Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley (38 page)

Read Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley Online

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
2.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
 
Page 249
White and Mellen. They'll have fair play or I'll know the reason why."
"In that case, Captain," Swede said, "you'll have to take my boy, and you'll have to go yourself, because you're captain. You might as well take two more. You'll have to do a lot of rowing, and the best men we've got are none too strong."
"It's too many," the captain repeated. "But if that's the way you want it, Mr. Langman, I'll fill the boat. I'll take my brother because he
is
my brother, and I'll take Mr. Whitworth because I promised his father I'd share and share alike with him."
A chorus of complaint went up from Saver and Graystock, that wholly worthless pair, from Chips Bullock, who was so weak from his lung trouble that he could hardly get to his feet, from Christopher Gray the gunner and Harry Hallion. We crawled from the tent as fast as we could, and for once were grateful for the ear-filling rumble of the breakers, which kept us from hearing the brainless clacking of those we left behind.
It was decided that when we slid the boat into the water at dead high tide, the captain and Neal Butler should be in her, while the rest of us waded in to hold her firm until she was free and clear. Then the captain was to pull in Langman, whereupon the two of them would hoist in the other four, with Neal steadying the boat with the steering oar.
Those we were leaving, barring Chips, who couldn't stand, came to the launching-ledge and crouched there, five unkempt specimens of humanity, all haggard and hairy. I suppose none of us, with the exception of Neal,
 
Page 250
looked better; but we could use our hands and feet, whereas those we were leaving either couldn't or pretended they couldn't. Thus we felt sorry for them, and those for whom one feels sorry seem sadly woeful.
"Well," the captain said, and his eyes wandered from man to man of those sorry five, "pray for courage, and don't stop moving. If we can reach shore, you'll have help and warmth and food and decent clothing."
He seemed to search his mind for something more to say, couldn't find it and so laid hold of the bow of the boat and started her down the seaweed-strewn ledge toward the water.
I imagined I knew how he feltempty inside, wrung dry by cold, hunger and the prospect of that long row to the mainland in this cranky contraption of driftwood and old canvas.
"Where's the axe?" Langman asked. "Where's the hammer?"
Swede shook a fist at him. "You don't need the axe and the hammer!" he cried. "You've got to leave us something!"
White stumbled up with both tools and gave Langman the axe.
"Captain Dean," Swede shouted. "Don't let 'em take those tools!"
The captain spoke mildly to Langman. "You might as well leave them."
There was something snake-like about Langman's face, in spite of his black beard. He lowered his head and faced Dean defiantly. "They couldn't use 'em, even if we left 'em," he said. "Even if there was anything to use 'em on,
 
Page 251
their hands won't hold 'em. They've got the saw. When we reach land we may need those tools to build a better boat."
Nobody answered. We were too intent on the long swells rolling toward uson waiting for the large one, the third wave, after which we might expect two rollers that would be less troublesome.
The captain raised his hand and shouted, "Now!"
"Push her in," Langman cried. He dropped the axe in the stern, bawled at the captain to get aboard, and signaled Neal to climb in as well. White tossed the hammer after the axe.
She slipped easily enough over the thick layer of seaweed we had spread beneath her. Her bow floated and rose up. With the canvas strip we had stretched above her sides, she had only eighteen inches freeboard.
We waded in with her, up to our knees, up to our middles. The shock of the water on my feet and legs was indescribable, because pain cannot be described.
Captain Dean, looking seaward, waved his arms wildly. "Hold her!" he screamed. "Back her!"
Ahead of the boat I saw a long swell moving in from the south. On its crest were the heads of a dozen seals, all staring down at me.
"Pull her back!" Captain Dean cried. "Pull!"
The boat was sluggish and immovable in my hands, and the icy water around my middle drove the wind from me. I had no strength to pull.
I felt her rising and rising. I caught her gunnel to rise with her. She turned sideways and loomed, tilted, like a slanted roof, before my face. I saw Captain Dean and Neal
 
Page 252
slide down against the gunnel, with oars tumbling all around them. I made a despairing, fruitless clutch at the axe, caught among the oars.
Then the wave broke, the boat turned over and above me, and I was buried in a choking smother of foam through which I struggled while icy thoughts darted like needles in my brain.
This was the end of it! Our precious axe was lost again; the hammer as well; all the oakum we had picked so endlessly; all the oars that had tortured us; all the planks and boards so painfully and hopefully pieced together; the stanchions, the canvas, the nails and spikes so arduously assembled! Everything was goneeverything but life itself.
 
Page 253
December 22nd, Friday
Our clothes froze that night, though we lay close together.
Probably we had thoughts, in spite of the shudderings that racked all of us when we crawled back to the tent after getting ourselves from the water. If I
did
have thoughts, I can't recall them, though I remember cursing Langman for putting the axe in the boat.
Nor can I remember what I thought when Swede came in alone, after we were bedded in our nest of dank oakum.
"She's gone," Swede said. "Lock, stock and barrel. I tried to hold her, but the tide pulled her out and the waves broke her into a tangle. She floated off to the south."
He hunted for Neal and wedged himself down beside him.
"It's started to snow," Swede said. "Thick: from the south. You couldn't have made it!"
He said no more. In that frigid tent there was silence that was almost tangible, like a fog. Even Captain Dean lay there, staring up at the peak of the tent, above which
 
Page 254
hung the canvas flag that had failed us as utterly as had all our puny but excruciating efforts.
With the coming of daylight Swede pulled himself to the tent flap. ''The snow's stopped," he said. "The whole world's plastered with it."
He looked helplessly from the tent, made an effort to get to his feet, fell to his hands and knees.
"It's got to be scraped off the tent," he said.
"Why has it?" Langman asked. "Don't Eskimos make houses out of snow? I say leave the snow on the tent. It'll protect us from wind."
Swede rolled over clumsily to look at Langman. "Langman," he said, "you're a whoreson, beetle-headed, flapear'd knave! You're against everyone and everything, and you keep right on telling lies to try to prove you're right. If we leave the snow on the tent and get more snow, the canvas will split, or it'll fall down on us. Snow's heavy! And you talk about Eskimos!"
"Eskimos
do
live under snow," Langman said defensively.
"Why don't you tell the truth?" Swede snapped. "They live in ice huts, and they have fur clothes and fireyes, and tools. We've got none! It's thanks to you that we're without tools."
Captain Dean got heavily to his feet. "Now, now!" he said. "We've got to live together. And Swede's right. We'll have to scrape the snow off the tent. If we do, maybe those on shore will see the tent and the flag against the snow."
"I don't believe it," Swede said bitterly. "If those ashore had their eyes open, they'd have seen this tent and flagpole
 
Page 255
long before now. They're probably like most of the farmers where I come fromspend half their lives walking around with their heads hanging and their mouths open. Well, I'm going to
make
'em see us!"
"I say with all this snow, we ought to stay in the tent," Langman said. "We're all half frozen. We'll slip in the snow and break our legs."
"No," Captain Dean said. "That's exactly why we can't stay in the tent. We're more than half frozen, and unless we keep moving, we
will
freeze."
"If they want to freeze," Swede said, "let 'em! They'd probably be more help to us dead than alive!" He crawled out into the snow, glittering white on the boulders and ledges, and bright blue in the shadows.
Neal went to the tent-flap to join his father. We heard them scratching at the snow to dislodge it from the sagging tent sides. Then they set off slowly toward the ledge where we had built the boat.
Since the tide was low at eight in the morning, the captain and George White and Langman and Christopher Gray went to the north side for mussels. We had nine apiece that day, with seaweed in place of bread and sauce and dessert.
I think the loss of the boat had shocked all of us: first into a state of horrified resignation, then into desperate activitythough Swede's openly contemptuous attack on Langman may have had something to do with waking us from our lethargy. Certainly there was rancor in the mind of everyone able to thinkeven in the minds of Langman's cronies, White and Mellen. In all their faces I saw sullen fury at Langman's folly in putting the axe and the ham-
 
Page 256
mer in the boat, and at his insolent insistence that he did so to let us build a better boat when we got to land.
We knew that wasn't so: knew that his seizure of the tools was unreasoning hoggishness on Langman's part, and there was hot resentment against Langman, and an irritation against everything. I think that was why there was a general outcry against the mussels on the ground that they were too cold, too tough, too bitter, impossible to swallow, too hard on the bowels.
There was even more unrest when Swede and Neal crawled back. Swede had found the tattered remains of two hammocks. Neal dragged in one. Swede dragged in the other and went to Captain Dean for his mussels.
"Look at these hammocks," Swede said proudly. "Just what we need for a raft!"
Captain Dean peered from Swede to Neal and back again. "Just eat your mussels, Swede," he said. "You worked hard to save that boat. There's plenty of time to discuss a raft."
"Oh no, there isn't," Swede said. "I've already lost the use of my feet, but I can still use my hands. I may lose them any minute. We'll have to build the raft before I lose my hands too."
A groan went up from the circle of scarecrows huddled in the tent.
"We'd work ourselves to death," White protested, "and have the same thing happen that happened to the boat."
"No," Swede said. "It wouldn't be anything like the boat, because it wouldn't be overloaded, and I wouldn't launch it till I had the wind with me."
"Swede," Captain Dean said, "let's talk this over some other time."
 
Page 257
"Some other timewhen my boy and all the rest of you are dead?" Swede said politely. "No! I'm building a raft while I've got my hands. If nobody else helps me, Neal will."
Harry Hallion spoke up. "He won't help you much when it comes to spiking her together. We used all our spikes on the boat. If there's any left in the junk, he'll never draw spikes without a hammer! What'll he use? His teeth?"
"We'll build it without spikes if we have to," Swede said. "We'll lace it together with cordage."
"On a raft," Captain Dean said, "a part of you would be in water most of the time
all
the time, maybe. The nearest land is six miles away. How long would you last in water like this?"
"I don't know," Swede said, "but I prayed to God yesterday while I was trying to hold the boat. I prayed again this morning. I prayed to Langman's God, whose Sunday is Saturday, and to our God, whose Sunday is Sundayto Langman's God, who wants us to observe Christmas the day before Christmas, and to our God, who doesn't care when we observe it, so long as we celebrate it with an understanding of what Christmas means. Both Gods told me what to do. They told me to build a raft."
I realized suddenly what Swede was saying. He was saying that God gave his only beloved son to save the world from itself. Now Swede, having communed with that God, was willing to give himself in order to save
his
only beloved son from a cruel and lingering death. He was not only willing to give himself: he had, in his mind, already done so.

Other books

The Amorous Nightingale by Edward Marston
Between Flesh and Steel by Richard A. Gabriel
Hidden Man by Charles Cumming
The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee
Undergrounders by David Skuy
Fatal Headwind by Leena Lehtolainen
Cole (The Ride Series) by O'Brien, Megan
THE SPIDER-City of Doom by Norvell W. Page