Читать книгу Billy Topsail & Company: A Story for Boys - Duncan Norman - Страница 9

In Which Jimmie Grimm and Billy Topsail, Being Added Up and Called a Man, Are Shipped For St. John’s, With Bill o’ Burnt Bay, Where They Fall In With Archie Armstrong, Sir Archibald’s Son, and Bill o’ Burnt Bay Declines to Insure the “First Venture”

Of course, Donald North, who had been ferryman to his father, had no foolishly romantic idea of his experience on that pan of ice; nor had Jimmie Grimm, nor had Billy Topsail. Donald North would not have called it an adventure, nor himself a hero; he would have said, without any affectation of modesty, “Oh, that was jus’ a little mess!” The thing had come in the course of the day’s work: that was all. Something had depended upon him, and, greatly to his elation, he had “made good.” It was no more to him than a hard tackle to a boy of the American towns. Any sound American boy–any boy of healthy courage and clean heart–would doubtless have taken Job North off the drifting floe; and Donald North, for his part, would no doubt have made the tackle and saved the goal–though frightened to a greenish pallor–had he ever been face to face with the necessity. Had he ever survived a football game, he would have thought himself a hero, and perhaps have boasted more than was pleasant; but to have taken a larger chance with his life on a pan of ice was so small and usual a thing as presently to be forgotten.