Archie Armstrong came aboard that afternoon––followed by two porters and two trunks. He was Sir Archibald’s son; there was no doubt about that: a fine, hardy lad––robust, straight, agile, alert, with his head carried high; merry, quick-minded, ready-tongued, fearless in wind and high sea. His hair was tawny, his eyes blue and wide and clear, his face broad and good-humoured. He was something of a small dandy, too, as the two porters and the two trunks might have explained. The cut of his coat, the knot in his cravat, the polish on his boots, the set of his 96 knickerbockers, were always matters of deep concern to him. But this did not interfere with his friendship with Billy Topsail, the outport boy. That friendship had been formed in times of peril and hardship, when a boy was a boy, and clothes had had nothing to say in the matter.
Archie bounded up the gangplank, crossed the deck in three leaps and stuck his head into the forecastle.
“Ahoy, Billy Topsail!” he roared.
“Ahoy, yourself!” Billy shouted. “Come below, Archie, an’ take a look at Jimmie Grimm.”
Jimmie Grimm was at once taken into the company of friends.
The story of this voyage––the tale of the time when Archie Armstrong and Billy Topsail and Bill o’ Burnt Bay were lost in the snow on the ice-floe––with certain other happenings in which Billy Topsail was involved––is related in “The Adventures of Billy Topsail.”
