Chapter XII

_In Which Billy Topsail's Agreeable Qualities Win a Warm Welcome
with Doctor Luke at Our Harbour, There is an Explosion at Ragged
Run, Tommy West Drops Through the Ice and Vanishes, and Doctor Luke
is in a Way Never to Be Warned of the Desperate Need of His
Services_

In Doctor Luke's little hospital at Our Harbour, Billy Topsail fell in with a charming group--Doctor Luke and his friends; and being himself a boy of a good many attractive qualities, and of natural good manners, which association with his friend Archie Armstrong, of St. John's, Sir Archibald's son, had helped to fashion--being a manly, good-mannered, humorous fellow, he was very soon warmly accepted. There was no mystery about Doctor Luke. He was an Englishman--a well-bred, cultured man; and having been wrecked on the coast, and having perceived the great need of a physician in those parts, he had thrown in his lot for good and all with the Labrador folk. And he was obviously happy--both busy and happy. That he regretted his determination was a preposterous thing to assume; on the contrary, he positively did not regret it--he whistled and sang and laughed and laboured, and Billy Topsail was convinced that he was not only the most useful man in the world, but the most delightful and best, and the happiest, too.

That Doctor Luke was useful was very soon evident to an astonishing degree. Teddy Brisk's leg was scraped--it was eventually healed and became quite as sound as Billy Topsail's "off shank." But there was a period of convalescence, during which Billy Topsail had all the opportunity in the world to observe just how mightily useful Doctor Luke was. The demands upon him were extraordinary; and his response to them--his ready, cheerful, skillful, brave response--was more extraordinary still.

Winter was not yet done with: summer delayed--there was more snow, more frost; and the ice drifted in and out with the variable winds: so that travelling in those parts was at its most dangerous period. Yet Doctor Luke went about with small regard for what might happen--afoot, with the dogs, and in a punt, when the ice, having temporarily drifted away, left open water. Up and down the coast, near and far, always on the wing: that was Doctor Luke--the busiest, happiest, most useful man Billy Topsail had ever known.

And Billy Topsail was profoundly affected by all this beneficent activity. He wished to emulate it. This was a secret, to be sure; there was no reason for Billy Topsail to think that a fisherman's son like himself would ever be presented with the opportunity to "wield a knife" and be made master of the arts of healing--and consequently he said nothing about the growing ambition. But the ambition flourished.

When Doctor Luke returned from his professional calls with tales of illness cured and distress alleviated, and when Billy Topsail reflected that there would have been neither cure nor alleviation had it not been for Doctor Luke's skill and kindly heart, Billy Topsail wanted with all his strength to be about that selfsame business. And there was a good deal in the performance of it to appeal to a lad like Billy Topsail--the adventure of the thing: for Doctor Luke seldom counted the chances, when they seemed not too unreasonably against him, and when the need was urgent he did not count them at all.

Billy Topsail was just a little bit puzzled at first. Why should Doctor Luke do these things? There was no gain--no material gain worth considering; but it did not take Billy Topsail long to perceive that there was in fact great gain--far exceeding material gain: the satisfaction in doing a good deed for what Doctor Luke called "the love of God" and nothing else whatsoever. Doctor Luke was not attached to any Mission. His work was his own: his field was his own--nobody contributed to his activities; nobody helped him in any way. Yet his work was done in the spirit of the missionary; and that was what Billy Topsail liked about it--the masterful, generous, high-minded quality of it.

Being an honest, healthy lad, Billy Topsail set Doctor Luke in the hero's seat and began to worship, as no good boy could very well help doing; it was not long, indeed, before Doctor Luke had grown to be as great a hero as Sir Archibald Armstrong, Archie's father--and that is saying a good deal. In the lap of the future there lay some adventures in which Billy Topsail and Archie Armstrong were to be concerned; but Billy Topsail was not aware of that.

Billy Topsail was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet. Sometimes, however, he sighed:

"I wish Archie was here!"

And that wish was to come true.

* * * * *

Before Teddy Brisk was well enough to be sent home, something happened at Ragged Run Cove, which lay across Anxious Bight, near by the hospital at Our Harbour; and Doctor Luke and Billy Topsail were at once drawn into the consequences of the accident. It was March weather. There was sunshine and thaw. Anxious Bight was caught over with rotten ice from Ragged Run Cove to the heads of Our Harbour. A rumour of seals--a herd on the Arctic drift-ice offshore--had come in from the Spotted Horses. It inspired instant haste in all the cottages of Ragged Run--an eager, stumbling haste.

In Bad-Weather Tom West's wife's kitchen, somewhat after ten o'clock in the morning, in the midst of this hilarious scramble to be off to the floe, there was a flash and spit of fire, pale in the sunshine, and the clap of an explosion and the clatter of a sealing gun on the bare floor; and in the breathless, dead little interval, enduring between the appalling detonation and a man's groan of dismay and a woman's choke and scream of terror--in this shocked silence, Dolly West, Bad-Weather Tom's small maid, and Joe West's niece, stood swaying, wreathed in gray smoke, her little hands pressed tight to her eyes.

She was a pretty little creature--she had been a pretty little creature: there had been yellow curls, in the Labrador way--and rosy cheeks and grave blue eyes; but now of all this shy, fair loveliness----

"You've killed her!"

"Dear Lord--no!" cried Uncle Joe West, whose gun had exploded.

Dolly dropped her hands. She reached out, then, for something to grasp.

And she plainted:

"I ithn't dead, mother. I juth'--I juth' can't thee."

She extended her red hands.

"They're all wet!" she complained.

By this time the mother had the little girl gathered close in her arms.

She moaned:

"Doctor Luke--quick!"

Tommy West caught up his cap and mittens and sprang to the door.

"Not by the Bight!" Joe West shouted.

"No, sir."

Dolly West whimpered:

"It thmart-th, mother!"

"By Mad Harry an' Thank-the-Lord!"

"Ay, sir."

Dolly screamed--now:

"It hurt-th! Oh, oh, it hurt-th!"

"An' haste, lad!"

"Ay, sir."

There was of course no doctor at Ragged Run; there was a doctor, Doctor Luke, at Our Harbour, however--across Anxious Bight. Tommy West avoided the rotten ice of the Bight, which he dared not cross, and took the 'longshore trail by way of Mad Harry and Thank-the-Lord. At noon he was past Mad Harry, his little legs wearing well and his breath coming easily through his expanded nostrils--he had not paused; and at four o'clock--still on a dog-trot--he had hauled down the chimney smoke of Thank-the-Lord and was bearing up for Our Harbour. Early dusk caught him short-cutting the doubtful ice of Thank-the-Lord Cove; and half an hour later, midway of the passage to Our Harbour, with two miles left to accomplish--dusk falling thick and cold, then, and a frosty wind blowing--the heads of Our Harbour looming black and solid in the wintry night beyond--he dropped through the ice and vanished. There was not a sign of him left--some bubbles, perhaps: nothing more.