CHAPTER XXVI
In Which Billy Topsail Determines to go to the Ice in the Spring of the Year and Young Archibald Armstrong of St. John's is Permitted to Set Out Upon an Adventure Which Promises to be Perilous but Profitable
IN the winter when he was fifteen years old, Billy Topsail determined to go to the ice with the great sealing fleet in the spring, if it could be managed by hook or crook. His father had no objection to make. The boy was old enough to look out for himself, he knew; and he was sure that the experience would complete the process of making a man of him.
"Go, b'y," said he, "if you can."
There was the difficulty. What sealing captain would take a lad of fifteen when there were grown men to be shipped? Billy was at a loss. But he determined, nevertheless, that he would go to the ice, and selected Long Tom Harbour as a promising port to sail from, for it was near by and well known. From Long Tom Harbour then, he would go seal hunting in the spring of the year if it could be managed by a boy with courage and no little ingenuity.
"Oh, I'll go somehow!" said he.
It was twilight of a blustering February day. Sir Archibald Armstrong, the great St. John's merchant, sat alone in his office, with his chair drawn close to the low, broad window, which overlooked the wharves and the ice-strewn harbour beyond; and while the fire roared and the wind drove the snow against the panes, he lost himself in profound meditation. He stared absently at the swarm of busy men—now almost hidden in the dusk and storm—and at the lights of the sealing fleet, which lay there fitting out for the spring voyage to the drift-ice of the north; but no sound of the activity on deck or dock could disturb the quiet of the little office where the fire blazed and crackled and the snow fell softly against the window panes.
"Beg pardon, sir," a clerk interrupted, putting his head in at the door. "Cap'n Hand, sir."
Captain Hand, of the sealing ship Dictator, was admitted. He was a thick, stubby, hammer-fisted, fiery-faced old man, marked with the mark of the sea. His eyebrows made one broad black band of wiry hair, stretching from temple to temple, where they grew in the fashion of two sharp little horns; and he had a habit of dropping them over his little red eyes, as if in a passion—but nobody was deceived by that; for, save in moments of righteous anger, the light of good humour still shone in the little red eyes, however fiercely they flashed. The rest of his face was beard—a wilderness of gray beard; it sprang from somewhere below his shirt collar, and straggled in a tangled growth over his cheek-bones and neck.