Billy Topsail & Company: A Story for Boys

  CHAPTER VII

  _In Which Bagg, Imported From the Gutters of London, Lands At Ruddy Cove From the Mail-Boat, Makes the Acquaintance of Jimmie Grimm and Billy Topsail, and Tells Them 'E Wants to Go 'Ome. In Which, Also, the Way to Catastrophe Is Pointed_

  The mail-boat comes to Ruddy Cove in the night, when the shadows areblack and wet, and the wind, blowing in from the sea, is charged witha clammy mist. The lights in the cottages are blurred by the fog. Theyform a broken line of yellow splotches rounding the harbour's edge.Beyond is deep night and a wilderness into which the wind drives. Inthe morning the fog still clings to the coast. Within the cloudy wallit is all glum and dripping wet. When a veering wind sweeps the fogaway, there lies disclosed a world of rock and forest and fuming sea,stretching from the end of the earth to the summits of the inlandhills--a place of ruggedness and hazy distances; of silence and avast, forbidding loneliness.

  It was on such a morning that Bagg, the London gutter-snipe, havingbeen landed at Ruddy Cove from the mail-boat the night before--thisbeing in the fall before Donald North played ferryman between thestanding edge and the floe--it was on such a foggy morning, I say,that Bagg made the acquaintance of Billy Topsail and Jimmie Grimm.

  "Hello!" said Billy Topsail.

  "Hello!" Jimmie Grimm echoed.

  "You blokes live 'ere?" Bagg whined.

  "Uh-huh," said Billy Topsail.

  "This yer '_ome_?" pursued Bagg.

  Billy nodded.

  "Wisht _I_ was 'ome!" sighed Bagg. "I say," he added, "which way's'ome from 'ere?"

  "You mean Skipper 'Zekiel's cottage?"

  "I mean Lun'on," said Bagg.

  "Don't know," Billy answered. "You better ask Uncle Tommy Luff. He'lltell you."

  Bagg had been exported for adoption. The gutters of London are neverexhausted of their product of malformed little bodies and souls; theyprovide waifs for the remotest colonies of the empire. So, as itchanced, Bagg had been exported to Newfoundland--transported from hisnative alleys to this vast and lonely place. Bagg was scrawny andsallow, with bandy legs and watery eyes and a fantastic cranium; andhe had a snub nose, which turned blue when a cold wind struck it. Butwhen he was landed from the mail-boat he found a warm welcome, justthe same, from Ruth Rideout, Ezekiel's wife, by whom he had been takenfor adoption.

  * * * * *

  Later in the day, old Uncle Tommy Luff, just in from the fishinggrounds off the Mull, where he had been jigging for stray cod all daylong, had moored his punt to the stage-head, and he was now coming upthe path with his sail over his shoulder, his back to the wide,flaring sunset. Bagg sat at the turn to Squid Cove, disconsolate. Thesky was heavy with glowing clouds, and the whole earth was filled witha glory such as he had not known before.

  "Shall I arst the ol' beggar when 'e gets 'ere?" mused Bagg.

  Uncle Tommy looked up with a smile.

  "I say, mister," piped Bagg, when the old man came abreast, "whichway's 'ome from 'ere?"

  "Eh, b'y?" said Uncle Tommy.

  "'Ome, sir. Which way is 'ome from 'ere?"

  In that one word Bagg's sickness of heart expressed itself--in thequivering, wistful accent.

  "Is you 'Zekiel Rideout's lad?" said Uncle Tommy.

  "Don't yer make no mistake, mister," said Bagg, somewhat resentfully."I ain't nothink t' nobody."

  "I knowed you was that lad," Uncle Tommy drawled, "when I seed thesize o' you. Sure, b'y, you knows so well as me where 'Zekiel's placeis to. 'Tis t' the head o' Burnt Cove, there, with the white railin',an' the tater patch aft o' the place where they spreads the fish.Sure, you knows the way home."

  "I mean Lun'on, mister," Bagg urged.

  "Oh, home!" said Uncle Tommy. "When I was a lad like you, b'y, justhere from the West Country, me fawther told me if I steered a courseout o' the tickle an' kept me starn fair for the meetin'-house, I'dsure get home t' last."

  "Which way, mister?"

  Uncle Tommy pointed out to sea--to that far place in the east wherethe dusk was creeping up over the horizon.

  "There, b'y," said he. "Home lies there."

  Then Uncle Tommy shifted his sail to the other shoulder and trudged onup the hill; and Bagg threw himself on the ground and wept until hissobs convulsed his scrawny little body.

  "I want to go 'ome!" he sobbed. "I want to go 'ome!"

  * * * * *

  No wonder that Bagg, London born and bred, wanted to go home to thecrowd and roar and glitter of the streets to which he had been used.It was fall in Ruddy Cove, when the winds are variable and gusty, whenthe sea is breaking under the sweep of a freshening breeze and yetheaving to the force of spent gales. Fogs, persistently returning withthe east wind, filled the days with gloom and dampness. Great breakersbeat against the harbour rocks; the swish and thud of them neverceased, nor was there any escape from it.

  Bagg went to the fishing grounds with Ezekiel Rideout, where he jiggedfor the fall run of cod; and there he was tossed about in the lop, andchilled to the marrow by the nor'easters. Many a time the punt ranheeling and plunging for the shelter of the harbour, with the sprayfalling upon Bagg where he cowered amidships; and once she was nearlyundone by an offshore gale. In the end Bagg learned consideration forthe whims of a punt and acquired an unfathomable respect for a gustand a breaking wave.

  Thus the fall passed, when the catching and splitting and drying offish was a distraction. Then came the winter--short, drear days, merebreaks in the night, when there was no relief from the silence andvasty space round about, and the dark was filled with the terrors ofsnow and great winds and loneliness. At last the spring arrived, whenthe ice drifted out of the north in vast floes, bearing herds ofhair-seal within reach of the gaffs of the harbour folk, and wascarried hither and thither with the wind.

  Then there came a day when the wind gathered the dumpers and pans inone broad mass and jammed it against the coast. The sea, where it hadlain black and fretful all winter long, was now covered and hidden.The ice stretched unbroken from the rocks of Ruddy Cove to the limitof vision in the east. And Bagg marvelled. There seemed to be a solidpath from Ruddy Cove straight away in the direction in which UncleTommy Luff had said that England lay.

  Notwithstanding the comfort and plenty of his place with Aunt RuthRideout and Uncle Ezekiel, Bagg still longed to go back to the guttersof London.

  "I want to go 'ome," he often said to Billy Topsail and Jimmie Grimm.

  "What for?" Billy once demanded.

  "Don't know," Bagg replied. "I jus' want to go 'ome."

  At last Bagg formed a plan.