Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [92]
Langman worked as hard as anyone, but he never stopped talking about the boat. As in the matter of privateers, he couldn't drop a subject for a minute, once he was embarked on it.
"If the full-moon spring tide rises above the top of this rock," he said, "what good's a tent going to do us? Nothing will help us then but a boat."
"Look," Captain Dean said, "I've measured this rock. Right here where we're standing, as near as I can figure, it's fourteen feet above normal high-water mark. According to my reckoning, the tide rise here is seven feet. I don't believe any spring tide could be three times as high as a normal tide."
"It can be," Langman said. "There's some places only a little north of here where the tide rises and falls twenty-
Page 221
eight feet. I've heard Woodes Rogers say so when he was sailing to Newfoundland."
"I know those places," Captain Dean said, "but that's 'way north of here. The same thing's true in England. You get some terrible high tides in the Severn estuary, but you never get any such tides on the Isle of Wight, which isn't far away, as the crow flies. And I'll tell you another thing, Langman. This is the fifteenth of December, and according to my lights"
"It's the sixteenth," Langman interrupted. "Tomorrow's Sunday."
"No," the captain said, "this is the fifteenth. Sunday isn't until day after tomorrow."
"I figured it out," Langman said. "Tomorrow's Sunday."
"We've got to get this tent finished," Captain Dean said, "and there's no sense arguing over which day's Sunday. The thing I want to impress on you is that my reckoning shows full moon to be due December 27th, a Wednesday. We must have had one spring tide already, because there should have been a new moon day before yesterday."
"The twenty-seventh would be a Thursday," Langman said.
"Well, whichever day of the week it is," Captain Dean said, "it's twelve days to spring tide, and if we don't get this shelter done, and the tide does rise that extra fourteen feet, and we do have another onshore blow, and we do have to have a boat to save our lives, we can't have a boat unless we shelter ourselves during those twelve days between now and spring tide. The tent has to come first."
<><><><><><><><><><><><>
Those of us who worked on the tent were the captain,
Page 222
Swede Butler, Langman, Neal, Harry Hallion and George White.
All the restHenry Dean, Christopher Gray, Nicholas Mellen, Saver, Graystock and Bullockas soon as the sides were up took shelter within it, and three of themChips Bullock, Saver and Graystocklooked as though nothing on earth could ever induce them to come out again.
The others, under the urgings of Henry Dean, did their best to pick oakum; but when they wouldn't work, and just lay or sat there, their eyes opaque like those of a fish, holding their hands to the pits of their stomach and crouching over them as if to send a little warmth into those numb extremities, there seemed to be nothing to be done about it.
We could hear Henry beg them to get on with their picking. That was one of the advantages of the new shelter. We couldn't sit up in the old shelter, and so had to go outdoors to pick oakum.
In the tent we could stand up, if only three or four stood at a time. The rest could sit up.
The day we finished the tent Henry Dean and Nicholas Mellen, fumbling around a little pile of junk we hadn't yet untangled, came across the rawhide seizing of one of the yards. It was still fastened to a fragment of the yard, and when it was pried loose and unwound, it looked like a piece of soggy cowhide about eighteen inches wide and two feet long.
When Henry Dean brought it back to the tent, even the men who seemed half dead sat up to look at it, and there was an instant demand that it be distributed for food.
"Food!" Henry Dean exclaimed. "You can't..." Then he stopped and said, "I'll speak