CHAPTER XIX
In Which Archie Armstrong Goes Deeper In and Thinks He Has Got Beyond His Depth. Bill o’ Burnt Bay Takes Deschamps By the Throat and the Issue Is Doubtful For a Time
That afternoon, after a short conversation with Josiah Cove, who had thus far managed to keep out of trouble, Archie Armstrong spent a brief time on the Heavenly Home to attend to the health and comfort of the watchman, who was in no bad way. Perhaps, after all, Archie thought–if Deschamps’ headache would only cause the removal of Bill o’ Burnt Bay to the dilapidated cell on the ground floor–the Heavenly Home might yet be sailed in triumph to Ruddy Cove. He strutted the deck, when necessary, with as much of the insolence of a civic official as he could command, and no man came near to question his right. When the watchman’s friends came from the Voyageur he drove them away in excellent French. They went meekly and with apologies for having disturbed him.
“So far, well enough,” thought Archie, as he rowed ashore, glad to be off the schooner.
It was after dark when, by appointment, the lad met Josiah. Josiah had provided himself with a crowbar and a short length of line, which he said would be sure to come useful, for he had always found it so. Then the two set off for the jail together, and there arrived some time after the drums had warned all good people to be within doors.
“What’s that?” said Josiah of a sudden.
It was a hoarse, melancholy croak proceeding from the other side of the wall. The skipper’s cell had been changed, as Archie had hoped, and the skipper himself was doing his duty to the bitter end. The street was deserted. They acted quickly. Josiah gave Archie a leg. He threw his jacket over the broken glass and mounted the wall. Josiah made off at once; it was his duty to have the skiff in readiness. Archie dropped into the garden.
“Is that you, b’y?” whispered Skipper Bill.
Again Archie once more found it impossible to take the adventure seriously. He began to laugh. It was far too much like the romances he had read to be real. It was play, it seemed–just like a game of smugglers and pirates, played on a summer’s afternoon.
“Is it you, Archie?” the skipper whispered again.
Archie chuckled aloud.
“Is the wind in the west?” the skipper asked.
“Ay,” Archie replied; “and blowing a smart sailing breeze.”
“Haste, then, lad!” said the skipper. “’Tis time t’ be off for Ruddy Cove.”
The window was low. With his crowbar Archie wrenched a bar from its socket. It came with a great clatter. It made the boy’s blood run cold to hear the noise. He pried the second and it yielded. Down fell a block of stone with a crash. While he was feeling for a purchase on the third bar Skipper Bill caught his wrist.
“Hist, lad!”
It was a footfall in the corridor. Skipper Bill slipped into the darkness by the door–vanished like a shadow. Archie dropped to the ground. By what unhappy chance had Deschamps come upon this visitation? Could it have been the silence of Skipper Bill? Archie heard the cover of the grating drawn away from the peep-hole in the door.
“He’s gone!”
That was Deschamps’ voice. Doubtless he had observed that two bars were missing from the window. Archie heard the key slipped into the lock and the door creak on its hinges. All the time he knew that Skipper Bill was crouched in the shadow–poised for the spring. The boy no longer thought of the predicament as a game. Nor was he inclined to laugh again. This was the ugly reality once more come to face him. There would be a fight in the cell. This he knew. And he waited in terror of the issue.
There was a quick step–a crash–a quick-drawn breath–the noise of a shock–a cry–a groan. Skipper Bill had kicked the door to and leaped upon the jailer. Archie pried the third bar out and broke the fourth with a blow. Then he squirmed through the window. Even in that dim light–half the night light without–he could see that the struggle was over. Skipper Bill had Deschamps by the throat with his great right hand. He had the jailer’s waist in his left arm as in a vise, and was forcing his head back–back–back–until Archie thought the Frenchman’s spine would crack.
“Don’t kill him!” Archie cried.
Skipper Bill had no intention of doing so; nor had Deschamps, the wrestler, any idea of allowing his back to be broken.
“Don’t kill him!” Archie begged again.
Deschamps was tugging at that right arm of iron–weakly, vainly tugging to wrench it away from his throat. His eyes were starting from their sockets, and his tongue protruded. Back went the head–back–back! The arm was pitiless. Back–back! He was fordone. In a moment his strength departed and he collapsed. He had not had time to call for help, so quick had been Bill’s hand. They bound his limp body with the length of line Josiah had brought, and they had no sooner bound him than he revived.
“You are a great man, monsieur,” he mumbled. “You have vanquished me–Deschamps! You will be famous–famous, monsieur. I shall send my resignation to His Excellency the Governor to-morrow. Deschamps–he is vanquished!”
“What’s he talkin’ about?” the skipper panted.
“You have beaten him.”
“Let’s be off, b’y,” the skipper gasped.
They locked the door on the inside, clambered through the window and scaled the wall. They sped through the deserted streets with all haste. They came to the landing-place and found the skiff tugging at her painter with her sails all unfurled. Presently they were under way for the Heavenly Home, and, having come safely aboard, hauled up the mainsail, set the jib and were about to slip the anchor. Then they heard the clang, clang, clang of a bell–a warning clang, clang, clang, which could mean but one thing: discovery.
“Fetch up that Frenchman,” the skipper roared.
The watchman was loosed and brought on deck.
“Put un in his dory and cast off,” the skipper ordered.
This done the anchor was slipped and the sheets hauled taut. The rest of the canvas was shaken out and the Heavenly Home gathered way and fairly flew for the open sea.
If there was pursuit it did not come within sight. The old schooner came safely to Ruddy Cove, where Bill o’ Burnt Bay, Josiah Cove and Archie Armstrong lived for a time in sickening fear of discovery and arrest. But nothing was ever heard from Saint Pierre. The Heavenly Home had been unlawfully seized by the French; perhaps that is why the Ruddy Cove pirates heard no more of the Miquelon escapade. There was hardly good ground in the circumstances for complaint to the Newfoundland government. At any rate, Archie wrote a full and true statement of the adventure to his father in St. John’s; and his father replied that his letter had been received and “contents noted.”
There was no chiding; and Archie breathed easier after he had read the letter.
CHAPTER XX
In Which David Grey’s Friend, the Son of the Factor at Fort Red Wing, Yarns of the Professor With the Broken Leg, a Stretch of Rotten River Ice and the Tug of a White Rushing Current
One quiet evening, after sunset, in the early summer, when the folk of Ruddy Cove were passing time in gossip on the wharf, while they awaited the coming of the mail-boat, old David Grey, who had told the tale of McLeod and the tomahawks, called to Billy Topsail and his friends. A bronzed, pleasant-appearing man, David’s friend, shook hands with the boys with the grip of a woodsman. Presently he drifted into a tale of his own boyhood at Fort Red Wing in the wilderness far back of Quebec. “You see,” said he, “my father had never fallen into the habit of coddling me. So when the lost Hudson Bay Geological Expedition made Fort Red Wing in the spring–every man exhausted, except the young professor, who had broken a leg a month back, and had set it with his own hands–it was the most natural thing in the world that my father should command me to take the news to Little Lake, whence it might be carried, from post to post, all the way to the department at Ottawa.
“‘And send the company doctor up,’ said he. ‘The little professor’s leg is in a bad way, if I know anything about doctoring. So you’ll make what haste you can.’
“‘Yes, sir,’ said I.
“‘Keep to the river until you come to the Great Bend. You can take the trail through the bush from there to Swift Rapids. If the ice is broken at the rapids, you’ll have to go round the mountain. That’ll take a good half day longer. But don’t be rash at the rapids, and keep an eye on the ice all along. The sun will be rotting it by day now. It looks like a break-up already.’
“‘Shall I go alone, sir?’ said I.
“‘No,’ said my father, no doubt perceiving the wish in the question. ‘I’ll have John go with you for company.’
“John was an Indian lad of my own age, or thereabouts, who had been brought up at the fort–my companion and friend. I doubt if I shall ever find a stancher one.
“With him at my heels and a little packet of letters in my breast pocket, I set out early the next day. It was late in March, and the sun, as the day advanced, grew uncomfortably hot.
“‘Here’s easy going!’ I cried, when we came to the river.
“‘Bad ice!’ John grunted.
“And it proved to be so–ice which the suns of clear weather had rotted and the frosts of night and cold days had not repaired. Rotten patches alternated with spaces of open water and of thin ice, which the heavy frost of the night before had formed.
“When we came near to Great Bend, where we were to take to the woods, it was late in the afternoon, and the day was beginning to turn cold.
“We sped on even more cautiously, for in that place the current is swift, and we knew that the water was running like mad below us. I was ahead of John, picking the way; and I found, to my cost, that the way was unsafe. In a venture offshore I risked too much. Of a sudden the ice let me through.
“It was like a fall, feet foremost, and when I came again to the possession of my faculties, with the passing of the shock, I found that my arms were beating the edge of ice, which crumbled before them, and that the current was tugging mightily at my legs.
“‘Look out!’ I gasped.
“The warning was neither heard nor needed. John was flat on his stomach, worming his way towards me–wriggling slowly out, his eyes glistening.
“Meanwhile I had rested my arms on the edge, which then crumbled no more; but I was helpless to save myself, for the current had sucked my legs under the ice, and now held them securely there, sweeping them from side to side, all the while tugging as if to wrench me from my hold. The most I could do was to resist the pull, to grit my teeth and cling to the advantage I had. It was for John to make the rescue.
“There was an ominous crack from John’s direction. When I turned my eyes to look he was lying still. Then I saw him wriggle out of danger, backing away like a crab.
“‘John!’ I screamed.
“The appeal seemed not to move him. He continued to wriggle from me. When he came to solid ice he took to his heels. I caught sight of him as he climbed the bank, and kept my eyes upon him until he disappeared over the crest. He had left me without a word.
“The water was cold and swift, and the strength of my arms and back was wearing out. The current kept tugging, and I realized, loath as I was to admit it, that half an hour would find me slipping under the ice. It was a grave mistake to admit it; for at once fancy began to paint ugly pictures for me, and the probabilities, as it presented them, soon flustered me almost beyond recovery.
“‘I was chest-high out of the water,’ I told myself. ‘Chest-high! Now my chin is within four inches of the ice. I’ve lost three inches. I’m lost!’
“With that I tried to release my feet from the clutch of the current, to kick myself back to an upright position, to lift myself out. It was all worse than vain. The water was running so swiftly that it dangled my legs as it willed, and the rotten ice momentarily threatened to let me through.
“I lost a full inch of position. So I settled myself to wait for what might come, determined to yield nothing through terror or despair. My eyes were fixed stupidly upon the bend in the river, far down, where a spruce-clothed bluff was melting with the dusk.
“What with the cold and the drain upon my physical strength, it may be that my mind was a blank when relief came. At any rate, it seemed to have been an infinitely long time in coming; and it was with a shock that John’s words restored me to a vivid consciousness of my situation.
“‘Catch hold!’ said he.
“He had crawled near me, although I had not known of his approach, and he was thrusting towards me the end of a long pole, which he had cut in the bush. It was long, but not long enough. I reached for it, but my hand came three feet short of grasping it.
“John grunted and crept nearer. Still it was beyond me, and he dared venture no farther. He withdrew the pole; then he crept back and unfastened his belt. Working deliberately but swiftly, he bound the belt to the end of the pole, and came out again. He cast the belt within reach, as a fisherman casts a line. I caught it, clutched it, and was hauled from my predicament by main strength.
“‘John,’ I said, as we drew near to the half-way cabin, ‘I know your blood, and it’s all very well to be careful not to say too much; but there’s such a thing as saying too little. Why didn’t you tell me where you were going when you started for that pole?’
“‘Huh!’ said John, as if his faithfulness to me in every fortune were quite beyond suspicion.
“‘Yes, I know,’ I insisted, ‘but a word or two would have saved me a deal of uneasiness.’
“‘Huh!’ said he.”
CHAPTER XXI
In Which a Bearer of Tidings Finds Himself In Peril of His Life On a Ledge of Ice Above a Roaring Rapid
“We passed that night at the cabin, where a roaring fire warmed me and dried my clothes,” David’s friend continued. “My packet of letters was safe and dry, so I slept in peace, and we were both as chirpy as sparrows when we set out the next morning. It was a clear, still day, with the sun falling warmly upon us.
“Our way now led through the bush for mile after mile–little hills and stony ground and swamp-land. By noon we were wet to the knees; but this circumstance was then too insignificant for remark, although later it gave me the narrowest chance for life that ever came within my experience.
“We made Swift Rapids late in the afternoon, when the sun was low and a frosty wind was freezing the pools by the way. The post at Little Lake lay not more than three miles beyond the foot of the rapids, and when the swish and roar of water first fell upon our ears we hallooed most joyfully, for it seemed to us that we had come within reaching distance of our destination.
“‘No,’ said John, when we stood on the shore of the river.
“‘I think we can,’ said I.
“‘No,’ he repeated.
“The rapids were clear of ice, which had broken from the quiet water above the verge of the descent, and now lay heaped up from shore to shore, where the current subsided at the foot. The water was most turbulent–swirling, shooting, foaming over great boulders. It went rushing between two high cliffs, foaming to the very feet of them, where not an inch of bank was showing. At first glance it was no thoroughfare; but the only alternative was to go round the mountain, as my father had said, and I had no fancy to lengthen my journey by four hours, so I searched the shore carefully for a passage.
“The face of the cliff was such that we could make our way one hundred yards down-stream. It was just beyond that point that the difficulty lay. The rock jutted into the river, and rose sheer from it; neither foothold nor handhold was offered. But beyond, as I knew, it would be easy enough to clamber along the cliff, which was shelving and broken, and so, at last, come to the trail again.
“‘There’s the trouble, John,’ said I, pointing to the jutting rock. ‘If we can get round that, we can go the rest of the way without any difficulty.’
“‘No go,’ said John. ‘Come.’
“He jerked his head towards the bush, but I was not to be easily persuaded.
“‘We’ll go down and look at that place,’ I replied. ‘There may be a way.’
“There was a way, a clear, easy way, requiring no more than a bit of nerve to pass over it, and I congratulated myself upon persisting to its discovery. The path was by a stout ledge of ice, adhering to the cliff and projecting out from it for about eighteen inches. The river had fallen. This ledge had been formed when it was at its highest, and when the water had subsided the ice had been left sticking to the rock. The ledge was like the rim of ice that adheres to a tub when a bucketful of freezing water has been taken out.
“I clambered down to it, sounded it, and found it solid. Moreover, it seemed to lead all the way round, broadening and narrowing as it went, but wide enough in every part. I was sure-footed and unafraid, so at once I determined to essay the passage. ‘I am going to try it!’ I called to John, who was clinging to the cliff some yards behind and above me. ‘Don’t follow until I call you.’
“‘Look out!’ said he.
“‘Oh, it’s all right,’ I said, confidently.
“I turned my back to the rock and moved out, stepping sidewise. It was not difficult until I came to a point where the cliff is overhanging–it may be a space of twelve feet or less; then I had to stoop, and the awkward position made my situation precarious in the extreme, for the rock seemed all the while bent on thrusting me off.
“The river was roaring past. Below me the water was breaking over a great rock, whence it shot, swift and strong, against a boulder which rose above it. I could hear the hiss and swish and thunder of it; and had I been less confident in my foothold, I might then and there have been hopelessly unnerved. There was no mercy in those seething rapids.
“‘A fall would be the end of me,’ I thought; ‘but I will not fall.’
“Fall I did, however, and that suddenly, just after I had rounded the point and was hidden from John’s sight. The cold of the late afternoon had frozen my boots stiff; they had been soaked in the swamp-lands, and the water was now all turned to ice.
“My soles were slippery and my feet were awkwardly managed. I slipped.
“My feet shot from under me. A flash of terror went through me. Then I found myself lying on my hip, on the edge of the shelf with my legs dangling over the rapids, my shoulder pressing the cliff, my hands flat on the ice, and my arms sustaining nearly the whole weight of my body.
“At that instant I heard a thud and a splash, as of something striking the water, and turning my eyes, I perceived that a section of the snow ledge had fallen from the cliff. It was not large, but it was between John and me, and the space effectually shut him off from my assistance.
“My problem was to get to my feet again. But how? The first effort persuaded me that it was impossible. My shoulder was against the cliff. When I attempted to raise myself to a seat on the ledge I succeeded only in pressing my shoulder more firmly against the rock. Wriggle as I would, the wall behind kept me where I was. I could not gain an inch. I needed no more, for that would have relieved my arms by throwing more of my weight upon my hips.
“I was in the position of a boy trying to draw himself to a seat on a window-sill, with the difference that my heels were of no help to me, for they were dangling in space. My arms were fast tiring out. The inch I needed for relief was past gaining, and it seemed to me then that in a moment my arms would fail me, and I should slip off into the river.
“‘Better go now,’ I thought, ‘before my arms are worn out altogether. I’ll need them for swimming.’
“But a glance down the river assured me that my chance in the rapids would be of the smallest. Not only was the water swift and turbulent, but it ran against the barrier of ice at the foot of the rapids, and it was evident that it would suck me under, once it got me there.
“Nor was there any hope in John’s presence. I had told him to stay where he was until I called; and, to be sure, in that spot would he stay. I might call now. But to what purpose? He could do nothing to help me. He would come to the gap in the ledge, and from there peep sympathetically at me. Indeed, he might reach a pole to me, as he had done on the day before, but my hands were fully occupied, and I could not grasp it. So I put John out of my mind,–for even in the experience of the previous day I had not yet learned my lesson,–and determined to follow the only course which lay open to me, desperate though it was.
“‘I’ll turn on my stomach,’ I thought, ‘and try to get to my knees on the ledge.’
“I accomplished the turn, but in the act I so nearly lost my hold that I lost my head, and there was a gasping lapse of time before I recovered my calm.
“In this change I gained nothing. When I tried to get to my knees I butted my head against the overhanging rock, nor could I lift my foot to the ice and roll over on my side, for the ledge was far too narrow for that. I had altered my position, but I had accomplished no change in my situation. It was impossible for me to rest more of my weight upon my breast than my hips had borne. My weakening arms still had to sustain it, and the river was going its swirling way below me, just as it had gone in the beginning. I had not helped myself at all.
“There was nothing for it, I thought, but to commit myself to the river and make as gallant a fight for life as I could. So at last I called John, that he might carry our tidings to their destination and return to Fort Red Wing with news of a sadly different kind.
“‘Ho!’ said John.
“He was staring round the point of rock; and there he stood, unable to get nearer.
“‘Ice under,’ said he, indicating a point below me. ‘More ice. Let down.’
“‘What?’ I cried. ‘Where?’
“‘More ice. Down there,’ said he. ‘Like this. Let down.’
“Then I understood him. Another ledge, such as that upon which I hung, had been formed in the same way, and was adhering to the rock beneath. No doubt there was a pool on the lower side of the point, and just below me, and the current would be no obstacle to the formation of ice. I had looked down from above, and the upper ledge had hidden the lower from me; but John, standing by the gap in the upper, could see it plainly.
“So I had but to let myself down until my feet rested on the new ledge, and this I did, with extreme caution and the expenditure of the last ounce of strength in my arms. Then a glance assured me that the way was clear to the shelving cliff beyond.
“‘You go,’ said John. ‘I go round.’
“‘All right,’ said I. ‘And, say! I wish I’d called you before.’
“‘Ho!’ said he, as he vanished.
“When John reached the Little Lake post late that night, the tidings of the safe return of the Hudson Bay Geological Expedition were on the way south by another messenger, and the company’s physician was moving over the trail towards Fort Red Wing, making haste to the aid of the young professor, whom, indeed, he soon brought back to health. The passage by the ledge of ice had resulted in a gain of three hours, but whether or not it saved the professor’s life I do not know. I do not think it did. It nearly cost me mine, but I had no thought of that when I essayed it, so my experience reflects no credit upon me whatever. I take fewer rash and reckless chances now on land and water, and I am not so overreliant upon my own resources.
“I have learned that a friend’s help is of value.”
At that moment the Ruddy Cove mail-boat entered the Tickle.