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

bearded faces. There was a grin on each, from the first, which was clear to its smallest wrinkle in the candle-light, to those which were vanishing and reappearing in the shadows behind. Billy seemed to be incapable of word or action.

"Come to report, sir," said the nearest wrecker. "We seed you was aground, young skipper, and we thought we'd help you ashore with the cargo."

Billy rested his left hand on the head of a powder keg, which stood on end on the counter beside him. His right stole towards the candlestick. There was a light in his blue eyes--a glitter or a twinkle--which might have warned the wreckers, had they known him better.

"I order you ashore!" he said, slowly. "I order you _all_ ashore. You've no right aboard this ship. If I had my gun----"

"Sure, you left it on deck."

"If I had my gun," Billy pursued, "I'd have the right t' shoot you down."

The manner of the speech--the fierce intensity of it--impressed the wreckers. They perceived that the boy's face had turned pale, that his eyes were flashing strangely. They were unused to such a depth of passion. It may be that they were reminded of a bear at bay.

"I believe he'd do it," said one.

An uneasy quiet followed; and in that silence Billy heard the prow of another punt strike the ship. More footfalls came shuffling aft--other faces peered down the companionway. One man pushed his way through the group and made as if to come down the ladder.

"Stand back!" Billy cried.

The threat in that shrill cry brought the man to a stop. He turned; and that which he saw caused him to fall back upon his fellows. There was an outcry and a general falling away from the cabin door. Some men ran forward to the punts.

"The lad's gone mad!" said one. "Leave us get ashore!"

Billy had whipped the stopper out of the hole in the head of the powder keg, had snatched the candle from the socket, carefully guarding its flame, and now sat, triumphantly gazing up, with the butt of the candle through the hole in the keg and the flame flickering above its depths.

"Men," said he, when they had gathered again at the door, "if I let that candle slip through my fingers, you know what'll happen." He paused; then he went on, speaking in a quivering voice: "My friends left me in charge o' this here schooner, and I've been caught nappin'. If I'd been on deck, you wouldn't have got aboard. But now you are aboard, and 'tis all because I didn't do my duty. Do you think I care what becomes o' me now? Do you think I don't care whether I do my duty or not? I tell you fair that if you don't go ashore I'll drop the candle in the keg. If one o' you dares come down that ladder, I'll drop it. If I hear you lift the hatches off the hold, I'll drop it. If I hear you strike a blow at the ship, I'll drop it. Hear me?" he cried. "If you don't go, I'll drop it!"

The candle trembled between Billy's fingers. It slipped, fell an inch or more, but his fingers gripped it again before he lost it. The wreckers recoiled, now convinced that the lad meant no less than he said.

"I guess you'd do it, b'y," said the man who had attempted to descend. "Sure," he repeated, with a glance of admiration for the boy's pluck, "I guess you would."

"'Tis not comfortable here," said another. "Sure, he might drop it by accident. Make haste, b'ys! Let's get ashore."

"Good-night, skipper, sir!" said the first.

"Good-night, sir!" said Billy, grimly.

With that they went over the side. Billy heard them leap into the punts, push off, and row away. Then silence fell--broken only by the ripple of the water, the noise of the wind in the rigging, the swish of breakers drifting in. The boy waited a long time, not daring to venture on deck, lest they should be lying in wait for him at the head of the ladder. He listened for a footfall, a noise in the hold, the shifting of the deck cargo; but he heard nothing.

When the candle had burned low, he lighted another, put the butt through the hole, and jammed it. At last he fell asleep, with his head resting on a pile of dress-goods; and the candle was burning unattended. He was awakened by a hail from the deck.

"Billy, b'y, where is you?"

It was Skipper Bill's hearty voice; and before Billy could tumble up the ladder, the skipper's bulky body closed the exit.

"She's all safe, sir!" said the boy.

Skipper Bill at that moment caught sight of the lighted candle. He snatched it from its place, dropped it on the floor and stamped on it. He was a-tremble from head to foot.

"What's this foolery?" he demanded, angrily.

Billy explained.

"It was plucky, b'y," said the skipper, "but 'twas wonderful risky."

"Sure, there was no call to be afraid."

"No call to be afraid!" cried the skipper.

"No, sir--no," said Billy. "There's not a grain of powder in the keg."

"Empty--an empty keg?" the skipper roared.

"Do you think," said Billy, indignantly, "that I'd have risked the schooner that way if 'twas a full keg?"

Skipper Bill stared; and for a long time afterwards he could not look at Billy without staring.


CHAPTER XXXIV


_In Which Skipper Bill, as a Desperate Expedient,
Contemplates the Use of His Teeth, and Archie Armstrong,
to Save His Honour, Sets Sail in a Basket, But Seems to
Have Come a Cropper_


Billy Topsail suddenly demanded:

"Where's the _Grand Lake_?"

"The _Grand Lake_," Skipper Bill drawled, with a sigh, "is somewheres t' the s'uth'ard footin' it for St. John's."

"You missed her!" Billy accused.

"Didn't neither," said the indignant skipper. "She steamed right past Hook-an'-Line without a wink in that direction."

This was shocking news.

"Anyhow," said little Donald North, as though it mattered importantly, "we seed her smoke."

Billy looked from Donald to Jimmie, from Jimmie to Bagg, from Bagg to the skipper; and then he stared about.

"Where's Archie?" he asked.

"Archie," the skipper replied, "is footin' it for St. John's, too. 'Skipper Bill,' says Archie, 'Billy Topsail has kep' that schooner safe. I knows he has. It was up t' Billy Topsail t' save the firm from wreckers an' I'll lay you that Billy Topsail has saved the firm. Now, Skipper Bill,' says Archie, 'you go back t' Jolly Harbour an' get that schooner off. You get her off somehow. Get her off jus' as soon as you can,' says he, 'an' fetch her to St. John's.'

"'I _can't_ get her off,' says I.

"'Yes, you can, too, Skipper Bill,' says he. 'I'll lay you can get her off. I don't know how you'll do it,' says he; 'but _I'll lay you can_!'

"'I'll get her off, Archie,' says I, 'if I got t' jump in the sea an' haul her off with a line in my teeth.'

"'I knowed you would,' says he; 'an' you got the best teeth, Skipper Bill,' says he, 't' be found on this here coast. As for me, skipper,' says he, 'I'm goin' down t' St. John's if I got t' walk on water. I told my father that I'd be in his office on the first o' September--an' I'm goin' t' be there. If I can't be there with the fish I can be there with the promise o' fish; an' I can back that promise up with a motor boat, a sloop yacht an' a pony an' cart. I don't know how I'm goin' t' get t' St. John's,' says he, 'an' I don't want t' walk on a wet sea like this; but I'm goin' t' get there somehow by the first o' September, an' I'm goin' to assoom'--yes, sir, '_assoom_, Skipper Bill,' says Archie--'I'm goin' to assoom that you'll fetch down the _Spot Cash_ an' the tail an' fins of every last tom-cod aboard that there craft.'

"An' I'm goin' t' _do_ it!" Skipper Bill roared in conclusion, with a slap of the counter with his hairy fist that made the depleted stock rattle on the shelves.

"Does you t-t-think you c-c-_can_ haul her off with your teeth?" Donald North asked with staring eyes.

Bill o' Burnt Bay burst into a shout of laughter.

"We'll have no help from the Jolly Harbour folk," said Billy Topsail, gravely. "They're good-humoured men," he added, "but they means t' have this here schooner if they can."

"Never mind," said Skipper Bill, with an assumption of far more hope than was in his honest, willing heart. "We'll get her off afore they comes again."

"Wisht you'd 'urry up," said Bagg.

With the _Spot Cash_ high and dry--with a small crew aboard--with a numerous folk, clever and unfriendly (however good-humoured they were), bent on possessing that which they were fully persuaded it was their right to have--with no help near at hand and small prospect of the appearance of aid--the task which Archie Armstrong had set Bill o' Burnt Bay was the most difficult one the old sea-dog had ever encountered in a long career of hard work, self-dependence and tight places. The Jolly Harbour folk might laugh and joke, they might even offer sympathy, they might be the most hospitable, tender-hearted, God-fearing folk in the world; but tradition had taught them that what the sea cast up belonged righteously to the men who could take it, and they would with good consciences and the best humour in the world stand upon that doctrine. And Bill o' Burnt Bay would do no murder to prevent them: it was not the custom of the coast to do murder in such cases; and Archie Armstrong's last injunction had been to take no lives.

Bill o' Burnt Bay declared in growing wrath to the boys that he would come next door to murder.

"I'll pink 'em, anyhow," said he, as he loaded his long gun. "_I'll_ makes holes for earrings, ecod!"

Yes, sir; the skipper would show the Jolly Harbour folk how near a venturesome man could come to letting daylight into a Jolly Harbour hull without making a hopeless leak. Jus' t' keep 'em busy calking, ecod! How much of this was mere loud and saucy words--with how much real meaning the skipper spoke--even the skipper himself did not know. But, yes, sir; he'd show 'em in the morning. It was night, now, however--though near morning. Nobody would put out from shore before daybreak. They had been frightened off once. Skipper Bill's wrath could simmer to the boiling point. But a watch must be kept. No chances must be taken with the _Spot Cash_, and--

"Ahoy, Billy!" a pleasant voice called from the water.

The crew of the _Spot Cash_ rushed on deck.

"Oh, ho!" another voice laughed. "Skipper's back, too, eh?"

"_With_ a long--perfeckly trustworthy--loaded--gun," Skipper Bill solemnly replied.

The men in the punts laughed heartily.

"Sheer off!" Skipper Bill roared.

But in the protecting shadows of the night the punts came closer. And there was another laugh.

* * * *