Norman Duncan - Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys

So he turned his back on Ruddy Cove and ran straight out to sea, for he thought that England was nearer than the coast he had left. He was now upon a pan, both broad and thick–stout enough to withstand the pressure of the pack. It was a wide field of ice, which the cold of the far North, acting through many years, it may be, had made strong. Elsewhere the pans were breaking–were lifting themselves out of the press and falling back in pieces–were being ground to finest fragments. This mighty confusion of noise and wind and snow and night, and the upheaval of the whole world roundabout, made the soul of Bagg shiver within him. It surpassed the terrors of his dreams.

“Guess I never will get ’ome,” thought he.

Soon he came to the edge of the pan. Beyond, where the pack was in smaller blocks, the sea was swelling beneath it. The ice was all heaving and swaying. He dared not venture out upon this shifting ground. So he ran up and down, seeking a path onward; but he discovered none. Meantime, the parts of the pack had fallen into easier positions; the noise of crunching, as the one ground against the other, had somewhat abated. The ice continued its course outward, under the driving force of the wind, but the pressure was relieved. The pans fell away from one another. Lakes and lanes of water opened up. The pan upon which Bagg chanced to find himself in the great break-up soon floated free. There was now no escape from it.

Bagg retreated from the edge, for the seas began to break there.

“Wisht I was ’ome again,” he sobbed.

This time he did not look towards England, but wistfully back to Ruddy Cove.

The gale wasted away in the night. The next day was warm and sunny on all that coast. An ice-pack hung offshore from Fortune Harbour. In the afternoon it began to creep in with a light wind. The first pans struck the coast at dusk. The folk of the place were on the Head, on the lookout for the sign of a herd of seal. Just before night fell they spied a black speck, as far out from shore as their eyes could see.

“They’ll be seals out there the morrow,” the men were all agreed.

So they went home and prepared to set out at dawn of the next day. In the night, the wind swept the whole pack in, to the last lagging pan. The ice was all jammed against the coast–a firm, vast expanse, stretching to the horizon, and held in place by the wind, which continued strong and steady. The men of Fortune Harbour went confidently out to the hunt. At noon, when they were ten miles off the shore, they perceived the approach of a small, black figure.

The meeting came soon afterwards, for the folk of Fortune Harbour, being both curious and quick to respond to need, made haste.

“I say, mister,” said Bagg, briskly, addressing old John Forsyth, “yer ’aven’t got no ’am, ’ave yer?”

The men of Fortune Harbour laughed.

“Or nothink else, ’ave yer?” Bagg continued, hopefully. “I’m a bit ’ungry.”

“Sure, b’y,” said Forsyth. “I’ve a biscuit an’ a bit o’ pork.”

“’Ave yer, now?” said Bagg. “Would yer mind giv–”

But his hands were already full. A moment later his mouth was in the same condition.

“How’d you come out here?” said Forsyth.

“Swep’ out,” said Bagg. “I say, mister,” he added, between munches, “which way would yer say my ’ome was from ’ere?”

“Where’s your home?”

“Ruddy Cove,” said Bagg.

“’Tis fifteen mile up the coast.”

“’Ow would you get there quickest if yer ’ad to?”

“We’ll take care o’ you, b’y,” said Forsyth. “We’ll put you t’ Ruddy Cove in a skiff, when the ice goes out. Seems t’ me,” he added, “you must be the boy Ezekiel Rideout took. Isn’t you Ezekiel Rideout’s boy?”

“Bet yer life I am,” said Bagg.

In Which Jimmie Grimm and Billy Topsail, Being Added Up and Called a Man, Are Shipped For St. John’s, With Bill o’ Burnt Bay, Where They Fall In With Archie Armstrong, Sir Archibald’s Son, and Bill o’ Burnt Bay Declines to Insure the “First Venture”

Of course, Donald North, who had been ferryman to his father, had no foolishly romantic idea of his experience on that pan of ice; nor had Jimmie Grimm, nor had Billy Topsail. Donald North would not have called it an adventure, nor himself a hero; he would have said, without any affectation of modesty, “Oh, that was jus’ a little mess!” The thing had come in the course of the day’s work: that was all. Something had depended upon him, and, greatly to his elation, he had “made good.” It was no more to him than a hard tackle to a boy of the American towns. Any sound American boy–any boy of healthy courage and clean heart–would doubtless have taken Job North off the drifting floe; and Donald North, for his part, would no doubt have made the tackle and saved the goal–though frightened to a greenish pallor–had he ever been face to face with the necessity. Had he ever survived a football game, he would have thought himself a hero, and perhaps have boasted more than was pleasant; but to have taken a larger chance with his life on a pan of ice was so small and usual a thing as presently to be forgotten.

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Donald North himself told me this–told me, too, what he had thought, and what he said to his mother–N. D.