Billy Topsail & Company - Norman Duncan (best love novels of all time TXT) 📗

American tourists--were relieved to learn, when the anchor went down with a splash and a rumble, that the "old man" was to "hang her down" until the weather turned "civil."

Accompanied by the old schoolmaster, who was to lend him aid in registering the letter to the Kurepain Company, Jim Grimm went aboard in the punt. It was then dark.

"You knows a Yankee when you sees one," said he, when they reached the upper deck. "Point un out, an' I'll ask un."

"Ay, _I'm_ travelled," said the schoolmaster, importantly. "And 'twould be wise to ask about this Kurepain Company before you post the letter."

Thus it came about that Jim Grimm timidly approached two gentlemen who were chatting merrily in the lee of the wheel-house.

"Do you know the Kurepain, sir?" he asked.

"Eh? What?" the one replied.

"Hook's, sir."

"Hook's? In the name of wonder, man, Hook's what?"

"Kurepain, sir."

"Hook's Kurepain," said the stranger. "Doctor," addressing his companion, "do you recommend----"

The doctor shrugged his shoulders.

"Then you do not?" said the other.

The doctor eyed Jim Grimm. "Why do you ask?" he inquired.

"'Tis for me little son, sir," Jim replied. "He've a queer sort o' rheumaticks. We're thinkin' the Kurepain will cure un. It have cured a Minister o' the Gospel, sir, an' a Champion o' the World; an' we was allowin' that it wouldn't have much trouble t' cure little Jimmie Grimm. They's as much as twelve dollars, sir, in this here letter, which I'm sendin' away. I'm wantin' t' know, sir, if they'll send the cure if I sends the money."

The doctor was silent for a moment. "Where do you live?" he asked, at last.

Jim pointed to a far-off light. "Jimmie will be at that window," he said, "lookin' out at the steamer's lights."

"Do you care for a run ashore?" asked the doctor, turning to his fellow tourist.

"If it would not overtax you."

"No, no--I'm strong enough, now. The voyage has put me on my feet again. Come--let us go."

Jim Grimm took them ashore in the punt; guided them along the winding, rocky path; led them into the room where Jimmie sat at the window. The doctor felt of Jimmie's knee, and asked him many questions. Then he held a whispered consultation with his companion and the schoolmaster; and of their conversation Jimmie caught such words and phrases as "slight operation" and "chloroform" and "that table" and "poor light, but light enough" and "rough and ready sort of work" and "no danger." Then Jim Grimm was dispatched to the steamer with the doctor's friend; and when they came back the man carried a bag in his hand. The doctor asked Jimmie a question, and Jimmie nodded his head. Whereupon, the doctor called him a brave lad, and sent Jim Grimm out to the kitchen to keep his wife company for a time, first requiring him to bring a pail of water and another lamp.

When they called Jim Grimm in again--he knew what they were about, and it seemed a long, long time before the call came--little Jimmie was lying on the couch, sick and pale, with his knee tightly bandaged, but with his eyes glowing.

"Mama! Father!" the boy whispered, exultantly. "They says I'm cured."

"Yes," said the doctor; "he'll be all right, now. His trouble was not rheumatism. It was caused by a fragment of the bone, broken off at the knee-joint. At least, that's as plain as I can make it to you. He was bitten by a dog, was he not? So he says. And he remembers that he felt a stab of pain in his knee at the time. That or the fall probably accounts for it. At any rate, I have removed that fragment. He'll be all right, after a bit. I've told the schoolmaster how to take care of him, and I'll leave some medicine, and--well--he'll soon be all right."

When the doctor was about to step from the punt to the steamer's ladder, half an hour later, Jim Grimm held up a letter to him.

"'Tis for you, sir," he said.

"What's this?" the doctor demanded.

"'Tis for you to keep, sir," Jim answered, with dignity. "'Tis the money for the work you done."

"Money!" cried the doctor. "Why, really," he stammered, "I--you see, this is my vacation--and I----"

"I 'low, sir," said Jim, quietly, "that you'll 'blige me."

"Well, well!" exclaimed the doctor, being wise, "that I will!"

Jimmie Grimm got well long before it occurred to his father that the fishing at Buccaneer Cove was poor and that he might do better elsewhere.


CHAPTER V


_In Which Jimmie Grimm Moves to Ruddy Cove and Settles on
the Slope of the Broken Nose, Where, Falling in With Billy
Topsail and Donald North, He Finds the Latter a Coward,
But Learns the Reason, and Scoffs no Longer. In Which,
Also, Donald North Leaps a Breaker to Save a Salmon Net,
and Acquires a Strut_


When old Jim Grimm moved to Ruddy Cove and settled his wife and son in a little white cottage on the slope of a bare hill called Broken Nose, Jimmie Grimm was not at all sorry. There were other boys at Ruddy Cove--far more boys, and jollier boys, and boys with more time to spare, than at Buccaneer. There was Billy Topsail, for one, a tow-headed, blue-eyed, active lad of Jimmie's age; and there was Donald North, for another. Jimmie Grimm liked them both. Billy Topsail was the elder, and up to more agreeable tricks; but Donald was good enough company for anybody, and would have been quite as admirable as Billy Topsail had it not been that he was afraid of the sea. They did not call him a coward at Ruddy Cove; they merely said that he was afraid of the sea.

And Donald North was.

* * * * *


Jimmie Grimm, himself no coward in a blow of wind, was inclined to scoff, at first; but Billy Topsail explained, and then Jimmie Grimm scoffed no longer, but hoped that Donald North would be cured of fear before he was much older. As Billy Topsail made plain to the boy, in excuse of his friend, Donald North was brave enough until he was eight years old; but after the accident of that season he was so timid that he shrank from the edge of the cliff when the breakers were beating the rocks below, and trembled when his father's fishing punt heeled to the faintest gust.

"Billy," he had said to Billy Topsail, on the unfortunate day when he caught the fear, being then but a little chap, "leave us go sail my new fore-an'-after. I've rigged her out with a fine new mizzens'l."

"Sure, b'y!" said Billy. "Where to?"

"Uncle George's wharf-head. 'Tis a place as good as any."

Off Uncle George's wharf-head the water was deep--deeper than Donald could fathom at low tide--and it was cold, and covered a rocky bottom, upon which a multitude of starfish and prickly sea-eggs lay in clusters. It was green, smooth and clear, too; sight carried straight down to where the purple-shelled mussels gripped the rocks.

The tide had fallen somewhat and was still on the ebb. Donald found it a long reach from the wharf to the water. By and by, as the water ran out of the harbour, the most he could do was to touch the tip of the mast of the miniature ship with his fingers. Then a little gust of wind crept round the corner of the wharf, rippling the water as it came near. It caught the sails of the new fore-and-after, and the little craft fell over on another tack and shot away.

"Here, you!" Donald cried. "Come back, will you?"

He reached for the mast. His fingers touched it, but the boat escaped before they closed. He laughed, hitched nearer to the edge of the wharf, and reached again. The wind had failed; the little boat was tossing in the ripples, below and just beyond his grasp.

"I can't cotch her!" he called to Billy Topsail, who was back near the net-horse, looking for squids.

Billy looked up, and laughed to see Donald's awkward position--to see him hanging over the water, red-faced and straining. Donald laughed, too. At once he lost his balance and fell forward.

This was in the days before he could swim, so he floundered about in the water, beating it wildly, to bring himself to the surface. When he came up, Billy Topsail was leaning over to catch him. Donald lifted his arm. His fingers touched Billy's, that was all--just touched them.

Then he sank; and when he came up again, and again lifted his arm, there was half a foot of space between his hand and Billy's. Some measure of self-possession returned. He took a long breath, and let himself sink. Down he went, weighted by his heavy boots.

Those moments were full of the terror of which, later, he could not rid himself. There seemed to be no end to the depth of the water in that place. But when his feet touched bottom, he was still deliberate in all that he did.

For a moment he let them rest on the rock. Then he gave himself a strong upward push. It needed but little to bring him within reach of Billy Topsail's hand. He shot out of the water and caught that hand. Soon afterwards he was safe on the wharf.[1]

"Sure, mum, I thought I were drownded that time!" he said to his mother, that night. "When I were goin' down the last time I thought I'd never see you again."

"But you wasn't drownded, b'y," said his mother, softly.

"But I might ha' been," said he.

There was the rub. He was haunted by what might have happened. Soon he became a timid, shrinking lad, utterly lacking confidence in the strength of his arms and his skill with an oar and a sail; and after that came to pass, his life was hard. He was afraid to go out to the fishing-grounds, where he must go every day with his father to keep the head of the punt up to the wind, and he had a great fear of the wind and the fog and the breakers. But he was not a coward. On the contrary, although he was circumspect in all his dealings with the sea, he never failed in his duty.

In Ruddy Cove all the men put out their salmon nets when the ice breaks up and drifts away southward, for the spring run of salmon then begins. These nets are laid in the sea, at right angles to the rocks and extending out from them; they are set alongshore, it may be a mile or two, from the narrow passage to the harbour. The outer end is buoyed and anchored, and the other is lashed to an iron stake which is driven deep into some crevice of the rock.

When belated icebergs hang offshore a watch must be kept on the nets, lest they be torn away or ground to pulp by the ice.

"The wind's haulin' round a bit, b'y," said Donald's father, one day in spring, when