Billy Topsail, M.D.

Billy Topsail was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet. Sometimes, however, he sighed:

"I wish Archie was here!"

And that wish was to come true.

Before Teddy Brisk was well enough to be sent home, something happened at Ragged Run Cove, which lay across Anxious Bight, near by the hospital at Our Harbour; and Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail were at once drawn into the consequences of the accident. It was March weather. There was sunshine and thaw. Anxious Bight was caught over with rotten ice from Ragged Run Cove to the heads of Our Harbour. A rumour of seals – a herd on the Arctic drift-ice offshore – had come in from the Spotted Horses. It inspired instant haste in all the cottages of Ragged Run – an eager, stumbling haste.

In Bad-Weather Tom West's wife's kitchen, somewhat after ten o'clock in the morning, in the midst of this hilarious scramble to be off to the floe, there was a flash and spit of fire, pale in the sunshine, and the clap of an explosion and the clatter of a sealing gun on the bare floor; and in the breathless, dead little interval, enduring between the appalling detonation and a man's groan of dismay and a woman's choke and scream of terror – in this shocked silence, Dolly West, Bad-Weather Tom's small maid, and Joe West's niece, stood swaying, wreathed in gray smoke, her little hands pressed tight to her eyes.

She was a pretty little creature – she had been a pretty little creature: there had been yellow curls, in the Labrador way – and rosy cheeks and grave blue eyes; but now of all this shy, fair loveliness —

"You've killed her!"

"Dear Lord – no!" cried Uncle Joe West, whose gun had exploded.

Dolly dropped her hands. She reached out, then, for something to grasp.

And she plainted:

"I ithn't dead, mother. I juth' – I juth' can't thee."

She extended her red hands.

"They're all wet!" she complained.

By this time the mother had the little girl gathered close in her arms.

She moaned:

"Doctor Luke – quick!"

Tommy West caught up his cap and mittens and sprang to the door.

"Not by the Bight!" Joe West shouted.

"No, sir."

Dolly West whimpered:

"It thmart-th, mother!"

"By Mad Harry an' Thank-the-Lord!"

"Ay, sir."

Dolly screamed – now:

"It hurt-th! Oh, oh, it hurt-th!"

"An' haste, lad!"

"Ay, sir."

There was of course no doctor at Ragged Run; there was a doctor, Doctor Luke, at Our Harbour, however – across Anxious Bight. Tommy West avoided the rotten ice of the Bight, which he dared not cross, and took the 'longshore trail by way of Mad Harry and Thank-the-Lord. At noon he was past Mad Harry, his little legs wearing well and his breath coming easily through his expanded nostrils – he had not paused; and at four o'clock – still on a dog-trot – he had hauled down the chimney smoke of Thank-the-Lord and was bearing up for Our Harbour. Early dusk caught him short-cutting the doubtful ice of Thank-the-Lord Cove; and half an hour later, midway of the passage to Our Harbour, with two miles left to accomplish – dusk falling thick and cold, then, and a frosty wind blowing – the heads of Our Harbour looming black and solid in the wintry night beyond – he dropped through the ice and vanished. There was not a sign of him left – some bubbles, perhaps: nothing more.

CHAPTER XIII

In Which Doctor Luke Undertakes a Feat of Daring and Endurance and Billy Topsail Thinks Himself the Luckiest Lad in the World

Returning from a call at Tumble Tickle, in clean, sunlit weather, with nothing more tedious than eighteen miles of wilderness trail and rough floe ice behind him, Doctor Luke was chagrined to discover himself a bit fagged. He had come heartily down the trail from Tumble Tickle in the early hours of that fine, windy morning, fit and eager for the trudge – as a matter of course; but on the ice, in the shank of the day – there had been eleven miles of the floe – he had lagged. A man cannot practice medicine out of a Labrador outport harbour and not know what it means to stomach a physical exhaustion. Doctor Luke had been tired before. He was not disturbed by that. But being human, he looked forward to rest; and in the drear, frosty dusk, when he rounded the heads of Home, opened the lights of Our Harbour, and caught the warm, yellow gleam of the lamp in the surgery window, he was glad to be near his supper and his bed.

And so he told Billy Topsail, whom he found in the surgery, replenishing the fire.

"Ha, Billy!" said he. "I'm glad to be home."

Afterwards, when supper had been disposed of, and Doctor Luke was with Billy in the surgery, the rest of the family being elsewhere occupied, there was a tap on the surgery door. Doctor Luke called: "Come in!" – with some wonder as to the event. It was no night to be abroad on the ice. Yet the tap on the surgery door could mean but one thing – somebody was in trouble; and as he called "Come in!" and while he waited for the door to open, Doctor Luke considered the night and wondered what strength he had left.

A youngster – he had been dripping wet and was now sparkling all over with frost and ice in the light of the surgery lamp – intruded.

"Thank-the-Lord Cove?"

"No, sir."

"Mad Harry?"

"Ragged Run, sir."

"Bad-Weather West's lad?"

"Yes, sir."

"Been in the water?"

The boy grinned. He was ashamed of himself. "Yes, sir. I falled through the ice, sir."

"Come across the Bight?"

The boy stared. "No, sir. A cat couldn't cross the Bight the night, sir. 'Tis all rotten. I come alongshore by Mad Harry an' Thank-the-Lord. I dropped through all of a sudden, sir, in Thank-the Lord Cove."

"Who's sick?"

"Uncle Joe's gun went off, sir."

Doctor Luke rose. "Uncle Joe's gun went off! Who was in the way?"

"Dolly, sir."

"And Dolly in the way! And Dolly – "