Boon Island - Kenneth Roberts [98]
But our labors on the oars were dwarfed by a discovery made by the captain.
At dead high tide, around ten o'clock, the captain raised a hoarse shout and pointed off to the south with his oakum-wrapped hand.
Beyond the breakers, beyond the round seal heads that watched us and watched us, were the sails of three vessels.
They might have been fishermen or coasting schooners, but at least they were vesselsthe first sign of a sail we had seen; and to me, who had felt sure that no fishermen would venture out of port at this season of the year, they were a sight that sent through me a choking surge of hope.
They were moving straight out from shore, to the eastward, probably out of Portsmouth, the captain said: taking provisions to the Isles of Shoals, perhaps, or going for cargoes of salt cod.
Again everyone crawled from the tent to see those three wonderful sails, and to wave their arms and halloo hoarsely. The three vessels looked to us to be about nine miles from us, but still we hallooed. No shout can be heard at a dis-
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tance of nine miles. All of us knew that. Perhaps our shouts were a form of prayer.
When the sails, sliding gradually to the eastward, became dim specks on the horizon, the oakum pickers crawled back to the tent. They looked like sick bears, and felt, if I could judge by my own feelings, even sicker than they looked.
Neal and Swede and I went back to making oars. The task before us seemed insurmountableas impossible, almost, as drilling a hole through a block of granite with a needle.
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December 19th, Tuesday
Those oars, I thought, were the most troublesome thing about the boatthough I suppose that each part of every enterprise always seems most difficult and most important to the one to whom it's entrusted.
Nonetheless, the oars seemed vital, for unless the wind was in the east, we couldn't depend on our sail to carry us to the nearest land, which, if Captain Dean's reckoning was correct, was six miles away. Even under favorable circumstancesbetter circumstances than the bitter ones we had so far encounteredwe would be three hours, at least, rowing that clumsy boat to shore.
And row we must, not only to get the boat across that turbulent stretch of water, but to keep ourselves moving so we wouldn't freeze.
Yet the oars, split with rock-wedges from boards, were the same width from end to end. They had to be narrowed at one end, and smoothed, so that men could use them effectively. The saw was useless to smooth those sharp edges. Our knives made no impression upon them, for the
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wet boards only roughened when we tried to bevel the corners.
The best we could do, in the end, was to knock the ice from a ledge and rub each oar against the rock, working the oar around and around, rasping at it until we brought it to some faint semblance of smoothness. I couldn't let myself think what such oars would do to the hands of those who paddled with them, even when the hands were padded with oakum.
Tide was high at eleven; so at daybreak, before we went to work on those devilish oars, Neal and I patrolled the island.
The wind, for a change, was in the south and the seals had moved around to the north side.
For a change, too, there were four gulls at high-water mark, wailing dolorously. One was eyeing something, first from one side, then from the other, as gulls do; and as we made our way toward it, the gull picked up the something, flew straight up with it: then dropped it on the rocks, so that we knew it was a mussel.
When we shouted and waved our arms, the gulls flew away, mewing. Neal picked up the mussel, broken by its fall, and divided it with me.
As he chewed at that orange-colored meat, spitting out seed pearls as he did so, he moved from