Billy Topsail, M.D.

CHAPTER XXXII

In Which Archie Armstrong and Billy Topsail Say Good-bye to Toby Farr for the Present, and, Bound Down to Our Harbour with Doctor Luke, Enter Into an Arrangement, From Which Issues the Discovery of a Mysterious Letter and Sixty Seconds of Cold Thrill

What happened next was the astonishing meeting of Archie Armstrong and Billy Topsail in Tom Lute's cottage on Amen Island. The rising blast of wind that threatened to interrupt Doctor Luke's passage of Ship's Run, and thus cost Terry Lute the "fiddle finger" he cherished, so dealt with the floe, at sea, where the men of the Rough and Tumble were at work, that Archie was cut off from return to the ship. At first the adventure wore a grave appearance; but Archie knew the coast, and was aware, also, that the land near which the Rough and Tumble had debarked her crew in the morning was the land of Amen Island.

That there was an hospitable settlement on Amen Island, Cap'n Saul had told him. It was towards Amen Island, then, that his endeavour was directed, when the shifting ice cut him off from the ship and dusk caught him on the floe. And he had no great difficulty in making the shore. The floe, in the grip of the wind, drifted towards the land and came in contact with it before night fell.

Archie had a long, stumbling search for the cottages of Amen. That was the most trying aspect of his experience. In the end, however, pretty well worn out, but triumphant, he caught sight of the light in Tom Lute's cottage; and he knocked on the door and pushed into the kitchen just when Doctor Luke, having lanced Terry Lute's finger, and having been informed that Terry Lute's fiddle was a jew's-harp, had joined Billy Topsail in the hearty laughter that the amazing disclosure excited.

It was late then. Archie and Billy and Doctor Luke were all feeling the effect of the physical labour of that stormy night; and when Billy and Archie had exchanged news in sufficient measure to ease their curiosity, and when Doctor Luke and Archie, who were old friends, had accomplished the same satisfying end, and Black Walt and his assistant had departed, and when Terry Lute and Tom Lute and Terry Lute's mother had recovered from their delight, the simple household turned in to sleep as best it could.

In the morning – which means almost immediately after dawn – Archie Armstrong insisted upon his own way. And his own way was happy and acceptable. The Rough and Tumble lay offshore. She was within sight from the window of Tom Lute's cottage. Undoubtedly Cap'n Saul had a searching party – probably the whole crew-out after Archie Armstrong; and undoubtedly the old man was in a fever and fury of anxiety – a fury of anxiety because, no great wind having blown, and the ice having been driven against the coast, his alarm for Archie's safety need not be great, whereas the delay caused by Archie's misadventure would surely arouse a furious impatience.

Consequently Archie sought to relieve both his anxiety and his impatience; and to this end he set out over the ice, with Billy Topsail and Doctor Luke, to board the Rough and Tumble, where Billy Topsail was wanting to shake the hand of his old friend, Bill o' Burnt Bay, and Archie was eager to have Doctor Luke "inspect" Toby Farr and his grandfather. It was in Archie's mind to "make a man" of Toby.

"Cap'n Saul," said Archie, by and by, "will you be sailing to the s'uth'ard?"

"A mad question!" Cap'n Saul growled.

"Yes; but, sir – "

"Isn't you got no sense at all? How can I tell where the ice will go?"

Archie grinned.

"It wasn't very bright, sir," he admitted. "Still, Cap'n Saul, is there any chance – "

"Why?"

"I want to go down with Doctor Luke, sir, to Our Harbour. But I don't want to be left on the coast until the mail-boat comes north. If you think you might be in the neighbourhood of Our Harbour, and could send a boat ashore for me, sir, I'll take a chance."

"I might," Cap'n Saul replied. "An' the way the ice sets, I think I will. Will that do ye?"

"It will, sir!"

"If the ice goes t' sea – "

"You'll leave me. I understand that."

"I'll leave ye like a rat!"

Archie laughed.

"Billy," said he, gleefully, "I'll go south with you!" And to Cap'n Saul: "How long will you give me, sir?"

"I'll give you a week."

"Make it ten days, sir?"

"Archie," Cap'n Saul replied, "I thought you was a b'y o' some sense. How can I say a week or ten days? I'll pick you up if I can. An' that's all I'll say. What I'm here for is swiles. An' swiles I'll have, b'y, no matter whether you're left on the coast or not."

Archie flushed.

"Cap'n Saul, sir," said he, "I beg pardon. You see, sir, I – I – "

Cap'n Saul clapped him on the back.

"Archie, b'y," said he, putting an arm over the boy's shoulder, "I'll pick you up if I can. An' if I can't" – Cap'n Saul accomplished a heavy wink – "there'll be some good reason why I don't. Now, you mark me!"

Upon that understanding Archie packed a seaman's bag and went back to Amen Island with Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail. First, however, he shook the hand of Bill o' Burnt Bay, and shook the hand of Toby Farr, and shook the hand of Jonathan Farr. And Billy Topsail shook hands with them all, too. Billy Topsail liked the quality of Toby Farr. They were to go through a gale of wind together – Archie and Billy and Bill and Jonathan and little Toby Farr. And Billy and Archie were to learn more of the quality of Toby Farr – to stand awed in the presence of the courage and nobility of Jonathan Farr.

Thus it came about that Doctor Luke, Billy Topsail and Archie Armstrong, near dusk, two days later, drove Doctor Luke's dogs into Bread-and-Butter Tickle, on the way south to Doctor Luke's hospital at Our Harbour. There was sickness near by – at Round Cove and Explosion Bight; and as Doctor Luke was in haste, he was in something of a quandary. Doctor Luke's solution and immediate decision were sufficient.

Billy Topsail was to carry medicine and directions, especially directions, which had a good deal to do with the virtues of fresh air, to ease the slight trouble at Explosion Bight, and Doctor Luke would himself attend to the serious case at Round Cove, setting off at once and returning before noon of the next day, all being well.

Billy's errand was the longer; it might be two or three days before he could get back – Explosion Bight lay beyond Poor Luck Barrens – but at any rate a start for Our Harbour would be made as soon as he got back. As for Archie Armstrong, he was to kick his heels and feed the dogs at Bread-and-Butter Tickle – a prospect that he did not greatly enjoy, but was disposed to make the best of. As it turned out, the issue of the whole arrangement gave him sixty seconds of thrill that he will never forget.

In the operation of the plan, returning from Explosion Bight, where he had executed his directions, dusk of a scowling day caught Billy Topsail on the edge of the woods. And that was a grave matter – Billy Topsail was in driven haste. As the white wilderness day had drawn on, from a drab dawn to a blinding noon, and from noon to the drear, frosty approach of night, the impression of urgency, in the mystery that troubled him, grew large and whipped him faster.

When he loped from the timber into the wind, high above the sea, he was dog-tired and breathless. It was offshore weather then; a black night threatened; it was blowing in tepid gray gusts from the southwest; a flutter of wet snow was in the gale. In the pool of ghostly, leaden dark, below Spear Rock, of Yellow Head, the ice of Skeleton Arm was wrenched from the coast; and with an accumulation of Arctic bergs and drift-pans, blown in by the last nor'easter, it was sluggishly moving into the black shadows of the open sea. And having observed the catastrophe, in a swift, sweeping flash, Billy Topsail stopped dead on the ridge of Spear Rock, dismayed and confounded.

To camp on Spear Rock was no incident of his dogged intention.

Bread-and-Butter Tickle, to which a persistent, feverish impression of urgency, divined from the puzzling character of the incident of the night before, had driven Billy Topsail since the drab dawn of that day, lay across the darkening reaches of Skeleton Arm. In the snug basin, beyond the heads of the narrows, the lamps were lighted in the cottages of the place. It was a twinkling, beckoning hospitality; it invited Billy Topsail to supper and to bed – to the conclusion of his haste and to the relief of his mystification.

But on the Labrador coast, as elsewhere, the longest way round is often the shortest way home. It was two miles across Skeleton Arm to Bread-and-Butter Tickle, on a direct line from Spear Head; it was four miles alongshore to Rattle Water Inlet, at the head of Skeleton Arm, and eight from Rattle Water to the lights of Bread-and-Butter. Billy Topsail reflected upon the discrepancy – the flurry of snow, too, and the swift approach and thick quality of the night; and having surveyed the ice, the fragments of which seemed still to be sufficiently in contact for crossing, he clambered down Spear Head to the shore of the sea.

"Can I cross?" he wondered.

After further reflection:

"I don't know," he concluded.

What mystified Billy Topsail, and drove and challenged him, as he had never been mystified and driven and challenged before, was a letter. Billy Topsail had come through the scrub timber and barrens beyond the first wild hills of Long-Age Inlet; and having came to the fork in the trail from Run-By-Guess to Poor Luck Barrens, where he was to camp for the night, he had been confronted by a new-cut stick, stoutly upright in the snow of the trail, and a flutter of red flannel rag, and a letter, snapped in the cleft head of the stick.

That the solitary wilderness of his journey should be so concerned with the outport world of that coast as to produce a letter was amazing; and that the letter should present itself, in the nick of time, where, probably, no other traveller except the mail-man had passed since the first snow fell, and that a fluttering flannel rag should declare its whereabouts, as though confidently beseeching instant conveyance to its destination, was more stimulating to Billy Topsail's reflection than mere amazement could be.

"Now," thought he, "what's this?"

It was darkly, vitally mysterious.

"'Tis the queerest thing ever I knowed!"

The letter was a folded brown paper, sealed tight, doubtless with a paste of flour and water; and it was inscribed in an illiterate scrawl: Brednbutr – which Billy Topsail had the wit to decipher at once. Bread-and-Butter – nobody in particular at Bread-and-Butter; anybody at all at Bread-and-Butter. Need was signified; haste was besought – a letter in a cleft stick, left to do its own errand, served by its own resources, with a fluttering red flannel rag to arrest and entreat the traveller.

Obviously it was intended for the mail-man. But the mail-man, old Bob Likely, with his long round – the mail-man, where was he? Billy Topsail did not open the letter; it was sealed – it was an inviolate mystery. Fingering it, scrutinizing it, in astonished curiosity, he reflected, however, upon the coincidence of its immediate discovery – the tracks were fresh in the snow and the brown paper was not yet weather-stained; and so remarkable did the coincidence appear that he was presently obsessed with the impulse to fulfill it.

He pushed back his cap in bewilderment.

"Jus' seems t' me," he reflected, gravely, "as if I was meant t' come along an' find this letter."

It was, truly, a moving coincidence.

"I ought t' be shot," Billy Topsail determined, "if I doesn't get this here letter t' Bread-and-Butter the morrow night!"

CHAPTER XXXIII

In Which the Letter is Opened, Billy and Archie are Confronted by a Cryptogram, and, Having Exercised Their Wits, Conclude that Somebody is in Desperate Trouble

It was a woman's doing. The signs of a woman were like print – little tracks in the snow – a woman's little foot; and the snow was brushed by a skirt. What woman? A girl? It was a romantic suggestion. Billy Topsail was old enough to respond to the appeal of chivalry. A perception of romance overwhelmed him. He was thrilled. He blushed. Reflecting, thus, his thought tinged with the fancies of romance, his chivalry was fully awakened. No; he would not open the letter. It was a woman's letter. An impulse of delicacy forbade him to intrude. Wrong? Perhaps. Yet it was a fine impulse. He indulged it. He stowed the letter away. And at dawn, still in a chivalrous glow, he set out for Bread-and-Butter Tickle, resolved to deliver the letter that night; and he was caught by dusk on the ridge of Spear Head, with a flurry of wet snow in the wind and the night threatening thick.

Having come to the edge of the moving ice, Billy Topsail looked across to the lights of Bread-and-Butter.

"Might 's well," he decided.

Between Spear Head and Bread-and-Butter Tickle, that night, Billy Topsail had a nip-and-tuck time of it. It was dark. Snow intermittently obscured his objective. The ice was fragmentary – driving and revolving in a slow wind. It was past midnight when he hauled down the heads of Bread-and-Butter and knocked Archie Armstrong out of bed.

"Archie," said he, "I found a queer thing."

Archie's sleepiness vanished.

"Queer?" he demanded, eagerly. "Something queer? What is it?"

"'Tis a letter."

"A letter! Where is it?"

Billy related the circumstances of the discovery of the letter. Then he said:

"'Tis a sealed letter. I wants t' show it t' Doctor Luke."

"He's not back."

"Not back? That's queer!"

"Oh, no," said Archie, easily; "the case has turned out to be more serious than he thought and has detained him. Where's the letter?"

Billy gave the letter to Archie.

"Bread-and-Butter," Archie read. "No other address. That is queer. What shall we do about it?"

"I don't know," Billy replied. "What do you say?"

"I say open it," said Archie, promptly.

"Would you?"

"There's nothing else to do. Open it, of course! It is addressed to Bread-and-Butter. Well, we're in Bread-and-Butter. Doctor Luke isn't here. If he were, he'd open it. There is something in this letter that somebody ought to know at once. I'm going to open it."

"All right," Billy agreed.

Archie opened the letter and stared and frowned and pursed his lips.

"What does it say?" said Billy.

"I can't make it out. Have a try yourself. Here – read it if you can."

Billy was confronted by a cryptogram:

Dokr com quk pops goncras im ferd

"What do you make of it?" said Archie.

"I'm not much of a hand at readin'," Billy replied; "but I knows that first word there or I misses my guess."

"What is it?"

"D-o-k-r. That means what it sounds like. It means Doctor."

Archie exclaimed.

"That's it!" said he. "And the second word's plain. C-o-m – that's Come."

"'Doctor, come,'" said Billy.

"Right. Somebody's in trouble. Deep trouble, too. The third word is Quick. 'Doctor, come quick.' We're right so far. P-o-p-s. What's that?"

"It means Father."

"Right. 'Doctor, come quick. Pop's —' What now? 'G-o-n-c-r-a-s.' What in the world is that? It must be a kind of sickness. Can't you guess it, Billy?"

Billy puzzled.

"G-o-n-c-r-a-s. I don't know what it means."

"Anyhow," Archie put in, "the next word must be I'm. Don't you think so, Billy? No? Looks like that. Hum-m! Look here, Billy – what's F-E-R-D? What does it sound like?"

"Sounds like feared."

"Of course it does! That's right! 'I'm afeared.' Billy, this is a pretty serious matter. Why should the writer of this be afraid? Eh? You think a woman wrote the letter? Well, she's afraid of something. And that something must be the sort of sickness her father has. Shake your nut, Billy. What sort of sickness could she be afraid of?"

"G-o-n-c-r-a-s. Gon-cras."

"Gon-cras. Gon-cras. Gon-cras."

"Gone," Billy suggested.

"Crazy!" cried Archie.

"Right!" said Billy.

"We've got it!" Archie exulted. "'Doctor, come quick. Pop's gone crazy. I'm afeared.' That's the message. What shall we do?"

"We can't do anything now."

"How's the ice on the Arm, Billy?"

"Movin' out. A man couldn't cross now. I barely made it."

"Will the Arm be free in the morning?"

"No; it will not. The Arm will be fit for neither foot nor punt in the morning. T' get t' Poor Luck Barrens a man would have t' skirt the Arm t' Rattle Water an' cross the stream."

"We'll have to do something, Billy. We can't leave that poor girl alone with a madman."

"We'll tell Doctor Luke – "

"Yes; but what if Doctor Luke isn't back in the morning?"

"We'll go ourselves."

Archie started.

"Go?" he inquired, blankly. "Go where? We don't know where this letter came from. It isn't signed."

"Ah, well," said Billy, "somebody in Bread-and-Butter will know. Let's turn in, Archie. If we're t' take the trail the morrow, we must have rest."

And they turned in.

CHAPTER XXXIV

In Which Archie and Billy Resolve Upon a Deed of Their Own Doing, and are Challenged by Ha-Ha Shallow of Rattle Water

Neither boy slept very much. In Samuel Jolly's spare bed (it was called a spare bed) – where they had tumbled in together – they did more talking than sleeping. And that could not be helped. It was a situation that appealed to the imagination of two chivalrous boys – a woman all alone on Poor Luck Barrens with a madman. When morning came they were up with the first peep of the light; and they were in a nervous condition of such a sort that neither would hesitate over a reckless chance if it should confront them in an attempt to help the writer of the letter of the cleft stick.

"Who is she?" Archie demanded of Samuel Jolly.

"Jinny Tulk, sir – Trapper George's daughter."

"How does she come to be at Poor Luck Barrens?"

"Trapper George has a trappin' tilt there, sir. They're both from this harbour. They goes trappin' on Poor Luck Barrens in the winter. Jinny keeps house for her pop."

"All alone?"

"Ay, sir; there's nobody livin' near."

Archie turned to Billy.

"Look here, Billy," said he, anxiously, "we've got to go. I can't bear it here – with that poor girl all alone – "

"Doctor Luke – "

"We can't wait for Doctor Luke."

"That's jus' what I was goin' t' say," said Billy. "We'll leave word for Doctor Luke that we've gone. He can follow. An' when we gets there, we can keep Trapper George quiet until Doctor Luke comes."

"When shall we start?"

"Now!"

Outbound from Bread-and-Butter, fortified with instructions, Billy Topsail and Archie Armstrong made along the shore of Skeleton Arm, by the long trail, and were halted before noon at Rattle Water. The ice had gone out of Rattle Water. At the ford the stream was deep, swift, bitter cold – manifestly impassable; and above, beyond Serpent Bend, the water of Ha-ha Shallow, which was the alternative crossing, was in a turmoil, swelling and foaming over the boulders in its wide, shallow bed.

Except where the current eddied, black, flecked with froth, Ha-ha Shallow was not deep. A man might cross – submerged somewhat above the knees, no more; but in the clinging grip and tug of the current his footing would be delicately precarious, and the issue of a misstep, a stumble, a lost balance, would be a desperate chance, with the wager heavily on grim Death.

It was perilous water – the noisy, sucking white rush of it, frothing over the boulders, and running, icy cold, in choppy, crested waves, where the channel was a bed of stones and gravel. Yet the path to the tilt at Poor Luck Barrens lay across and beyond Ha-ha Shallow of Rattle Water.

Billy Topsail and Archie Armstrong surveyed the rapids in a dubious silence.

"Hum!" Archie coughed.

Billy Topsail chuckled.

"You've no fancy for the passage?" he inquired.

"I have not. Have you?"

"I don't hanker for it, Archie. No, sir – not me!"

"Can it be done?"

"No, b'y."

"No; it can't be done," Archie declared. "You're right."

They stared at the tumultuous stream.

"Come along," said Archie, with decision, his teeth set; "we'll try that ice below again."

Below Ha-ha Shallow, where the stream dropped into a deep, long pool, lying between low cliffs, fringed with the spruce of that stunted wilderness, Rattle Water was bridged with ice. There had been flood water in the early spring break-up – a rush of broken ice, a jam in Black Pool, held by the rocks of its narrow exit; and the ice had been caught and sealed by the frosts of a swift spell of bitter weather.

The subsidence of Rattle Water, when the ice below Black Pool ran off with the current into the open reaches of Skeleton Arm, had left the jam suspended. It was a bridge from shore to shore, lifted a little from the water; but in the sunshine and thaw and warm rain of the subsequent interval it had gone rotten. Its heavy collapse was imminent.

And of this Billy Topsail and Archie had made sure on the way up-stream from the impassable ford to the impassable white water of Ha-ha Shallow. The ice-bridge could not be crossed. It awaited the last straw – a rain, a squall of wind, another day of sunshine and melting weather. Billy had ventured, on pussy-feet, and had withdrawn, threatened by a crack, his hair on end.

A second trial of the bridge had precisely the same result. Archie cast a stone. It plumped through.

"Soft 's cheese," said Billy.

Another stone was cast.

"Hear that, Billy?"

"Clean through, Archie."

"Yes; clean through. It's all rotten. We can't cross. Give me a hand. I'll try it."

With a hand from Billy Topsail, Archie let himself slip over the edge of the cliff to an anxious footing on the ice.

He waited – expectant.

"Cautious, Archie!" Billy warned.

Nothing happened.

"Cautious!" Billy repeated. "You'll drop through, b'y!"

Archie took one step – and dropped, crashing, with a section of the bridge, which momentarily floated his weight. Billy caught his hand, as the ice disintegrated under his feet, and dragged him ashore.

"It can't be done," said Archie.

"No, b'y; it can't."

"We'll try Ha-ha Shallow again. We've got to get across."

A moment, however, Archie paused. A startling possibility possessed his imagination. It was nothing remote, nothing vague; it was real, concrete, imminent. Standing on the brink of the rock at the point where the ice-bridge began, he contemplated the chances of Rattle Water. With a crossing of Ha-ha Shallow immediately in prospect, there was something for affrighted reflection in the current below. And the suggestion was vivid and ugly.

There the water was flowing black, spread with creamy puffs of foam; and it ran swift and deep, in strong, straight lines, as it approached the Black Pool ice and vanished beneath. There was a space between the ice and the fallen current – not much: two feet, perhaps; but it occurred to Archie, with sudden, shocking force, that two feet were too much. And the deep, oily, adherent flow of the current, and the space between the ice and the water, and the cavernous shadow beneath the ice, and the gurgle and lapping of the pool, made the flesh of his back uneasy.