hand he came upon a small, thin pan, not more than six feet square.
“Haste, b’y!” cried his father.
“They’s one here,” he called back, “but ’tis too small. Is there none there?”
“No, b’y. Fetch that over.”
Here was desperate need. If the lad were to meet it, he must act instantly and fearlessly. He stepped out on the pan and pushed off with his gaff. Using his gaff as a paddle–as these gaffs are constantly used in ferrying by the Newfoundland fishermen–and helped by the wind, he soon ferried himself to where Job North stood waiting with his companions.
“’Tis too small,” said Stevens. “’Twill not hold two.”
North looked dubiously at the pan. Alexander Bludd shook his head in despair.
“Get back while you can, b’y,” said North. “Quick! We’re driftin’ fast! The pan’s too small.”
“I thinks ’tis big enough for one man an’ me,” said Donald.
“Get aboard an’ try it, Alexander,” said Job. “Quick, man!”
Alexander Bludd stepped on. The pan tipped fearfully, and the water ran over it; but when the weight of the man and the boy was properly adjusted, it seemed capable of bearing them both across. They pushed off, and seemed to go well enough; but when Alexander moved to put his gaff in the water the pan tipped again. Donald came near losing his footing. He moved nearer the edge and the pan came to a level. They paddled with all their strength, for the wind was blowing against them, and there was need of haste if three passages were to be made. Meantime the gap had grown so wide that the wind had turned the ripples into waves, which washed over the pan as high as Donald’s ankles.
But they came safely across. Bludd stepped swiftly ashore, and Donald pushed off. With the wind in his favour he was soon once more at the other side.
“Now, Bill,” said North; “your turn next.”
“I can’t do it, Job,” said Stevens. “Get aboard yourself. The lad can’t come back again.
“We’re driftin’ out too fast. He’s your lad, an’ you’ve the right to–”
“Ay, I can come back,” said Donald. “Come on, Bill! Be quick!”
Stevens was a lighter man than Alexander Bludd; but the passage was wider, and still widening, for the pack had gathered speed. When Stevens was safely landed he looked back. A vast white shadow was all that he could see. Job North’s figure had been merged with the night.
“Donald, b’y,” he said, “you got t’ go back for your father, but I’m fair feared you’ll never–”
“Give me a push, Bill,” said Donald.
Stevens caught the end of the gaff and pushed the lad out.
“Good-bye, Donald,” he called.
When the pan touched the other side Job North stepped aboard without a word. He was a heavy man. With his great body on the ice-cake, the difficulty of return was enormously increased, as Donald had foreseen. The pan was overweighted. Time and again it nearly shook itself free of its load and rose to the surface. North was near the centre, plying his gaff with difficulty, but Donald was on the extreme edge. Moreover, the distance was twice as great as it had been at first, and the waves were running high, and it was dark.
They made way slowly. The pan often wavered beneath them; but Donald was intent upon the thing he was doing, and he was not afraid. Then came the time–they were but ten yards off the standing edge–when North struck his gaff too deep into the water. He lost his balance, struggled to regain it, failed–and fell off. Before Donald was awake to the danger, the edge of the pan sank under him, and he, too, toppled off.
Donald had learned to swim now. When he came to the surface, his father was breast-high in the water, looking for him.
“Are you all right, Donald?” said his father.
“Yes, sir.”
“Can you reach the ice alone?”
“Yes, sir,” said Donald, quietly.
Alexander Bludd and Bill Stevens helped them up on the standing edge, and they were home by the kitchen fire in half an hour.
“’Twas bravely done, b’y,” said Job.
So Donald North learned that perils feared 68 are much more terrible than perils faced. He had a courage of the finest kind, in the following days of adventure, now close upon him, had young Donald.
CHAPTER VII
In Which Bagg, Imported From the Gutters of London, Lands At Ruddy Cove From the Mail-Boat, Makes the Acquaintance of Jimmie Grimm and Billy Topsail, and Tells Them ’E Wants to Go ’Ome. In Which, Also, the Way to Catastrophe Is Pointed
The mail-boat comes to Ruddy Cove in the night, when the shadows are black and wet, and the wind, blowing in from the sea, is charged with a clammy mist. The lights in the cottages are blurred by the fog. They form a broken line of yellow splotches rounding the harbour’s edge. Beyond is deep night and a wilderness into which the wind drives. In the morning the fog still clings to the coast. Within the cloudy wall it is all glum and dripping wet. When a veering wind sweeps the fog away, there lies disclosed a world of rock and forest and fuming sea, stretching from the end of the earth to the summits of the inland hills–a place of ruggedness and hazy distances; of silence and a vast, forbidding loneliness.
It was on such a morning that Bagg, the London gutter-snipe, having been landed at Ruddy Cove from the mail-boat the night before–this being in the fall before Donald North played ferryman between the standing edge and the floe–it was on such a foggy morning, I say, that Bagg made the acquaintance of Billy Topsail and Jimmie Grimm.
“Hello!” said Billy Topsail.
“Hello!” Jimmie Grimm echoed.
“You blokes live ’ere?” Bagg whined.
“Uh-huh,” said Billy Topsail.
“This yer ’ome?” pursued Bagg.
Billy nodded.
“Wisht I was ’ome!” sighed Bagg. “I say,” he added, “which way’s ’ome from ’ere?”
“You mean Skipper ’Zekiel’s cottage?”
“I mean Lun’on,” said Bagg.
“Don’t know,” Billy answered. “You better ask Uncle Tommy Luff. He’ll tell you.”
Bagg had been exported for adoption. The gutters of London are never exhausted of their product of malformed little bodies and souls; they provide waifs for the remotest colonies of the empire. So, as it chanced, Bagg had been exported to Newfoundland–transported from his native alleys to this vast and lonely place. Bagg was scrawny and sallow, with bandy legs and watery eyes and a fantastic cranium; and he had a snub nose, which turned blue when a cold wind struck it. But when he was landed from the mail-boat he found a warm welcome, just the same, from Ruth Rideout, Ezekiel’s wife, by whom he had been taken for adoption.
Later
