"Skipper! Skipper! Here, b'y!"
The ringing call, in the voice of Billy Topsail, never failed to bring the dog from the kitchen with an eager rush, when the snow lay deep on the rocks, and all the paths of the wilderness were ready for the sled. He stood stock-still for the harness, and at the first "Hi, b'y! Gee up there!" he bounded away with a wagging tail and a glad bark. It was as if nothing pleased him so much on a frosty morning as the prospect of a hard day's work.
If the call came in summer-time when Skipper was dozing in the cool shadow of a flake—a platform of boughs for drying fish—he scrambled to his feet, took his clog[1] in his mouth and ran, all a-quiver for what might come, to where young Billy waited. If the clog were taken off, as it was almost sure to be, it meant sport in the water. Then Skipper would paw the ground and whine until the stick was flung out for him. But best of all he loved to dive for stones.
At the peep of many a day, too, he went out in the punt to the fishing-grounds with Billy Topsail, and there kept the lad good company all the day long. It was because he sat on the little cuddy in the bow, as if keeping a lookout ahead, that he was called Skipper.
"Sure, 'tis a clever dog, that!" was Billy's boast. "He would save life—that dog would!"
This was proved beyond doubt when little Isaiah Tommy Goodman toddled over the wharf-head, where he had been playing with a squid. Isaiah Tommy was four years old, and would surely have been drowned had not Skipper strolled down the wharf just at that moment.
Skipper was obedient to the instinct of all Newfoundland dogs to drag the sons of men from the water. He plunged in and caught Isaiah Tommy by the collar of his pinafore. Still following his instinct, he kept the child's head above water with powerful strokes of his fore paws while he towed him to shore. Then the outcry which Isaiah Tommy immediately set up brought his mother to complete the rescue.
For this deed Skipper was petted for a day and a half, and fed with fried caplin and salt pork, to his evident gratification. No doubt he was persuaded that he had acted worthily. However that be, he continued in merry moods, in affectionate behaviour, in honesty—although the fish were even then drying on the flakes, all exposed—and he carried his clog like a hero.
"Skipper," Billy Topsail would ejaculate, "you do be a clever dog!"