Billy Topsail, M.D.

Doctor Luke stared at the breach of slush. He faced away, then, abruptly. "Wel-ll," he admitted, with a shrug, "no doubt you're right, Billy. I – "

CHAPTER XXVI

In Which it Seems that an Axe and Terry Lute's Finger Are Surely to Come into Injurious Contact, and Terry Lute is Caught and Carried Bawling to the Block, While His Mother Holds the Pot of Tar

In Tom Lute's cottage beyond Come-Along Point of Amen Island they were ready for the operation. There was a thick, round billet of birch, upended in the middle of the kitchen floor, to serve as a block for the amputation; and the axe was sharp, at last – at hand, too, but concealed, for the moment, behind the pantry door – and a pot of tar was warming on the kitchen stove.

Sandy Lands had reported for duty, whom nothing but a sense of duty had drawn to a hand in the surgical assistance – a bit perturbed, as he contemplated the task of restraining the struggles of a violent little subject, whose temper he knew, but sturdy and resolved, his resolution substantiated by a sort of religious austerity.

Black Walt Anderson, a gigantic, phlegmatic fellow, who would have subdivided into half a dozen little Terry Lutes, also awaited the signal to pounce upon the Little Fiddler of Amen Island, imprison his arms, confine his legs, subdue all his little struggles, in short, bear him to the block and flatten his hand and spread his fingers for the severing blow.

It was to be a simple operation – a swift descent of the axe and a quick application of hot tar and bandages to stifle the wound. And that was to be the end of the finger and the trouble.

There had been a good deal of trouble. Terry Lute's sore finger was a source of brutal agony. There had been many days of this pain – a throbbing torture in the finger and hand and arm. And Terry had practiced deception in an heroic degree.

No pain (said he); but, ah, well, a twinge, now an' again – but nothin' at all t' make a man complain. An' sure (said he), 'twas better all the while – improvin' every blessed minute, sir. A day more (said he) would see the boil yield t' mother's poultice; an' a fortnight would see un all healed up an' the finger able for labour again.

It was in the night that Terry could conceal the agony no longer – deep in the night, when his mother sat beside the cot; and then he would crawl out of bed, stow his slender little body away in his mother's arms, put his head down and cry and moan without shame until he had exhausted himself and fallen into a fitful sleep.

No; it was no trifling agony for Terry Lute to withstand. And he knew all the while, moreover, that the cut of an axe – no more, it might be, than a flash – would eventually relieve him. Terry Lute was not afraid of the pain of the thing they wanted to do. That was not the inspiration of his infuriated rebellion.

There was nothing mistaken in the intention of the axe. It was neither cruel nor blundering.

Amen Island lies remote: the folk do for themselves – they are nearly sufficient to themselves, indeed, in all the affairs of life; and when they fail (they say) and sorrow comes of it – well, there is failure everywhere, too, and life leaves every man when the spirit is finished with its habitation. "I done the best I could!" It is epitaph honourable enough. There was no horror on Amen Island – no furious complaint of the wrongs of a social arrangement – when catastrophe came through lack of uncommon means to stave it off.

And so when Tom Lute told old Bob Likely that when he had a job to do he was accustomed to employ the best means at hand – he expressed in simple terms the lesson of his habitat. This affair of Terry Lute's finger was of gravest moment; had the finger gangrened – it must come off in haste, and the sooner the better; and an axe and a pot of tar were the serviceable instruments according to the teaching of all experience.

Doubtless doctors were better provided and more able; but as there was no doctor to be had, and as Terry Lute was loved and greatly desired in the flesh, and as he was apparently in peril of a sudden departure – and as he was in desperate pain – and as —

But Terry Lute would not have his finger off. From the corner, where he stood at bay, roaring in a way to silence the very gale that had now begun to shake the cottage, he ran to his mother's knee, as though for better harbour.

And there he sobbed his complaint.

"Ah, Terry, lad," his father pleaded; "'tis only a finger!"

"'Tis on my left hand!"

"You're not left-handed, son," Tom Lute argued, patiently. "You've no real need o' four fingers there. Why, sonny, boy, once I knowed a man – "

"'Tis one o' my fiddle fingers."

Tom Lute sighed. "Fiddle fingers, son!" said he. "Ah, now, boy! You've said that so often, an' so foolishly, that I – "

"I'll not have it off!"

"But – "

"Isn't no use in havin' it off," Terry complained, "an' I can't spare it. This here boil – "

"'Tisn't a boil, son. 'Tis mortification. An' – "

"'Tis not mortification."

Again Tom sighed.

"Is you afeared, Terry?" said he. "Surely you isn't a pullin' little coward, is you? A finger! 'Tis such a simple little thing t' suffer – "

"I'm not afeared neither!"

"Well, then – "

"You may cut any finger you likes off my right hand," Terry boasted, "an' I'll not whimper a peep."

"I don't want a finger off your right hand, Terry."

"I won't have it!"

"'Tis no pleasure t' me t' – "

"I won't have a finger off my left hand!"

"I tells you, Terry, you isn't left-handed. I've told you that a thousand times. What in the name o' – "

"I tells you I won't have it!"

Black Walt Anderson looked to Tom Lute for a signal. Sandy Lands rose.

"Now?" he seemed to inquire.

Tom Lute shook his head.

"That's the way we done aboard the Royal Bloodhound," the Little Fiddler's grandfather put in. He began to pace the floor. The tap-tap of his wooden leg was furious and his voice was as gusty as the gale outside. "Now, you mark me!" he ran on. "We chopped Cap'n Sam Small's foot off with a axe an' plugged it with b'ilin' tar. 'Twas mortification. I knows mortification when I sees it. An' Sam Small got well."

He was bawling, by this time, like a skipper in a gale – being deaf, the old man was accustomed to raise his voice, a gradual crescendo, until he had come as near hearing himself as possible.

"Yes, sir – you mark me! That's what we done aboard the Royal Bloodhound the year I shipped for the seals along o' Small Sam Small. We chopped it clean off with a meat axe an' plugged it with b'ilin' tar. If Small Sam Small had clung t' that member for another day he would have died. Mark me! Small Sam Small would have been dropped over the side o' the Royal Bloodhound an' left t' shift for hisself in a sack an' a Union Jack!"

He paused before Terry Lute and shook a lean finger under the little boy's nose.

"Now," he roared, "you mark me!"

"I isn't aboard the Royal Bloodhound!" Terry sobbed.

"Ah, Terry!" This was Terry's mother. She was crying bitterly. "You'll die an you don't have that finger off!"

"I'll die an I got to!"

"Oh, Terry, Terry!"