Billy Topsail & Company: A Story for Boys

“Billy,” he said to his young son, forgetting the darkness and the dogs, “go fetch that swile up.”

Billy was gone a long time.

“I wonder what’s keepin’ Billy,” his mother said.

They grew uneasy, at last; and presently they set out to search for the lad. Neither child nor seal did they ever see again; but they came upon the shocking evidences of what had occurred.

And they blamed Tog of Buccaneer Cove.

For a month or more Tog was lost to sight; but an epidemic had so reduced the number of serviceable dogs that he was often in Jim Grimm’s mind. Jim very heartily declared that Tog should have a berth with the team if starvation drove him back; not that he loved Tog, said he, but that he needed him. But Tog seemed to be doing well enough in the wilderness. He did not soon return. Once they saw him. It was when Jim and Jimmie were bound home from Laughing Cove. Of a sudden Jim halted the team.

“Do you see that, Jimmie, b’y?” he asked, pointing with his whip to the white crest of a near-by hill.

“Dogs!” Jimmie ejaculated.

“Take another squint,” said Jim.

“Dogs,” Jimmie repeated.

“Wolves,” drawled Jim. “An’ do you see the beast with the black eye?”

“Why, dad,” Jimmie exclaimed, “’tis Tog!”

“I ’low,” said Jim, “that Tog don’t need us no more.”

But Tog did. He came back–lean and fawning. No more abject contrition was ever shown by dog before. He was starving. They fed him at the usual hour; and not one ounce more than the usual amount of food did he get. Next day he took his old place in the traces and helped haul Jim Grimm the round of the fox traps. But that night Jim Grimm lost another dog; and in the morning Tog had again disappeared into the wilderness. Jimmie Grimm was glad. Tog had grown beyond him. The lad could control the others of the pack; but he was helpless against Tog.

“I isn’t so wonderful sorry, myself,” said Jim. “I ’low, Jimmie,” he added, “that Tog don’t like you.”

“No, that he doesn’t,” Jimmie promptly agreed. “All day yesterday he snooped around, with an eye on me. Looked to me as if he was waitin’ for me to fall down.”

“Jimmie!” said Jim Grimm, gravely.

“Ay, sir?”

“You mustn’t fall down. Don’t matter whether Tog’s about or not. If the dogs is near, don’t you fall down!”

“Not if I knows it,” said Jimmie.

It was a clear night in March. The moon was high. From the rear of Jim Grimm’s isolated cottage the white waste stretched far to the wilderness. The dogs of the pack were sound asleep in the outhouse. An hour ago the mournful howling had ceased for the night. Half-way to the fish-stage, whither he was bound on his father’s errand, Jimmie Grimm came to a startled full stop.

“What was that?” he mused.

A dark object, long and lithe, had seemed to slip like a shadow into hiding below the drying flake. Jimmie continued to muse. What had it been? A prowling dog? Then he laughed a little at his own fears–and continued on his way. But he kept watch on the flake; and so intent was he upon this, so busily was he wondering whether or not his eyes had tricked him, that he stumbled over a stray billet of wood, and fell sprawling.

He was not alarmed, and made no haste to rise; but had he then seen what emerged from the shadow of the flake he would instantly have been in screaming flight toward the kitchen door.

The onslaught of Tog and the two wolves was made silently.

There was not a howl, not a growl, not even an eager snarl. They came leaping, with Tog in the lead–and they came silently. Jimmie caught sight of them when he was half-way to his feet. He had but time to call his father’s name; and he knew that the cry would not be heard. Instinctively, he covered his throat with his arms when Tog fell upon him; and he was relieved to feel Tog’s teeth in his shoulder. He felt no pain–not any more, at any rate, than a sharp stab in the knee. He was merely sensible of the fact that the vital part had not yet been reached.

In the savage joy of attack, Jimmie’s assailants forgot discretion. Snarls and growls escaped them while they worried the small body. In the manner of wolves, too, they snapped at each other. The dogs in the outhouse awoke, cocked their ears, came in a frenzy to the conflict; not to save Jimmie Grimm, but to participate in his destruction. Jimmie was prostrate beneath them all–still protecting his throat; not regarding his other parts.

And by this confusion Jim Grimm was aroused from a sleepy stupor by the kitchen fire.

“I wonder,” said he, “what’s the matter with them dogs.”

“I’m not able t’ make out,” his wife replied, puzzled, “but–”

“Hark!” cried Jim.

They listened.

“Quick!” Jimmie’s mother screamed. “They’re at Jimmie!”

With an axe in his hand, and with merciless wrath in his heart, Jim Grimm descended upon the dogs. He stretched the uppermost dead. A second blow broke the back of a wolf. The third sent a dog yelping to the outhouse with a useless hind leg. The remaining dogs decamped. Their howls expressed pain in a degree to delight Jim Grimm and to inspire him with deadly strength and purpose. Tog and the surviving wolf fled.

“Jimmie!” Jim Grimm called.

Jimmie did not answer.

“They’ve killed you!” his father sobbed. “Jimmie, b’y, is you dead? Mother,” he moaned to his wife, who had now come panting up with a broomstick, “they’ve gone an’ killed our Jimmie!”

Jimmie was unconscious when his father carried him into the house. It was late in the night, and he was lying in his own little bed, and his mother had dressed his wounds, when he revived. And Tog was then howling under his window; and there Tog remained until dawn, listening to the child’s cries of agony.

Two days later, Jim Grimm, practicing unscrupulous deception, lured Tog into captivity. That afternoon the folk of Buccaneer Cove solemnly hanged him by the neck until he was dead, which is the custom in that land. I am glad that they disposed of him. He had a noble body–strong and beautiful, giving delight to the beholder, capable of splendid usefulness. But he had not one redeeming trait of character to justify his existence.

“I wonder why Tog was so bad, dad,” Jimmie mused, one day, when, as they mistakenly thought, he was near well again.

“I s’pose,” Jim explained, “’twas because his father was a wolf.”

Little Jimmie Grimm was not the same after that. For some strange reason he went lame, and the folk of Buccaneer Cove said that he was “took with the rheumatiz.”

“Wisht I could be cured,” the little fellow used to sigh.

CHAPTER III

In Which Little Jimmie Grimm Goes Lame and His Mother Discovers the Whereabouts of a Cure

Little Jimmie Grimm was then ten years old. He had been an active, merry lad, before the night of the assault of Tog and the two wolves–inclined to scamper and shout, given to pranks of a kindly sort. His affectionate, light-hearted disposition had made him the light of his mother’s eyes, and of his father’s, too, for, child though he was, lonely Jim Grimm found him a comforting companion. But he was now taken with what the folk of Buccaneer Cove called “rheumatiz o’ the knee.” There were days when he walked in comfort; but there were also times when he fell to the ground in a sudden agony and had to be carried home. There were weeks when he could not walk at all. He was not now so merry as he had been. He was more affectionate; but his eyes did not flash in the old way, nor were his cheeks so fat and rosy. Jim Grimm and the lad’s mother greatly desired to have him cured.

“’Twould be like old times,” Jim Grimm said once, when Jimmie was put to bed, “if Jimmie was only well.”

“I’m afeared,” the mother sighed, “that he’ll never be well again.”

“For fear you’re right, mum,” said Jim Grimm, “we must make him happy every hour he’s with us. Hush, mother! Don’t cry, or I’ll be cryin’, too!”

Nobody connected Jimmie Grimm’s affliction with the savage teeth of Tog.