Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [88]
The captain and George White made hard work of getting Cooky to the seaweedy rock-fingers of the south shore. They would pull Cooky's body forward until his head was almost at their ankles, then they'd get themselves across another ten feet of ledges, flat on their stomachs like two frogs; then rise and cautiously pull Cooky to them again.
If I hurried, I told myself, I could reach them even now, before they put the body in the water.
I felt Langman looking at me, a mocking twist on his thin, sallow face. That was a bad habit of hisstaring fixedly at those he disliked, apparently under the impression that the person at whom he stared wasn't conscious of his starewhich of course wasn't the case. That was like Langman. He was about as perceptive and sensitive as a pig.
"What you got on your mind?" Langman asked.
"Why, nothing," I said. "I've got nothing on my mind."
He looked over his shoulder at the captain and White pulling and hauling at Cooky's body.
"Well," I said, "this isn't clearing that foretopsail yard."
We had it cleared by midafternoon, soon after Swede and Chips came for it and for a square of canvas to use as a flag. They had, they said, found a ledge with a deep crack in itone into which a spar could be pushed and shimmed into place with wedge-shaped rocks.
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''Once we get that spar in place," Swede said to Langman, "it'll outlast you."
Langman looked scornful. "If we don't build a boat, it'll outlast all of us."
Chips swung his head from side to side. "I wish I had my axe," he said irrelevantly. "When we were cleaning that slot for the spar, we found slivers of rock. They're shaped like splitting wedges. We can use 'em for chisels if they don't splinter when pounded."
He and Swede carried away the foretopsail yard and the square of canvas; but dark came down on us before we were able to unsnarl the sails that were wrapped with rigging as a fly is wrapped in a spider web.
So we spent that night in the shelter in which Cooky had sobbed and moaned night after night.
Night after night?
Had we been three nights in that shelter? Why no! It was only two nights. I found it difficult to keep track. The first night we'd spent in a crevice, without covering. The next two nights we'd had a strip of canvas above us.
Things were different with Cooky gone. Not better, perhaps, but quieter. Cooky had always groaned and sobbed; and lying somewhere near him was another who moaned and groaned. It may have been Graystock. It may have been Saver. It could, God knows, have been almost any one of us. Now, with Cooky gone, there was a lot less sobbing.
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December 14th, Thursday
I think our labors of the day before, and our depression because of the death of Cooky Sipper, would have kept us from even thinking of continuing our work on the tent on Thursday. The bitter northwest wind was more biting than that of the northeaster. I thought wryly of the winter chill of the Bodleian, often so penetrating that students insisted they couldn't read. This was a different cold, and its effect upon us forced us to do things we couldn't otherwise have done.
And that's another thing my sojourn on Boon Island did for me: it made me impatient of a person who, because of fancied ill-health or discomfort, fails to execute a task or complete an undertaking. No man is worth his salt if, by such a failure, he inconveniences others.
A man can't, I know, stay awake indefinitely, though I think he somehow contrives to sleep or to lose consciousness in spite of pain or mental trouble. Yet I'd have sworn I never slept on the night of the thirteenth. All night long my feet and legs either throbbed or burned or itched. Each one of those three ills seemed unendurable by itself, and
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certainly there was no respite from the constant movement of the men around mean uneasy thrashing, as dogs thrash when wounded and in distress.
When daylight came I could see as well as feel