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

by Kenneth Roberts

  When he stayed behind us, brooding over his raft and talking endlessly to Neal, he put me in mind of a bridegroom, garrulous over the inescapable fate awaiting him on the morrow.

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  December 27th, Wednesday

  Love, true love, is, I suppose, always intemperate, whether it's the love of a man for a woman, a woman for a child, or a father for a son. Certainly Swede's love for Neal was a consuming passion, and equally certainly Neal's comprehension of that love was unusual and beautiful.

  Even before sunup Swede had left the tent, and Neal with him. I couldn't hear what Swede said to Neal, but there was a buoyant quality to his voice. When I went outside, I found the wind, wambling and uncertain the day before, had dropped to a dead calmand when I say calm, I'm speaking only of the wind. The canvas on the tent pole hung flat against it; but the seaah, that damnable sea! There may be such a thing as a dead calm around Boon Island, but it must be in the summer. When we were on the island, the sea was perpetually heaving, surging, on every side, as if afflicted with waves of nausea.

  If the breakers came at us from the west, the island seemed to catch them and pull them around, billowing, on either side, as a woman, battered by wind, draws a cape around herself.

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  But the air, at least, was still and frost-laden. There was frost on the seaweed: ice on the naked bouldersspume-ice left by the northwest wind.

  I went over to the raft on which Swede and Neal were sitting, lashing two oars to the sides with spun yarn.

  "I know the signs," Swede said cheerfully. "That wind's coming around. When the tide's low at one o'clock, she'll move in from the south. No doubt about it."

  "How're your feet?" I asked.

  "Gone," Swede said lightly.

  "Wouldn't you feel better if we cleaned them?" I asked.

  Swede shook his head. "I don't want to see 'em," he said. "I don't want anybody else to see 'em. They don't hurt, and if you did something to 'em, they might start hurting again."

  The captain and George White crawled from the tent just as the sun came up. Against its rising disk the rollers on the horizon were like the teeth of our cutlass-saw.

  "Well, Captain," Swede said triumphantly, "this is the day! Full moon! Onshore wind!"

  The captain shook his head and with his oakum-swathed hands dragged at the spar that formed one side of this spider-web of a raft, laced together with cordage. The spar pulled free of the ice beneath it. It was too frail a support for my taste. The two hammocks, rigged as sails on its stump of a mast, hung limp and ineffective, like the folded wings of a sleeping bat.

  "I've made up my mind to one thing," Captain Dean said. "If this raft sets off, I won't be on it."

  "That's your privilege," Swede said.

  "I won't be on it," Captain Dean said, "because I've

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  weighed the chances, and the chances of getting ashore alive with this raft aren't as good as staying alive on this rock. I ought to forbid you to go. Yesterday we saw two sail heading east. They must have come out of the Piscataqua River, making toward the Isles of Shoals. I'd say they're probably running out of salt fish in Portsmouth. Either that, or they need fresh fish. If they run out of fish in Portsmouth, they're bound to run out in York, too, or Cape Porpoise, or some such place. Boats'll put out of those ports, just as they put out of Portsmouth."

  Swede put his arm around Neal's shoulders and spoke to Captain Dean. "Captain, I'm leaving here at low tide. You'll help me put her in over yonder, where those ledges point out to the west, won't you?"

  I was watching Neal. His eyes seemed to be examining the lashings of that strange raft. They lifted suddenly, met mine and instantly dropped again. They looked hurt, like the eyes of a dog whose master is deserting him.

  "Help me get seaweed, Neal," I said.

  He climbed obediently from the raft, and as he went, his father's fist rapped him affectionately on the shoulder.

  We skirted the tent and started that hated circuit of the island, hunting for any useful thing that might have been sent to us by the sea's grace.

  "Neal," I asked, "has your father ever told you he'd like you to go with him on the raft?"

  Neal shook his head. "He wouldn't let me. I said I'd go, but he almost snapped my ears off."

  "He'll never make it," I said. "Have you asked him not to go?"

  "No," Neal admitted. "He wants to go. He's determined to go."

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  "Yes," I said, "I can see that."

  "He might make it," Neal said, "if he had an onshore wind and a strong man to use the paddle. Anyway, nothing can stop him." He hesitated; then added, "I don't want to stop him."

  When I was silent, Neal added, "When he was in the Naval Hospital, he thought he was as good as dead. He said he wasn't pulling his weight, and he was ashamed to be seen in the hospital uniform. On the Nottingham he pulled his weight. He was happy again. He was even happy on this islanduntil his feet froze. Then he couldn't pull his weight any more. He thinks this raft'll let him pull his weight."

  "Not if he doesn't get ashore," I reminded him.

  "He doesn't look at it that way," Neal said. "He says everything's in his favor. He says somebody may see him if he gets halfway to land. He says if he gets almost to land, somebody's sure to see him. He says if he doesn't get to land and the raft does, they'll find the raftand then they'll find us."

  "You wouldn't stop him if you could, would you?" I asked.

  "No, I wouldn't," Neal said. "If he let me or anybody or anything stop him, he'd never forgive himself. He knows he's going to die, and so do I. I don't want him to die unhappy. Once he's on that raft, headed for shore, his mind will be at ease, no matter what happens."

  There wasn't anything I could say to that. Neal, when I'd first encountered him in Greenwich, was a fine boythe sort of boy anyone would be proud to have as a son or a brother; but the things that had happened to him in

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  five months had changed him from a boy into a mana man who would be a credit to any society, to any country, no matter along what lines his life might be cast.

  Swede was right about the wind. At noon it moved in faintly, a little east of south, and the captain gave the word to drag the raft to the spot Swede had chosen. The dragging wasn't easy, and we did it by inches. Swede counted for us as he probably once had counted in the St. George's Light Dragoons"One, two, three, hup,"and at the "hup" we'd all lift together. By "all" I mean the captain and Neal on one side with Langman and me; on the other side Gray, Hallion, Mellen and White.

  The others couldn't lift, they said, but they had crawled from the tent to watch, all but poor Chips Bullock.

  Between every few lifts we crawled forward to move rocks from our path, and came back to lift again, sliding the raft forward three inches, five inches. The hardest part was finding footholds sufficiently secure to make lifting possible.

  At the water's edge the captain stepped back from the raft.

  "Put her in," Swede shouted. "She's headed right for shore!"

  "Yes, put her in," George White said. "I'm going with him. With this breeze I think we can make it."

  Langman, I thought, as well as could be seen on a face so covered with whiskers, had a smug look. If one of his own men hadn't been going with Swede, I was sure he would have protested bitterly. He never would have gone himself, and he would have done everything possible to prevent Swede from going alone.

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  "If you're determined to go," the captain said, "I won't try to stop you, now that you've gone this far"

  "Push her in," Swede said.

  "But I want to urge you to wait one more day, or two days."

  "What for?" Swede demanded. "Get her in the water!"

  There were murmurs from the oakum-draped figures sprawled on the rocks around us, their limbs at odd angles, like those of dead men.

  The captain fumbled in his clothes and with difficulty produced coins, which he gave to Swe
de. "These are all I saved," he told Swede. "They may help you, one way or another. And there's just one thing, Swede. When you get to shore, have somebody light a fire on the beach. Have 'em light two fires. Have 'em do that before they do anything else."

  "Two fires," Swede said. He crawled aboard the raft and swept us with a glance that made my heart contract. "I know you wish us well," he said. "I wish all of you well." He steadied himself by grasping the spar on either side, and we ran the raft into the water. George White climbed over the stern, and we pushed as hard as we could.

  The raft moved heavily between two ledge-fingers, and her hammock-sail flapped. She almost stopped, settled down as a wave receded, then picked up way again. She moved out until she was parallel with the tips of the ledgefingers: then sluggishly swung broadside to the distant coast line. A slow surge moved her forward. The bow rose a little. The surge slid back and left the side of the raft caught on an unseen ledge.

  White struggled with the lashings of his oar. The free side of the raft slipped under water. The surge returned

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  and the raft tilted sharply. Then another surge moved down from the north side of the island, pressed against the submerged side, and the raft rolled over. A crying rose around us like the squalling of seagulls above a school of fish.

  The raft had spilled in deep water. I found myself on a ledge-finger near the wallowing contraption. Swede came to the surface, gasping, and swam easily to shore, holding a rope-end in his hand. Neal and Langman dragged him up on the seaweed.

  I saw the captain, at the end of another rock finger, reaching and clutching for a piece of woodWhite's rude oar. He caught it and pulled. White's head emerged from the water. I thought he was dead. The captain dragged him up on the ledge, hoisted him to his feet and held him by the waist, doubled over. I saw he couldn't be dead, because he still clung to the oar.

  Swede, clutching his rope-end, seemed able to say nothing but "Help me! Help me!" in a voice that quavered so the words were hardly distinguishable.

  Incapable of using his feet, he straddled a seaweed-covered boulder, pulling at the rope-end until others came to help.

  Between us we got the overturned raft into the cove and ashore at the spot from which we had launched her.

  "Help turn her over," Swede gasped. "Turn her right side up!"

  "You can't make it, Swede," the captain said. "White's finished. He's full of sea water. He's sick!

  "I'll go alone," Swede said wildly. "Turn her over, Captain. I've got to go!"

  "You can't go, you fool," Langman said. "It'll be dark

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  before you get ashore. You'll freeze in those wet clothes. It's too late.''

  "It's not too late," Swede cried. "We'll never get a brighter night than tonightfull moon, no clouds, onshore breeze, high tide at seven! Make 'em turn it over, Captain!

  "Not if you're going alone," Captain Dean said.

  Swede, on his knees, caught the captain's hand. "Don't do it for me!" he implored. "Do it for these others!" He swung an oakum-swathed hand in a semicircle to include all those stooped, bearded, wild-looking creatures. I was afraid to look among them for Neal.

  Harry Hallion shuffled across the slippery seaweed to stand beside Swede and the captain. "I'll go with him," he told the captain. "I can swim. White couldn't. If Swede feels the way he does, I think we can make it."

  The captain eyed him dubiously.

  "Anything's better than this," Hallion said. "You're wasting time. Get her turned over for us."

  Captain Dean motioned to us to help him drag the raft from the water and turn her right side up. Swede, half sobbing and half laughing, scuttled among our legs like a shaggy dog, wanting to help, trying to help, but only succeeding in getting in our way.

  She slid up easily on the seaweed, and we turned her gently for fear of smashing her. The mast and the hammock-sails were gone, but the pulpits hadn't been dislodged.

  "Push her in!" Swede shouted, and there was a terrible urgency in his voice. "We don't need a sail! Get her in before the tide turns!"

  He rolled himself onto the raft, rose to his knees, un-

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  knotted the lashings of the oar still fastened to her side, and shook the oar at us like a spear.

  We slid her into the water, and as she left the ledge Hallion crawled in with White's oar.

  A swell from the south raised her. Miraculously she slipped down it, toward the mouth of the little cove. A cross-swell from the north pushed her to the west and she cleared the mouth of the cove, Swede and Hallion thrashing the water with their makeshift oars.

  Behind me someone prayed, the same incoherent prayer that had risen so often to my own lipsOh God Oh God Oh God Oh God ...

  I felt sick all over at the smallness of that miserable raft, the cold immensity of that heaving ocean, the far far frosty distance over which the raft must float, the seeming pitifulness of those two human specksyet who was to feel sick when those two specks were in truth, and unknown to themselves, great in spirit, and therefore happy!

  There was distance and haziness between the raft and Boon Island when Swede turned, raised his oar and waved it. I looked for Neal. He wasn't among those who knelt on ledges or clung to boulders, following the slow movement of the raft with straining eyes, urging it on, urging it on. Neal would, I knew, have felt that same empty sickness I had felt.

  I got myself back to the tent. Neal was sitting beside Chips Bullock, holding one of Chips's hands in both of his.

  "He was alive when I came in," Neal said. "He held out his hand to me and I took it. He didn't say anything, but his eyes asked. I told him about the raft. I think it made him feel better."

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  Chips's eyes were closed. His face was peaceful, and I was glad he was gone. He hadn't died alone in a hole on the rock, with someone who couldn't speak to him, as he had feared he might if Langman, on Election Day, had become our captain.

  There was coming and going in the tent. At dusk, the captain said, the raft seemed to be halfway to land. Sometimes it would go from sight: then rise again on a wave. Nobody talked about it. We were exhausted. Also around high tide time, the wind rose and howled around the tent and through its many chinks, and the surf made speech next to impossible for exhausted men.

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  December 28th, Thursday

  God only knows why so many of us are unable to tell the truth about occurrences. A man is said to blench at a distressing sight, when in reality his color changes not at all. A lady, supposedly, swoons or blushes at a word she has heard her father and her brothers use a thousand times, whereas the swoon or the blush occurs only in the imagination of the lady herself, or in that of the narrator of the incident. If a writer dislikes wine, all drinkers are drunkards, staggering and revolting. Those of whom we approve have smiling countenances and warm hearts: those of whom we disapprove are hyenas in appearance and behavior. If two nations are engaged in a war, the one we dislike is a land of beasts, brutes and matricides; whereas we, to them, are bullies, murderers and patricides. Each nation is fighting a righteous war, brought about by the intolerable knavery of the other. Too many of us write of men and affairs as we think readers would have us write. Perhaps most of us are not only incapable of seeing things truly, but never do.