Billy Topsail was aboard. "I 'low, dad," he had said to his father, when the skipper of the Rescue received the Government commission to proceed North with supplies, "that I'd like t' see the Labrador."

"You'll see it many a time, lad," his father had replied, "afore you're done with it."

"An' Skipper Job," Billy had persisted, "says he'll take me."

The end of it was that Billy was shipped.

The Rescue had rounded the cape at dawn, with all sails set, even to her topmast-staysail, which the Newfoundlanders call the "Tommy Dancer"; but now, with the night coming down, she was laboriously beating into a head wind under jib and reefed mainsail.

"I'm fair ashamed t' have the canvas off her," said Skipper Job, after a long look to windward. "'Tis no more than a switch, an' we're clewed up for a snorter."

"They's no one t' see, sir," said the cook. "That's good; an' sure I hopes that nothin' heaves in sight t' shame us."

"Leave us shake the reef out o' the mains'l, sir, an' give her the fores'l," said the first hand.

"We're not in haste, b'y," the skipper replied. "She's doin' well as she is. We'll not make harbour this night, an' I've no mind t' be in the neighbourhood o' the Break-heart Rocks afore mornin'. Let her bide."

The weather thickened. With the night came a storm of snow in heavy flakes, which the wind swept over the deck in clouds. There was nothing to relieve the inky darkness. The schooner reeled forth and back on the port and starboard tacks, beating her way south as blind as a bat. There was no rest for the crew. The skipper was at the wheel, the first hand on the lookout forward, the cook and the two other hands standing by on deck for emergencies.

So far as the wind, the sea and the drift-ice were concerned, the danger was slight, for the Rescue was stoutly built; but the sea was strewn with vast fields and mountains of Arctic ice,—the glacier icebergs which drift out of the north in the spring—and in their proximity, in their great mass and changing position, lay a dreadful danger.

"Sure, I wisht you could chart icebergs," said the skipper to the cook. "But," he added, anxiously, "you can't. They moves so fast an' so peculiar that—that—well, I wisht they didn't."

"I wisht they wasn't none," said the cook.

"Ay, lad," said the skipper. "But they might be a wonderful big one sixty fathom dead ahead at this minute. We couldn't see it if they was."

"I hopes they isn't, sir," said the cook, with a shiver.

The snow ceased before morning; but at the peep of dawn a thick fog came up with the wind, and when the light came it added nothing to the range of vision from the bow. The night had been black; the dawn was gray. It was so thick that the man at the wheel could not see beyond the foremast. The lookout was lost in the fog ahead. Eyes were now of no more use than in the depths of a cloudy night.

But the schooner had weathered the night; and when the first light of day broke in the east, Skipper Job gave the wheel to the second hand, and went below with the cook to have a cup of tea.

"I've no mind t' lose her," said he, "so I'll leave her bowl along under short sail. If we strike, 'twill be so much the easier."

"'Twould be a sad pity t' lose her," said the cook, "when you've got her so near paid for."

"Ay, that's it," said the skipper.

The Rescue had been built for young Skipper Job, after Skipper Job's own model, by the Ruddy Cove trader. The trader was to share in the voyages—whether for Labrador fish or in the Shore trade—until she was paid for. Then she would belong to Skipper Job—to the young skipper, who had married the parson's daughter, and now had a boy of his own for whom to plan and dream.

That was the spring of his energy and caution—that little boy, who could no more than toddle over the kitchen floor and gurgle a greeting to the lithe young fellow who bounded up the path to catch him in his arms. The schooner was the fortune of the lad and the mother; and she was now all so nearly Job's own that another voyage or two—a mere four months—might see the last dollar of the obligation paid over.

"No," Skipper Job repeated, absently, when he had thought of the toddler and the tender, smiling mother, "I've no mind t' lose this here schooner."

Job dreamed of the lad while he sipped his tea. They must make a parson of him, if he had the call, the skipper thought; or a doctor, perhaps. Whatever, that baby must never follow the sea. No, no! He must never know the hardship and anxiety of such a night as that just past. He must be——

A scream of warning broke into the dream:

"Har-rd-a-lee!"

Skipper Job heard the fall of the feet of a man leaping back from the bow. There was meaning in the step, in the haste and length of the leaps—the imminence of a collision with the ice.

"All hands!"

The skipper had no more than leaped to his feet when there was a stunning crash overhead, followed on the instant by a shock that stopped the schooner dead and made her quiver from stem to stern. The bowsprit was rammed into the forecastle, the deck planks were ripped up, the upper works of the bows were crushed in, the cook's pots and pans were tumbled about, the lamp was broken and extinguished. Job was thrown from his feet.

When he recovered, it was to the horror of this darkness and confusion—to a second crash and shock, to screams and trampling overhead, and to a rain of blows upon the deck. He cried to the cook to follow him on deck, and felt his way in mad haste to the ladder; but there he stopped, of a sudden, with his foot on the lowest step, for the cook had made no reply.

"Cook, b'y!" he shouted.

There was no answer. It was apparent that the man had been killed or desperately injured. The skipper knew the danger of delay. They had struck ice; the berg might overturn, some massive peak might topple over, the ship might fill and sink. But, as a matter of course, and with no thought of himself as a hero, he turned and made a groping search for the cook, until he found the poor fellow lying unconscious among his own pots and pans. Thence he carried him to the deck, and stretched him out on the fore hatch, with the foreboom and sail to protect him from the fragments of ice, which fell as in a shower each time the schooner struck the berg.

Billy Topsail caught the skipper by the arm in a strong grip.

"We're lost!" he cried.

The roaring wind, the hiss of the seas, the shock and wreck, the sudden, dreadful peril, had thrown the lad into a panic. The skipper perceived his distress, and acted promptly to restore him to his manhood.

"Leave me free!" he shouted, with a scowl.

But Billy tightened his grip on the skipper's arm, and sobbed and whined. The skipper knocked him down with a blow on the breast; then jerked him to his feet and pointed to the pump.

"Pump for your life!" he commanded, knowing well that what poor Billy needed was work, of whatever kind, to give him back his courage.