Billy Topsail, M.D.: A Tale of Adventure With Doctor Luke of the Labrador by Norman Duncan

  CHAPTER VIII

  _In Which Teddy Brisk Escapes From the Wolfskin Bag and Determines to Use His Crutch and Billy Topsail Comes to the Conclusion that "It Looks Bad"_

  Next day the dogs hung close. They were now almost desperately ravenous.It was agony for them to be so near the satisfaction of their hunger andin inhibitive terror of seizing it. Their mouths dripped. They were intorture--they whimpered and ran restless circles; but they did not dare.They would attack when the quarry was weak or unaware. OccasionallyBilly Topsail sallied on them with his club and a loud, intimidatingtongue, to disclose his strength and teach them discretion; and the dogswere impressed and restrained by this show. If Billy Topsail could catchand kill a dog he would throw the carcass to the pack and thus stave offattack. Having been fed, the dogs would be in a mild humour. Billy mightthen entice and kill another--for himself and Teddy Brisk.

  THE DOGS WERE DESPERATELY RAVENOUS]

  Cracker was alive and still masterful. Billy went out in chase of Smoke.It was futile. Billy cut a ridiculous figure in the pursuit. He couldneither catch the dog nor overreach him with blandishments; and a cry ofalarm from the boy brought him back to his base in haste to drive offCracker and Tucker and Sling, who were up to the wolf's trick offlanking. The dogs had reverted. They were wolves again--as nearly asharbour dogs may be. Billy perceived that they could no longer be dealtwith as the bond dogs of Tight Cove.

  In the afternoon Billy slept. He would need to keep watch through thenight.

  Billy Topsail had husbanded the fragments of the komatik. A fire burnedall that night--a mere glow and flicker of light. It was the last of thewood. All that remained was the man's club and the boy's crutch. Now,too, the last of the food went. There was nothing to eat. What Billy hadbrought, the abundant provision of a picnic, with something foremergencies--the bread and tea and molasses--had been conserved, to besure, and even attenuated. There was neither a crumb nor a drop of itleft.

  What confronted Billy Topsail now, however, and alarmed his hope andcourage, was neither wind nor frost, nor so much the inevitable pangs ofstarvation, which were not immediate, as a swift abatement of hisstrength. A starved man cannot long continue at bay with a club. Billycould beat off the dogs that night perhaps--after all, they were thedogs of Tight Cove, Cracker and Smoke and Tucker and Sling; butto-morrow night--he would not be so strong to-morrow night.

  The dogs did not attack that night. Billy heard them close--the sniffingand whining and restless movement in the dark that lay beyond the lightof 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 brightand warm. When night fell again it was starlight--every star of them alltwinkling its measure of pale light to the floe. The dogs were plain asshifting, shadowy creatures against the white field of ice. BillyTopsail fought twice that night. This was between midnight and dawn.There was no maneuvering. The dogs gathered openly, viciously, anddelivered a direct attack. Billy beat them off. He was gasping anddiscouraged, though, at the end of the encounter. They would surely comeagain--and they did. They waited--an hour, it may have been; and thenthey came.

  There was a division of the pack. Six dogs--Spunk and Biscuit and Heroin advance--rushed Billy Topsail. It was a reluctant assault. Billydisposed of the six--after all, they were dogs of Tight Cove, not wolvesfrom the rigours of the timber; and Billy was then attracted to therescue of Teddy Brisk, who was tied up in the wolfskin bag, by the boy'smuffled screams. Cracker and Smoke and Tucker and Sling were worryingthe wolfskin bag and dragging it off. They dropped it and took flightwhen Billy came roaring at them with a club.

  When Billy released him from the wolfskin bag the boy was stillscreaming. He was not quieted--his cries and sobbing--until the day wasbroad.

  "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 indue course, however, and was to be faced.

  * * * * *

  It was a gray day. Sky and ice and fields of ruffled water had no warmthof colour. All the world was both cold and drear. A breeze was stirringdown from the north and would be bitter in the dusk. It cut anddisheartened the castaways. It portended, moreover, a black night.

  Teddy cried a good deal that day--a little whimper, with tears. He wascold and hungry--the first agony of starvation--and frightened andhomesick. Billy fancied that his spirit was broken. As for Billyhimself, he watched the dogs, which watched him patiently near by--ahopeless vigil for the man, for the dogs were fast approaching a pass ofneed in which hunger would dominate the fear of a man with a club. AndBilly was acutely aware of this much--that nothing but the habitual fearof a man with a club had hitherto restrained the full fury and strengthof the pack.

  That fury, breaking with determination, would be irresistible. No mancould 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 darkof that night Billy could easily be dragged down; and the dogs weremanifestly 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.