of Tight Cove, Cracker and Smoke and Tucker and Sling; but to-morrow night – he would not be so strong to-morrow night.
The dogs did not attack that night. Billy heard them close – the sniffing and whining and restless movement in the dark that lay beyond the light of his feeble fire and was accentuated by it. But that was all.
It was now clear weather and the dark of the moon. The day was bright and warm. When night fell again it was starlight – every star of them all twinkling its measure of pale light to the floe. The dogs were plain as shifting, shadowy creatures against the white field of ice. Billy Topsail fought twice that night. This was between midnight and dawn. There was no maneuvering. The dogs gathered openly, viciously, and delivered a direct attack. Billy beat them off. He was gasping and discouraged, though, at the end of the encounter. They would surely come again – and they did. They waited – an hour, it may have been; and then they came.
There was a division of the pack. Six dogs – Spunk and Biscuit and Hero in advance – rushed Billy Topsail. It was a reluctant assault. Billy disposed of the six – after all, they were dogs of Tight Cove, not wolves from the rigours of the timber; and Billy was then attracted to the rescue of Teddy Brisk, who was tied up in the wolfskin bag, by the boy's muffled screams. Cracker and Smoke and Tucker and Sling were worrying the wolfskin bag and dragging it off. They dropped it and took flight when Billy came roaring at them with a club.
When Billy released him from the wolfskin bag the boy was still screaming. He was not quieted – his cries and sobbing – until the day was broad.
"Gimme my crutch!" said he. "I'll never go in that bag no more!"
"Might as well wield your crutch," Billy agreed.
To survive another night was out of the question. Another night came in due course, however, and was to be faced.
It was a gray day. Sky and ice and fields of ruffled water had no warmth of colour. All the world was both cold and drear. A breeze was stirring down from the north and would be bitter in the dusk. It cut and disheartened the castaways. It portended, moreover, a black night.
Teddy cried a good deal that day – a little whimper, with tears. He was cold and hungry – the first agony of starvation – and frightened and homesick. Billy fancied that his spirit was broken. As for Billy himself, he watched the dogs, which watched him patiently near by – a hopeless vigil for the man, for the dogs were fast approaching a pass of need in which hunger would dominate the fear of a man with a club. And Billy was acutely aware of this much – that nothing but the habitual fear of a man with a club had hitherto restrained the full fury and strength of the pack.
That fury, breaking with determination, would be irresistible. No man could beat off the attack of ten dogs that were not, in the beginning, already defeated and overcome by awe of him. In the dark – in the dark of that night Billy could easily be dragged down; and the dogs were manifestly waiting for the dark to fall.
It was to be the end.
"It looks bad – it do so, indeed!" Billy Topsail thought.
That was the full extent of his admission.
CHAPTER IX
In Which Attack is Threatened and Billy Topsail Strips Stark Naked in the Wind in Pursuit of a Desperate Expedient and with Small Chance of Success
Teddy Brisk kept watch for a skiff from Our Harbour or Come-Again Bight. He depended for the inspiration of this rescue on his mother's anxious love and sagacity. She would leave nothing to the indifferent dealings and cold issue of chance; it was never "more by good luck than good conduct" with her, ecod!
"I knows my mother's ways!" he sobbed, and he repeated this many times as the gray day drew on and began to fail. "I tells you, Billy, I knows my mother's ways!"
And they were not yet beyond sight of the coast. Scotchman's Breakfast of Ginger Head was a wee white peak against the drab of the sky in the southwest; and the ragged line of cliffs running south and east was a long, thin ridge on the horizon where the cottages of Walk Harbour and Our Harbour were.
No sail fluttered between – a sail might be confused with the colour of the ice, however, or not yet risen into view; but by and by, when the misty white circle of the sun was dropping low, the boy gave up hope, without yielding altogether to despair. There would be no skiff along that day, said he; but there would surely be a sail to-morrow, never fear – Skipper Thomas and a Tight Cove crew.
In the light airs the floe had spread. There was more open water than there had been. Fragments of ice had broken from the first vast pans into which Schooner Bay ice had been split in the break-up. These lesser, lighter pans moved faster than the greater ones; and the wind from the north – blown up to a steady breeze by this time – was driving them slowly south against the windward edge of the more sluggish fields in that direction.
At sunset – the west was white and frosty – a small pan caught Billy Topsail's eye and instantly absorbed his attention. It had broken from the field on which they were marooned and was under way on a diagonal across a quiet lane of black water, towards a second great field lying fifty fathoms or somewhat less to the south.
Were Billy Topsail and the boy aboard that pan the wind would ferry them away from the horrible menace of the dogs. It was a small pan – an area of about four hundred square feet; yet it would serve. It was not more than fifteen fathoms distant. Billy could swim that far – he was pretty sure he could swim that far, the endeavour being unencumbered; but the boy – a little fellow and a cripple – could not swim at all.
Billy jumped up.
"We've got t' leave this pan," said he, "an' forthwith too."
"Have you a notion, b'y?"
Billy laid off his seal-hide overjacket. He gathered up the dogs' traces – long strips of seal leather by means of which the dogs had drawn the komatik, a strip to a dog; and he began to knot them together – talking fast the while to distract the boy from the incident of peculiar peril in the plan.
The little pan in the lane – said he – would be a clever ferry. He would swim out and crawl aboard. It would be no trick at all. He would carry one end of the seal-leather line. Teddy Brisk would retain the other. Billy pointed out a ridge of ice against which Teddy Brisk could brace his sound leg. They would pull, then – each against the other; and presently the little pan would approach and lie alongside the big pan – there was none too much wind for that – and they would board the little pan and push off, and drift away with the wind, and leave the dogs to make the best of a bad job.
It would be a slow affair, though – hauling in a pan like that; the light was failing too – flickering out like a candle end – and there must be courage and haste – or failure.
Teddy Brisk at once discovered the interval of danger to himself.
"I'll be left alone with the dogs!" he objected.
"Sure, b'y," Billy coaxed; "but then you see – "
"I won't stay alone!" the boy sobbed. He shrank from the direction of the dogs towards Billy. At once the dogs attended. "I'm afeared t' stay alone!" he screamed. "No, no!"
"An we don't leave this pan," Billy scolded, "we'll be gobbled up in the night."
That was not the immediate danger. What confronted the boy was an immediate attack, which he must deal with alone.
"No! No! No!" the boy persisted.
"Ah,
