Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [132]
He stopped outside the tent to hang over a boulder and rid himself of the salt water he had swallowed. I went on in to see Langman draw from beneath the edges of the tent an armful of tarry rope-ends, hidden away for just this purpose.
"Now that we've got the fire to cook it," Langman said, "there'll be an extra meat ration tonight."
He ignited the end of one of those pieces of tarred rope,
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laid it carefully on the flickering shavings: then criss-crossed a dozen other rope-ends above it.
The rope burned with a sound of sizzling. Up from it came a cloud of yellowish-green smoke that on the instant thickened the air within the tent to a sort of dry, strangling soup.
All in a moment's time our eyes, our chests, our stomachs were choked. We couldn't breathe: we couldn't think: we could hardly make the effort to get ourselves past the tent-flap and into the open air.
When we had clean air in our lungs again, we hoisted Neal on our shoulders until, clinging to the flagpole, he could cut away the cap of oakum around the apex of the tent and slash holes in the canvas. Through them a spurt of discolored smoke went drifting out to sea.
That night, when we had recovered from our sickness and the fire was burning with a clear flame, the captain was generous with the store of beef; and we, taking turns in charring it over the bright fire, found it delicious ... heartening ... and gave no thought to its origin.
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January 3rd, Wednesday
If we hadn't been racked by disappointment, exhausted from overexertion, befuddled from hunger and dazed by the smoke within that tent, I doubt that Graystock and Saver would ever have been put on watch that night. They had been spared most of the labors that had drugged the rest of us and so they were assigned to stand fire-watchthe last watch before daybreak.
Perhaps this had come about because of their constant malingeringbecause of their repeated insistence that they were too weak to work; because of the filth in which they lay in spite of our freely expressed disgust. Perhaps, because of all this, we had come to feel that they were too weak to be harmful, too helpless to be dangerous. I know now, of course, that those who seem weakest and most harmless are the greatest threat to any society, and the most to be feared.
Richard Nason and Captain Dean had been right in looking askance at that southeast wind, for its gusts grew stronger and stronger: then snow came whirling in at the
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top of the tent. Sometimes the wind pulled the smoke up with it and set the fire to glowing. At other times it beat at the blaze with icy fingers, flattening the smoke around us.
God only knows how Saver and Graystock had discovered where Neal had hidden our reserves of meat entrusted to him by Captain Dean. Perhaps they had loosened the foot of the tent and watched him when he first hid it, or when he went back to thicken the protecting seaweed above it. But discovered it had been.
Thanks to the warmth of that ineffable fire, I had truly slept that night, instead of shivering in a sort of intermittent nightmare; but before dawn on that tempestuous Wednesday morning, I came to my senses to find Neal prodding me. The captain, too, was awake, because I saw the glimmer of his eyes in the light of the fire.
Beside the fire sat Graystock, feeding it with bits of tarred rope, and inching forward the end of a board, drying it above the flame. I could see the surface of the board boiling and sizzling in the heat before it reluctantly caught fire.
Neal put his lips close to my ear, so that I could hear his whisper. He could have shouted without being heard by Graystock, because of the pounding of the breakers.
"Saver went out," Neal said. "I heard him talking to Graystock. He went to get meat."
"He couldn't do it," I whispered back. "He couldn't find his way. His feet wouldn't let him."
"He knew where it was,"