Billy Topsail & Company Part 40

"Man," Tom Topsail declared, at last, "I don't know where I is!"

"Drive on, Tom," said Archie.

The punt went forward in a smother of water.

"Half after eleven," Archie remarked.

Tom Topsail hauled the sheet taut to pick up another puff of wind. An hour pa.s.sed. Archie had lost the accommodation if she were on time.

"They's an island dead ahead," said Tom. "I feels it. Hark!" he added.

"Does you hear the breakers?"

Archie could hear the wash of the sea.

"Could it be Right-In-the-Way?" Tom Topsail wondered. "Or is it Mind-Your-Eye Point?"

There was no help in Archie.

"If 'tis Right-In-the-Way," said Tom, "I'd have me bearin's. 'Tis a marvellous thick fog, this," he complained.

Mind-Your-Eye is a point of the mainland.

"I'm goin' ash.o.r.e t' find out," Tom determined.

Landed, however, he could make nothing of it. Whether Right-In-the-Way, an island near by Burnt Bay, or Mind-Your-Eye, a long projection of the main-sh.o.r.e, there was no telling. The fog hid all outlines. If it were Right-In-the-Way, Tom Topsail could land Archie in Burnt Bay within half an hour; if it were Mind-Your-Eye point--well, maybe.

"Hark!" Tom exclaimed.

Archie could hear nothing.

"Did you not hear it?" said Tom.

"What, man? Hear _what_?"

"_That!_" Tom e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed.

Archie heard the distant whistle of a train.

"I knows this place," Tom burst out, in vast excitement. "'Tis Mind-Your-Eye. They's a cut road from here t' the railway. 'Tis but half a mile, lad."

Followed by Archie, Tom Topsail plunged into the bush. They did not need to be told that the mixed accommodation was labouring on a steep grade from Red Brook Bridge. They did not need to be told that a little fire, builded by the track before she ran past, a flaring signal in the fog, would stop her. With them it was merely a problem of getting to the track in time to start that fire.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI

_And Last: In Which Archie Armstrong Hangs His Head in His Father's Office, the Pale Little Clerk Takes a Desperate Chance, Bill o' Burnt Bay Loses His Breath, and there is a Grand Dinner in Celebration of the Final Issue, at Which the Amazement of the Crew of the "Spot Cash" is Equalled by Nothing in the World Except Their Delight_

It was the first of September. A rainy day, this, in St. John's: the wind in the east, thick fog blowing in from the open. Sir Archibald's grate was crackling in its accustomed cheerful way. Rain lashed the office windows at intervals; a melancholy mist curtained the harbour from view. Sir Archibald was anxious. He drummed on the desk with his finger-tips; he paced the office floor, he scowled, he pursed his lips, he dug his restless hands deep in his pockets. The expected had not happened. It was now two o'clock. Sir Archibald was used to going home at three. And it was now two o'clock--no, by Jove! it was eight after. Sir Archibald walked impatiently to the window. It was evident that the fog was the cause of his impatience. He scowled at it. No, no (thought he); no schooner could make St. John's harbour in a fog like that. And the winds of the week had been fair winds from the French Sh.o.r.e. Still the expected had not happened. _Why_ had the expected not happened?

A pale little clerk put his head in at the door in a very doubtful way.

"Skipper of the _Black Eagle_, sir," said he. "Clerk, too," he added.

"Show 'em in," Sir Archibald growled.

What happened need not be described. It was both melancholy and stormy without; there was a roaring tempest within. Sir Archibald was not used to giving way to aggravation; but he was now presently embarked on a rough sea of it, from which, indeed, he had difficulty in reaching quiet harbour again. It was not the first interview he had had with the skipper and clerk of the _Black Eagle_ since that trim craft had returned from the French Sh.o.r.e trade. But it turned out to be the final one. The books of the _Black Eagle_ had been examined; her stores had been appraised, her stock taken, her fish weighed. And the result had been so amazing that Sir Archibald had not only been mystified but enraged. It was for this reason that when Skipper George Rumm, with Tommy Bull, the rat-eyed little clerk, left the presence of Sir Archibald Armstrong, the prediction of the clerk had come true: there were two able-bodied seamen looking for a berth on the streets of St. John's. First of all, however, they set about finding Tom Tulk o' Twillingate; but this, somehow or other, the discreet Tom Tulk never would permit them to do.

By Sir Archibald's watch it was now exactly 2:47. Sir Archibald rose from the chair that was his throne.

"I'm sorry," he sighed. "I had hoped----"

Again the pale little clerk put his head in at the door. This time he was grinning shamelessly.

"Well?" said Sir Archibald. "What is it?"

"Master Archie, sir."

Archie shook hands with his father in a perfunctory way. Sir Archibald's cheery greeting--and with what admiration and affection and happiness his heart was filled at that moment!--Sir Archibald's cheery greeting failed in his throat. Archie was prodigiously scowling. This was no failure of affection; nor was it an evil regard towards his creditor, who would have for him, as the boy well knew, nothing but the warmest sympathy. It was shame and sheer despair. In every line of the boy's drawn face--in his haggard eyes and trembling lips--in his dejected air--even in his dishevelled appearance (as Sir Archibald sadly thought)--failure was written. What the nature of that failure was Sir Archibald did not know. How it had come about he could not tell. But it _was_ failure. It was failure--and there was no doubt about it. Sir Archibald's great fatherly heart warmed towards the boy.

He did not resent the brusque greeting; he understood. And Sir Archibald came at that moment nearer to putting his arms about his big son in the most sentimental fas.h.i.+on in the world than he had come in a good many years.

"Father," said Archie, abruptly, "please sit down."

Sir Archibald sat down.

"I owe you a thousand dollars, sir," Archie went on, coming close to his father's desk and looking Sir Archibald straight in the eye. "It is due to-day, and I can't pay it--now."

Sir Archibald would not further humiliate the boy by remitting the debt. There was no help for Archie in this crisis. n.o.body knew it better than Sir Archibald.

"I have no excuse, sir," said Archie, with his head half-defiantly thrown back, "but I should like to explain."

Sir Archibald nodded.

"I meant to be back in time to realize on--well--on those things you have given me--on the yacht and the boat and the pony," Archie went on, finding a little difficulty with a lump of shame in his throat; "but I missed the mail-boat at Ruddy Cove, and I----"

The pale little clerk once more put his sharp little face in at the door.

"Judd," said Sir Archibald, sternly, "be good enough not to interrupt me."

"But, sir----"

"Judd," Sir Archibald roared, "shut that door!"

The pale little clerk took his life in his hands, and, turning infinitely paler, gasped: