The Adventures of Billy Topsail

"We're cotched!"

The squid had fastened one of its tentacles to the punt. The other was poised above the stern, ready to fall and fix its suckers. The onward movement of the punt was explained.

Billy knew the danger, but he was not so terrified as to be incapable of action. He was about to spring to the stem to strike off the tentacle that already lay over the gunwale; but as he looked down to choose his step he saw that one of the eight powerful arms was slowly creeping over the starboard bow.

He struck at that arm with all his might, missed, wrenched the axe from the gunwale, and struck true. The mutilated arm was withdrawn. Billy leaped to the stern, vaguely conscious in passing that another arm was creeping from the water. He severed the first tentacle with one blow. When he turned to strike the second it had disappeared; so, too, had the second arm. The boat seemed to be free, but it was still within grasp.

In the meantime the squid had awakened to furious activity. It was lashing the water with arms and tail, angrily snapping its great beak and ejecting streams of black water from its siphon-tube. The water was violently agitated and covered with a black froth.

In this the creature manifested fear and distress. Had it not been aground it would have backed swiftly into the deep water of the basin. But, as if finding itself at bay, it lifted its uninjured tentacle high above the boat. Billy made ready to strike.

By this time Bobby had mastered his terror. While Billy stood with uplifted axe, his eyes fixed on the waving tentacle overhead, Billy heaved mightily on the oars. The boat slowly drew away from that highly dangerous neighbourhood. In a moment it was beyond reach of the arms, but still, apparently, within reach of the tentacle. The tentacle was withdrawn a short distance; then like a flash it shot towards the boat, writhing as it came.

Billy struck blindly – and struck nothing. The tentacle had fallen short. The boat was out of danger!

But still Billy Topsail was determined to have the body of the squid. Notwithstanding Bobby's pleading and protestation, he would not abandon his purpose. He was only the more grimly bent on achieving it. Bobby would not hear of again approaching nearer than the boat then floated, nor did Billy think it advisable. But it occurred to Bobby that they might land, and approach the squid from behind. If they could draw near enough, he said, they could cast the grapnel on the squid's back, and moor it to a tree ashore.

"Sure," he said, excitedly, "you can pick up a squid from behind, and it can't touch you with its arms! It won't be able to see us, and it won't be able to reach us."

So they landed. Billy carried the grapnel, which was attached to twelve fathoms of line. It had six prongs, and each prong was barbed.

A low cliff at the edge of the tickle favoured the plan. The squid lay below, and some twenty feet out from the rock. It was merely a question of whether or not Billy was strong enough to throw the grapnel so far. They tied the end of the line to a stout shrub. Billy cast the grapnel, and it was a strong, true cast. The iron fell fair on the squid's back. It was a capture.

"That means a new punt for me," said Billy, quietly. "The tide'll not carry that devil-fish away."

"And now," Bobby pleaded, "leave us make haste home, for 'tis growin' wonderful dark – and – and there might be another somewhere."

So that is how one of the largest specimens of Architeuthis princeps– enumerated in Prof. John Adam Wright's latest monograph on the cephalopods of North America as the "Chain Tickle specimen" – was captured. And that is how Billy Topsail fairly won a new punt; for when Doctor Marvey, the curator of the Public Museum at St. John's – who is deeply interested in the study of the giant squids – came to Ruddy Cove to make photographs and take measurements, in response to a message from Billy's father, he rewarded the lad.

CHAPTER V

On the Face of the Cliff: Wherein Billy Topsail Gets Lost in a Perilous Place and Sits Down to Recover His Composure

IN summer, when there chanced to be no fish, or when no bait was to be had, and the fish were not to be jigged, Billy Topsail had idle time, which he was not slow to improve for his own amusement. Often he wandered on the cliffs and heads near the harbour – not always for gulls' eggs: sometimes for sheer love of the sky and space and sunlit air. Once, being bound for Breakheart Head, to watch the waves beat on the rocks below, he came across old Arch Butt.

"Wonderful sea outside," said the old fisherman. "Wonderful sea, Billy. 'Tis as big a tumble as ever I seed stirred up in a night."

"An' you'll not be takin' the punt t' the grounds?" Billy asked, in surprise.

"I'm not able, lad. 'Tis too much for any paddle-punt. Sure, the sea's breakin' right across the tickle. 'Tis so much as a man's life is worth t' try t' run out."

"Isn't you got a salmon net off Shag Rock?"

"I is that," Arch answered; "an' I'm wantin' bad t' get to it. 'Tis set off the point of Shag Rock, an' I'm thinkin' the sea will wreck it, for 'tis a wonderful tumble, indeed. 'Tis like I'll not be able t' get out afore to-morrow mornin', but I'm hopin' I will."

"An' I hopes you may, Skipper Arch," said Billy.

It was a fine wish, born of the fresh breeze and brightness of the day – a word let drop from a heart full of good feeling for all the world: nothing more. Yet within a few hours Billy Topsail's life hung upon the possibility of its fulfillment.

"Ay," he repeated, "I hopes you may."

Billy Topsail followed the rocky road to the Bath Tub, climbed the Lookout, and descended the rough declivity beyond to the edge of the sea, meanwhile lifted to a joyous mood by the sunlight and wind and cloudless sky. Indeed, he was not sorry he had come; the grim cliffs and the jagged masses of rock lying at their feet – the thunder and froth where sea met rock – the breaking, flashing water to seaward; all this delighted him then, and were not soon forgotten. Best of all, the third submerged rock off Shag Cliff – the rock they call the Tombstone – was breaking; the greater waves there leaped into the air in fountains of froth.

"I 'low I'll get closer t' the Tombstone," thought he.

Thus he was led along the coast to the foot of Shag Cliff. It was a hard climb, in which hands and feet were both concerned. There were chasms to leap, sharp points to round, great rocks to scale, narrow ledges to pass over on the toes of his boots; and all the while the breakers were crashing and foaming below him, and now and again splashing him with spray.

Had the day been drear, it may be he would not have ventured so far; but the sun was out, the day long, the gulls quietly soaring over the sea, and on he went, giving no thought whatever to his return.

Once under the cliff, he ventured farther. Detached from it, there lies Nanny's Rock, which must long ago have fallen from above; the breakers surrounded but did not sweep it when they rose and broke.

His wish to lie there in the sunshine, with the blue sky above him and the noise of the water in his ears, led him to dash across the dripping space between when the wave fell back, even though he must scramble out of the way of the returning water.

In a few minutes he was deep in an enchanting day-dream, which, to his subsequent peril, soon changed to sleep.

The tide was rising. A few drops of spray, falling upon his face from a great breaker, awoke him. On the instant he was wide awake and looking desperately about. Then he laughed to think that the breakers were reaching for him – that they would have had him fast in the trap had he slept much longer; for, in a glance, he thought he had made sure that his escape from the rock was not yet cut off. But his laugh was touched with some embarrassment when he found, upon trial, that the sea had blocked the path by which he had reached the foot of Shag Cliff.

"I must go 'tother way," he thought.

There was no other way; to right and to left the sea was breaking against overhanging juts of rock. He could pass from jut to jut, but he could round neither.

"Sure, I'll be late for dinner," he thought; "an' dad won't like it."

It was all very well to exclaim vexatiously, but he was forced to abandon the hope of returning by way of the foot of the cliffs. The tide had cut him off.

"I'll scale Shag Cliff," he determined.

He was not alarmed; the situation was awkward, but it promised the excitement of an adventure, and for a time he was rather glad that he had fallen asleep. To scale the two hundred feet of Shag Cliff – that was something to achieve! His father would say that he was "narvy," and forget that he had kept him from his dinner. Scale Shag Cliff, by all means!

He knew well enough that he had but to seek higher ground and wait for the tide to fall, if he wanted an unexciting return; but it pleased him to make believe that his situation was desperate – that the rising water would overwhelm him if he did not escape over the brow of the cliff: an indulgence which his imagination did not need half an hour later. When he looked up, however, to choose a path of ascent, he found that, from where he stood, close against the cliff at the base, there seemed to be no path at all.

"I 'low I'll have t' go back t' Nanny's Rock for a better squint," he told himself.

Back to Nanny's Rock he went, at no small risk, for the occasional flow of foam, which had cut it off from the mainland when first he crossed, had swollen to a strait of some depth and strength. He must make the leap, but he dreaded it. There was a moment of terror when his foot slipped, and he came near falling back into the very claws of the breaker which followed him; on that account, perhaps, his survey of the face of the cliff was a hurried one, and his return to safe ground precipitate and somewhat flurried.

He had seen enough, however, to persuade him that the ascent would be comparatively easy for at least a hundred feet, and that, for the rest of the way, it would not, probably, be much more difficult.

In point of fact, he knew nothing whatever of what lay beyond the first hundred feet. But the element of probability, or rather improbability, did not disconcert him. He could at least make a start.

If you have ever climbed about a rocky sea-coast, you will know that an ascent may be comparatively simple where a descent is quite impracticable; you will know that the unwary may of a sudden reach a point where to continue the climb is a nauseating necessity. There are times when one regrets the courage that led him into his difficulty – the courage or the carelessness, as the case may be.

Experience had long ago taught Billy Topsail that; but the lesson had not been severe – there had been no gulf behind him; the whip of life or death had not urged him on. Indeed, he had never attempted a climb of such height and ugly possibilities in the way of blind leads as Shag Cliff, else possibly he should not have made the start with a sense of adventure so inspiring.

Up he went – up and still up, his cheeks glowing, his nerves pleasurably tingling! Up – up and still up, until he could hear the whiz of gulls' wings near him, and the feeling of space below began to try his nerves. At last he stopped to rest and look about. Down deep lay the breakers, so far off, it seemed, that he marvelled he could hear the roar and crash so distinctly.

"An' they says 'tis a hundred feet!" thought he. "Hut! 'Tis two hundred if 'tis an inch. An' I isn't but half way up!"

Beyond that point his difficulties began. The cliff was bolder; it was almost bare of those little ledges and crevices and projections upon which the cliff-climber depends for handhold and foothold. Moreover, the path was interrupted from time to time by sheer or overhanging rock. When he came to these impassable places, of course, he turned to right or left, content with his progress if only he mounted higher and higher. Thus he strayed far off the path he had picked out from Nanny's Rock; indeed, he was climbing blindly, a thoughtless course, for – had he but stopped to think – there was no knowing that the cliff did not overhang at the end of the way he had taken.