CHAPTER XXXI
The Dictator Charges an Ice Pan and Loses a Main Topmast
"CAST loose!" was the order from the bridge.
The men scrambled to the berg and released the lines and ice-hooks. The pack was still loosening under the rising breeze. To the east, separating the sky from the ice, lay a long black streak – the water of the open sea; a clear way to the broad, white fields. Once free of the floe, the ship would speed northward to the Yellow Islands and Cape William coasts. In a day and a night, the weather continuing propitious, it would be, "Ho! for the ice. Ho! for the seals."
A lane of water opened up. "Go ahead," was the signal from the master on the bridge, and the ship moved forward, with her nose turned to the sea.
"Ha, Mr. Ackell!" exclaimed the captain, rubbing his horny hands. "Looks t' be a fine time, man. We'll make the Yellow Islands at dawn t'-morrow, if all goes well."
When the Dictator had followed the lane to within one hundred yards of free water, the advance was blocked by a great pan of ice, tight jammed in the pack on either side. So fast and vagrantly was the floe shifting its formation that what had been a clear path was now crossed by a mighty barrier. Here was no slob ice to be forged through at full steam, but a solid mass, like a bar of iron, lying across the path.
The ship was taken to the edge of the obstruction, and the captain and mate went forward to the bow to gauge the strength of it. When they came back to the bridge, the former had his teeth set.
"It's stiff work for the old ship," said the mate.
The captain growled as he pulled the signal lever for full speed astern.
"Take half a day to cut a way through," he said. "We'll ram it. Here, b'y," to Archie, "get off the bridge. You're in the way."
Archie joined Billy Topsail on the forward deck. Neither had yet experienced a charge on a pan of ice; but both had listened, open eyed, to the sealing tales of daring that had brought disaster.
"I feel queer," Archie remarked.
"Cap'n Hand," said Billy, as though trying to revive his faith in the old skipper, "he's a clever one. 'Tis all right."
"Make fast below," the captain shouted over the bridge rail.
The word was passed in a lively fashion. Tackle, boats, and all things loose, were lashed in their places, as if for a great gale.
"Stop!" was the next signal. Then: "Full speed ahead!"
The blow had been launched! A moment later, the Dictator was ploughing forward, charging the pan, which she must strike like a battering ram, and shiver to pieces. She was of solid oak, this good ship, and builded for such attacks; steel plates would buckle and spring under such shocks as she had many times triumphantly sustained. The men were silent while they awaited the event. There was not a sound save the hiss of the water at the ship's prows, and the chug-chug of the engines.
Archie caught his breath. His eyes were fixed on the fast vanishing space of water. The thrill of the adventure was manifest in Billy Topsail's sharp, quick breathing, and in his blue eyes, which were as though about to pop out of their sockets.
"Stop!"
The engines abruptly ceased their labour. Only a fathom or two of water lay ahead. The ship was about to strike. There was a long drawn instant of suspense. Then came the blow!
It was a fearful shock. The vessel quivered, crushed her way on for a space, and stopped dead, quivering still. A groan ran over her, from stem to stern, as though she had been racked in every part. The main topmast snapped and fell forward on the rigging with a crash.
A volley of cracks sounded from the ice, like the discharge of a thousand rifles, slowly subsiding. Dead silence fell and continued for a moment. Then the screw churned the water, and the ship backed off, sound, but beaten; for the pan of ice lay, unbroken and unchanged, in its place, with but a jagged bruise, where the blow had been struck.
"Aloft, there, some o' you, an' cut away that spar!" the captain shouted. "Bill, get below, an' see if she's tight. Here, you, Dickson, call the watch t' make sail. Mr. Girth," to the second mate, "take a crew t' the ice. Blast that pan in three places. Lively, now, every man o' you!"
Roaring subordinates, answering "Ay, ay, sirs!" rattling blocks and chains, the fall of hurried feet, cries of warning and encouragement, the engine's gasps: these sounds confounded the confusion, and continued it, while the ship, snorting like a frightened horse, was backed to her first position.
"He'll try it again," Archie gleefully observed to Billy.
The captain was pacing the bridge. Try it again? He was in a fever of impatience to be at it! It was as though the pan of ice were a foe needing only another and a heavier blow to be beaten down.
"Sure," said Billy, after a glance to the bridge, "he'll hit that pan till he smashes it, if it takes till Tibb's Eve!"
"Tibb's Eve?"
"Sure, b'y. Does you not know what that is? 'Tis till the end o' the world."
The ship was again to be launched against the pan. The second mate took the blasting crew to the ice in the quarter boat; and he lost no time about it, as the captain made sure. Up aloft went other hands to cut away the broken spar and loose the canvas. Work was carried on under the spur of the captain's harshened voice; for the captain was in a passion to prove the quality of his ship.
The ice picks were plied as fast as arms could swing them. Soon the mines were laid and fired. And when the dust of ice had fallen, and the noise of the explosion had gone rumbling into the distance, three gaping holes marked the pan at regular intervals from edge to edge.
"She's all tight below, sir," was the carpenter's report.
"Now, Mr. Ackell," said the captain, grimly, "in ten minutes we'll be free o' the ice, or – "
They made all sail. After a quiet word or two of command, forth the ship shot, heeling to the breeze, wind now allied with steam. Her course was laid straight for the jagged bruise in the pan. There was no stopping her now. The ice was cracked and shivered into a thousand pieces. The ship forged on, grinding the cakes to fragments, heaping them up, riding them down. She quivered when she struck, and strained and creaked as she crushed her way forward, but she crept on, invincible, adding inch to inch, foot to foot, until she swept out into the unclogged water.
Then she shook the ice from her screw, and ran grandly into the swelling sea.
"Hurrah!" the stout hearts roared.
"Hem – hem! Mr. Ackell," said the captain, with some emotion, "'tis a great ship!"
It occurred to Archie that night, while he sat munching hard biscuit with the captain before turning in, to ask a few questions about Tim Tuttle. What was the matter with the man? Why did he go about with a sneer or a frown forever on his face? Why was he not like all the rest of the crew? Why did the crew seem to expect him to "do" something? Why did the captain flush and bristle when Tuttle came near?
"Oh," the captain replied, with a laugh, "Tuttle had a fallin' out with me when we was young. I think," he added, gravely, "that he wronged me. But that's neither here nor there. I forgave him. The point is – an' I've often run across the same thing in my life – that he won't forgive me for forgivin' him. That's odd, isn't it? But it's true. An' he's aboard here t' make trouble; an' the men know that that's just what he came for."
"But what did you ship him for, captain, if you knew that?"
The captain paused. "Well," he said, "because I'm only a man, I s'pose. I couldn't help knockin' the chip off his shoulder."
"Do you think he can make trouble?"
"I'd like t' see him try!" the captain burst out, wrathfully.
Tuttle's opportunity occurred the next day.
CHAPTER XXXII
In Which Seals are Sighted and Archie Armstrong has a Narrow Chance in the Crow's-Nest.
AT peep o' dawn the Dictator made the Groais Island sealing grounds. The day broke late and dull. The sky was a dead gray, hanging heavily over a dark, fretful sea; and there was a threat of wind and snow in the air.
"Ice, sir!" said the mate, poking his head into the captain's cabin, his ceremony lost in his elation.
"Take her 'longside," cried the captain, jumping out of his berth. "What's it like?"
"Looks like a big field o' seal ice, sir."
"Hear that, b'y?" the captain shouted to Archie, who was sitting up in his berth, still rubbing his eyes. "A field o' ice! There'll be a hunt t'-day. Mr. Ackell, tell the cook t' send the breakfast up here. What's the weather?"
"Promisin' thick, sir."
When the captain and the boy went on deck, the ice was in plain sight – many vast fields, rising over the horizon continually, so that there seemed to be no end to it. From the crow's-nest it had been reported to the mate, who reported to the captain, that the spars of a three-masted ship were visible, and that the vessel was apparently lying near the ice. That was considered bad news – and worse news yet, when it was reported from the crow's-nest that she was flying the house-flag of Alexander Bryan & Company, the only considerable rival of the firm of Armstrong and Son.
"Oh, well," said the captain, making the best of it in a generous way, "there'll be 25,000 seals in that pack, an' out o' that we ought t' bag enough t' pay both of us for the day's work."
Archie caught sight of Billy Topsail, who was standing on the forward deck, gazing wistfully at him; so he went forward, and the two found much to say to each other, while the ship made for the ice under full steam. They fought the fight with the dog hood over again; and when Billy had acknowledged a debt to Archie's quick thought, and Archie had repudiated it with some heat, they agreed that the old seal had been a mighty fellow, and a game one, deserving his escape from continued attack. Then they abandoned the subject.
"Pretty hard work on the ice," Archie observed, sagely.
"Sure!" Billy exclaimed; for that had been clear to him all his life. "'Tis fearful dangerous, too. When my father was young, he was to the ice in a schooner, an' they got caught with the fleet in raftin' ice7 offshore, up Englee way. He saw six schooners nipped; an' they were all crushed like an egg, an' went down when the ice went abroad. His was the only one o' all the fleet that stood the crush."
"Think you'll share with the crew, Billy?"
"I want to," Billy said with a laugh. Then, soberly: "I want to, for I want t' get a skiff for lobster-fishin' in New Bay. They's lots o' lobsters there, an' they's no one trappin' down that way. 'Tis a great chance," with a sigh.
The captain beckoned Archie to the upper deck. "Tell me, now," he said, when the boy reached his side, "can you go aloft?"
"Yes," Archie answered, laughing scornfully. "I'm no landsman!"
"True word, if you're son of your father! Then get up with the bar'l man, an' take a trick at swatchin'. 'Tis cold work, but great sport."
"Swatching" is merely the convenient form for "seal watching." It appeared to Archie that to swatch with the barrel man must be a highly diverting occupation. He was not slow to mount the rope ladder to the masthead, and slip into the cask with the swatcher, who chanced to be Bill o' Burnt Bay and vociferously made him welcome.
"See anything yet?" asked the boy.
"I'll show you them swiles (seals) in a minute or two," Bill replied confidently.
Archie was closely muffled in wool and fur; but the wind, which was bitter and blowing hard, searched out the unprotected places, and in five minutes he was crouching in the cask for shelter, only too glad to find an excuse in the swatcher's advice.
"H-h-h-how l-l-long you been h-h-here?" he chattered.
"Sure, b'y," said Bill, with no suspicion of a shiver in his voice, "'tis goin' on two hours, now."
"P-p-pretty cold, i-i-isn't it?"
Bill o' Burnt Bay did not reply. His eye was glued to the telescope, which fairly shook in his hands. Then he leaned over the rim of the cask, altogether disregarding its instability.
"Seals ho!" he roared.
A cheer went up. Looking down, Archie saw the men swarming to the deck.
"Take a look at them harps, b'y," said Bill, excitedly. "No! Starboard the glass. There! See them?"
Archie made out a myriad of moving specks – black dots, small and great, shifting about over a broad white surface. They were like many insects. He saw Alexander Bryan & Company's vessel, too; and it appeared to him that the men were just landing on the ice to attack the pack.
"That's the Lucky Star," Bill explained. "She's a smaller ship than we, an' she've got about a hundred men, I s'pose. Never fear, lad, we'll be up in time t' get our share o' the swiles."
"I-I-I-I g-g-guess I'll g-g-go down, now," said Archie.
Half an hour of exposure in the crow's-nest had chilled the lad to numbness. His blood was running sluggishly; he was shivering; his legs were stiff, and his hands were cold and uncertain in their grip. He climbed out of the cask, and cleverly enough made good his footing on the platform of the nest. It was when he essayed the descent that he erred and faltered.
He had a full, two-handed grip on the topmast backstays, and was secure in searching with his foot for the rope ladder lashed thereto. But when his foot struck, he released his left hand from the stays, without pausing to make sure that his foot was firm-fixed on the rung. His foot missed the rung altogether, and found no place to rest. In a flash, he had rolled over, and hung suspended by one hand, which, numb though it was, had unexpectedly to bear the weight of his whole body.
"Be careful goin' down, b'y," he heard Bill o' Burnt Bay say.
The voice seemed to come out of a great distance. Archie knew, in a dim way, that the attention of the man was fixed elsewhere – doubtless on the herd of harps. Then he fell into a stupefaction of terror. It seemed to him, in his panic, that Bill would never discover his situation; that he must hang there, with his grip loosening, instant by instant – until he fell.
He was speechless, incapable of action, when, by chance, Bill o' Burnt Bay looked down. The sealer quietly reached over the cask and caught him by the collar; then lifted him to the platform, and there held him fast. Each looked silently, tensely, into the other's eyes.
"'Tis a cold day," said Bill, dryly.
Archie gasped.
"Tough on tender hands, b'y," said Bill.
"Yes," gasped the lad, in a hoarse whisper.
There was a long silence, through which the swatcher looked Archie in the eye, holding him tight all the while.
"'Tis not wise t' be in a hurry, sometimes," he observed, at last.
The boy waited until he could view the necessity of descent with composure. Then, with extreme caution, he made his way to the deck, and went to the cabin, where he warmed himself over the stove. Apparently, the incident had passed unnoticed from the deck. He said nothing about it to the captain, nor to any one else; nor did Bill o' Burnt Bay, who had an adequate conception of the sensitiveness of lads in respect to such narrow chances.
CHAPTER XXXIII
The Ice Runs Red, and, in Storm and Dusk, Tim Tuttle Brews a Pot o' Trouble for Captain Hand, While Billy Topsail Observes the Operation
MEANTIME the ship drew near the ice. When Archie came again on deck, his nerves quite composed, she was being driven in and out through the fields to a point as near to the first seal pack as she could be taken – a mile distant, at the least. During this tedious search for a landing place, the crew's eager excitement passed the bounds of discipline. The men could see the crew from Alexander Bryan & Company's Lucky Star at work; and that excited them the more: they were mad to reach the ice before their rivals could molest the pack for which they were bound.
When, at last, the engines were stopped, a party of sixty was formed in a haphazard fashion; the boats were lowered in haste, and the men leaped and tumbled into them, crowding them down to the gunwales. In one of the boats were Archie and Billy, the former in the care of Bill o' Burnt Bay, to whom the "nursing" was not altogether agreeable, under the circumstances; the latter in charge of himself, a lenient guardian, but a wise one.
"Don't get into trouble with the crew o' the Lucky Star," had been the captain's last command.
The men landed, hurrahing, and at once organized into half a dozen separate expeditions. The direction to be taken by each was determined by the leaders, and they set off at a dog trot upon their diverging paths over the ice to the widely distributed seal pack. Meantime, the boats were taken back to the ship and hoisted in; and the ship steamed off to land another party on another field, thence to land the last party near a third pack.
The boys trotted in Bill's wake. Two pennant bearers, carrying flags to mark the heaps of "fat," as they should be formed, led the file. One of these men – it happened by chance, to all appearances – was the captain's enemy, Tim Tuttle. Their work was particularly important on that day, with the crew of the Lucky Star working so near at hand; for the flags were to mark the ownership of the mounds of "fat," and any tampering with these "brands" would be likely to precipitate a violent encounter between the men of the rival ships.
"I'm thinkin' 'twill snow afore night," Bill panted, as they ran along; and, indeed, it appeared that it would.
The advance soon had to be made with caution. The hunters were so near the pack that the whines of the white coats could be heard. Archie could make out not only the harps, but the blow-holes beside which they lay in family groups. At this point the men formed in twos and threes, and dispersed. In a few minutes more, they rushed upon the prey, striking right and left.
The ice was soon strewn with dead seals. It was harvest time for these impoverished Newfoundlanders. Lives of seals for lives of men and women! Bill o' Burnt Bay had ten "kids" at home, and he was merciless and mighty in destruction.
Archie and Billy came upon a family of four, lying at some distance from their blow-hole – two grown harps, a "jar," which is a one year old seal, and a ranger, which is three years old and spotted like a leopard. Billy attacked the ranger without hesitation. Archie raised his gaff above the fluffy little jar, which was fanning itself with its flipper, and whining.
"I can't do it!" he exclaimed, lowering his club, and turning away, faint at heart; then "Look, Billy!" he cried, in half amused wonderment.
The old seals had wriggled off to the blow-hole, moving upon their flippers, in short jumps, as fast as a man could walk. Apparently they had reached the hole at the same instant, which was not wide enough to admit them both. Neither would give way to the other. They were stuck fast, their heads below, their fat bodies above.
Their selfish haste was their undoing. Billy was not loath to take advantage of their predicament.
Thus, everywhere, the men were at work. There was no friction with the crew of the Lucky Star; the whole party worked amicably, and almost side by side. When they had dispersed the pack, the "sculping" knives were drawn, and the labour of skinning was vigorously prosecuted. The skins, with the blubber adhering, were piled in heaps of six or more, according to the strength of the men who were to "tow" them to the edge of the field, where the ship was to return in the evening; and every "tow" was marked with an Armstrong and Son flag.
The Lucky Star's recall gun surprised the men before the work was finished. They looked up to find that the dusk was upon them, and that the snow was falling – falling ever more thickly, and drifting with the wind. The men of the Lucky Star stopped work, hurriedly saw to it that their heaps of pelt were all marked, and started on a run for the ship; for, on the ice fields, the command of the recall gun is never disregarded.
"There goes the Dictator's gun," shouted one of the men.
A second boom added force to the warning. The captain was evidently anxious to have his men safe out of the storm; the "fat" could be taken aboard in the morning. So Bill o' Burnt Bay, who was in tacit command of the party, called his men about him, and led the return. It was a mile over the ice to the Dictator, which lay waiting, with the second and third parties aboard. He was in haste; moreover, he had Sir Archibald Armstrong's son in his care: perhaps, that is why he did not stop to count the Dictator's heaps of pelt before he started.
"Come, now, Tuttle, don't lag!" he shouted, ambitious to have his party return with no delay.
But Tuttle still lagged – or, rather, ran from heap to heap of pelt, as though to make sure that each was marked. He busied himself, indeed, until the party was well in advance – until, as he thought, there was no eye to see what he did under cover of the driving snow. Then he quickly snatched Lucky Star flags from half a dozen heaps of "fat," cast them away, and planted Dictator flags in their stead – a dishonourable duty which the house-flag of Armstrong & Son had never before been made to do.
Quite sure, now, that he had shot an arrow that would sorely wound Captain Hand and the firm of Armstrong & Son, Tuttle ran after his party. When he was yet some distance behind, he turned about, and saw a small figure following him. He stopped dead – and waited until that small figure came up.
"Topsail," he demanded, "what you been doin' back there?"
Billy was very much frightened; but he was a truthful boy, and he now told the truth. "Been sculpin' an' pilin' me swiles, sir," he stammered.
"Has you been touchin' them flags?"
"N-n-no, sir. I didn't have no time. I was afeared I'd get lost in the snow."
Tuttle caught the boy by the shoulders, and stared fiercely into his eyes. "Did you see what I done?" he demanded.
Billy was strongly tempted to choose the easier way; but, as I have said, he was a truthful lad, and a brave lad, too. The temptation passed in a moment, and he fearlessly returned Tuttle's stare.
"Yes, sir," he said.
"If you tells Cap'n Hand what you saw," said Tuttle, tightening his grip, and bringing his face close to the lad's, "I'll – "
He did not complete the threat. Billy Topsail's imagination, as he knew, would conceive the most terrible revenge.
"Yes, sir," Billy gasped, vacantly; for he was more frightened than he had ever before been in his short life.
That was all. They ran at full speed after their party, and soon joined it. Tuttle kept at Billy's side while they were getting aboard the ship, kept at his side while supper was served in the forecastle, kept at his side through the short evening; kept at his side all the time, in a haunting, threatening way that frightened Billy as nothing else could, until the lad, tired out and utterly discouraged as to the purpose he had formed, turned in, no less to escape Tuttle, who had now grown hateful to him, than to rest.
"Oh," he thought, "if Archie had on'y come t' the fo'c's'le this night, I might 'a' told him; but now – I thinks – I'll be afeared, in the mornin'."