Chapter XIII

_In Which Doctor Luke Undertakes a Feat of Daring and Endurance and
Billy Topsail Thinks Himself the Luckiest Lad in the World_

Returning from a call at Tumble Tickle, in clean, sunlit weather, with nothing more tedious than eighteen miles of wilderness trail and rough floe ice behind him, Doctor Luke was chagrined to discover himself a bit fagged. He had come heartily down the trail from Tumble Tickle in the early hours of that fine, windy morning, fit and eager for the trudge--as a matter of course; but on the ice, in the shank of the day--there had been eleven miles of the floe--he had lagged. A man cannot practice medicine out of a Labrador outport harbour and not know what it means to stomach a physical exhaustion. Doctor Luke had been tired before. He was not disturbed by that. But being human, he looked forward to rest; and in the drear, frosty dusk, when he rounded the heads of Home, opened the lights of Our Harbour, and caught the warm, yellow gleam of the lamp in the surgery window, he was glad to be near his supper and his bed.

And so he told Billy Topsail, whom he found in the surgery, replenishing the fire.

"Ha, Billy!" said he. "I'm glad to be home."

Afterwards, when supper had been disposed of, and Doctor Luke was with Billy in the surgery, the rest of the family being elsewhere occupied, there was a tap on the surgery door. Doctor Luke called: "Come in!"--with some wonder as to the event. It was no night to be abroad on the ice. Yet the tap on the surgery door could mean but one thing--somebody was in trouble; and as he called "Come in!" and while he waited for the door to open, Doctor Luke considered the night and wondered what strength he had left.

A youngster--he had been dripping wet and was now sparkling all over with frost and ice in the light of the surgery lamp--intruded.

"Thank-the-Lord Cove?"

"No, sir."

"Mad Harry?"

"Ragged Run, sir."

"Bad-Weather West's lad?"

"Yes, sir."

"Been in the water?"

The boy grinned. He was ashamed of himself. "Yes, sir. I falled through the ice, sir."

"Come across the Bight?"

The boy stared. "No, sir. A cat couldn't cross the Bight the night, sir. 'Tis all rotten. I come alongshore by Mad Harry an' Thank-the-Lord. I dropped through all of a sudden, sir, in Thank-the Lord Cove."

"Who's sick?"

"Uncle Joe's gun went off, sir."

Doctor Luke rose. "Uncle Joe's gun went off! Who was in the way?"

"Dolly, sir."

"And Dolly in the way! And Dolly----"

"She've gone blind, sir. An' her cheek, sir--an' one ear, sir----"

"What's the night?"

"Blowin' up, sir. There's a scud. An' the moon----"

"You didn't cross the Bight? Why not?"

"'Tis rotten from shore t' shore. I'd not try the Bight, sir, the night."

"No?"

"No, sir." The boy was very grave.

"Mm-m."

All this while Doctor Luke had been moving about the surgery in sure haste--packing a waterproof case with little instruments and vials and what-not. And now he got quickly into his boots and jacket, pulled down his coonskin cap, pulled up his sealskin gloves, handed Bad-Weather West's boy over to the family for supper and bed, and was about to close the surgery door upon himself when Billy Topsail interrupted him.

"I say, sir!"

Doctor Luke halted.

"Well, Billy?"

"Take me, sir! Won't you?"

"What for?"

"I wants t' go."

"I go the short way, Billy."

"Sure, you does! I knows _you_, sir!"

Doctor Luke laughed.

"Come on!" said he.

Billy Topsail thought himself the luckiest lad in the world. And perhaps he was.