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CHAPTER XXVIII

In Which Archie Armstrong falls in with Bill o' Burnt Bay and Billy Topsail of Ruddy Cove and Makes a Speech

THERE is no telling what would have happened had the Dictator struck the jam of ice in the narrows of Long Tom Harbour. Captain Hand was not the man to lose half a voyage because there was a risk to be taken; had he been used to counting the risk, he would not have been in command of the finest ship in Armstrong and Son's fine fleet. Rather than be locked in the harbour, he had launched his vessel at the barrier, quietly confident that she would acquit herself well. But, as he had foreseen, the jam broke of its own weight before the steamer struck. Of a sudden, it cracked, and gave way; the key blocks had broken. It then remained only to breast the pack, which was not at all an impossible undertaking for the stout Dictator.

With her rivals following close, she struck the floe, broke a way through, and pushed on, with a great noise, but slowly, surely; and she was soon in the open sea. The course was then shaped northeast, for it appeared that open water lay in that direction. The floe retarded the ship's progress, but could not stop it; the ice pans crashed against her prow and scraped her sides, but she was staunch enough to withstand every shock; and so, gaining on the rest of the fleet, she crept out to sea, in the teeth of the rising gale.

At two o'clock in the morning, Archie Armstrong was still on the bridge with the captain and mate. The lights of the fleet were lost in the night behind. The Dictator had laboured through the first field of ice into open water. The sea was dotted with great, white "pans," widely scattered; and, as the captain had feared, there were signs of bergs in the darkness roundabout. The waves were rising, spume crested, on every hand; at intervals, they broke over the bows, port and starboard, with frightful violence. Gusts of wind whirled the spray to the bridge, where it soon sheathed men and superstructure in ice.

"Send a lookout aloft, Mr. Ackell," said the captain, after he had long and anxiously peered straight ahead.

The thud of ice, as the seas hurled it against the ship's prows, the hiss and crash of the waves, the screaming of the gale, drowned the captain's order.

"Pass the word for Bill o' Burnt Bay!" he roared.

A short, brawny man, of middle age, who had not missed a voyage to the ice in twenty years, soon appeared in response to the call, which had gone from mouth to mouth through the ship. Archie was inclined to smile when he observed Bill's unkempt, sandy moustache, which was curiously given an upward twist at one side, and a downward twist at the other. Nevertheless, he was strongly attracted to him; for he looked like a man who could be trusted to the limit of his courage and strength.

"Take a glass t' the nest, b'y, an' look sharp for bergs," the captain ordered. "Don't stay up there. Come back an' report t' me here."

The man went off with a brisk, "Ay, ay, sir!" It was his duty to clamber to the crow's-nest – a cask lashed to the topmast just below the masthead – and to sweep the sea for signs of bergs.

"'Tis more than I bargained for, Mr. Ackell," the captain went on, to the mate, in an anxious undertone, which, however, Archie managed to catch; and it may be added that the lad's heart jumped into his throat, and had a hard time getting back into place again.

"Dirty weather, sir!" the mate agreed. "I'm thinkin' we're close to some heavy ice."

"Well," said the captain, after a pause, "keep her head as she points now. I'll have a look 'tween decks."

Archie was tempted to ask the captain "if there was any danger." The foolish question was fairly on the tip of his tongue; but his better sense came to his rescue in time. Danger? Of course, there was! There was always danger. He had surely not come on a sealing voyage expecting none! But catastrophe was not yet inevitable. At any rate, it was the captain's duty to sail the ship. He was responsible to the owners, and to the families of the crew; the part of the passenger was but bravely to meet the fortune that came. So, completely regaining his courage, Archie followed the captain below.

'Tween decks the stout hearts were rollicking still. The working crew had duty to do, every man of them; but the two hundred hunters, who had been taken along to wield gaff and club, were sprawled in every place, singing, laughing, yarning, scuffling, for all the world like a pack of boys: making light of discomfort, and thinking not at all of danger, for the elation of departure still possessed them. Had any misgiving still remained with Archie, the sight of this jolly, careless crowd of hunters would have quieted it. They were not alarmed. Then, why should he be? Doubtless, it was responsibility that made the captain anxious.

In the improvised cabin aft, Ebenezer Bowsprit, of Exploits, was roaring the "Luck o' the Northern Light," a famous old sealing song, which, no doubt, his grandfather had sung to shipmates upon similar occasions long ago. Rough, frank faces, broadly smiling, were turned to him; and when it came time for the chorus, willing voices and mighty lungs swelled it to a volume that put the very gale to shame. The ship was pitching violently – with a nauseating roll occasionally thrown in – and the cabin was crowded and hot and filled with clouds of tobacco smoke; but neither pitch, nor roll, nor heat, nor smoke, could interfere with the jollity of the occasion.

"All right here," the captain growled, grinning in his great beard.

"Speech, Sir Archie!" shouted one of the men.

Before Archie could escape – and amid great laughter and uproar and louder calls for a speech – he was caught by the arm, jerked off his feet, and hoisted on the table, where he bumped his head, and, by an especially violent roll of the vessel, was almost thrown headlong into the arms of the grinning crowd around him.

"Speech, speech!" they roared.

Archie would have declined with some heat had he not caught sight of the face of Tim Tuttle – a tawny, lean, long man, apparently as strong as a wire rope. There was a steely twinkle in his eye, and a sneering, utterly contemptuous smile upon his thin lips. Archie did not know that this was Tuttle's habitual expression. He felt that the man expected a rather amusing failure on the part of Sir Archibald Armstrong's son; and that stimulated him to take the situation seriously. Unconsciously calling his good breeding to his aid, he pulled off his cap, smoothed his hair, touched his cravat, and —

"Ahem!" he began; as he had heard the governor of the colony do a dozen times, and as now, to his surprise, he found most inspiring.

"Hear, hear!" burst rapturously from old Ebenezer Bowsprit.

Ebenezer was in a condition of high delight and expectation. Admiration shone in his eyes, surprise was depicted by his wide opened mouth, bewonderment by his strained attention. The sight of his face was too much for Archie.

"Oh, what Tommy-rot!" he laughed. "Here, let me go! I can't (hold me up, or I'll fall) make a speech. ("Hear, hear!" from the awe-stricken Ebenezer.) All I got to say is that I'm (please get a better hold on my legs, or I'll be pitched off) mighty glad to be here. I'm having the best time of my life, and I expect to have a better one when we strike the seals. (Loud and prolonged cheering.) I hope – "

But, in the excitement following his last remark, the speaker's support was withdrawn, and a pitch of the ship threw him off the table. He was caught, set on his feet, and clapped on the back. Then he managed to escape with the captain, followed by loud cries of "More! More!" to which he felt justified in paying no attention.

"You're your father's son," laughed the captain, as they made their way up the deck. "Sure, your father never in his life let slip a chance t' make a speech."

In the forecastle they had a lad on the table under the lantern – a tow-headed, blue-eyed, muscular boy, of Archie's age, or less. He had on goatskin boots, a jacket of homespun, and a flaring red scarf. The men were quiet; for the boy was piping, in a clear, quavering treble, the "Song o' the Anchor an' Chain," a Ruddy Cove saga, which goes to the air of a plaintive West Country ballad of the seventeenth century, with the refrain,

 
"Sure, the chain 'e parted,
An' the schooner drove ashoare,
An' the wives o' the 'ands
Never saw un any moare.
No moare!
Never saw un any mo-o-o-are!"
 

He was near the end of the sixteenth verse, and the men were drawing breath for the chorus, when the captain appeared in the door, wrath in his eyes.

"What's this?" roared he.

There was no answer. The lad turned to face the captain, in part deferentially, in part humorously, altogether fearlessly.

CHAPTER XXIX

Billy Topsail is Shipped Upon Conditions, and the Dictator, in a Rising Gale, is Caught in a Field of Drift Ice, with a Growler to Leeward

"WHERE'D you come aboard, b'y?" Captain Hand demanded.

"Long Tom, sir."

"Who shipped you?"

"I stowed away in a bunker, sir."

"You're from Ruddy Cove?" said the captain.

"Yes, sir. Me name's Billy, an' me father's a Labrador fisherman. Sure, I've sailed t' the French Shore, sir, an' I'm a handy lad t' work, sir."

"Billy what?"

"Topsail, sir."

The captain raised his eyebrows; then dropped them, and stared at the boy. He had been before the mast with old Tom Topsail on a South American barque in years long gone.

"You'll work hard, b'y," said he, severely, for he had been bothered with stowaways for thirty years, "an' I'll ship you regular, if you do your duty. If you don't," and here the captain frowned tremendously, "I'll have you thrashed at the post at Long Tom, an' you'll have no share with the crew in the cargo."

"Ay, sir," said Billy, gladly. "Sure, I'll stand by it, sir."

When the captain turned his back, out came the belated chorus, with young Billy Topsail leading:

 
"Sure, the chain 'e parted,
An' the schooner drove ashoare,
An' the wives o' the 'ands
Never saw un any moare.
No moare!
Never saw un any mo-o-o-are!"
 

"If he's like his dad," the captain chuckled to Archie, as they mounted to the deck, "his name will be on the ship's books before the v'y'ge is over, sure enough."

It appeared from the bridge that the gale was venting the utmost of its force. The wind had veered a point or two to the north, and was driving out of the darkness a vast field of broken ice. This, close packed and grinding, was bearing down swiftly. It threatened to block the ship's course – if not to surround her, take hold of her, and sweep her away. In the northeast, dead over the bows, there loomed a great white mass, a berg, grandly towering, with its peaks hidden in black, scudding clouds. Beyond, and on either side, patches of white, vanishing and reappearing, disclosed the whereabouts of other bergs.

"I was thinkin' about slowin' down," said the mate, when the captain had scanned the prospect ahead.

With that, some part of Archie's alarm returned. It continued with him, while the captain moved the lever of the signal box until the indicator marked half speed, while the ship lost way, and the engines throbbed, as though alive and breathing hard.

"Report, sir!"

This was Bill o' Burnt Bay, down from the crow's-nest, with his beard frozen to his jacket and icicles hanging from his shaggy eyebrows.

"Well?"

"They's a big field o' ice bearin' down with the wind. 'Tis heavy, an' comin' fast, an' 'tis stretchin' as far as I can see. They's five good-sized bergs ahead, sir, with pan ice all about them. An' – "

"Growlers?" sharply.

"An' they's a big growler off the port bow. 'Twill soon be dead t' leeward, if we keeps this course."

Bill o' Burnt Bay lumbered down the ladder and made for the forecastle to thaw out. Meantime, the captain devoted himself to giving the growler a wide berth; for a growler is a berg which trembles on the verge of toppling over, and he had no wish to be caught between it and the advancing floe. He had once lost a schooner that way; the adventure was one of his most vivid recollections.

"We'll have t' get out o' this, Mr. Ackell," he said, "or we may get badly nipped. We'll tie up t' the first steady berg we come to. Here, b'y," sharply, to Archie, "you'll not go t' bed for a while. Keep near me – but keep out o' the way."

"Ay, ay, sir!"

"Turn out all hands!"

The cry of "All hands on deck!" was passed fore and aft. It ran through the ship like an alarm. The men trooped from below, wondering what had occasioned it. Once on deck, a swift glance into the driving night apprised these old sealers of the situation. They placed the ice hooks and tackle in handy places; for the work in hand was plain enough.

The ship was swinging wide of the growler, against which the wind beat with mighty force. A vast surface was exposed to the gale; and upon every square foot a varying pressure was exerted. As the vessel drew nearer, Archie could see the iceberg yield and sway. It was evident that its submerged parts had been melted and worn until the equilibrium of the whole was nearly overset. A sudden, furious gust might turn the scale; and in that event a near-by vessel would surely be overwhelmed.

Captain Hand kept a watchful eye on the ice pack, which had now come within a hundred fathoms, and was hurrying upon the advancing ship. The vessel was between the floe and the growler: a situation not to be escaped, as the captain had foreseen. The danger was clear: if the rush of the floe should be too great for the steamer to withstand, she would be swept, broadside on, against the berg, which, being of greater weight and depth, moved sluggishly. Stout as she was, she could not survive the collision.

The captain turned her bow to the pack; then he signalled full speed ahead. There was a moment of waiting.

"Grab the rail, b'y," said the captain.

"Ay, ay, sir!"

The floe divided before the ship; the shock was hardly perceptible. For a moment, where, at the edge, the ice was loose, she maintained her speed. But the floe thickened. The fragments were packed tight. It was as though the face of the sea were covered with a solid sheet of ice, lying ahead as far as sight carried into the night. The ship laboured. Her speed diminished, gradually, but perceptibly – vividly so! Her progress was soon at the rate of half speed. In a moment it was even slower than that. Would it stop altogether?

Archie was on the port side of the bridge. The captain walked over to him and slapped him heartily on the back.

"Well, b'y," he cried, "how do you like the sealin' v'y'ge?"

That was a clever thought of the captain! Here was a man in desperate case who could await the issue in light patience. The boy took heart at the thought of it; and he needed that encouragement.

"I knew what it was when I started," he replied, with a gulp.

"Will she make it, think you?"

Another clever ruse of this great heart! He wanted the boy to have a part in the action. Archie felt the blood stirring in his veins once again.

"She's pretty near steady, sir, I think," he replied, after a pause.

The two leaned over the rail and looked intently at the ice sweeping past.

"Are we losing, sir?" asked the boy.

"I think we're holdin' our own," said the captain, elatedly.

The boy turned to the great growler, now vague of outline in the dark. The ice floe had swept over the limit of vision. He wondered if it had struck the base of the berg. Then all at once the heap of cloudy white swayed forth and back before his eyes. For a moment it was like a gigantic curtain waving in the wind. It vanished of a sudden. A mountain of broken water shot up in its place – as high as its topmost pinnacle had been; and, following close upon its fall, another berg, with a worn outline, reared itself, dripping streams of water.

Thus far there had been no sound; but the sound beat its way against the wind, at last, and it was a thunderous noise – "like the growlin' of a million dogs," the captain said afterwards. The growler had capsized.

"Look!" the boy cried, overcome.

"Turned turtle, ain't she?" remarked the skipper, calmly.

"The pack might have carried us near it!"

"Oh," said the captain, lightly, "but it didn't. She's a good ship, the Dictator. What's more," he added, "she's makin' her way right through the pack."

Another berg had taken form over the port quarter. The captain shaped a course for it, eyeing it carefully as he drew near. It was low – not higher than the ship's spars – and broad, with the impression of stability strong upon it.

"See that berg, b'y?" said the captain. "Well," decisively, "we'll lie in the lee o' that in half an hour. You see, b'y," he went on, "the wind makes small bother for a solid berg. It whips the pan ice along, easy enough, but the bergs float their own way, quiet as you please. In the lee of every big fellow like that, there's open water. We'll lie there, tied up, till mornin'."

In half an hour, the ship broke from the ice into the lee of the berg. The floe raced past under the force of the gale, which left the lee air and water untouched by its violence. Skillful seamanship brought the vessel broadside to the ice. A wild commotion ensued: orders roared from the bridge, signal bells, the shouts of the line men, the hiss of steam, and the churning of the screw. Archie saw young Billy Topsail scramble to the ice like a cat, with the first line in his hand: then Bill o' Burnt Bay and half a dozen others, with axes and hooks.

In twenty minutes the engines were at rest, the ship was lying like a log in a mill pond, the watch paced the deck in solitude, and Archibald Armstrong was asleep in his berth in the captain's cabin – dreaming that the mate was wrong and the captain right: that the gale had abated in the night, and the morning had broken sunny.

CHAPTER XXX

In Which Archie Armstrong and Billy Topsail Have an Exciting Encounter with a Big Dog Hood, and, at the Sound of Alarm, Leave the Issue in Doubt, While the Ice Goes Abroad and the Enemy Goes Swimming

HAIR seals, which come out of the north with the ice in the early spring, and drift in great herds past the rugged Newfoundland coast, returning in April, have no close, soft fur next the skin, such as the South Sea and Alaskan seals have. Hence, they are valued only for their blubber, which is ground and steamed into oil, and for their skin, which is turned into leather. They are of two kinds, the harp which is doubtless indigenous to the great inland sea and the waters above, and the hood, which inhabits the harsher regions of the farther north and east. The harp is timid, gentle, gregarious, and takes in packs to the flat, newly frozen, landward pans; the hood is fierce, quarrelsome and solitary, grimly riding the rough glacier ice at the edge of the open sea.

Thus the Dictator lay through the night with hood ice all about the sheltering berg.

"Hi, b'y! Get yarry (wide awake)!" cried the captain, in the morning.

Archie Armstrong was "yarry" on the instant, and he rolled out of his berth in hot haste, not at all sure that it was not time to leave a sinking ship in the boats. The hairy face of the old sealer, a broad, kindly grin upon it, peered at him from the door.

"Morning, skipper!"

"Mornin' t' you, sir. An' a fine mornin' 'tis," said the captain. "Sure a finer I never saw."

"What's become of the gale?"

"The gale's miles t' the sou'east – an' out o' sight o' these latitudes. We're packed in the lee o' the berg, an' fast till the wind changes. There's a family o' hoods, quarter mile t' starboard. Up, now, b'y! an' you'll go after them with a crew after breakfast."

When Archie reached the deck, the air was limpid, frosty and still. There was a blue sky overhead, stretching from horizon to horizon. A waste of ice lay all about – rough, close-packed, glistening in the sun. With the falling away of the wind the floe had lost its headway, and had crept softly in upon the open water. The ship was held in the grip of the pack, and must perforce remain for a time in the shadow of the berg, where shelter from the gale of the night had been sought. Save for the watch of that hour, the men were below, at breakfast. The "great white silence" possessed the sea. For the boy, this silence, vast and heavy, and the immeasurable area of broken ice, with its pent-up, treacherous might, was as awe-impelling as the gale and the night.

"What d'ye think, Mr. Ackell?" said the captain to the mate, when the two came up.

Ackell looked to the northeast. "We'll have wind by noon," he replied.

"'Tis what I think," the captain agreed. "Archie, b'y, you'll have a couple of hours, afore the ice goes abroad. Bowsprit 'll take the crew, an' you'll do what he tells you."

Ebenezer Bowsprit, with half a dozen cronies of his own choosing, led the way over the side, in high good humour. In the group on the deck stood Billy Topsail. He eyed Archie with frank envy as the lad prepared to descend to the ice; for to participate in the first hunt, generally regarded as pure sport, was a thing greatly to be desired. He was perceived by Archie, who was at once taken with a wish for company of his own age.

"Captain," the boy whispered, "let the other kid come along, won't you?"

"Topsail," the captain ordered, "get a gaff, an' cut along with the rest."

In five minutes, the boys had broken the ice of diffidence, and were chatting like sociable magpies, as they crawled, jumped, climbed, over the uneven pack. They were Newfoundlanders both: the same in strength, feeling, spirit, and, indeed, experience. The one was of the remote outports, where children are reared to toil and peril, which, with hunger, is their heritage, and must ever be; the other was of the city, son of the well-to-do, who, following sport for sport's sake, had made the same ventures and become used to the same toil and peril.

"'Tis barb'rous hard walkin'," said Billy.

"Sure," replied the other. "And they're getting away ahead of us."

Ebenezer Bowsprit and his fellows, with the lust of the chase strong upon them, were making great strides towards three black objects some hundred yards away. It was a race; for it is a tradition that he who strikes the first blow of the voyage will have "luck" the season through. The boys were hopelessly behind, and they stopped to look about them. It was then that Billy Topsail spied a patch of open water, to the left, half hidden by the surrounding ice. It was a triangular hole in the floe, formed by three heavy blocks, which had withstood the pressure of the pack.

"Look!" he cried.

A head, small and alert, raised upon a thick, supple neck, appeared. A moment later, a second head popped out of the water. They were hoods. The young one, the pup, must lie near. The boys stood stock still until the seals had clambered to the pack. Then they advanced swiftly. Billy Topsail was armed with a gaff, which is a pole shod with iron at one end and having a hook at the other; and Archie was provided with a sealing club. They came upon the dog hood before he could escape to the water. Perceiving this, and only on this account, he turned, snarling, to give fight.

"I'll take him!" cried Billy.

The hood was as big as an ox – a massive, flabby, vicious beast. He was furiously aroused, and he would now fight to the death, with no thought of retreat. He raised himself on his flippers and reared his head to the length of his long neck, as the boy, stepping cautiously, gaff poised, drew near.

"Get behind him," Billy shouted to Archie.

Billy advanced fearlessly, steadily, never for a moment taking his eyes from the hood's head. Upon that head, from the nose to the back of the neck, the tough, bladder-like "hood" was now inflated. It was a perfect protection; the boy might strike blow after blow without effect. The stroke must be thrust at the throat; and it must be a stroke swiftly, cunningly, strongly delivered. A furious hood, excited past fear, is a match for three men. The odds were against the lad. He had been carried away by his own daring.

But Billy made the thrust, and the seal received the point of the gaff on his hood, as upon a shield: then advanced on his flippers, by jerky jumps, snapping viciously. Archie cried out. But Billy had skipped out of harm's way, and had faced about, laughing. He returned to the attack, undismayed, though the seal reared to meet him, with bared teeth.

"Strike!" screamed Archie.

Teeth and flippers were to be feared, and Billy had drawn nearly within reach of both. He paused, waiting his opportunity. Archie could not contain his excitement.

"Strike!" he cried again.

Billy struck; but the blow had no force, for he slipped, overreached, lost his footing, and fell sprawling, almost within reach of his adversary's teeth. The seal snarled and drew back, startled. Then he advanced upon the boy, who had had no time to recover, much less to scramble out of his desperate situation.

It was for Archie to act. He leaped forward from his position behind the seal, struck the animal with full force upon the tail, and darted out of reach. The hood snorted, and turned in a rage to face his new assailant. Billy leaped to his feet, gaff in hand, and faced about, panting, but ready. He was preparing to attack again, when —

"What's that?" Archie cried in alarm.

It was the boom of the ship's gun, followed by an ominous, hollow crackling, which ran into the distance like a long peal of thunder. The floe seemed to be turning.

"'Tis goin' abroad!" Billy shouted. "Quick, b'y! T' the ship!"

The boys had been out of sight of the ship, hidden by a shoulder of the berg. They had not seen the flag of recall, which had been flying for ten minutes. Again they heard the report of the gun; and they saw Ebenezer Bowsprit and his men making shipwards with all speed. Billy was fully aware of the danger. With another warning cry to Archie, he started off on a run, turning from time to time to make sure that his companion was following.

The ice was nauseatingly unstable, grinding and shifting; but no open water had as yet appeared, though, at any moment, a lane might open up and cut off the retreat. The floe was feeling the force of a wind in the north, and was stirring itself from edge to edge. It would soon be shaken into its separate parts. But with Billy Topsail leading, the boys ran steadily over the heaving foothold, and in good time came to the ship, which the rest of the hunting party had already boarded.

Billy Topsail was laughing.

"I don't feel that way," said Archie, "we were in a good deal of danger."

Billy laughed louder.

"Well, we were, weren't we?" Archie demanded.

"Maybe," said Billy; "but you'll get used t' that!"

They were not a moment too soon, however; for the pack very quickly fell apart – thus opening a way for the escape of the Dictator. And meantime, the gallant old dog hood had followed the retreating figures with his eyes: after which, well satisfied with himself, he slipped into the water and went fishing.