Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [91]
As we made our painful patrol of the high-water mark, we saw two seals playfully nosing at a floating object, and
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simultaneously Captain Dean came across a slender stick of wood that might have been a broom handle.
The seals swam around and under the thing with which they played, and whisked at it with their hind flippers, until the water shoaled. Then they abandoned it, and lay offshore, rising high in the water, puffing out their whiskers and watching us from staring round eyes. I would have given anything I ever hoped to own if I could have got my hands on one of those seals, though I well knew I could never have held him.
When a breaker thrust their plaything against the rock, we found it to be two bones from salted beef, held together by the muscles of the joint. To add to this bit of good fortune, Captain Dean came across a lump of cheese the size of a child's head, and Langman found a mussel from which grew scores of long streamers of thin kelp, which Langman insisted were good to eat. The mussel he discarded with an expression of distaste, before the captain could stop him.
"A mussel is full of meat," the captain protested. "Well, one mussel wouldn't have gone far among thirteen men, but there's more where that one came from."
When we returned to the canvas shelter with this treasure trove, the others came out, dreadful haggard objects. Each was given a streamer of kelp; and all of them, as intent as an audience at a play, watched us smash those beef bones with rocks, and, with knife blades, extract a dab of marrow for each man.
"We'll eat all the cheese right now," Captain Dean said. "We'll lash that saucepan handle to the end of this broomstick with spun yarn. Maybe, when the tide is right, we'll
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find enough mussels to give us a real mealand can pry era off the rocks without losing our hands.
"Then," he went on, "we'll all go to the flag mast and build the tent and pick more oakum for it. We can't spend another night in this rotten shelter."
The men, haggard, bearded, misshapen, just stared at him. I think they were only a quarter conscious, partly paralyzed by the biting cold of the night just past. Three of themSaver, Graystock and Mellencrawled silently back beneath the canvas.
Captain Dean stooped to peer after them. Then he gave up. After all, there's no use driving those who have passed the limit of endurance.
The size of the tent was determined by the area of the rounded ledge that held the center pole.
The ledge was shaped roughly like a humped-up triangle, sliced from the side of an enormous hogshead. This triangle rose from a welter of boulders. It was narrow: then widened as a wedge of orange peel widens, to descend, still widening, and vanish among more boulders. Thus the tent of necessity was three-sided, like a pyramid. Its height was regulated by the distance between the rock and the lowest lashing of the canvas flag.
Captain Dean helped us pick the corner posts for the tent. When they were set in place, Swede, Langman and Harry Hallion formed a living step ladder on which the captain mounted to lash the posts to the mast. The rest of us dragged pieces of sail across the rocks, arranging them so they could be fastened to the corner posts with spun yarn.
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The canvas at the base of each of the three sides was anchored by broken pieces of deck-planking. The planks were held down by boulders.
The placing of the boulders was a source of great concern to Captain Dean. ''If those timbers aren't properly secured," he said, "the canvas is sure to blow down on us. Such things always happen on the coldest night, when you won't be able to see your hand in front of your face."
So outside the single row of boulders atop each plank, he made us lay another row of boulders. Then he insisted we lay a third row on top of this double rowbig boulders, too large to be handled by one man. How, with my half frozen hands, I could have been of any help in the handling of them, I cannot recall. All I