Off the starboard quarter—far away where the dusk had gathered—the mate of the dead whale rose, hon-g-ked, dived and was seen no more.
"Too bad!" muttered Billy Topsail.
CHAPTER XXI
In Which Billy Topsail Goes Fishing in Earnest. Concerning, also, Feather's Folly of the Devil's Teeth, Mary Robinson, and the Wreck of the Fish Killer
FEATHER'S FOLLY was one of a group of troublesome islands lying off Cape Grief on the way to the Labrador. Surveyed by a generously inaccurate apprentice it might have measured an acre. It was as barren as an old bone; but a painstaking man, with unimpaired eyesight, if he lingered long and lovingly enough over the task, could doubtless have discovered more than one blade of grass. There is no adjective in the English language adequate to describe its forbidding appearance as viewed from the sea in a gale of wind.
On the chart it was a mere dot—a nameless rock, the outermost of a group most happily called the Devil's Teeth. To the Labrador fishermen, bound north from Newfoundland in the spring, bound south, with their loads of green cod, in the fall, it was the Cocked Hat. This name, too, is aptly descriptive; many a schooner, caught in the breakers, had, as the old proverb hath it, been knocked into that condition, or worse. But to the folk of the immediate coast, and especially of Hulk's Harbour, which lies within sight on the mainland, it was for long known as Feather's Folly.
Old Bill Feather had once been wrecked on the Cocked Hat. The little Lucky Lass, bound to Hulk's Harbour from the Hen-and-Chickens, and sunk to the scupper-holes with green fish, had struck in a fog. Four minutes later she had gone down with all hands save Bill. An absentminded breaker had deposited him high and dry on a ledge of the northeast cliff; needless to say, it was much to Bill's surprise. For five days the castaway had shivered and starved on the barren rock. This was within sight of the chimney-smoke of home—of the harbour tickle, of the cottage roofs; even, in clear weather, of the flakes and stage of his own place.
"It won't happen again," vowed Bill, when they took his lean, sore hulk home.