that pan in three places. Lively, now, every mano' you!"

  Roaring subordinates, answering "Ay, ay, sirs!" rattling blocks andchains, the fall of hurried feet, cries of warning and encouragement,the engine's gasps: these sounds confounded the confusion, andcontinued it, while the ship, snorting like a frightened horse, wasbacked to her first position.

  "He'll try it again," Archie gleefully observed to Billy.

  The captain was pacing the bridge. Try it again? He was in a fever ofimpatience to be at it! It was as though the pan of ice were a foeneeding only another and a heavier blow to be beaten down.

  "Sure," said Billy, after a glance to the bridge, "he'll hit that pantill he smashes it, if it takes till Tibb's Eve!"

  "Tibb's Eve?"

  "Sure, b'y. Does you not know what that is? 'Tis till the end o' theworld."

  The ship was again to be launched against the pan. The second mate tookthe blasting crew to the ice in the quarter boat; and he lost no timeabout it, as the captain made sure. Up aloft went other hands to cutaway the broken spar and loose the canvas. Work was carried on underthe spur of the captain's harshened voice; for the captain was in apassion to prove the quality of his ship.

  The ice picks were plied as fast as arms could swing them. Soon themines were laid and fired. And when the dust of ice had fallen, andthe noise of the explosion had gone rumbling into the distance, threegaping holes marked the pan at regular intervals from edge to edge.

  "She's all tight below, sir," was the carpenter's report.

  "Now, Mr. Ackell," said the captain, grimly, "in ten minutes we'll befree o' the ice, or----"

  They made all sail. After a quiet word or two of command, forth theship shot, heeling to the breeze, wind now allied with steam. Hercourse was laid straight for the jagged bruise in the pan. There wasno stopping her now. The ice was cracked and shivered into a thousandpieces. The ship forged on, grinding the cakes to fragments, heapingthem up, riding them down. She quivered when she struck, and strainedand creaked as she crushed her way forward, but she crept on,invincible, adding inch to inch, foot to foot, until she swept out intothe unclogged water.

  Then she shook the ice from her screw, and ran grandly into theswelling sea.

  "Hurrah!" the stout hearts roared.

  "Hem--hem! Mr. Ackell," said the captain, with some emotion, "'tis agreat ship!"

  * * * * *

  It occurred to Archie that night, while he sat munching hard biscuitwith the captain before turning in, to ask a few questions about TimTuttle. What was the matter with the man? Why did he go about with asneer or a frown forever on his face? Why was he not like all the restof the crew? Why did the crew seem to expect him to "do" something? Whydid the captain flush and bristle when Tuttle came near?

  "Oh," the captain replied, with a laugh, "Tuttle had a fallin' out withme when we was young. I think," he added, gravely, "that he wronged me.But that's neither here nor there. I forgave him. The point is--an'I've often run across the same thing in my life--that he won't forgive_me_ for forgivin' _him_. That's odd, isn't it? But it's true. An' he'saboard here t' make trouble; an' the men know that that's just what hecame for."

  "But what did you ship him for, captain, if you knew that?"

  The captain paused. "Well," he said, "because I'm only a man, I s'pose.I couldn't help knockin' the chip off his shoulder."

  "Do you think he _can_ make trouble?"

  "I'd like t' see him try!" the captain burst out, wrathfully.

  Tuttle's opportunity occurred the next day.