The Adventures of Billy Topsail

"I had four otter skins, some martens and ten fine fox skins in the pack on my back. To do anything in the water with that handicap was too much for me. So I wasn't at all particular about making time until I found that the night would catch me if I didn't wag along a little faster.

"No, sir!" the trader said. "I didn't want to be caught out there in the dark.

"By good luck, I struck some big pans about half-way over. Then I took to a dog-trot, and left the yards behind me in a way that cheered me up. Just before dusk I got near enough to the other side to feel proud of myself, and I began to think of what a fool I'd have been if I'd taken the shore route. A minute later I changed my mind. I felt the pack moving! Well, in a flash I said good-bye to Cherry Hill and the boys. Not many men are caught twice in a place like that. They never have the second chance.

"There I was, aboard a rotten floe and bound out to the big, lonely ocean at the rate of four miles an hour.

"'Oh, you might as well get ready to go, Jim,' thinks I. But I didn't give up. I loped along shoreward in a way that didn't take snow crust or air-holes into account. And I made the edge of the floe before the black hours of the night had come.

"There was a couple of hundred yards of cold water between me and the shore.

"'This is the time you think more of your life than your fur,' thinks I.

"There was a stray pan or two – little rafts of things – lying off the edge of the floe; and beyond them, scattered between the shore and me, half a dozen other pans were floating. How to get from one to the other was the puzzle. They were fifty or sixty yards apart, most of them, and I had no paddle. It was foolish to think of making a shift with my jacket for a sail; the wind was out, not in, and I had no rudder.

"What had I? Nothing that I could think of. It didn't strike me, as you say. I wish it had.

"'Anyhow,' says I to myself, 'I'll get as far as I can.'

"It was a short leap from the floe to the first pan. I made it easily. The second pan was farther off, but I thought I could jump the water between. So I took off my pack and threw it on the ice beside me. It almost broke my heart to do it, for I'd walked five hundred miles in the dead of winter for that fur; I'd been nearly starved and frozen, and I'd paid out hard-earned money. I put down my pack, took a short run, and jumped like a stag for the second pan.

"I landed on the spot I'd picked out. I can't complain of missing the mark, but instead of stopping there, I shot clear through and down into the water.

"Surprised? I was worse than that. I was dead scared. For a minute I thought I was going to rise under the ice and drown right there.

"How it happened I don't know; but I came up between the pans, and struck out for the one I'd left. I got to the pan, all right, and climbed aboard. There I was, on a little pan of ice, beyond reach of the floe and leaving the shore behind me, and cold and pretty well discouraged.

"There's the riddle of the corked bottle," said the trader, interrupting his narrative. "Now how do I happen to be sitting here?"

"I'm sure I can't tell," said the skipper.

"No more you should," said he, "for you don't know what I carried in my pack. But you see I had the bottle in my hands, and I wanted the ginger ale bad; so I thought fast and hard.

"It struck me that I might do something with my line and jigger.[4 - A jigger is a lead fish, about three inches long, which spreads into two large barbed hooks at one end; the other end is attached to about forty fathoms of stout line. Jiggers are used to jerk fish from the water where there is no bait.] Don't you see the chance the barbed steel hooks and the forty fathom of line gave me? When I thought of that jigger I felt just like the man who is told to push the cork in when he can't draw it out. I'd got back to the pan where I'd thrown down my pack, you know; so there was the jigger, right at hand.

"It was getting dark by this time – getting dark fast, and the pans were drifting farther and farther apart.

"It was easy to hook the jigger in the nearest pan and draw my pan over to it; for that pan was five times the weight of the one I was on. The one beyond was about the same size; they came together at the half-way point. Of course this took time. I could hardly see the shore then, and it struck me that I might not be able to find it at all, when I came near enough to cast my jigger for it.

"About fifty yards off was a big pan. I swung the jigger round and round and suddenly let the line shoot through my fingers. When I hauled it in the jigger came too, for it hadn't taken hold. That made me feel bad. I felt worse when it came back the second time. But I'm not one of the kind that gives up. I kept right on casting that jigger until it landed in the right spot.

"My pan crossed over as I hauled in the line. That was all right; but there was no pan between me and the shore.

"'All up!' thinks I.

"It was dark. I could see neither pan nor shore. Before long I couldn't see a thing in the pitchy blackness.

"All the time I could feel the pan humping along towards the open sea. I didn't know how far off the shore was. I was in doubt about just where it was.

"'Is this pan turning round?' thinks I. Well, I couldn't tell; but I thought I'd take a flier at hooking a rock or a tree with the jigger.

"The jigger didn't take hold. I tried a dozen times, and every time I heard it splash the water. But I kept on trying – and would have kept on till morning if I'd needed to. You can take me at my word, I'm not the kind of fool that gives up – I've been in too many tight places for that. So, at last, I gave the jigger a fling that landed it somewhere where it held fast; but whether ice or shore I couldn't tell. If shore, all right; if ice, all wrong; and that's all I could do about it.

"'Now,' thinks I, as I began to haul in, 'it all depends on the fishing line. Will it break, or won't it?'

"It didn't. So the next morning, with my pack on my back, I tramped round the point to Racquet Harbour."

"What was it?" was Billy Topsail's foolish question. "Shore or ice?"

"If it hadn't been shore," said the trader, "I wouldn't be here."

CHAPTER VIII

In the Offshore Gale: In Which Billy Topsail Goes Seal Hunting and is Swept to Sea With the Floe

WHAT befell old Tom Topsail and his crew came in the course of the day's work. Fishermen and seal-hunters, such as the folk of Ruddy Cove, may not wait for favourable weather; when the fish are running, they must fish; when the seals are on the drift-ice offshore in the spring, they must hunt.

So on that lowering day, when the seals were sighted by the watch on Lookout Head, it was a mere matter of course that the men of the place should set out to the hunt.

"I s'pose," Tom Topsail drawled, "that we'd best get under way."

Bill Watt, his mate, scanned the sky in the northeast. It was heavy, cold and leaden; fluffy gray towards the zenith, and black where the clouds met the barren hills.

"I s'pose," said he, catching Topsail's drawl, "that 'twill snow afore long."

"Oh, aye," was the slow reply, "I s'pose 'twill."

Again Bill Watt faced the sullen sky. He felt that the supreme danger threatened – snow with wind.

"I s'pose," he said, "that 'twill blow, too."

"Oh, aye," Topsail replied, indifferently, "snow 'n' blow. We'll know what 'twill do when it begins," he added. "Billy, b'y!" he shouted.

In response Billy Topsail came bounding down the rocky path from the cottage. He was stout for his age, with broad shoulders, long thick arms and large hands. There was a boy's flush of expectation on his face, and the flash of a boy's delight in his eyes. He was willing for adventure.

"Bill an' me'll take the rodney," Topsail drawled. "I s'pose you might's well fetch the punt, an' we'll send you back with the first haul."

"Hooray!" cried Billy; and with that he waved his cap and sped back up the hill.

"Fetch your gaff, lad!" Topsail called after him. "Make haste! There's Joshua Rideout with his sail up. 'Tis time we was off."

"Looks more'n ever like snow," Bill Watt observed, while they waited. "I'm thinkin' 'twill snow."

"Oh, maybe 'twon't," said Topsail, optimistic in a lazy way.

The ice-floe was two miles or more off the coast; thence it stretched to the horizon – a vast, rough, blinding white field, formed of detached fragments. Some of the "pans" were acres in size; others were not big enough to bear the weight of a man; all were floating free, rising and falling with the ground swell.

The wind was light, the sea quiet, the sky thinly overcast. Had it not been for the threat of heavy weather in the northeast, it would have been an ideal day for the hunt. The punt and the rodney, the latter far in the lead, ran quietly out from the harbour, with their little sails all spread. From the punt Billy Topsail could soon see the small, scattered pack of seals – black dots against the white of the ice.