It was a bad night on the field to the south. The boys were hungry. It was cold. Billy Topsail suffered from the cold. In the morning the northerly wind had turned the heap of dogskin robes into a snowdrift. The sun shone. Billy was still cold. He shivered and chattered. He despaired. Rescue came, however, in the afternoon. It was the Tight Cove skiff, hailing now from Our Harbour, with Doctor Luke aboard.
The skiff from Come-Again Bight found the dogs. The dogs were wild—the men said—and would not come aboard, but ran off in a pack to the farthest limits of the field and were not seen again—save only Cracker, who fawned and jumped into the skiff without so much as a by-your-leave. And Cracker, in due course and according to custom, they hanged by the neck at Tight Cove until he was dead.
That day, however—the afternoon of the rescue—when the Tight Cove skiff came near, Teddy Brisk put his hands to his mouth and shouted—none too lustily:
"Ahoy!"
"Aye?" Skipper Thomas answered.
"Did my mother send you?"
"She did."
Teddy Brisk turned to Billy Topsail.
"Didn't I tell you," he sobbed, his eyes blazing, "that I knowed my mother's ways?"