Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [83]
The boulder was set in a patch of crushed shells and
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pebbles, on which there was no weed. The cordage was jammed between the gravelly stuff and the boulder's base.
The captain motioned for Swede to come and stand beside him. I knew what they discussed, though I couldn't hear a word they spoke because of the roaring of the breakers.
In the end Swede nodded his head, and the captain sent Langman hurrying off. In no time he was back with the piece of rope out of which the oakum was to have been made. Five minutes later Swede and the captain, with Neal between them, were showing Neal the working of a running bowline.
When Neal stood there on the edge of the rock, with that fearful background of foam and roaring waves beyond him, I couldn't bear to look at him: yet I couldn't bear not to. I knew we had to have that cordage: knew that somebody had to go for it, and I knew, too, that the captain was right in picking Neal. He was the lightest: in all likelihood he was the quickest.
At a signal from the captain he slid down the weed in the wake of the receding wave. He put me in mind of an otter. He threw the rope before him and over the boulder as a boy throws a skipping rope: fell on his stomach over the boulder-top; slipped the loose end of the rope under the cordage and through the noose. Just as a towering breaker curled before breaking, he darted back, the rope-end in his hand, no wetter than when he had jumped down.
Swede, stretched far forward, grasped one of his wrists, the captain the other, and the two of them snapped Neal up over the face of the ledge.
Whether that running bowline would grip the cordage
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tightly enough to let us haul in the floating yards and sails to which it was attached, we couldn't know. The captain pulled it tight, then drew it gently toward him. The cordage rose up to the level of the top of the boulder around which it was snagged. Chips Bullock joined the captain in his pulling. When the bowline held, we all pulled, but still the cordage didn't come loose.
Twice more Neal went down into that foaming hole to move the bowline higher on the cordageand at last we had our hands on the tangled wet rope.
The rest of that day was horrible beyond words. We hauled at that dripping cordage, fearful each moment that it would part from the floating timbers and sails to which it was attached. When we'd taken in all the slack we could, we strained and struggled to bring the tangled mass closer to shore.
The labor of hauling in that raft of junk seemed greater than mere men could undertake. The raft was attached to somethingperhaps to a part of the sunken hull: perhaps to an anchor cable: perhaps to the stump of a mast, so that I had the feeling that we were trying to draw up a part of the ocean floor.
Worse than that, it was dripping wet, and the handling of wet cordage in a December northeaster becomes insupportable because of the violent aching in the hands. One can pull at it for a minute or two, but then he must stop and clutch his hands between his thighs in order to be free of that terrible aching.
Equally bad was our dubious footing on the surface of that rock. As we gained ground on the cordage, we staggered, slipped, fell on the icy ledges, and still con-
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trived to move more and more of the cordage inshore: to find boulders around which to belay it, lest our gains be snatched from us by the voracious seas.
For the first time, that day, we saw the flood tide march up to the high-water mark, to leave our poor island shrunk to a mere nothing, barely rising above the tops of the combers that swept at us and past usthough in the sweeping it helped us in our efforts to draw the sails and spars closer.
In my pain and weariness and terrorand in that terror I was not aloneI had thoughts that helped and thoughts that hindered. If at flood tide the