"I'm just crazy to——"
"'Tis no fit place for you."
"But——"
Cap'n Saul changed his mind all at once. He sent a call for Archie's old and well-tried friend, Bill o' Burnt Bay.
"Stand by the lad," said he.
"Ay, sir."
Archie left the bridge with Bill o' Burnt Bay, with whom he had sailed before. And over the side they went. And over the side went the crew for punishment. There were more than two hundred men. And not a man was spared. Cap'n Saul sent the ship's doctor after malingerers, and the mate and the haft of a sealing gaff after lurkers; and he kept them capering and balancing for dear life on that dirty floe, sopping and shivering, all in a perilous way, until dusk was in the way of catching some of them unaware.
It was then that Archie and Bill o' Burnt Bay fell in with old Jonathan Farr of Jolly Harbour. Bill o' Burnt Bay knew the old man well. And he was shocked to find him cavorting over that foul, tricky ice, with the thin blood and dry old bones he had to serve his need—a gray old dog like Jonathan Farr of Jolly Harbour, past his full labour these years gone by, gone stiff and all unfit for the labour and chances of the ice.