Billy Topsail & Company by Norman Duncan (good novels to read in english TXT) 📕

you will," said Sir Archibald, shortly; "the craft's yours."

* * * * *


Archie Armstrong came aboard that afternoon--followed by two porters and two trunks. He was Sir Archibald's son; there was no doubt about that: a fine, hardy lad--robust, straight, agile, alert, with his head carried high; merry, quick-minded, ready-tongued, fearless in wind and high sea. His hair was tawny, his eyes blue and wide and clear, his face broad and good-humoured. He was something of a small dandy, too, as the two porters and the two trunks might have explained. The cut of his coat, the knot in his cravat, the polish on his boots, the set of his knickerbockers, were always matters of deep concern to him. But this did not interfere with his friendship with Billy Topsail, the outport boy. That friendship had been formed in times of peril and hardship, when a boy was a boy, and clothes had had nothing to say in the matter.

Archie bounded up the gangplank, crossed the deck in three leaps and stuck his head into the forecastle.

"Ahoy, Billy Topsail!" he roared.

"Ahoy, yourself!" Billy shouted. "Come below, Archie, an' take a look at Jimmie Grimm."

Jimmie Grimm was at once taken into the company of friends.

-----


[2] The story of this voyage--the tale of the time when Archie
Armstrong and Billy Topsail and Bill o' Burnt Bay were lost in
the snow on the ice-floe--with certain other happenings in which
Billy Topsail was involved--is related in "The Adventures of
Billy Topsail."



CHAPTER X


_In Which the Cook Smells Smoke, and the "First Venture"
In a Gale of Wind Off the Chunks, Comes Into Still Graver
Peril, Which Billy Topsail Discovers_


Skipper Bill o' Burnt Bay got the _First Venture_ under way at dawn of the next day. It was blowing a stiff breeze. A fine, fresh wind was romping fair to the northwest, where, far off, Ruddy Cove lay and Mrs. Skipper William waited.

"I 'low," Skipper Bill mused, as the schooner slipped through the narrows, "that that there insurance wouldn't o' done much harm anyhow."

There was an abrupt change of weather. It came without warning; and there was no hint of apology to the skipper of the _First Venture_. When the schooner was still to the s'uth'ard of the dangerous Chunks, but approaching them, she was beating laboriously into a violent and capricious head wind. Bill o' Burnt Bay, giving heed to Sir Archibald's injunction, kept her well off the group of barren islands. They were mere rocks, scattered widely. Some of them showed their forbidding heads to passing craft; others were submerged, as though lying in wait. It would be well to sight them, he knew, that he might better lay his course; but he was bound that no lurking rock should "pick up" his ship.

"Somehow or other," he thought, "I wisht I _had_ took out that there insurance."

At dusk it began to snow. What with this thick, blinding cloud driving past, shrouding the face of the sea, and what with the tumultuous waves breaking over her, and what with the roaring gale drowning her lee rail, the _First Venture_ was having a rough time of it. Skipper Bill, with his hands on the wheel, had the very satisfactory impression, for which he is not to be blamed, that he was "a man." But when, at last, the _First Venture_ began to howl for mercy in no uncertain way, he did not hesitate to waive the wild joy of "driving" for the satisfaction of keeping his spars in the sockets.

"Better call the hands, Tom!" he shouted to the first hand. "We'll reef her."

Tom put his head into the forecastle. The fire in the little round stove was roaring lustily; and the swinging lamp filled the narrow place with warm light.

"Out with you, lads!" Tom cried. "All hands on deck t' reef the mains'l!"

Up they tumbled; and up tumbled Archie Armstrong, and up tumbled Jimmie Grimm, and up tumbled Billy Topsail.

"Blowin' some," thought Archie. "Great sailin' breeze. What's he reefin' for?"

The great sail was obstinate. Ease the schooner as Skipper Bill would, it was still hard for his crew of two men, three lads and a cook to grasp and confine the canvas. Meantime, the schooner lurched along, tossing her head, digging her nose into the frothy waves. A cask on the after deck broke its lashings, pursued a mad and devastating career fore and aft, and at last went spinning into the sea. Skipper Bill devoutly hoped that nothing else would get loose above or below. He cast an apprehensive glance into the darkening cloud of snow ahead. There was no promise to be descried. And to leeward the first islands of the Chunks, which had been sighted an hour ago, had disappeared in the night.

"Lively with that mains'l, lads!" Skipper Bill shouted, lifting his voice above the wind. "We'll reef the fores'l!"

The crew had been intent upon the task in hand. Not a man had yet smelled smoke. And they continued to wrestle with the obstinate sail, each wishing, heartily enough, to get the dirty-weather job well done, and to return to the comfort of the forecastle. It was the cook who first paused to sniff--to sniff again--and to fancy he smelled smoke. But a gust of wind at that moment bellied his fold of the sail, and he forgot the dawning suspicion in an immediate tussle to reduce the disordered canvas. A few minutes more of desperate work and the mainsail was securely reefed; but these were supremely momentous intervals, during which the fate of the _First Venture_ was determined.

"All stowed, sir!" Archie Armstrong shouted to the skipper.

"Get at that fores'l, then!" was the order.

With the customary, "Ay, ay, sir!" shouted cheerily, in the manner of good men and willing lads, the crew ran forward.

Skipper Bill remembers that the cook tripped and went sprawling into the lee scupper; and that he scrambled out of the water with a laugh.

It was the last laugh aboard the _First Venture_; for the condition of the schooner was then instantly discovered.

"Fire!" screamed Billy Topsail.

The _First Venture_ was all ablaze forward.


CHAPTER XI


_In Which the "First Venture" All Ablaze Forward, Is
Headed For the Rocks and Breakers of the Chunks, While
Bill o' Burnt Bay and His Crew Wait for the Explosion of
the Powder in Her Hold. In Which, Also, a Rope Is Put to
Good Use_


"Fire!"

A cloud of smoke broke from the forecastle and was swept off by the wind. A tongue of red flame flashed upward and expired. Skipper Bill did not need the cries of terror and warning to inform him. The _First Venture_ was afire! And she was not only afire; she was off the Chunks in a gale of wind and snow.

"Aft, here, one o' you!"

When Billy Topsail took the wheel, the skipper plunged into the forecastle. It was a desperate intention. He was back in a moment, singed and gasping. But in that interval he had made out that the forecastle stove, in some violent lurch of the schooner, had broken loose, and had been bandied about, distributing red coals in every part. He had made out, moreover, that the situation of the schooner was infinitely perilous, if not, indeed, quite beyond hope. The forecastle was all ablaze. In five minutes it would be a furnace.

"We're lost!" Jimmie Grimm cried, staring at the frothy waves running past.

"Not yet," Archie grimly replied.

They were all of heart and strength and ingenuity; and they worked with all their might. But the buckets of water, and the great seas, which Skipper Bill, in desperation, deliberately shipped, made little impression. It was soon evident that the little _First Venture_ was doomed. Meantime, the skipper had brought her before the wind, and she was now flying towards the inhospitable Chunks. The skipper was less concerned for his schooner than for the lives of his crew. The ship was already lost; the crew--well, how _could_ the crew survive the rocks and gigantic breakers of the Chunks?

It was the only hope. No small boat could for a moment live in the sea that was running. The schooner must be beached on the Chunks. There was no other refuge. But how beach her? It was a dark night, with the snow flying thick. Was it possible to sight a black, low-lying rock? There was nothing for it but to drive with the wind in the hope of striking. There were many islands; she might strike one. But would it really be an island, whereon a man might crawl out of reach of the sea? or would it be a rock swept by the breakers? Chance would determine that. Skipper Bill was powerless.

But would she make the Chunks before she was ablaze from stem to stern? Again, the skipper was powerless; he could do no more than give her all the wind that blew.

So he ordered the reefs shaken out--and waited.

"Tom," said the skipper, presently, to the first hand, "was it you stowed the cargo?"

"Yes, sir."

There was a pause. Archie Armstrong and Jimmie Grimm, aft near the wheel, wondered why the skipper had put the question.

"An' where," the skipper asked, quietly, "did you put the powder?"

"For'ard, sir."

"How far for'ard?"

"Fair up against the forecastle bulkhead!"

The appalling significance of this was plain to the crew. The bulkhead was a thin partition dividing the forecastle from the hold.

"Archie," Skipper Bill drawled, "you better loose the stays'l sheet. She ought t' do better than this." He paused. "Fair against the forecastle bulkhead?" he continued. "Tom, you better get the hatch off, an' see what you're able t' do about gettin' them six kegs o' powder out. No--bide here!" he added. "Take the wheel again, Billy. Get that hatch off, some o' you."

It was the skipper himself who dropped into the hold. The cargo was packed tight. Heavy barrels of flour, puncheons of molasses, casks of pork and beef, lay between the skipper and the powder. He crawled forward, wriggling in the narrow space between the freight and the deck. No fire had as yet entered the hold; but the place was full of stifling smoke. It was apparent that the removal of the powder would be the labour of hours; and there were no hours left for labour. The skipper could stand the smoke no longer. He retreated towards the hatch. How long it would be before the fire communicated itself to the cargo--how long it would be before the explosion of six kegs of powder would scatter the wreck of the _First Venture_ upon the surface of the sea--no man could tell. But the end was inevitable.

Anxious questions greeted the skipper when again he stood upon the wind-swept deck.

"Close the hatch," said he.

"No chance, sir?" Archie asked.

"No, b'y."

The forecastle was already closed. There was no gleam of fire anywhere to be seen. The bitter wind savoured of