een. More than that, Donald North
profited by his experience. He perceived that if perils must be
encountered, they are best met with a clear head and an unflinching
heart.

"Wisht you'd been out t' see me jump the day," he said to Jimmie
Grimm, that night.

Billy and Jimmie laughed.

"Wisht you had," Donald repeated.

"We was," said Jimmie.

Donald threw back his head, puffed out his chest, dug his hands in his
pockets and strutted off. It was the first time, poor lad! he had ever
won the right to swagger in the presence of Jimmie Grimm and Billy
Topsail. To be sure, he made the most of it!

But he was not yet cured.

-----

[1] Donald North himself told me this--told me, too, what he
had thought, and what he said to his mother--N. D.

CHAPTER VI

_In Which, Much to the Delight of Jimmie Grimm and Billy
Topsail, Donald North, Having Perilous Business On a Pan
of Ice After Night, is Cured of Fear, and Once More Puffs
Out His Chest and Struts Like a Rooster_

Like many another snug little harbour on the northeast coast of
Newfoundland, Ruddy Cove is confronted by the sea and flanked by a
vast wilderness; so all the folk take their living from the sea, as
their forebears have done for generations. In the gales and high seas
of the summer following, and in the blinding snow-storms and bitter
cold of the winter, Donald North grew in fine readiness to face peril
at the call of duty. All that he had gained was put to the test in the
next spring, when the floating ice, which drifts out of the north in
the spring break-up, was driven by the wind against the coast.

After that adventure, Jimmie Grimm said:

"You're all right, Don!"

And Billy Topsail said:

"You're all right, Don!"

Donald North, himself, stuck his hands in his pockets, threw out his
chest, spat like a skipper and strutted like a rooster.

"I 'low I _is_!" said he.

And he was. And nobody decried his little way of boasting, which
lasted only for a day; and everybody was glad that at last he was like
other boys.

* * * * *

Job North, with Alexander Bludd and Bill Stevens, went out on the ice
to hunt seal. The hunt led them ten miles offshore. In the afternoon
of that day the wind gave some sign of changing to the west, and at
dusk it was blowing half a gale offshore. When the wind blows offshore
it sweeps all this wandering ice out to sea, and disperses the who