Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [110]
But on the day after our true Christmas, the weather moderated.
I may seem to speak overmuch about the weatherabout the hours of high tides and low tides; about the spring tides that threatened our lives and the neap tides that let us go farther out on the seaweed-covered rock fingers in our search for mussels; about the snow or sleet that might crush our tent; about the offshore winds that bit into our bones, and the south winds that could, if Providence so ordained, float evidences of our existence to the distant beaches that we sometimes saw, always fogged by mist from breakers.
Yet weather was our life, and so must be explained to those who see weather with different eyes; and to one who
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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-
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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,