Of course, Donald North, who had been ferryman to his father, had no foolishly romantic idea of his experience on that pan of ice; nor had Jimmie Grimm, nor had Billy Topsail. Donald North would not have called it an adventure, nor himself a hero; he would have said, without any affectation of modesty, “Oh, that was jus’ a little mess!” The thing had come in the course of the day’s work: that was all. Something had depended upon him, and, greatly to his elation, he had “made good.” It was no more to him than a hard tackle to a boy of the American towns. Any sound American boy––any boy of healthy courage and clean heart––would doubtless have taken Job North off the drifting floe; and Donald North, for his part, would no doubt have made 89 the tackle and saved the goal––though frightened to a greenish pallor––had he ever been face to face with the necessity. Had he ever survived a football game, he would have thought himself a hero, and perhaps have boasted more than was pleasant; but to have taken a larger chance with his life on a pan of ice was so small and usual a thing as presently to be forgotten.
Newfoundland boys are used to that.
It was still spring at Ruddy Cove––two weeks or more after Bagg came back to his real home––when Donald North’s friends, Billy Topsail and Jimmie Grimm, fell into considerable peril in a gale of wind off the Chunks. Even they––used to such adventures as they were––called it a narrow escape.
“No more o’ that for me,” said Billy Topsail, afterwards.
“Nor me,” said Jimmie Grimm.
“You’ll both o’ you take all that comes your way,” Bill o’ Burnt Bay put in, tartly.
It was aboard the First Venture, which Bill o’ Burnt Bay had as master-builder built at Ruddy Cove for himself. She was to be his––she was his––and he loved her from stem to 90 stern. And she was his because Sir Archibald Armstrong, the great St. John’s merchant and ship-owner, had advanced the money to build her in recognition of Skipper Bill’s courageous rescue of Archie Armstrong, Sir Archibald’s only son, in a great blizzard, on the sealing voyage of the year before.[2] At any rate, the First Venture was Bill’s; and she was now afloat and finished, rigged to the last strand of rope. To say that Skipper Bill was proud of her does not begin to express the way in which he loved her.
“Now, look you, Billy Topsail, and you, too, Jimmie Grimm!” said he, gravely, one day, beckoning the boys near.
The First Venture was lying at anchor in the harbour, ready for her maiden voyage to St. John’s.