Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [123]
Singularly, I thought of Sir Isaac Newton and his discovery of the reflecting telescope: of Langman, who said there could be no such thingwho laughed at the truth. And ironically it came to me that there would be people like Langman who would say that there was no truth to this island or to the tribulations we'd endured upon it: that our labors were nonsense. It came to me suddenly that when I left this island, if I ever did leave it, I wanted nothing to do with the Langmans of this worldnothing to do with those who derided the truth, and defiled it.
We went back to the tent. The captain, carving pieces of fat from Chips Bullock's kidneys, looked up at us sharply. "Any smoke?"
When we shook our heads, he sliced off a piece of the fat, laid it on a board and pounded it with the handle of his knife, spreading it into a thin sheet.
Page 312
"There," he said. "That's pretty near the same as the mutton tallow my grandmother used to make. Each one of you can have an equal amount. You'll have to make it go as far as possible.
"We'll flatten it out, flatten it out, and when it's as thin as we can make it, we'll take off these oakum bindings and wash our feet and legs again, same as we did before. The fat ought to be good for deep sores. It's bound to help those who've lost toes."
Page 313
December 31st, Sunday
If a man, on the last day of any year, chooses honestly to consider his shortcomings, he must always be depressed; and if any people anywhere ever had occasion to be downcast on the last day of that year, it was we on Boon Island.
The sight of our legs and feet on the day before, when we applied the poultices of kidney fat to them, had frightened us. They were worsemuch worsethan they had been in the dim and dreadful past, when we cut off our boots and first swathed ourselves in oakum. The sores were deeper: the toes broke off more easily, though without pain.
Then Henry Dean screamed that horrible epileptic's scream of his in the deep dark, and flung himself around the tent as though he had eight legs and eight arms, all made of steel. When we finally pinned him down, he twisted and turned in our hands with almost unbelievable violence, and on top of that he groaned horribly, and there's something catchingsomething poisonousabout groans.
The whole night was a bad one and after Henry Dean
Page 314
had stopped thrashing and writhing, and had fallen into an epileptic's heavy sleep, I lay staring upward, afraid of the dark, afraid of what must happen to my feet and legs if this cold continuedif we went on and on, being drenched daily by the salty spit from the breakersif I lost the use of my hands and could no longer occupy myself in the brain-deadening task of picking oakum.
In my thinking I groaned, realized too late what I was doing, tried to turn it into a cough, and produced a sort of squawk, like a crow with a beakful of food.
I felt a hand fumbling at my shoulder and heard Neal say, "Are you all right, Miles?"
"Of course," I said. "Of course I'm all right. Are you all right?"
"We're all all right," Captain Dean said. "Even my brother's all rightor will be when he wakes. All of you felt how much strength he has. Just remember you're all as strong as Henry if only you make up your minds to be."
He hesitated: then added, "I've been thinking. I don't believe we've been praying right. We've been praying as if we didn't know God at allas if he was some sort of distant image, away up above the stars somewherean image with whiskers, like ours.
"Well, he isn't an image. He's real. And since we expect him to answer our prayers, he can't be far away. We believe he'll help us if we deserve to be helped, but we don't ask him for that help in the same way we'd ask our own fathers for help."
He hesitated again. "Would anyone like to speak to God? If you can't find the words, I'll speak for you,