Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [105]
If Langman hadn't lost the axe, two men whose hands weren't frost-nipped might, by spelling each other, do the cutting in half an hour.
But without the axewith the saw alone: that miserable saw which would only cut when pulled backwardthat was different!
Would two men make half an inch an hour?
Not through the thick part of the yard, they wouldn't.
Perhaps when they were nearly finished, and the yard could be balanced on a boulder, so the blade wouldn't bind in the cut, they might make half an inch in an hour. Perhaps they might.
In any event, half an inch an hour was the best we could expectand with ten inches to go, we'd be twenty hours making the cut. But there were only nine hours of daylight in each day, provided there was no snow or rain: provided the wind wasn't so piercing that working in it was impossible.
And how many of us, afflicted with gurry sores and partly frozen hands and feet, were capable of using that saw at all?
"Clear away the junk in the center," Swede told Captain Dean, and his voice was jubilant. "Then I'll start the groove. Neal can hold the knife. I'll do the hammering."
In the face of Swede's excitement, I banished my doubts about our ability to sever that detested spar. If Swede's faith was so unconquerable, I could have faith too.
I went to work on the twisted cordage. It resisted my knife-blade like strands of metal.
"Take it a strand at a time," the captain said. "Wriggle
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your knife-blade under a single strand: then drag the blade toward your stomach."
There were eight of us working at that spar, and we must have looked like hairy bears, nosing at a log in hungry curiosity.
Langman came from the tent to watch us. In his hand he held the saucepan handle we had salvaged in the distant past.
"Get your knife and go to work," Captain Dean said.
"It's Sunday," Langman said. "Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy."
"It's Saturday," Captain Dean said. "What excuse will you have tomorrow for not working?"
"Tomorrow's Christmas," Langman said, almost indulgently.
He seemed disappointed when the men on both sides of the spar made no reply. He had to have attention, Langman did; and he didn't care how he got it.
He left us, slipping and sliding across the wet seaweed toward the mussel pools on the south shore.
The tide was low. I hoped Langman's respect for his private Sunday wouldn't prevent him from hunting food for the rest of usthough the mere thought of mussels almost made me retch.
Gradually we gained on the cordage and junk, half numbed by the clack, clack, clack of Swede's rock as he rapped it against the back of the knife-blade that Neal clutched.
Into that monotonous clacking, suddenly, intruded an uproar as startling as it was unexpected. Shrill through the noise of the breakers came a raucous screaming that
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brought us up all standing. Against the dark background of the seaweed-covered ledges we saw a preposterous mixture of man and wings that gyrated and flapped and rolled about.
"It's Langman," Captain Dean said. "He's caught a seagull!"
He had indeed, or the seagull had caught him, for the big bird was screaming, squalling, flapping its wings, beating Langman's head with giant pinions. I thought for a moment that the gull had lifted him from the rock. But the gull fell at last and Langman leaped upon it, and we saw he was beating it with the saucepan handle. At last the gull ceased to flap and flop, and lay still.
The air above the man and the struggling bird had been alive with gulls, wheeling, squealing and wailing; but when the bird was quiet, every last one of those gulls fell silent and winged off toward the mainland as if terror-stricken. Not one remained behind. There was something oppressive about the sudden departure of all those noisy creatures whose screams had shrilled through the roaring of breakers from dawn to dark each day.
Langman came slowly back to us, dragging that