Billy Topsail, M.D.

"Well, well," Doctor Luke replied, "it is Bad-Weather Tom's maid who is in need of us at Ragged Run."

Billy liked that "Us"!

CHAPTER XVI

In Which Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail Proceed to Accomplish What a Cat Would Never Attempt and Doctor Luke Looks for a Broken Back Whilst Billy Topsail Shouts, "Can You Make It?" and Hears No Answer

When they came to the Head and there paused to survey Anxious Bight in a flash of the moon Billy Topsail and Doctor Luke were tingling and warm and limber and eager. Yet they were dismayed by the prospect. No man could cross from the Head to Blow-me-Down Dick of Ragged Run Cove in the dark. Doctor Luke considered the light. Communicating masses of ragged cloud were driving low across Anxious Bight. Offshore there was a sluggish bank of black cloud. And Doctor Luke was afraid of that bank of black cloud. The moon was risen and full. It was obscured. The intervals of light were less than the intervals of shadow. Sometimes a wide, impenetrable cloud, its edges alight, darkened the moon altogether. Still – there was light enough. All that was definitely ominous was the bank of black cloud lying sluggishly offshore.

"I don't like that cloud, Billy," said Doctor Luke.

"No, sir; no more does I."

"It will cover the moon by and by."

"Sure, sir."

"There may be snow in it."

"Sure t' be, sir."

The longer Doctor Luke contemplated that bank of black cloud – its potentiality for catastrophe – the more he feared it.

"If we were to be overtaken by snow – "

Billy interrupted with a chuckle.

"'Twould be a tidy little fix," said he. "Eh, sir?"

"Well, if that's all you have to say," said Doctor Luke – and he laughed – "come right along!"

It was blowing high. There was the bite and shiver of frost in the wind. Half a gale ran in from the open sea. Midway of Anxious Bight it would be a saucy, hampering, stinging head-wind. And beyond the Head the ice was in doubtful condition. A man might conjecture: that was all. What was it Tommy West had said? "A cat couldn't cross!" It was mid-spring. Freezing weather had of late alternated with periods of thaw and rain. There had been windy days. Anxious Bight had even once been clear of ice. A westerly wind had broken the ice and swept it out beyond the heads; a punt had fluttered over from Ragged Run Cove.

In a gale from the northeast, however, these fragments had returned with accumulations of Arctic pans and hummocks from the Labrador Current; and a frosty night had caught them together and sealed them to the cliffs of the coast. It was a slender attachment – a most delicate attachment: one pan to the other and the whole to the rocks.

It had yielded somewhat – it must have gone rotten – in the weather of that day.

What the frost had accomplished since dusk could be determined only upon trial.

"Soft as cheese!" Doctor Luke concluded.

"Rubber ice," said Billy.

"Air-holes," said the Doctor.

There was another way to Ragged Run – the way by which Tommy West had come. It skirted the shore of Anxious Bight – Mad Harry and Thank-the-Lord and Little Harbour Deep – and something more than multiplied the distance by one and a half. Doctor Luke was completely aware of the difficulties of Anxious Bight, and so was Billy Topsail – the way from Our Harbour to Ragged Run: the treacherous reaches of young ice, bending under the weight of a man, and the veiled black water, and the labour, the crevices, the snow-crust of the Arctic pans and hummocks, and the broken field and wash of the sea beyond the lesser island of the Spotted Horses.

They knew, too, the issue of the disappearance of the moon – the desperate plight into which the sluggish bank of black cloud might plunge a man.

Yet they now moved out and shaped a course for the black bulk of the Spotted Horses.

This was in the direction of Blow-me-Down Dick of Ragged Run and the open sea.

"Come on!" said Doctor Luke.

"I'm comin', sir," Billy replied.

There was something between a chuckle and a laugh from Billy's direction.

Doctor Luke started.

"Laughing, Billy?" he inquired.

"I jus' can't help it, sir."

"Nothing much to laugh at."

"No, sir," Billy replied. "I don't feel like laughin', sir. But 'tis so wonderful dangerous out on the Bight that I jus' can't help laughin'."

Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail were used to travelling all sorts of ice in all sorts of weather. The returning fragments of the ice of Anxious Bight had been close packed for two miles beyond the entrance to Our Harbour by the northeast gale that had driven them back from the open. An alien would have stumbled helplessly and exhausted himself; by and by he would have begun to crawl – in the end he would have lost his life in the frost. This was rough ice. In the press of the wind the drifting floe had buckled. It had been a big gale. Under the whip of it, the ice had come down with a rush. And when it encountered the coast, the first great pans had been thrust out of the sea by the weight of the floe behind.

A slow pressure had even driven them up the cliffs of the Head and heaped them in a tumble below.

It was thus a folded, crumpled floe – a vast field of broken bergs and pans at angles.

No Newfoundlander would adventure on the ice without a gaff. A gaff is a lithe, iron-shod pole, eight or ten feet in length. Doctor Luke was as cunning and sure with the gaff as any old hand of the sealing fleet; and Billy Topsail always maintained that he had been born with a little gaff in his hand instead of a silver spoon in his mouth. They employed the gaffs now to advantage. They used them like vaulting poles. They walked less than they leaped. But this was no work for the half-light of an obscured moon. Sometimes they halted for light. And delay annoyed Doctor Luke. A peppery humour began to possess him. A pause of ten minutes – they squatted for rest meantime – threw him into a state of incautious irritability. At this rate it would be past dawn before they made the cottages of Ragged Run Cove.

It would be slow beyond – surely slow on the treacherous reaches of green ice between the floe and the Spotted Horses.

And beyond the Spotted Horses, whence the path to Ragged Run led – the crossing of Tickle-my-Ribs!

A proverb of Our Harbour maintains that a fool and his life are soon parted.

Doctor Luke invented the saying.

"'Twould be engraved on my stationery," he would declare, out of temper with recklessness, "if I had any engraved stationery!"

Yet now, impatient of precaution, when he thought of Dolly West, Doctor Luke presently chanced a leap. It was error. As the meager light disclosed the path, a chasm of fifteen feet intervened between the edge of the upturned pan upon which he and Billy Topsail stood and a flat-topped hummock of Arctic ice to which he was bound. There was footing for the tip of his gaff midway below. He felt for this footing to entertain himself whilst the moon delayed.

It was there. He was tempted. It was an encouragement to rash conduct. The chasm was critically deep for the length of the gaff. Worse than that, the hummock was higher than the pan. Doctor Luke peered across. It was not much higher. Was it too high? No. It would merely be necessary to lift stoutly at the climax of the leap. And there was need of haste – a little maid in hard case at Ragged Run and a rising cloud threatening black weather.

"Ah, sir, don't leap it!" Billy pleaded.

"Tut!" scoffed the Doctor.

"Wait for the moon, sir!"

A slow cloud covered the moon. It was aggravating. How long must a man wait? A man must take a chance – what? And all at once Doctor Luke gave way to impatience. He gripped his gaff with angry determination and projected himself towards the hummock of Arctic ice. In mid-air he was doubtful. A flash later he had regretted the hazard. It seemed he would come short of the hummock altogether. He would fall. There would be broken bones. He perceived now that he had misjudged the height of the hummock.