Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [104]
"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 timeall 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.
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December 23rd, Saturday
This was the day of the seagulla Langman Sunday, the day before Langman's Christmas, and the day we started the raft.
In making the boat we had deliberately ignored the foremast yard, not only because of its awkward lengthtwenty-four feet, a veritable treebut also because it was so tangled and cluttered with the innumerable confusing attachments of such a spar that by general agreement it had been spurned by allpassed over after one look at the tattered shreds of canvas still clinging to it, and its wrappings of frayed and frozen preventer stays, lanyards, bowlines, bridles, sheets, lifts, yard tackles.
Just that yard alone was enough to turn me against ships, and I wondered why three-masted square-rigged vessels were ever made in the first place.
I asked Captain Dean, as we dragged it to the spot chosen by Swede; but he didn't know.
"Probably," he said, "we build square-riggers because nations like France and England have to fight wars every few years. To fight wars you have to have warships; and
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warships have to carry a lot of men. If you put a lot of men aboard a big schooner or a big brig, both easy to sail, there wouldn't be anything for sailors to do between fights, so they'd make trouble like Langmanmutiny, probably, or die of boredom. To keep 'em busy you've got to have a hundred sails for 'em to set or take in every half hour, and five or ten thousand sheets and lifts and tackles for 'em to haul on at five-minute intervals."
He cogitated: then added, "Maybe shipbuilders are like Langman. Maybe they get a foolish idea in their heads, and can't recognize a better one when it's presented to 'em."
Swede and Neal had been at that spar since dawn, pounding the ice and snow from it and its attached junk.
"I've got it all figured out," Swede told Captain Dean. "First we'll sharpen up our knives and cut through each piece of cordage on the top side. Then we'll roll the spar over, knock the ice off the other side, and pull the cordage free. All that cordage is slushed with tar, so the short pieces can be burned later, when you get fire."
When we got fire! Ah, would that day ever come!
Captain Dean nodded. "If we start at the center when we strip the junk, two of us can start knifing a groove around the middle. We'll hammer our knife-blades with rocks. Maybe we can cut an inch-deep groove all the way around. That'll leave only a ten-inch cut to be made with the saw."
I suspected irony and glanced at him quickly, but he was serious enough.
A ten-inch cut through that tree trunk of a spar! And with a saw made by pounding a cutlass into jaggedness against the sharp edge of a ledge! I tried to figure the
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amount of sawing we'd have to do in order to