Billy Topsail, M.D.

When Billy Topsail came drifting down, Archie Armstrong, waiting on the ice, helped him out and ashore.

"Better build a fire, Archie," said Billy, presently.

"I'm doing that very thing, Billy."

"Thanks, Archie."

"Cold, b'y?"

"I'll take no harm from the wettin'."

"Harm! A hardy kid like you! I laugh!"

Billy grinned.

"When I'm rested," said he, "I'll wring out my clothes. By the time we've had a snack o' soggy grub I'll be dry. An' then we'll go on."

"On it is!"

Billy looked up.

"Archie," said he, "that was marvellous – clever!"

"Clever?" inquired Archie. "What was clever?"

And Archie Armstrong grinned. He knew well enough what was clever.

Nobody was mad at Poor Luck Barrens. But somebody was in a raving delirium of fever. And that was big George Tulk – Trapper George of Bread-and-Butter Tickle. It was a tight little tilt on the edge of the timber – winter quarters: a log shanty, with a turf roof, deep in a drift of snow, to which a rising cloud of smoke attracted the attention of Archie and Billy Topsail. No; what was alarming at Poor Luck Barrens was not a frenzy of insanity – it was the delirium of pneumonia.

Jinny Tulk was glad enough to receive the help of Billy Topsail and Archie Armstrong.

By and by Billy asked:

"Was it you put the letter in the cleft stick?"

Jinny smiled.

"Ay," said she.

"I found it," said Billy.

With that Jinny Tulk kissed Billy Topsail before he could stop her. She was old enough for that; and she was so wholesome and pretty that when Billy had reflected upon the incident he determined that he would not try to stop her should she attempt it again.

"How'd you like it?" Archie teased him, privately, when Doctor Luke had arrived and Trapper George was resting.

Billy blushed.

"'Twasn't so awful," was his stout reply.

Archie burst out laughing. Billy blushed again. Then he, too, laughed.

"I 'low I got my reward," said he.

By that time Trapper George was doing well. Doctor Luke was watchfully at work. And Doctor Luke and Jinny Tulk, with the help of a spell of frosty weather and an abundance of healing fresh air, and assisted by the determined constitution of Trapper George Tulk himself, who had formed the fixed habit of surviving adverse conditions – Doctor Luke and Jinny Tulk worked an improvement, which passed presently into a state of convalescence and ultimately became a cure. It was no easy matter. Trapper George Tulk put one foot over the border – took a long look into the final shadows. But Doctor Luke was a good fighter. And he happened to win.

CHAPTER XXXVII

In Which Archie Armstrong Rejoins the "Rough and Tumble," With Billy Topsail for Shipmate, and They Seem Likely to be Left on the Floe, While Toby Farr, With the Gale Blowing Cold as Death and Dark Falling, Promises to Make a Song About the Ghosts of Dead Men, but is Entreated Not to Do So

Archie Armstrong and Billy Topsail did not wait with Doctor Luke at Poor Luck Barrens until the cure of Trapper George was accomplished. In view of Archie's wish to return to St. John's with Cap'n Saul aboard the Rough and Tumble, it was arranged that the boys should go back to Bread-and-Butter Tickle alone, and thence down the coast to Our Harbour, as best they could manage, carrying news of Doctor Luke's detention and the cause of it. They were sorry to say good-bye to Doctor Luke; and Doctor Luke was sorry to say good-bye to them. When the time came, Billy Topsail, who had come to love and respect the man for his warm qualities and the work that he did, sought for words to express his feeling and his thanks; but being a simple, robust fellow, not accustomed to the frank expression of feeling, not used to conventional forms, he could manage but poorly. Archie Armstrong would have been ready, fluent, and sincere in the same situation. But Billy Topsail could only stutter and flush and come to an awkward full stop.

What Billy wanted to say was clear enough in his own mind. He had been with Doctor Luke a good deal. They had been in tight places together. But it was not that. "Tight places" are only relative, after all; what is an adventure in one quarter of the world may be a mild incident in another. And that Billy Topsail and Doctor Luke had been in danger together was not particularly impressive: Billy Topsail was used to danger – to peril of that sort – and had grown to regard it as among the commonplaces of life.

That aspect of his experience with Doctor Luke to which Billy Topsail had responded was the habit of service – the instant, willing, efficient answer to the call of helpless need. Indeed, Doctor Luke appeared to Billy Topsail to be a very great man – the greatest man, in his personality and life, Billy Topsail had ever known, not excepting Sir Archibald Armstrong. And Billy Topsail had come definitely to the conclusion that what he wanted to do with his life was precisely what Doctor Luke was doing with his.

It was this that he wanted to tell Doctor Luke; and it was this that he failed to tell him.

"Good-bye, sir," he said.

"Good-bye, Billy."

"Th-th-thanks, sir."

"Thanks?" cried Doctor Luke. "For what, Billy? I'm the debtor."

"Th-th-thanks, sir."

"Thank you, Billy, boy, for your most excellent company."

And so Billy and Archie left Doctor Luke at Poor Luck Barrens – hard at work and happy in his work. They made Bread-and-Butter Tickle; they travelled down the coast without incident; they shook hands with Teddy Brisk, who was still telling his adventures on the ice-floe, his leg as sound as any leg; and they came safe to Our Harbour, where they waited until Cap'n Saul put in with the Rough and Tumble. And then Archie would hear of nothing but Billy's company to St. John's – Billy must go to St. John's, and he would go to St. John's on the Rough and Tumble, ecod, or Archie would put him in irons and carry him there! Billy had no sound objection. From St. John's he could travel easily to his home at Ruddy Cove and arrive there long before the Labrador mail-boat would be north on her first voyage.

And so the boys boarded the Rough and Tumble together, fell in with Bill o' Burnt Bay, Jonathan Farr and little Toby once more, and put to sea. The Rough and Tumble was not loaded; she had more seals to kill and stow away, and Cap'n Saul was resolved to "put back loaded" – a desirable end towards which his active crew, in conjunction with his own sealing wisdom, was fast approaching.

"I'll load in a week!" he boasted.

And then —

Sunday, then – and that a brooding day. It was a dull, dragging time. Not a gaff was out, not a gun; not a man put foot on the floe. The Rough and Tumble killed no seals. It was not the custom. All that day she lay made fast to the ice, fretting for midnight. Cap'n Saul kept to his cabin. Time and quiet weather went wasting away. Quiet weather – quiet enough that day: a draught of westerly wind blowing, the sky overcast and blank, and a flurry of snow in the afternoon, which failed, before dusk, a black, still midnight drawing on.

On the first stroke of the midnight bell, for which he had waited since the dawn of that dull day, Cap'n Saul popped out of the cabin, like a jack-in-the-box, and stamped the bridge, growling and bawling his orders, in a week-day temper, until he had dropped the First Watch, and was under way through the floe, a matter of twenty miles, to land the Second Watch and the Third – feeling a way through the lanes.

Before dawn Bill o' Burnt Bay's watch, with Archie and Billy Topsail, was on the ice. Cap'n Saul put back to stand by the First Watch. Black dark yet. It was bleak on the floe! They shivered in the frost and dark. And the light lagged, as the light will, when it is waited for. It was a sad dawn. A slow glower and lift of thin, gray light: no warmth of colour in the east – no rosy flush and glow. When day broke, at last, the crew made into the herds, mad to be warm, and began to kill. Still, it was done without heart. There was less blithe slaughter, that day, than unseemly brooding and weather-gazing. It was a queer thing, too. There was no alarm of foul weather that any man could see.

A drear, gray day it was, day drawing near noon. Archie and Billy always remembered that. Yet there was no frost to touch a man's heart, no need to cower and whine in the wind, no snow to make a man afraid. A scowl in the northeast – a low, drab, sulky sky, mottled with blue-black and smoky white. They recalled it afterwards. But that was all. And Bill o' Burnt Bay fancied, then, with the lives of his crew in mind, that the weather quarter was doubtless in a temper, but no worse, and was no more than half-minded to kick up a little pother of trouble before day ran over the west.

And Bill was at ease about that.

"She'll bide as she is," he thought, "'til Cap'n Saul gets back."