Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [79]
The sea was all around us, so close that from the hollow where we stood I could have thrown a rock into the raging
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breakers to north, south, east or west. Rimming the island was a border of blacknessthe seaweed on which we had slithered and fallen the night before. Beyond the black weed the white breakers raced out of the north to spurt up in spray on the north side: then go galloping and bellowing down the west and east sides of the island; swinging around to pound the south side with a sort of ferocious maelstrom of foam.
Of the Nottingham there wasn't a trace-not that we could see.
Fourteen of us had spent the night in that rocky depression, and all but three of us were on our feet. Cooky Sipper lay on his face, shuddering and sobbing, great racking sobs that were frightening. Two seamen, William Saver and Charles Graystock, just lay there with eyes closed. Their faces were greenish.
''Please God," Captain Dean said. "We can't have this! You're frightened before you need to be! You're better off right now than if you were wrecked on a sand spit in the Indian Ocean. Here you've got good ice to keep you from getting thirsty. You can have it without stealing it, as you tried to do on shipboard. This is no time to be frightened."
Chips Bullock's hammer was fastened to his belt by a cord. Captain Dean took it from him. "I'm going to knock ice off the rocks so to have a path to the place where we struck. All those who can walk come with me. I'll need help with the things that have washed ashore. There must be something."
He was nearly wrong. No man would believe that a ship the size of the Nottingham could have vanished so completely and left so little behind, or that all that cheese and all that butter we had stowed so carefully, while we
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lay in the harbor of Killybegs, could have gone so completely to the bottom.
She must have struck at dead low water, around nine o'clock at night. Thus high tide would have been around four o'clock in the morning. Daylight probably broke about seven o'clock, so the tide should now be half out; and at the high-water mark there should have been heaps of material from the after cabin, from foc's'l and hold.
We found four lengths of deck plank, six timbers from the quarter-deck, a length of tarred rope, three pieces of canvas ripped from their fastenings, a bolt of Irish linen purchased by Captain Dean in Killybegs, a cutlass, the handle of a stewpan, a caulking mallet. Scattered among the shaggy masses of seaweed were fragments of cheese, small, like little sponges. And strangelyuntil I remembered Chips Bullock's workbagthere were as many spikes and nails in crevices beneath the seaweed as there were pieces of cheese.
Offshore, caught on something and held in one position, was a floating tangle of yards, sails and cordage that rose sluggishly to the top of each comber that rolled in to break on the fingers of black rock pointing out from every side of the island.
Captain Dean halted us just short of the seaweed and gave the hammer back to Chips. We could hardly hear him above the roar of the waves. "Langman, you and Mellen and Chips Bullock lay hold of the canvas, the planks and timbers and drag 'em back to the hole in the rocks. Take the tarred rope and set Cooky, Graystock and Saver to unraveling it. If they keep on being sick, drive 'em. We've got to get ourselves under shelter tonight."
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He pulled at the waterlogged pieces of canvas, and with his pocket knife hacked off a small square.
"Yes," Langman said, "and while we're doing that, you'll eat the cheese."
"Mr. Langman," Captain Dean said, "I realize you're under something of a strain. Every scrap of cheese we find will be wrapped in this square of canvas and divided into equal portions. Make no mistake about that. On this island we'll all share alike."
Captain Dean motioned to us to come close to him. "Remember one thing above all else,"