Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [103]
"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
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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-
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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."
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"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.