Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley (32 page)

Read Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley Online

Authors: Kenneth Roberts,Jack Bales,Richard Warner

Tags: #Survival After Airplane Accidents; Shipwrecks; Etc., #Nottingham (Galley) - Fiction, #Transportation, #Historical, #Boon Island (Me.) - Fiction, #Boon Island, #18th Century, #Survival After Airplane Accidents; Shipwrecks; Etc - Fiction, #Survival After Airplane Accidents; Shipwrecks; Etc, #Shipwrecks, #Fiction, #Literary, #Sea Stories, #Historical Fiction, #Shipwrecks - Maine - Boon Island - History - 18th Century - Fiction, #test, #Boon Island (Me.), #General, #Maine, #History

 
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pebbles, on which there was no weed. The cordage was jammed between the gravelly stuff and the boulder's base.
The captain motioned for Swede to come and stand beside him. I knew what they discussed, though I couldn't hear a word they spoke because of the roaring of the breakers.
In the end Swede nodded his head, and the captain sent Langman hurrying off. In no time he was back with the piece of rope out of which the oakum was to have been made. Five minutes later Swede and the captain, with Neal between them, were showing Neal the working of a running bowline.
When Neal stood there on the edge of the rock, with that fearful background of foam and roaring waves beyond him, I couldn't bear to look at him: yet I couldn't bear not to. I knew we had to have that cordage: knew that somebody had to go for it, and I knew, too, that the captain was right in picking Neal. He was the lightest: in all likelihood he was the quickest.
At a signal from the captain he slid down the weed in the wake of the receding wave. He put me in mind of an otter. He threw the rope before him and over the boulder as a boy throws a skipping rope: fell on his stomach over the boulder-top; slipped the loose end of the rope under the cordage and through the noose. Just as a towering breaker curled before breaking, he darted back, the rope-end in his hand, no wetter than when he had jumped down.
Swede, stretched far forward, grasped one of his wrists, the captain the other, and the two of them snapped Neal up over the face of the ledge.
Whether that running bowline would grip the cordage
 
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tightly enough to let us haul in the floating yards and sails to which it was attached, we couldn't know. The captain pulled it tight, then drew it gently toward him. The cordage rose up to the level of the top of the boulder around which it was snagged. Chips Bullock joined the captain in his pulling. When the bowline held, we all pulled, but still the cordage didn't come loose.
Twice more Neal went down into that foaming hole to move the bowline higher on the cordageand at last we had our hands on the tangled wet rope.
The rest of that day was horrible beyond words. We hauled at that dripping cordage, fearful each moment that it would part from the floating timbers and sails to which it was attached. When we'd taken in all the slack we could, we strained and struggled to bring the tangled mass closer to shore.
The labor of hauling in that raft of junk seemed greater than mere men could undertake. The raft was attached to somethingperhaps to a part of the sunken hull: perhaps to an anchor cable: perhaps to the stump of a mast, so that I had the feeling that we were trying to draw up a part of the ocean floor.
Worse than that, it was dripping wet, and the handling of wet cordage in a December northeaster becomes insupportable because of the violent aching in the hands. One can pull at it for a minute or two, but then he must stop and clutch his hands between his thighs in order to be free of that terrible aching.
Equally bad was our dubious footing on the surface of that rock. As we gained ground on the cordage, we staggered, slipped, fell on the icy ledges, and still con-
 
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trived to move more and more of the cordage inshore: to find boulders around which to belay it, lest our gains be snatched from us by the voracious seas.
For the first time, that day, we saw the flood tide march up to the high-water mark, to leave our poor island shrunk to a mere nothing, barely rising above the tops of the combers that swept at us and past usthough in the sweeping it helped us in our efforts to draw the sails and spars closer.
In my pain and weariness and terrorand in that terror I was not aloneI had thoughts that helped and thoughts that hindered. If at flood tide the breakers crowded up so close to us, where would they be when December's full moon and spring tide were upon usand every shore has its spring tide twice a month, at new moon and full moontides far higher than ordinary tides: so high that they seem bent on submerging land that cannot be submerged at any other time.
And how could my tutors and professors at Oxford have pretended to find truth and beauty in the adventures of Ulysses? Ulysses, confronted by such tribulations as those that surrounded us, couldn't have helped himselfcould only have turned to and been succored by a god or a goddess in the shape of somebody or otherperhaps by Minerva in the form of an eagle. If he had been in our dire straits, ever-dependable Mercury would have built for him a stout ship from newly cut lumberyes, and seasoned it for him, too. Mercury would even have done it for him on Boon Island, where no tree grew!
In a vision Minerva would have told him how to discover a great store of cheese. In the depths of his distress, Minerva would have appeared to comfort and encourage
 
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himto restore to him the beauty of his youth; Jupiter would have thundered from heaven, ordering the seas to subside!
But the unhappy truth was that nothing like the
Odyssey
has ever been or ever will be. The troubles of Ulysses were brought upon him by his own stupidity and not, as Homer would have us believe, by the vindictiveness of Poseidon, that green-whiskered ruler of the vasty deep. The dreadful facts we faced on Boon Island taught me that Ulysses was a dilatory and philandering old fool; and if he had been with us on our rock, he'd have been exactly in our situationdespairing, helpless, hopeless, and perpetually on the verge of death.
 
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December 13th, Wednesday
I hoped that when the northeaster blew itself out, the sea would grow calm, but it didn't. When the wind swung, it backed into the northwest and west, meaning that bad weather had only temporarily abated. We were free of driving snow and rain, but breakers still roared deafeningly on the north and west. They pounded less on the south and east, but still they pounded, throwing off manes of white foam. The wind seemed colder than on the night we were wrecked.
With the break of day I heard Captain Dean calling Neal to come outside. I went out, too, to find the captain staring off to the northwest.
''Neal," the captain said, "see if you can remember those maps you drew in the little book."
Neal said he remembered.
"Can you recall the chief places you lettered on the maps, starting with Cape Porpoise?" the captain asked.
"Cape Porpoise," Neal said, "Cape Arundel, Bald Head Cliff, Cape Neddick"
"That's it," the captain cried. "Bald Head Cliff! That's
 
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where the waves shoot up, yonder, and this is Boon Island! The last time I sailed east from Portsmouth, I sailed between Boon Island and Cape Neddick! Boon Island was to starboard and Bald Head Cliff to larboard!"
As the eastern sky grew brighter we could see the high dark red rock face of Bald Head Cliff. Spouts of spray rose high against it.
If we'd gone ashore on Bald Head Cliff in a northeaster, instead of on Boon Island, the ship and every last one of us would have been battered to a pulp in a minute's time.
Captain Dean, cheered by the sight of the mainland, lay flat to crawl beneath the shelter and shout the good news to those within.
"Listen," he said. "I know where we are! We're on Boon Island! Just south of us are the Isles of Shoals, where the Pepperrells and other Portsmouth people have fish stages. All winter there's fishing off the Isles of Shoals. There'll be fishing shallops passing us from every directionPortsmouth, Kittery, York. If we set up something they can see, they'll find us. They'll take us off. But unless all of you get out and go to work, we won't be able to set up anything. Your blood won't circulate. You'll die. You've got to come out and drag cordage and junk."
Nobody said a word.
"Another thing," Captain Dean said. "There's seals off the south side of this island. I saw their heads in the water, following me and watching me, just after dawn, the way they always do. There's ducks, thousands of 'em, swimming in big flocks off the south shore.
"Seals have to rest somewhere. If I can catch one of 'em asleep around midnight, we'll have enough to eat for a month. He'll have fat that maybe we can set fire to."
"Where's the rest of that cheese?" Langman asked.
 
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"Right here with Neal Butler," Captain Dean said. "Those who want it must come out and get it."
He backed out himself, and behind him crawled the remnants of our wretched company, with the exception of Cooky Sipper. Even Graystock and Saver came out, looking like corpses.
The captain took the canvas-wrapped cheese from Neal. "Go for seaweed to eat with it," he told Neal. "I'll cut and pass out the cheese myself."
He gave each of us a little cube of cheese. When he came to Graystock and Saver, he went upwind of them and eyed them contemptuously.
"You didn't eat your cheese yesterday," the captain said. "It's been saved for you, and I'm giving you yesterday's and today's too. You don't deserve either. You've been letting the rest of us work for you, and by rights your rations ought to go to those who've been doing the work."
"We were sick, and couldn't work," Graystock said.
"You're a liar," Captain Dean said. "Cooky Sipper's sick and can't stand up, but you're no sicker than the rest of us. You're scared, that's all! If you weren't, you'd get up and move off to do what has to be done, same as the rest of us. You've got to stay human, not be like helpless babies, or pigs that can be smelled a mile down-wind!" The captain was furious, no doubt about it, but he held himself under control, which isn't easy when dealing with people like Graystock and Saveror Langman.
He gave them their little ration of cheese; then turned back to the rest of us. "Up to now," he told us harshly, "I haven't said anything about Saver and Graystock, but now I know where we arenow I'm able to see the things
 
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God gives us, so we can help ourselves and help each otherI'm going to say something. Yes, and about anyone who thinks he can do like Saver and Graystock."
"It's your duty as captain," Langman said, "to encourage your men: not to discourage 'em."
Captain Dean rounded on him. "What do you think I
am
doing? You ought to be called Wrong-end Langman! I want Graystock and Saver to go to work and help save themselves, instead of refusing to work. They're doing nothing but setting the rest of us an example in discouragement and despair. Nobody ever accomplished anything in this world without working day and night; but most people are such damned fools that they don't want to work at all, not at anything, just like Saver and Graystock. Give 'em a free hand and they won't even work to save their lives! You know the most discouraging thing in the world, Langman? It's for a lot of hardworking people to have to look at and listen to those who'd like to keep on living without doing anything at all."
I suppose," Langman said, "I was Wrong-end Langman when I said you wanted to run us ashore."
Captain Dean looked at him long and hard. "Mr. Langman," he said, "don't forget that you were No-lookout Langman before we struck. Just what is it that you'd do, right now, if you had the say?"
"I'd build a boat," Langman said promptly.
"With nothing but a hammer, a cutlass, a caulking mallet and our pocket knives?" Captain Dean asked.
Langman glowered at him.
"I'll tell you exactly what we must do first of all," Captain Dean said. "We have to locate the highest point on this rock able to hold a mast that won't blow down. A
 
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mast that people on shore may be able to see if they ever come to the water's edge to look for driftwood or seaweed, or if they ever put out for fish or lobsters. Then we have to build a tent around it.
"Even before we do that we need oakum to lie on: oakum to protect our faces and hands and feet: oakum for caps and mittens and bellybands: oakum to keep the wind from blowing the tent to pieces: oakum to keep the rain from driving through the canvas. What's more, we can't build a boat until we have oakum. The sort of boat we build will need all the oakum we can pick between dawn and dark for a year!
"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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