Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [111]
"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