Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley (41 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
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Page 276
has been exposed to the ocean and its winter furies, the words ''the weather moderated" bring inexpressible reliefa surcease from agony, from despair, from dark depression....
Londonerscity dwellerswho despise sailors and countrymen, can never in their ignorance know the beauty of those words, just as they can never know, in their restricted world, the marvels that exist in the worlds of others, or appreciate the magic qualities of all the things they look upon as commonplace: the wonders of fire, of sweet water, of shelter.
In Greenwich we listened in amazement to those Londoners who longed for and acclaimed cloudless skies at times when countrymen were praying for rain and losing their crops and even their farms from drought; who were perpetually being caught in thunderstorms because they turned resolutely from the west and put their faith in a narrow strip of blue sky in the east; to whom a tree was merely a tree, and they unable to distinguish between a pine, a fir, a spruce or a larch; to whom a bird smaller than a pheasant was merely a bird, without a name, without a song....
Ah! Fortunate, fortunate city dwellers: fortunate that so many countrymen and seamen are inarticulate, unable to express their thoughts concerning those who dwell in cities and are so profoundly lacking in knowledge!
And so, to our joy, the weather moderated!
The wind, what there was of it, couldn't make up its mind what to do. It blew gently from the east: then came fitfully from the west.
Swede, working at the pile of junk for materials to strengthen his raft, nosed at those breezes like a weather-
 
Page 277
vane. He was afraid, and so were the rest of us, that the wind would back upmove to the west and south without first going to the eastward and the southeast. When, after a storm or a blow, the wind backs up, unpleasant weather will soon return, just as some sort of evil follows the appearance of a ring around the sun or around the moon.
We stepped a fence post of a mast on the raft and hung the two hammocks on it, to serve as a sort of double lugsail. We fastened three pieces of woodoars, we called them, and were too weak to laugh at ourselvesto the spars. Then, because Swede insisted we must, we lashed bridles to both ends of the spars, with long rope-ends trailing from them.
At noon the tide was lower than ever before, because of the full moon, and we brought in a treasure trove of mussels. We left half of them unopened. There was something about that raft that sickened those who worked on it.
Only Swede grew constantly more cheerful.
"There's got to be two little pulpits built up at each end," he told Captain Dean. "We can lay two piles of cordage, bow and stern: then lace the piles in position. That'll keep us out of the water. They ought to be big enough so we can kneel on them."
"Who's we?" Captain Dean asked. "You and who else?"
I don't know," Swede said. "The Lord will provide."
The captain shook his head and let his eyes wander around the horizon as if in hopes of finding the something that the Lord would provide. He studied the tall rusty face of Bald Head Cliff, the long sands of York and so on to the open sea beyond. Then he straightened, as if incredulous.
"Why," he said, "there's a sail! There's
two
of 'em!"
He raised his voice shouting, "Sail! Sail!"
 
Page 278
We dropped our armfuls of cordage. We got ourselves to the highest part of the rock and stared longingly at those two far-off sails. They seemed to be sloops, but they were so distant, we couldn't be sure which way they were heading: whether they were inbound or outbound. We could hardly see their hulls, but our unreasoning longing to be rescued was so strong within us that we shouted and waved, waved and shoutedall of us but Swede.
When we stopped our waving and our shouting and just followed the progress of those small pink sails, Swede laughed at us.
"You think I haven't got a chance to reach shore on this raft," he said, "yet you go shouting and waving at two sloops that are fifteen miles away if they're an inch. You'd never have seen 'em at all if the wind hadn't blown from the northwest all day yesterday. There isn't one of you that can see a man when he's over six miles away. There isn't one of you whose voice could be heard a mile away. If that's the way you feel, every last one of you ought to be fighting for the chance to go on this raft with me."
I had to admit that he was right, and that our behavior in shouting and waving at those two far-off sail showed we were close to panic. Yet the sight of those sail, and our shouting and our waving, had done something to our spirits so that when we had finished Swede's cordage pulpits, and went to the tent to eat our seaweed and ice, we were more hopeful about Swede's venture than we had hitherto been.
When he stayed behind us, brooding over his raft and talking endlessly to Neal, he put me in mind of a bridegroom, garrulous over the inescapable fate awaiting him on the morrow.
 
Page 279
December 27th, Wednesday
Love, true love, is, I suppose, always intemperate, whether it's the love of a man for a woman, a woman for a child, or a father for a son. Certainly Swede's love for Neal was a consuming passion, and equally certainly Neal's comprehension of that love was unusual and beautiful.
Even before sunup Swede had left the tent, and Neal with him. I couldn't hear what Swede said to Neal, but there was a buoyant quality to his voice. When I went outside, I found the wind, wambling and uncertain the day before, had dropped to a dead calmand when I say calm, I'm speaking only of the wind. The canvas on the tent pole hung flat against it; but the seaah, that damnable sea! There may be such a thing as a dead calm around Boon Island, but it must be in the summer. When we were on the island, the sea was perpetually heaving, surging, on every side, as if afflicted with waves of nausea.
If the breakers came at us from the west, the island seemed to catch them and pull them around, billowing, on either side, as a woman, battered by wind, draws a cape around herself.
 
Page 280
But the air, at least, was still and frost-laden. There was frost on the seaweed: ice on the naked bouldersspume-ice left by the northwest wind.
I went over to the raft on which Swede and Neal were sitting, lashing two oars to the sides with spun yarn.
"I know the signs," Swede said cheerfully. "That wind's coming around. When the tide's low at one o'clock, she'll move in from the south. No doubt about it."
"How're your feet?" I asked.
"Gone," Swede said lightly.
"Wouldn't you feel better if we cleaned them?" I asked.
Swede shook his head. "I don't want to see 'em," he said. "I don't want anybody else to see 'em. They don't hurt, and if you did something to 'em, they might start hurting again."
The captain and George White crawled from the tent just as the sun came up. Against its rising disk the rollers on the horizon were like the teeth of our cutlass-saw.
"Well, Captain," Swede said triumphantly, "this is the day! Full moon! Onshore wind!"
The captain shook his head and with his oakum-swathed hands dragged at the spar that formed one side of this spider-web of a raft, laced together with cordage. The spar pulled free of the ice beneath it. It was too frail a support for my taste. The two hammocks, rigged as sails on its stump of a mast, hung limp and ineffective, like the folded wings of a sleeping bat.
"I've made up my mind to one thing," Captain Dean said. "If this raft sets off, I won't be on it."
"That's your privilege," Swede said.
"I won't be on it," Captain Dean said, "because I've
 
Page 281
weighed the chances, and the chances of getting ashore alive with this raft aren't as good as staying alive on this rock. I ought to forbid you to go. Yesterday we saw two sail heading east. They must have come out of the Piscataqua River, making toward the Isles of Shoals. I'd say they're probably running out of salt fish in Portsmouth. Either that, or they need fresh fish. If they run out of fish in Portsmouth, they're bound to run out in York, too, or Cape Porpoise, or some such place. Boats'll put out of those ports, just as they put out of Portsmouth."
Swede put his arm around Neal's shoulders and spoke to Captain Dean. "Captain, I'm leaving here at low tide. You'll help me put her in over yonder, where those ledges point out to the west, won't you?"
I was watching Neal. His eyes seemed to be examining the lashings of that strange raft. They lifted suddenly, met mine and instantly dropped again. They looked hurt, like the eyes of a dog whose master is deserting him.
"Help me get seaweed, Neal," I said.
He climbed obediently from the raft, and as he went, his father's fist rapped him affectionately on the shoulder.
We skirted the tent and started that hated circuit of the island, hunting for any useful thing that might have been sent to us by the sea's grace.
"Neal," I asked, "has your father ever told you he'd like you to go with him on the raft?"
Neal shook his head. "He wouldn't let me. I said I'd go, but he almost snapped my ears off."
"He'll never make it," I said. "Have you asked him not to go?"
"No," Neal admitted. "He
wants
to go. He's
determined
to go."
 
Page 282
"Yes," I said, "I can see that."
"He
might
make it," Neal said, "if he had an onshore wind and a strong man to use the paddle. Anyway, nothing can stop him." He hesitated; then added, "I don't want to stop him."
When I was silent, Neal added, "When he was in the Naval Hospital, he thought he was as good as dead. He said he wasn't pulling his weight, and he was ashamed to be seen in the hospital uniform. On the
Nottingham
he pulled his weight. He was happy again. He was even happy on this islanduntil his feet froze. Then he couldn't pull his weight any more. He thinks this raft'll let him pull his weight."
"Not if he doesn't get ashore," I reminded him.
"He doesn't look at it that way," Neal said. "He says everything's in his favor. He says somebody may see him if he gets halfway to land. He says if he gets almost to land, somebody's
sure
to see him. He says if he doesn't get to land and the raft does, they'll find the raftand then they'll find us."
"You wouldn't stop him if you could, would you?" I asked.
"No, I wouldn't," Neal said. "If he let me or anybody or anything stop him, he'd never forgive himself. He knows he's going to die, and so do I. I don't want him to die unhappy. Once he's on that raft, headed for shore, his mind will be at ease, no matter what happens."
There wasn't anything I could say to that. Neal, when I'd first encountered him in Greenwich, was a fine boythe sort of boy anyone would be proud to have as a son or a brother; but the things that had happened to him in
 
Page 283
five months had changed him from a boy into a mana man who would be a credit to any society, to any country, no matter along what lines his life might be cast.
Swede was right about the wind. At noon it moved in faintly, a little east of south, and the captain gave the word to drag the raft to the spot Swede had chosen. The dragging wasn't easy, and we did it by inches. Swede counted for us as he probably once had counted in the St. George's Light Dragoons"One, two, three, hup,"and at the "hup" we'd all lift together. By "all" I mean the captain and Neal on one side with Langman and me; on the other side Gray, Hallion, Mellen and White.
The others couldn't lift, they said, but they had crawled from the tent to watch, all but poor Chips Bullock.
Between every few lifts we crawled forward to move rocks from our path, and came back to lift again, sliding the raft forward three inches, five inches. The hardest part was finding footholds sufficiently secure to make lifting possible.
At the water's edge the captain stepped back from the raft.
"Put her in," Swede shouted. "She's headed right for shore!"
"Yes, put her in," George White said. "I'm going with him. With this breeze I think we can make it."
Langman, I thought, as well as could be seen on a face so covered with whiskers, had a smug look. If one of his own men hadn't been going with Swede, I was sure he would have protested bitterly. He never would have gone himself, and he would have done everything possible to prevent Swede from going alone.

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