"Whatever you told un, sir—an' I knows what you told un—it made a changed man o' Bad-Weather Tom. He mooned a deal, an' he would talk no more o' the future, but dwelt upon the shortness of a man's days an' the quantity of his sin, an' laboured like mad, an' read the Scriptures by candle-light, an' sot more store by going to church and prayer-meetin' than ever afore. Labour? Ecod, how that poor man laboured—after you told un. While there was light! An' until he fair dropped in his tracks o' sheer weariness!
"'Twas back in the forest—haulin' fire-wood with the dogs an' storin' it away back o' this little cottage under Lend-a-Hand Hill.
"'Dear man!' says Skinflint Sam; 'you've fire-wood for half a dozen winters.'
"'They'll need it,' says Tom.
"'Ay,' says Sam; 'but will you lie idle next winter?'
"'Nex' winter?' says Tom. An' he laughed. 'Oh, nex' winter,' says he, 'I'll have another occupation.'
"'Movin' away, Tom?'
"'Well,' says Tom, 'I is an' I isn't.'
"There come a day not long ago when seals was thick on the floe off Ragged Run. You mind the time, sir?" Billy Topsail "minded" the time well enough. And so did Doctor Luke. It was the time when Billy Topsail and Teddy Brisk were carried to sea with the dogs on the ice. "Well, you could see the seals with the naked eye from Lack-a-Day Head. A hundred thousand black specks swarmin' over the ice three miles an' more to sea. Ragged Run went mad for slaughter—jus' as it did yesterday, sir. 'Twas a fair time for offshore sealin', too: a blue, still day, with the look an' feel o' settled weather.
"The ice had come in from the current with a northeasterly gale, a wonderful mixture o' Arctic bergs and Labrador pans, all blindin' white in the spring sun; an' 'twas a field so vast, an' jammed so tight against the coast, that there wasn't much more than a lane or two an' a Dutchman's breeches of open water within sight from the heads. Nobody looked for a gale o' offshore wind t' blow that ice t' sea afore dawn o' the next day.