"What's that patch o' black?" Bill o' Burnt Bay asked. "Due west, lads--a mile or more off?"
"Sure, it looks like the ship," some of the men agreed.
As the light increased, the storm passed on. A burst of sunshine at last revealed the _Dictator_, lying on the ice, listed far to port. The broken ice in which she had been caught, they learned afterwards, had been forced under her, and she had been lifted out of danger when the fields that nipped her came together.
When it is said that old Captain Hand welcomed his crew with open arms, and embraced Archie--the meanwhile searching through all his pockets for a handkerchief, which he could not find--there remains little to be told. He was more haggard than the rescued men. What depths his brave spirit sounded on that long night are not to be described.
"Well, b'y," was what he said to Archie, "you're back, is you?"
"Safe and sound, cap'n," the boy replied, wearily, "and hungry."
"Send the cook for'ard with the scoff!" roared the captain.
Before noon, all the men were safe aboard, and the ice was breaking up. When the _Dictator_ settled softly into the water, at the parting of the fields, the pelt was stowed away. She had no difficulty in making the open sea; and thence she set forth in search of other floes and other seal packs.
The _Dictator_ made Long Tom Harbour without mishap. There it was made known that the name of Billy Topsail of Ruddy Cove was "on the books," and not a man grumbled because the lad was to share with the rest. There, too, old John Roth, to whom two "white coats" had been promised, claimed the gift of Archie, and was not disappointed. And there Archie said good-bye to Billy for the time.
"I'll see you this summer," he said. "Don't forget, Billy. I'll spend a week of vacation time with you at Ruddy Cove."
"No," Billy replied. "You'll spend it at New Bay. Sure, me name is on the books, an' I'm goin' after lobsters with me own skiff in July."
"I'll go with you, if you'll take me," said Archie. "And I can never, never forget that you----"
"Sure," Billy Topsail interrupted, flushing, "you'll go with me t' New Bay. An' times we'll have of it!"
And so they parted on terms of perfect equality.
That summer, Billy Topsail went to New Bay. But it was not in a skiff; it was in a swift little sloop, especially made to be sailed by a crew of one. It came North, mysteriously, from St. John's, to the wonder of all Green Bay; and its name was _Rescue_. And a letter came North for Bill o' Burnt Bay: which, when he read it, stirred him to the profoundest depth of his rugged old heart, for he roared in a most unmannerly fashion that he'd "be busted if he'd take a thing for standin' by such a lad!" In reply to a second letter, however, Bill said he would "be willin' t' take it on credit, if he'd be 'lowed t' pay for it as he could." So that is how Bill o' Burnt Bay came to sail to the Labrador in his own fore-and-after, when the fish were running.