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

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It chanced at Hook-and-Line Harbour before night--Skipper Bill had then for hours been gone towards Jolly Harbour--that a Labrador fishing craft put in for water. She was loaded deep; her decks were fairly awash with her load of fish, and at best she was squat and old and rotten--a basket to put to sea in. Here was no fleet craft; but she was south-bound, at any rate, and Archie Armstrong determined to board her. To get to St. John's--to open the door of his father's office on the first of September as he had promised--to explain and to reassure and even to present in hard cash the value of a sloop yacht and a pony and a motor boat--was the boy's feverish determination. He could not forget his father's grave words: "Your honour is involved." Perhaps he exaggerated the importance of them. His honour? The boy had no wish to be excused--had no liking for fatherly indulgence. He was wholly intent upon justifying his father's faith and satisfying his own sense of honourable obligation. It must be fish or cash--fish or cash--and as it seemed it could not be fish it must therefore be cash.

It must be hard cash--cash down--paid on the first of September over his father's desk in the little office overlooking the wharves.

"Green Bay bound," the skipper of the Labrador craft replied to Archie's question.

That signified a landing at Ruddy Cove.

"I'll go along," said Archie.

"Ye'll not," the skipper snapped. "Ye'll not go along until ye mend your manners."

Archie started in amazement.

"_You'll_ go along, will ye?" the skipper continued. "Is you the owner o' this here craft? Ye may _ask_ t' go along; but whether ye go or not is for me--for _me_, ye cub!--t' say."

Archie straightened in his father's way. "My name," said he, shortly, "is Archibald Armstrong."

The skipper instantly touched his cap.

"I'm sorry, skipper," Archie went on, with a dignity of which his manner of life had long ago made him unconsciously master, "for having taken too much for granted. I want passage with you to Ruddy Cove, skipper, for which I'll pay."

"You're welcome, sir," said the skipper.

The _Wind and Tide_ lay at Hook-and-Line that night in fear of the sea that was running. She rode so deep in the water, and her planks and rigging and sticks were at best so untrustworthy, that her skipper would not take her to sea. Next morning, however--and Archie subsequently recalled it--next morning the wind blew fair for the southern ports. Out put the old craft into a rising breeze and was presently wallowing her way towards Green Bay and Ruddy Cove. But there was no reckless sailing. Nothing that Archie could say with any appearance of propriety moved the skipper to urge her on. She was deep, she was old; she must be humoured along. Again, when night fell, she was taken into harbour for shelter. The wind still blew fair in the morning; she made a better day of it, but was once more safely berthed for the night. Day after day she crept down the coast, lurching along in the light, with unearthly shrieks of pain and complaint, and lying silent in harbour in the dark.

"'Wisht she'd 'urry up,'" thought Archie, with a dubious laugh, remembering Bagg.

It was the twenty-ninth of August and coming on dark when the boy first caught sight of the cottages of Ruddy Cove.

"Mail-boat day," he thought, jubilantly. "The _Wind and Tide_ will make it. I'll be in St. John's the day after to-morrow."

"Journey's end," said the skipper, coming up at that moment.

"I'm wanting to make the mail-boat," said Archie. "She's due at Ruddy Cove soon after dark."

"She'll be on time," said the skipper. "Hark!"

Archie heard the faint blast of a steamer's whistle.

"Is it she?" asked the skipper.

"Ay," Archie exclaimed; "and she's just leaving Fortune Harbour. She'll be at Ruddy Cove within the hour."

"I'm doubtin' that _we_ will," said the skipper.

"Will you not run up a topsail?" the boy pleaded.

"Not for the queen o' England," the skipper replied, moving forward. "I've got my load--an' I've got the lives o' my crew--t' care for."

Archie could not gainsay it. The _Wind and Tide_ had all the sail she could carry with unquestionable safety. The boy watched the mail-boat's lights round the Head and pass through the tickle into the harbour of Ruddy Cove. Presently he heard the second blast of her deep-toned whistle and saw her emerge and go on her way. She looked cozy in the dusk, he thought: she was brilliant with many lights. In the morning she would connect with the east-bound cross-country express at Burnt Bay. And meantime he--this selfsame boastful Archie Armstrong--would lie stranded at Ruddy Cove. At that moment St. John's seemed infinitely far away.


CHAPTER XXXV


_In Which Many Things Happen: Old Tom Topsail Declares
Himself the Bully to Do It, Mrs. Skipper William
Bounds Down the Path With a Boiled Lobster, the Mixed
Accommodation Sways, Rattles, Roars, Puffs and Quits on a
Grade in the Wilderness, Tom Topsail Loses His Way in the
Fog and Archie Armstrong Gets Despairing Ear of a
Whistle_


At Ruddy Cove, that night, when Archie was landed from the _Wind and Tide_, a turmoil of amazement instantly gave way to the very briskest consultation the wits of the place had ever known.

"There's no punt can make Burnt Bay the night," Billy Topsail's father declared.

"Nor the morrow night if the wind changes," old Jim Grimm added.

"Nor the next in a southerly gale," Job North put in.

"There's the _Wind an' Tide_," Tom Topsail suggested.

"She's a basket," said Archie; "and she's slower than a paddle punt."

"What's the weather?"

"Fair wind for Burnt Bay an' a starlit night."

"I've lost the express," said Archie, excitedly. "I must--I _must_, I tell you!--I must catch the mixed."

The Ruddy Cove faces grew long.

"I must," Archie repeated between his teeth.

The east-bound cross-country express would go through the little settlement of Burnt Bay in the morning. The mixed accommodation would crawl by at an uncertain hour of the following day. It was now the night of the twenty-ninth of August. One day--two days. The mixed accommodation would leave Burnt Bay for St. John's on the thirty-first of August.

"If she doesn't forget," said Job North, dryly.

"Or get tired an' rest too often," Jim Grimm added.

Archie caught an impatient breath.

"Look you, lad!" Tom Topsail declared, jumping up. "I'm the bully that will put you aboard!"

Archie flung open the door of Mrs. Skipper William's kitchen and made for the Topsail wharf with old Tom puffing and lumbering at his heels. Billy Topsail's mother was hailed with the news. Before Tom had well made the punt shipshape for a driving cruise up the Bay she was on the wharf with a bucket of hardtack and a kettle of water. A frantic scream--perhaps, a shout--announced the coming of Mrs. Skipper William with a ham-bone and a greatcoat. These tossed inboard, she roared a command to delay, gathered up her skirts and fled into the night, whence she emerged, bounding, with a package of tea and a boiled lobster. She had no breath left to bid them Godspeed when Tom Topsail cast off; but she waved her great soft arms, and her portly person shook with the violence of her good wishes. And up went the sail--and out fluttered the little jib--and the punt heeled to the harbour breeze--and Tom Topsail and Archie Armstrong darted away from the lights of Ruddy Cove towards the open sea.

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The mixed accommodation, somewhere far back in the Newfoundland wilderness, came to the foot of a long grade. She puffed and valiantly choo-chooed. It was desperately hard work to climb that hill. A man might have walked beside her while she tried it. But she surmounted the crest, at last, and, as though immensely proud of herself, rattled down towards the boulder-strewn level at an amazing rate of speed. On she went, swaying, puffing, roaring, rattling, as though she had no intention whatever of coming to a stop before she had brought her five hundred mile run to a triumphant conclusion in the station at St. John's.

Even the engineer was astonished.

"Doin' fine," thought the fireman, proud of his head of steam.

"She'll make up them three hours afore mornin'," the engineer hoped.

On the next grade the mixed accommodation lagged. It was a steep grade. She seemed to lose enthusiasm with every yard of puffing progress. She began to pant--to groan--to gasp with horrible fatigue. Evidently she fancied it a cruel task to be put to. And the grade was long--and it was outrageously steep--and they had overloaded the little engine with freight cars--and she wasn't yet half-way up. It would take the heart out of any engine. But she buckled to, once more, and trembled and panted and gained a yard or two. It was hard work; it was killing work. It was a ghastly outrage to demand such effort of _any_ engine, most of all of a rat-trap attached to a mixed accommodation on an ill-graded road. The Rat-Trap snorted her indignation. She howled with agony and despair.

And then she quit.

"What's the matter now?" a passenger asked the conductor, in a coach far in the rear.

"Looks to me as if we'd have to uncouple and run on to the next siding with half the train," the conductor replied. "But it _may_ be the fire-box."

"What's the matter with the fire-box?"

"She has a habit of droppin' out," said the conductor.

"We'll be a day late in St. John's," the passenger grumbled.

The conductor laughed. "You will," said he, "if the trouble is with the fire-box."

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While the mixed accommodation was panting on the long grade, Tom Topsail's punt, Burnt Bay bound, was splashing through a choppy sea, humoured along by a clever hand and a heart that understood her whims. It was blowing smartly; but the wind was none too much for the tiny craft, and she was making the best of it. At this rate--with neither change nor failure of the wind--Tom Topsail would land Archie Armstrong in Burnt Bay long before the accommodation had begun to think of achieving that point in her journey across the island. There was no failure of the wind as the night spent itself; it blew true and fair until the rosy dawn came softly out of the east. The boy awoke from a long doze to find the punt overhauling the first barren islands of the long estuary at the head of which the Burnt Bay settlement is situated.

With the most favourable weather there was a day's sailing and more yet to be done.

"How's the weather?" was Archie's first question.