It was now clear weather and the dark of the moon. The day was bright and warm. When night fell again it was starlight—every star of them all twinkling its measure of pale light to the floe. The dogs were plain as shifting, shadowy creatures against the white field of ice. Billy Topsail fought twice that night. This was between midnight and dawn. There was no maneuvering. The dogs gathered openly, viciously, and delivered a direct attack. Billy beat them off. He was gasping and discouraged, though, at the end of the encounter. They would surely come again—and they did. They waited—an hour, it may have been; and then they came.
There was a division of the pack. Six dogs—Spunk and Biscuit and Hero in advance—rushed Billy Topsail. It was a reluctant assault. Billy disposed of the six—after all, they were dogs of Tight Cove, not wolves from the rigours of the timber; and Billy was then attracted to the rescue of Teddy Brisk, who was tied up in the wolfskin bag, by the boy's muffled screams. Cracker and Smoke and Tucker and Sling were worrying the wolfskin bag and dragging it off. They dropped it and took flight when Billy came roaring at them with a club.
When Billy released him from the wolfskin bag the boy was still screaming. He was not quieted—his cries and sobbing—until the day was broad.
"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 in due course, however, and was to be faced.
It was a gray day. Sky and ice and fields of ruffled water had no warmth of colour. All the world was both cold and drear. A breeze was stirring down from the north and would be bitter in the dusk. It cut and disheartened the castaways. It portended, moreover, a black night.
Teddy cried a good deal that day—a little whimper, with tears. He was cold and hungry—the first agony of starvation—and frightened and homesick. Billy fancied that his spirit was broken. As for Billy himself, he watched the dogs, which watched him patiently near by—a hopeless vigil for the man, for the dogs were fast approaching a pass of need in which hunger would dominate the fear of a man with a club. And Billy was acutely aware of this much—that nothing but the habitual fear of a man with a club had hitherto restrained the full fury and strength of the pack.
That fury, breaking with determination, would be irresistible. No man could 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 dark of that night Billy could easily be dragged down; and the dogs were manifestly waiting for the dark to fall.