Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley (50 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

BOOK: Boon Island: including Contemporary Accounts of the Wreck of the Nottingham Galley
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Page 351
her anchor was up, and we were moving to the westward. Between us and that miserable island there was the mist of breaking seas and the haze of cold air above salt water. That island had visited upon us every conceivable form of misery, disappointment and torture, but it hadn't been able to destroy us, and in spite of my aches and my discomfort, I felt a great peacea blissful quiet.
Around me men spoke quietly and I heard themheard small sounds: the sighing of the breeze in the rigging: the screaking of the boom against the mast: the faint rustle of the seas along the hull. The world, after an eternity, was blessedly silent once more. Gone forever, thank God, was the deafening tumult of breakers, bellowing and roaring like furious beasts determined to destroy our minds as well as our bodies.
The brigantine and the two schooners hove to and waited for the pink to come within hailing distance: then cruised along on either side and spoke us.
"Get 'em all?" they shouted. "Anything we can do?"
Long used his speaking trumpet. "We got 'em all. Ten of 'em. If you beat us in, see there's canoes at Pepperrell's Wharf in Portsmouth. Take word to Dr. Packer. Get barbers. Find Nason and see what he's arranged."
The skippers of the three vessels nodded vigorously: held their hands clasped high in air and shook them.
Captain Long resumed his shouting. "Plenty of warm water! They're lousy, all of 'em! Plenty of bandages! All kinds of ointments!"
One of the skippers, perched in the ratlins, bawled, "How many days on the island?"
"Twenty-four," Captain Long shouted.
 
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The skipper slid down from the ratlins, and I could see the crews talking and gesticulating. I knew they didn't believe it.
The three vessels sheered away from the pink and drew ahead, as if racing for Portsmouth.
A sailor brought me a tot of rum and a slice of bread. "Captain's orders," he said. The rum burned my gullet and went heatedly around in my stomach. My first bite of bread had a flat taste, but the second was better: the last better still.
The same sailor came back with a cup of gruel and stood before me while I drank it. Then he quickly took the mug from me and moved to a distance. "I'll stand here so you won't fall overboard," he said.
I didn't know what he meant until the pink skittered on the top of a wave, then sank sideways down it. On that my ears roared, my insides were contorted, and everything in me churned up and out. I hung over the pink's bulwarks while the sailor held my knees. This, I thought, was death.
Dimly I heard the sailor say soothingly, "This'll clean you out. Everyone was sick after the gruel, even the captain."
Just at that moment I didn't care what had happened to the captain. I didn't even care what happened to me. I was seasick.
Pepperrell's Wharf was crowded when the pink slid alongside it at dusk. It was a mystery to me why so many hundreds had gathered on that wharf to see a few scarecrows, but in spite of the bitter January cold there were hundreds of them, women and men, too. Almost all had
 
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lanterns made of pierced tin. They were somehow different from any such throng that might collect in Greenwich. In Greenwich there would have been beggars among them and hangdog-looking folk, and deformed, dwarfed people, slyly seeking pockets to pick. Those of substance would have been smaller and would have seemed contemptuous. Almost certainly there would have been some who jeered, or laughed raucously at our hairiness and raggedness and queer oakum garments.
But those hundreds on Pepperrell's Wharf stood straight, had solidity, and all of them, without exception, were concerned about us. They were compassionate people, deeply interested in our welfare. When I was helped over the bulwarks and saw all those solicitous eyes, glittering in the light from their upheld lanterns, I couldn't help gulping to think that strangers should be so kind.
Nason came from the crowd to lower me into a canoe with Neal. "You're going to Captain Furber's," he said. "Captain Dean's going there, too. He's already gone." He put his hand on Neal's shoulder. "I'll see you tomorrow," he said. "We're all your friends. You needn't worry about a thing."
The canoeman took us a short distance downstream, helped us ashore, pulled his canoe half up the bank, and motioned us to follow him.
"Tell us where it is," I said, "and we'll go there. You don't need to leave your canoe."
"Why not?" he asked.
"Someone might steal it."
He looked baffled: then urged us forward, between two warehouses and across a street to a two-and-a-half-story wooden house. The door of the house was open and before
 
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it stood two women and three children, all peering in through the doorway.
Our canoeman touched one of the women on the shoulder. She stifled a cry and whirled to face him.
At the sight of us, she pressed her hand to her lips and shrank back, drawing the children against her skirts. They were pretty little plump things, and I had the thought that has come to me, against my will, a thousand thousand times since then, whenever I see a sturdy child or a woman with a large arm or heavy buttocksthe thought that, if the need arose, that child or that woman would make good eating. No wonder the women were afraid of us!
"What's the matter, ma'am?" the canoeman asked. "I was told by Captain Nason to bring these people here, orders of Captain Furber, and Captain Dean's already been brought here."
"Oh," the woman said, "he frightened us to death, just the look of him. When he stood here and started to speak to us, we screamed and ran out. He went in. I think he's in the kitchen."
"Well, go on in," the canoeman said, "and take these two with you. Treat 'em the same way you'd want Captain Furber to be treated if he'd been cast away on Boon Island for a month."
"Only for twenty-four days," Neal said.
Mrs. Furber looked at Neal: looked away, then studied him carefully. "Only!" she said. "
Only
twenty-four days! You come in the house, right this minute!"
Captain Dean was in the kitchen, as Mrs. Furber had suspected. On the fire he had found an iron kettle filled with beef stew, and had forked out pieces of beef and turnips
 
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and potatoes, and had covered the top of the kitchen table with them to let them cool.
"I'm sorry, ma'am," he said to Mrs. Furber. "When you screamed and ran out, I figured the wise thing to do was to stay here instead of running after you and maybe frightening you and the children even more."
He looked at the children in what he doubtless thought was a genial manner; but I knew too well that he was entertaining the same understandable thought that had passed through my headthat they would be tenderer to eat than Chips Bullock had been.
Mrs. Furber's initial horror was passing. "You can't have all that beef and vegetables you've put out on the table," she said sternly. "And just because you're starved is no reason you shouldn't eat like human beings." She brought a bowl and three plates, forked a moderate amount from the table top to each plate; then put the remainder in the bowl.
"Now," she said, "that's all you can have!"
"Ma'am," Neal said. "I'll ask you to put us in the room where we'll stay. We'd better eat there."
"Well I never!" Mrs. Furber exclaimed.
Neal scratched himself deliberately, first his head: then his arm.
"Well," Mrs. Furber said, "we'll put you in the barn. There's three stalls and a summer oven, and lots of hay and blankets. When you're cleaned up, we'll move you to the house."
There was a knock on the door. Mrs. Furber opened it to admit three menDr. Packer and two barbers.
The doctor took one look at us, then beckoned us to
 
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pick up our plates and follow him. To Mrs. Furber he said, ''Bring us hot water as often as you can. And get tubs. If you've only got one, borrow two from the neighbors."
I can hear Dr. Packer's voice, after all these years, exclaiming over our sores and over our feet. "It's a miracle," he said over and over. "I've got to send word to Boston! Urine and oakum? Seaweed? God knows! But it's a miracle, all the same!"
Warmth, blankets, soft hay on which to lie, clean bodies, shorn heads, shaved faces, white bandages, soothing ointments! I felt as the sailors of Ulysses must have felt, when freed of Circe's spell.
 
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The Last Chapter
I waked, the next morning, to the sound of jingling, faint and far off, couldn't remember where I was, and sat up straight on my hay-stuffed mattress, half frightened by not hearing the unending roaring of those Boon Island breakers: bewildered by my flannel nightgown, smelling of lavender. Lavender, of all things, instead of the stenches of our Boon Island tent! The jingling sound went on and on.
Captain Dean spoke up from the adjoining stall. "Sleigh bells! People moving around! Probably there'll be a few of 'em come to see us today. Probably they'll want to know all about us. We'd better decide on what we'll tell 'em about Neal."
"That's simple enough, isn't it?" I asked. "He learned to read and write while working for my father. And my father got to know him because Neal's father was in the Naval Hospital."
"Yes," Captain Dean said. "That's close enough. Are you listening, Neal?"
From a third stall Neal politely said he was.
 
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"Probably," the captain went on cheerfully, "we won't have occasion to say much. Shipwrecked sailors aren't a novelty nowadays, considering how our good country-men in Devon and Cornwall make a business of getting them wrecked. These New Hampshire people aren't much different, probably."
Probably! Probably!
How little Captain Dean knew about America, in spite of the high opinion he'd expressed to us in the harbor of Killybegs concerning the people of Portsmouth.
How little anyone, anywhere, knows about America! About its insatiable curiosity concerning the welfare of others! About its generous eagerness to help strangers achieve the same health and happiness that its own citizens enjoy! About its limitless resources: its enormous latent strength! And above all, about its friendliness to those who deserve its friendship: its implacable detestation of false men and evil measures!
Captain Furber came banging at the door that led from the barn to the woodshed, which in turn opened into the kitchen. With him he carried a kettle of fish chowder, three bowls, a ladle and three spoons.
"Haddock!" Captain Furber said portentously. "The Woman"and I took The Woman to be Mrs. Furber"cooks the heads and bones in one kettle, and the onions and potatoes and fish in another. Then she makes a mess of pork scraps, and breaks up some ship's bread, and mixes 'em all up with the liquor from the bones. Every sea captain in Portsmouth claims his wife makes the best fish chowder in the world, but I'll put The Woman's up against any of 'em. It's the liquor from the heads and the backbones that grows hair on your chest!''
 
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He ladled the stew into the bowls; then discoursed while we rolled that hot and fragrant chowder over our tongues, crunching the pork scraps through the soft and savory ship's bread, the tender haddock and the melting potatoes. My toes, what there were left of them, would have curled, if that had been possible, at the life-giving sweetness that trickled down my throat.
"The Woman," Captain Furber said, "makes fried pies that would stand a dead Indian right up on his feet. Doc Packer's in there now, eating fried pies. The Woman wanted me to take in a few for you, but Doc Packer said No. There's a couple of nurses coming overGovernor Wentworth authorized 'emand Doc Packer says maybe you can have one fried pie apiece along about four bells."
As a seeming afterthought he said, "There's been people coming around with stuff already, but Doc Packer says they can't come in till after he's looked at you. He says maybe some of 'em can come in after you have your dinner."
"What sort of stuff?" Captain Dean asked.
"Oh, knitted small clothes," Captain Furber said. "Linen shirts. Woolen stockings. Big parcel from Mrs. John Brewsterthe one that was scalped. Good woman. Got a silver plate in her head to close up a hatchet hole. Hair never grew back, so she wears a wig. Kind of starchy-looking woman, but she softens up considerably toward those who've been in trouble. I'll have a table brought in so you can spread things out on it."
Dr. Packer came in, followed by two women in gray dresses. One, the Widow Hubbard, was short and stout and had a luxuriant mustache. The other, Widow Macklin, was tall and cheerful-looking with a cast in one eye that

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