Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley (37 page)

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Authors: Kenneth Roberts,Jack Bales,Richard Warner

Tags: #Survival After Airplane Accidents; Shipwrecks; Etc., #Nottingham (Galley) - Fiction, #Transportation, #Historical, #Boon Island (Me.) - Fiction, #Boon Island, #18th Century, #Survival After Airplane Accidents; Shipwrecks; Etc - Fiction, #Survival After Airplane Accidents; Shipwrecks; Etc, #Shipwrecks, #Fiction, #Literary, #Sea Stories, #Historical Fiction, #Shipwrecks - Maine - Boon Island - History - 18th Century - Fiction, #test, #Boon Island (Me.), #General, #Maine, #History

BOOK: Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley
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Page 240
December 19th, Tuesday
Those oars, I thought, were the most troublesome thing about the boatthough I suppose that each part of every enterprise always seems most difficult and most important to the one to whom it's entrusted.
Nonetheless, the oars seemed vital, for unless the wind was in the east, we couldn't depend on our sail to carry us to the nearest land, which, if Captain Dean's reckoning was correct, was six miles away. Even under favorable circumstancesbetter circumstances than the bitter ones we had so far encounteredwe would be three hours, at least, rowing that clumsy boat to shore.
And row we must, not only to get the boat across that turbulent stretch of water, but to keep ourselves moving so we wouldn't freeze.
Yet the oars, split with rock-wedges from boards, were the same width from end to end. They had to be narrowed at one end, and smoothed, so that men could use them effectively. The saw was useless to smooth those sharp edges. Our knives made no impression upon them, for the
 
Page 241
wet boards only roughened when we tried to bevel the corners.
The best we could do, in the end, was to knock the ice from a ledge and rub each oar against the rock, working the oar around and around, rasping at it until we brought it to some faint semblance of smoothness. I couldn't let myself think what such oars would do to the hands of those who paddled with them, even when the hands were padded with oakum.
Tide was high at eleven; so at daybreak, before we went to work on those devilish oars, Neal and I patrolled the island.
The wind, for a change, was in the south and the seals had moved around to the north side.
For a change, too, there were four gulls at high-water mark, wailing dolorously. One was eyeing something, first from one side, then from the other, as gulls do; and as we made our way toward it, the gull picked up the something, flew straight up with it: then dropped it on the rocks, so that we knew it was a mussel.
When we shouted and waved our arms, the gulls flew away, mewing. Neal picked up the mussel, broken by its fall, and divided it with me.
As he chewed at that orange-colored meat, spitting out seed pearls as he did so, he moved from me to stare off to the westward, where low, shelving ledges made an easy descent to the rising waves.
I followed the direction of his gaze, and my eyes caught what his had caughta short stick, a trifle bent, standing up straight from those shelving ledges.
There was something about the curve of that stick that
 
Page 242
filled me with an almost insupportable excitement. I knew it couldn't be what it vaguely resembled! It couldn't be! Such things happen only in the
Odyssey,
and through the direct intervention of Minerva.
The surf swirled around the stick as we hurried toward it as rapidly as our bandaged and aching feet would let us.
Neal crawled out on the seaweed. I held his arm while he reached for the stick.
It was exactly what it had looked like the moment we saw it. It was an axe helve, and on the end of it, yellowed with salt-water rust, was the axe head, with the hone-marks still showing on the still sharp blade!
It's amazing how small a thing can make such a difference to so many people! Without that axe we were almost helpless, though I think we were never wholly hopeless.
With the axe, our spirits rose, our work no longer stood like an impenetrable wall before us.
We shouted the news of the axe to Captain Dean and Langman: showed it to those in the tent, to raise their spirits. They passed it from hand to hand.
"That's mine," Chips said. "The nails are mine, too. I ought to be allowed to go in the boat."
Nobody answered him. He was the only one who didn't know how sick he was.
"We'll need that oakum tomorrow," I reminded them. "If we have the right wind but shouldn't have enough oakum, we wouldn't dare to put her in the water."
Everyone, even Saver and Graystock, struggled to soften pieces of cordage, to separate the strands, to pick the hemp apart.
We went back to the oars.
 
Page 243
With Neal holding each board upright, wedged between rocks, the axe chipped smooth slivers from the corners of the planks. The portions to be gripped by the hands of the rowers became round. Neal and I exchanged places at intervals, for the sake of warmth; but I think the thing that kept us warmest was the feeling of miraculous accomplishment.
 
Page 244
December 20th, Wednesday
The boat was shaped like a punt, with square ends and square sides, and we spent all day putting the final touches on herif anything about that boat could be called final. She was a marvel of incompleteness.
We had no way of judging how high she'd ride in the water when seven men were in her; nor was there any way of knowing how our caulking would hold.
All day long we drove oakum between the stern board and the sides: the bow boards and the sides.
The floor boards had been laid on canvas; and when they had been caulked as well as we could do it, the canvas was drawn up around the sides and ends like a shroud.
We stretched canvas over her bow and stern, binding the canvas with cordage. ''It might be," Captain Dean said, "that if waves start slapping us, that canvas may help to keep out some of the spray."
Her height was a little increased by running a long strip of canvas around her, fastened to the stanchions; but it was too low. It had to be, so that the men who knelt in the boat could use the oars as paddles.
 
Page 245
Remembering now how that boat looked, I can't believe that so many of us were eager to trust ourselves to her. Today I wouldn't trust such a travesty of a craft to get me across the Isis at Oxford, but it's easy to forget what a man will do when he's faced on the one hand with certain death, and on the other hand with a chance to live.
The easiest thing to say is that we were insane because of the things we'd endured. Surely I was insane, because I was eager to go. I was even sorry for Swede and Chips, who weren't strong enough to do so, and for all the others who couldn't for lack of space.
Yet we weren't wholly demented, because we made half a dozen bailing scoopsa simple matter now that we had the axe, though without the axe it would have been beyond our powers.
And we spent the last hours, right up to dark, in clearing seaweed-covered boulders from the narrow passageway down which the boat would have to be pushed in order to reach the sea. So we were sane enough to know that if a wave let this strange boat down on such a boulder, we'd have small chance of saving ourselves.
We spent those hours, too, in cutting seaweed to floor the ledge on which the boat rested, and to cover all the interval down to the growing seaweed. Without that protection, the canvas shroud on which the floor boards had been laid would have been cut to ribbons on barnacles by the time we got her to the water.
As we cut the seaweed, we ate as much of it as we could stomach; for the tide, high at noon, had shut us off from the mussel pools that were reachable only at low water.
In the tent, that night, I may have slept a little, but only a little, because of the excited discussions as to when the
 
Page 246
boat should be launched. Sometimes my hearing blurred, and there seemed to be breaks in the talk. This, I suppose, was sleep, for when my ears snapped open, someone, always, was talking.
The tide was low at seven in the morning, high an hour after noon, and low again at two hours after dark.
What, then, was it best to do?
To start at dawn, when the ocean might be stillest?
No: there was the great stretch of seaweed to be crossed at low tide, and the danger of falling!
Yes, but over against that was the hazard of arriving at our destination when the tide was high, concealing perilous ledges and possibly covering beaches that might, at low tide, be reached even though the boat were swamped.
To start at flood tide, then? That would mean that the tide would be falling when we reached our destination, and that offshore currents might push us away.
Ah yes, but beaches would be exposedmore safely approached. Offshore ledges would be revealedmore readily skirted.
Some argued for starting on the half-risen tide in the morning.
Langman in the beginning argued against all starting times that were proposed, and in the end argued for all of them. I think he wanted to take credit for anything good that happened, and dodge the responsibility for anything bad. The world is full of people like that, but most of them haven't Langman's malice.
 
Page 247
December 21st, Thursday
The day, to the amazement and delight of all, was better for our purpose than any we had so far seen, though bitter cold. The sun rose red but unclouded, and there was a glassy sheen to the sea. On the north shore there were breakers, though not bad ones. On the south shore the swells came in from both directions, to gurgle, hiss and sigh along the brown seaweed-covered fingers of ledge, but for the most part they surged in without breaking to spend themselves in foam.
The captain urged everyone from the tent at daybreak. "Tide's dead low," he shouted. "We've got a lot to do today, so try to get enough mussels to last you through tomorrow."
I knew what he had in mind. He hadn't liked the looks of that red sky in the east.
When we were back in the tent, hacking with our knives at those miserable mussels and chewing our hated seaweed, the captain said, almost diffidently, that he had been thinking about the boat and her launching.
"I know we made seven oars," he said, "but I've come
 
Page 248
to the conclusion that seven is too many to pack into a boat that size and shape, even when she's well built. It seems to me that two would be better than seven."
When he would have continued, his words were drowned by a roar of protest. The loudest roar came from Swede Butler, but Langman's was almost as loud.
"If only two go," Swede cried, "you wouldn't take Neal, and it was Neal found the axe! Without the axe you'd still be working on that boat! If anybody deserves to go, Neal does."
"It was my axe to begin with," Chips rasped. "I need medical help."
"It wasn't yours any more after you'd lost it," Swede said. "It belonged to all of us, same as a seagull would belong to all of us if we could catch one."
Langman shouted, "You needn't think I'm going to sit here like a bump on a log while the captain goes ashore all alone to spread the news about how he didn't wreck us on Boon Island on purpose! No, sir! I'm going in that boat if anyone does!"
Captain Dean looked sick. "I still think seven is too many. Would you be willing to try it with just me alone?"
"Oh no!" Langman said. "I haven't forgotten how you hit me with the loggerhead the night we went ashore! I wouldn't want anything like that to happen again."
The captain looked at him intently. "I hit you because you'd stolen supplies that rightly belonged to all of us. You were mutinous! You planned to take the ship for yourself and White and Mellen."
Langman's eye was sardonic. "Who'd believe such drivel! Just to make sure you don't slander innocent men without giving 'em a chance to answer, I insist on taking

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