Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [86]
"So right now we'll start to separate all the junk we pulled ashore yesterday.
"While we do that, I want Chips Bullock and Swede Butler to pick the highest spot they can findpreferably a smooth piece of ledge that has a crack in it that will let us step a mast with a canvas flag on topa big one, that can be seen six miles away.
"I'm putting Neal Butler in charge of making white oakum from the tangled cordage and black oakum from the tarred shrouds. He's to take Hallion with him and Saver and Graystock and George White.
"I want Mr. Langman with mealso Mr. Whitworth and GrayMellen and my brother Henry. We'll free the yards of whatever junk is fastened to them, and save all the cordage that can be used to lash down the tent.
"When the mast for the new tent is stepped, all usable things are to be brought close to the mast.
"In addition to all these things, we'll have to patrol this island at dawn each day, and at sundown, and again at high tide and low tide. I'll take the first patrol with George
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White. Miles Whitworth will take the second patrol with Neal Butler. Mr. Langman'll take the third patrol with Nicholas Mellen. Swede Butler will take the fourth patrol with Henry Dean. Chips Bullock will take the fifth patrol with Christopher Gray."
For the first time Langman seemed to have no objection to Captain Dean's plans. "What about this shelter we've been living in for the past three nights?"
"You mean last night," Captain Dean said. "I'll tell you what about it. We'll floor it with oakum, and if any one of us falls so low that he can't relieve himself as he's supposed to doby going to the place I select as a head and taking his breeches down and otherwise behaving in a civilized and Christian mannerhe'll stay nights in this shelter until he's fit to live with other humans. For that matter, we may all have to stay here one more night, until the oakum's picked, the canvas separated from that pile of junk, and the cordage straightened so it can be used.
"Meanwhile the cutlass and Chips's hammer and the caulking mallet are to be used by those who do the separating. And I'll be responsible for them.
"Those who pick oakum will have to do it with their own pocket knivesand before the oakum-picking starts, I want Neal Butler to take Saver and Graystock to a pool of water on the south side of this island and see that they clean their breeches as well as they can be cleaned. Let it be a lesson to youthat I have to put a boy in charge of grown men to make sure they keep clean."
The ruin a furious ocean can wreak on a stout ship in an hour's time is beyond the comprehension of those who haven't seen it. It wrenches spikes from wet wood. It knots
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cordage into such intricacies as hangman's knots, six-strand Matthew Walkers, double cat's-paws, three-bight Turk's-heads. It smashes a main yard in the slings, strips a stern post from an inner post as readily as a child twists off a doll's foot.
The first thing we freed from the mass of junk was the foretopsail yard for Chips and Swede to use as the center post of the tent. It was lodged in a frozen hoorah's-nest of canvas, rigging and ratlins that defied our knives almost as though it had been made of iron.
Captain Dean constantly urged us to cut the tarred rope in eight-inch lengths. "If ever we're able to make a fire," he said, "we'll probably have the tarred rope to thank for it; and the lengths'll have to be short or they won't dry."
The foretopsail yard was only half freed when Neal came stumbling to us.
"Cooky's dead," he told the captain.
The captain snapped his pocket knife shut, stared hard at Neal: then straightened up to look