Billy Topsail & Company: A Story for Boys

“Which way, mister?”

Uncle Tommy pointed out to sea–to that far place in the east where the dusk was creeping up over the horizon.

“There, b’y,” said he. “Home lies there.”

Then Uncle Tommy shifted his sail to the other shoulder and trudged on up the hill; and Bagg threw himself on the ground and wept until his sobs convulsed his scrawny little body.

“I want to go ’ome!” he sobbed. “I want to go ’ome!”

No wonder that Bagg, London born and bred, wanted to go home to the crowd and roar and glitter of the streets to which he had been used. It was fall in Ruddy Cove, when the winds are variable and gusty, when the sea is breaking under the sweep of a freshening breeze and yet heaving to the force of spent gales. Fogs, persistently returning with the east wind, filled the days with gloom and dampness. Great breakers beat against the harbour rocks; the swish and thud of them never ceased, nor was there any escape from it.

Bagg went to the fishing grounds with Ezekiel Rideout, where he jigged for the fall run of cod; and there he was tossed about in the lop, and chilled to the marrow by the nor’easters. Many a time the punt ran heeling and plunging for the shelter of the harbour, with the spray falling upon Bagg where he cowered amidships; and once she was nearly undone by an offshore gale. In the end Bagg learned consideration for the whims of a punt and acquired an unfathomable respect for a gust and a breaking wave.

Thus the fall passed, when the catching and splitting and drying of fish was a distraction. Then came the winter–short, drear days, mere breaks in the night, when there was no relief from the silence and vasty space round about, and the dark was filled with the terrors of snow and great winds and loneliness. At last the spring arrived, when the ice drifted out of the north in vast floes, bearing herds of hair-seal within reach of the gaffs of the harbour folk, and was carried hither and thither with the wind.

Then there came a day when the wind gathered the dumpers and pans in one broad mass and jammed it against the coast. The sea, where it had lain black and fretful all winter long, was now covered and hidden. The ice stretched unbroken from the rocks of Ruddy Cove to the limit of vision in the east. And Bagg marvelled. There seemed to be a solid path from Ruddy Cove straight away in the direction in which Uncle Tommy Luff had said that England lay.

Notwithstanding the comfort and plenty of his place with Aunt Ruth Rideout and Uncle Ezekiel, Bagg still longed to go back to the gutters of London.

“I want to go ’ome,” he often said to Billy Topsail and Jimmie Grimm.

“What for?” Billy once demanded.

“Don’t know,” Bagg replied. “I jus’ want to go ’ome.”

At last Bagg formed a plan.

CHAPTER VIII

In Which Bagg, Unknown to Ruddy Cove, Starts for Home, and, After Some Difficulty, Safely Gets There

Uncle Tommy Luff, coming up the hill one day when the ice was jammed against the coast and covered the sea as far as sight carried, was stopped by Bagg at the turn to Squid Cove.

“I say, mister,” said Bagg, “which way was you tellin’ me Lun’on was from ’ere?”

Uncle Tommy pointed straight out to the ice-covered sea.

“That way?” asked Bagg.

“Straight out o’ the tickle with the meetin’-house astarn.”

“Think a bloke could ever get there?” Bagg inquired.

Uncle Tommy laughed. “If he kep’ on walkin’ he’d strike it some time,” he answered.

“Sure?” Bagg demanded.

“If he kep’ on walkin’,” Uncle Tommy repeated, smiling.

This much may be said of the ice: the wind which carries it inshore inevitably sweeps it out to sea again, in an hour or a day or a week, as it may chance. The whole pack–the wide expanse of enormous fragments of fields and glaciers–is in the grip of the wind, which, as all men know, bloweth where it listeth. A nor’east gale sets it grinding against the coast, but when the wind veers to the west the pack moves out and scatters.

If a man is caught in that great rush and heaving, he has nothing further to do with his own fate but wait. He escapes if he has strength to survive until the wind blows the ice against the coast again–not else. When the Newfoundlander starts out to the seal hunt he makes sure, in so far as he can, that no change in the wind is threatened.

Uncle Ezekiel Rideout kept an eye on the weather that night.

“Be you goin’, b’y?” said Ruth, looking up from her weaving.

Ezekiel had just come in from Lookout Head, where the watchers had caught sight of the seals, swarming far off in the shadows.

“They’s seals out there,” he said, “but I don’t know as us’ll go the night. ’Tis like the wind’ll haul t’ the west.”

“What do Uncle Tommy Luff say?”

“That ’twill haul t’ the west an’ freshen afore midnight.”

“Sure, then, you’ll not be goin’, b’y?”

“I don’t know as anybody’ll go,” said he. “Looks a bit too nasty for ’em.”

Nevertheless, Ezekiel put some pork and hard-bread in his dunny bag, and made ready his gaff and tow-lines, lest, by chance, the weather should promise fair at midnight.

“Where’s that young scamp?” said Ezekiel, with a smile–a smile which expressed a fine, indulgent affection.

“Now, I wonder where he is?” said Ruth, pausing in her work. “He’ve been gone more’n an hour, sure.”

“Leave un bide where he is so long as he likes,” said he. “Sure he must be havin’ a bit o’ sport. ’Twill do un good.”

Ezekiel sat down by the fire and dozed. From time to time he went to the door to watch the weather. From time to time Aunt Ruth listened for the footfalls of Bagg coming up the path. After a long time she put her work away. The moon was shining through a mist; so she sat at the window, for from there she could see the boy when he rounded the turn to the path. She wished he would come home.

“I’ll go down t’ Topsail’s t’ see what’s t’ be done about the seals,” said Ezekiel.

“Keep a lookout for the b’y,” said she.

Ezekiel was back in half an hour. “Topsail’s gone t’ bed,” said he. “Sure, no one’s goin’ out the night. The wind’s hauled round t’ the west, an’ ’twill blow a gale afore mornin’. The ice is movin’ out slow a’ready. Be that lad out yet?”

“Yes, b’y,” said Ruth, anxiously. “I wisht he’d come home.”

“I–I–wisht he would,” said Ezekiel.

Ruth went to the door and called Bagg by name.

But there was no answer.

Offshore, four miles offshore, Bagg was footing it for England as fast as his skinny little legs would carry him. The way was hard–a winding, uneven path over the pack. It led round clumpers, over ridges which were hard to scale, and across broad, slippery pans. The frost had glued every fragment to its neighbour; for the moment the pack formed one solid mass, continuous and at rest, but the connection between its parts was of the slenderest, needing only a change of the wind or the ground swell of the sea to break it everywhere.

The moon was up. It was half obscured by a haze which was driving out from the shore, to which quarter the wind had now fairly veered. The wind was rising–coming in gusts, in which, soon, flakes of snow appeared. But there was light enough to keep to the general direction out from the coast, and the wind but helped Bagg along.

“I got t’ ’urry up,” thought he.