Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [115]
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December 28th, Thursday
God only knows why so many of us are unable to tell the truth about occurrences. A man is said to blench at a distressing sight, when in reality his color changes not at all. A lady, supposedly, swoons or blushes at a word she has heard her father and her brothers use a thousand times, whereas the swoon or the blush occurs only in the imagination of the lady herself, or in that of the narrator of the incident. If a writer dislikes wine, all drinkers are drunkards, staggering and revolting. Those of whom we approve have smiling countenances and warm hearts: those of whom we disapprove are hyenas in appearance and behavior. If two nations are engaged in a war, the one we dislike is a land of beasts, brutes and matricides; whereas we, to them, are bullies, murderers and patricides. Each nation is fighting a righteous war, brought about by the intolerable knavery of the other. Too many of us write of men and affairs as we think readers would have us write. Perhaps most of us are not only incapable of seeing things truly, but never do.
I think that when Captain Dean called me from the tent
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at dawn on the day after Swede and Harry Hallion had gone floating off on the raft, and Chips Bullock had died, he knew what that day would bring forth, and I think he was struggling desperately to find the inner strength to face it.
Captain Dean was what is known as civilized. He recognized and detested the bad days that selfish and greedy men, civil war, French influences, gambling, bad laws and worse law enforcement had brought upon England. On Boon Island he had willingly done physical things that those beneath him hadn't the moral strength to do. He had endured without anger the cowardice of Saver and Gray-stock: the helplessness of his own brother; the malicious opposition of Langman, White and Mellen. He had ventured out into the black cold of midnight in the hope of catching a seal unaware. He had washed our ulcerated legs and feet with urine: persuaded his unwilling crew to pick oakum for their own protection: almost paralyzed his hands to dredge up mussels for us; and now I think he foresaw that a worse trial was upon him-one that would require him to ignore standards that civilization builds up within a decent man.
As I crawled from the tent, Captain Dean stopped to speak to the men. "We'll make the full circuit of the island," he said. "Tide's high at eight. When it starts to fall, I want Chips's body on the ledge nearest the tent. White, that salt water you swallowed yesterday hasn't hurt you. You're still the strongestyou and Langman. Drag out Chips's body. Put it on the ledge. When Mr. Whitworth and I come back, we'll say a prayer over it and roll it in the water."
He followed me out. The tide was higher than we had
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ever seen it. The breakers, pounding and bellowing, were close and enormous.
"There's no doubt about it," Captain Dean said. "There have been spring tides that washed right over this island. There must have been."
He looked back at the tent. There was no sign of movement within its sagging sides.
We made our slow circuit of the island, watching for floating objects or anything usable cast up by the sea. There was nothing in sightnothing except the seals that reared head and shoulders from waves to follow our every movement with insatiable curiosity: little black and white sea-swallows, skittering from wave to wave with limp feet trailing, and everywhere an infinity of sea ducks, swimming in vast shoals; chunky round black ones with white cheeks: little slender brown ones with bristly combs, diligently raising pointed beaks to heaven and genuflecting to each otherand all complacently ignoring us.
Our rounds completed, the captain peered intently toward the distant mainland, then glanced disconsolately toward the tent.
"They haven't done as I told 'em," he said. "They haven't taken him out."