Billy Topsail & Company by Norman Duncan (ebook reader screen txt) 📖

smoke; nothing else betrayed the schooner's peril.

"Now, get you all back aft!" was the skipper's command. "Keep her head as it points."

When the crew had crept away to the place remotest from the danger point, Bill o' Burnt Bay went forward to keep a lookout for the rocks and breakers. The burning forecastle was beneath his feet; he could hear the crackling of the fire; and the smoke, rising now more voluminously, troubled his nostrils and throat. It was pitch dark ahead. There was no blacker shadow of land, no white flash of water, to give him hope. It seemed as though an unbroken expanse of sea lay before the labouring _First Venture_. But the skipper knew to the contrary; somewhere in the night into which he stared--somewhere near, and, momentarily, drawing nearer--lay the Chunks. He wondered if the _First Venture_ would strike before the explosion occurred. It must be soon, he knew. The possibility of being off the course did not trouble him.

Soon the seams of the deck began to open. Smoke poured out in thickening clouds. Points of light, fast changing to lines of flame, warned the skipper that he must retreat. It was not, however, until heat and smoke and the certain prospect of collapse compelled him, that he joined the crew. He was not a spectacular hero; when common sense dictated return, he obeyed without delay, and without maudlin complaint. Without a word he took the wheel from Billy Topsail's hands, and without a word he kept the schooner on her course. There was no need of command or advice; men and boys knew their situation and their duty.

"It can't be long," said the cook.

There was now a glow of red light above the forecastle. The fire was about to break through. It was not hard to surmise that the collapse of the bulkhead was imminent.

"No, sir!" the fidgety cook repeated. "It can't be long, now."

It seemed long. Minute after minute passed, each of incredible length, while the _First Venture_ staggered forward, wildly pitching through the seas. At last, the flames broke out of the forecastle and illuminated the deck.

"Not long, now!" the cook whimpered. "It _can't_ be!"

Nor was it. The _First Venture_ struck. She was upon the rocks before the skipper was well aware that breakers lay ahead. Her bow fell, struck, was lifted, fell again, and fastened itself. The next wave flung the schooner broadside. The third completed the turn. She lay with her head pointing into the wind. Her stern, where the crew stood waiting for the end, rose and fell on the verge of a great breaker. Beyond was a broken cliff, rising to unwashed heights, which the snow had begun to whiten. The bow was lifted clear of the waves; the stern was awash. A space of white water lay between the schooner and the shore.

Bill o' Burnt Bay let go his grip on the wheel. There was but one thing to do. Many a skipper had done it before; but never before had there been such desperate need of haste. The fire still burned lustily; and the forecastle was high out of the water.

"If I can't do it," the skipper shouted, "it's the first hand's turn next."

He had fastened the end of a coil of rope about his waist. Now he stood swaying on the taffrail. By the light of the fire--uncertain and dull--he must act. He leaped a moment after the next wave had slipped under the stern--when, in the current, he should reach the rocks just after the wave had broken. The crew waited a long time. Many a glance was cast forward; it seemed to them all, such headway had the fire made, that the six kegs of powder must explode the very next instant. No sign came from the skipper; and no sight of him could be caught. They paid out the rope--and waited. The rope was for a long time loose in their hands.

"He's landed!" cried Jimmie Grimm.

The rope was hauled taut. Upon the rocks, out of reach of the sea, the figure of the skipper could be seen.

"One at a time!" Skipper Bill shouted.

And one at a time they went--decently and in order, like true Newfoundland sailors, Tom Rook, the first hand, the last of all. When they were all ashore, they scrambled like mad up the cliff; and they were no more than out of danger when the _First Venture_ was blown to atoms. There was a flash, a deafening roar--and darkness; broken only by the spluttering splinters of the little craft.

* * * * *


That night, from Heart's Harbour, the folk observed a ship afire, running in towards the Chunks. To the report they sent immediately to St. John's--there happens fortunately to be a government telegraph station at Heart's Harbour--they added, later, that she had blown up. But from St. John's the salvage-tug _Hurricane_ was dispatched into the stormy sea in search of the survivors; and on the second day following she picked up Skipper Bill o' Burnt Bay and his crew.

Next day they were in St. John's.

"Wisht I'd took your advice about the insurance, sir," broken-hearted Bill o' Burnt Bay said to Sir Archibald.

Sir Archibald laughed. "I took it for you," said he.

"What?" Skipper Bill exploded.

"I insured the _First Venture_ on my own responsibility," Sir Archibald replied. "You shall build the _Second Venture_ at Ruddy Cove next winter."

Archie Armstrong and Bill o' Burnt Bay, with the lads and men of the lost _First Venture_, went back to Ruddy Cove by rail and the mail-boat.


CHAPTER XII


_In Which Old David Grey, Once of the Hudson Bay Company,
Begins the Tale of How Donald McLeod, the Factor at Fort
Refuge, Scorned a Compromise With His Honour, Though His
Arms Were Pinioned Behind Him and a Dozen Tomahawks Were
Flourished About His Head._


Archie Armstrong was presently established in a white little room in the beaming Aunt "Bill's" little white cottage at Ruddy Cove. His two trunks--two new trunks, now--were there established with him, of course; and they contained a new outfit of caps, shoes, boots, sweaters, coats, gloves, and what not, suited to every circumstance and all sorts of weather. Then began for Archie, Jimmie and Billy--with Bagg, of the London gutters, sometimes included--hearty times ashore and afloat. It was Bagg, indeed, who proposed the cruise to Birds' Nest Islands.

"I said I wouldn't go t' Birds' Nest Islands," said Billy Topsail, "an' I won't."

"Ah, come on, Billy," Archie pleaded.

"I said I wouldn't," Billy repeated, obstinately, "an' I won't."

"That ain't nothink," Bagg argued.

"Anyhow," said Billy, "I won't, for I got my reasons."[3]

David Grey, a bent old fellow, who was now long "past his labour," as they say in Newfoundland, sat within hearing. Boy and man he had been in the service of the Hudson Bay Company, as hunter, clerk, trader, explorer, factor; and here, on the coast where he had been born, he had settled down to spend the rest of his days. He was not an ignorant man, but, on the contrary, an intelligent one, educated by service, wide evening study of books, and hard experience in the great wildernesses of the Canadian Northwest, begun, long ago, when he was a lad.

"You make me think of Donald McLeod," said he.

The boys drew near.

* * * * *


"It was long ago," David went on. "Long, long ago," the old man repeated. "It was 'way back in the first half of the last century, for I was little more than a boy then. McLeod was factor at Fort Refuge, a remote post, situated three hundred miles or more to the northeast of Lake Superior, but now abandoned. And a successful, fair-dealing trader he was, but so stern and taciturn as to keep both his helpers and his half-civilized customers in awe of him. It was deep in the wilderness--not the wilderness as you boys know it, where a man might wander night and day without fear of wild beast or savage, but a vast, unexplored place, with dangers lurking everywhere.

"'Grey,' he said to me when I reported for duty, fresh from headquarters, 'if you do your duty by me, I'll do mine by you.'

"'I'll try to,' said I.

"'When you know me better,' said McLeod, with quiet emphasis, 'you'll know that I stand by my word.'

"We dealt, of course, with the Indians, who, spring and fall, brought their furs to the fort, and never failed to remain until they had wasted their earnings in the fashion that best pleased their fancy.

"Even then the Indians were degenerate, given over to idleness and debauchery; but they were not so far sunk in these habits as are the dull, lazy fellows who sell you the baskets and beaded moccasins that the squaws make to-day. They were superstitious, malicious, revengeful, and they were almost in a condition of savagery, for the only law they knew was the law our guns enforced. Some authority was vested in the factor, and he was not slow to exert it when a flagrant offense was committed near by.

"'There's no band of Indians in these parts,' I was told, 'that can scare McLeod. He'll see justice done for and against them as between man and man.'

"Fort Refuge was set in a wide clearing. It was built of logs and surrounded by a high, stout stockade. Admittance to the yard was by a great gate, which was closed promptly at sundown, and always strongly barred. We had no garrison regularly stationed there to defend us. In all, it may be, we could muster nine men--McLeod, two clerks, and a number of stout fellows who helped handle the stores. Moreover, were our gate to be closed and our fort surrounded by a hostile force, we should be utterly cut off from communication with those quarters whence relief might come. We had the company's wares to guard, and we knew that once we were overcome, whatever the object of the attack, the wares and our lives would be lost together.

"'But we can stand a long siege,' I used to think; and indeed there was good ground for comfort in that.

"Our stockade was impregnable to an attack by force, no doubt; but as it soon appeared, it was no more than a paper ribbon before the wily strategy of the Indians. One night, when I had shut the gates and dropped the bars, I heard a long-drawn cry--a scream, in which it was not hard to detect the quality of terror and great stress. It came, as I thought, from the edge of the forest. When it was repeated, near at hand, my heart went to my mouth, for I knew that a band of Indians was encamped beyond, and had been carousing for a week past. Then came a knocking at the gate--a desperate pounding and kicking.

"'Let me in! Open! Open!' I heard a man cry.