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A very soft, warm, gentle breeze fanned my cheek, and the only audible sounds were the snores and snorts of many sleepers near me, mingling with the gentle lap of water along the boat's planking. All hands save myself were sound asleep! I was not greatly surprised at this, though naturally a trifle vexed that my orders as to the maintenance of a lookout had not been more strictly observed.
As it was not possible to put a passenger in control as pilot, the machine was attached to a central post by wire guys and run round a circle 100 feet in diameter, the track consisting of wooden planking 4 feet wide.
The driver looked down, as he drove safely off the bridge, and shook his head at the swirl of water that rushed and eddied, dark and muddy, close up under the rotten planking; then he cracked his whip, and the horses sturdily attacked the little hill.
The first glance showed him a sinewy warrior, moving softly across the planking from the other end of the cabin and coming directly toward him. The Comanche was in a crouching posture, with his rifle in his left hand, while his right rested on his hip, as if grasping the handle of his knife.
The original council house was built by the troops in 1823, but Agent Taliaferro claimed that most of the inside work was done at his own expense. The building was of logs and stone, eighty-two feet long, eighteen feet wide, and presenting in the front a piazza of seventy feet. Within, there were six rooms, lined with pine planking and separated from each other by panel doors.
The ribs spring from the solid mass of their own floors bolted in between the keelson and the keel; and the planking, or skin, is let into the rabbets, or side grooves, of the keel and firmly fastened to the ribs throughout by hardwood pegs called treenails. The decks are, in themselves, a source of weakness.
In one place the snow had been dug down to the pine planking of the pathway round the house; and the contact of this woodenness with the frozen ground pierced his nerves and set his teeth on edge like a harsh noise.
Had we a good carpenter among us, we might have built a vessel from the wreck, should she hold together long enough for us to bring a good portion of her planking and timber ashore; but I am very certain that none of us are capable of that, although we have a stock of carpenter's tools." "There is nothing like trying," said Desmond.
It was, indeed, both wonderful and providential that she had escaped destruction; for not only had the sharp rock torn off the planking and worked its way into the timbers, but one point had cut a hole right through the bottom, and, breaking off, had happily remained fixed. Had it fallen out, no human power could have prevented the ship from foundering.
It was only an accident which gave me a clue to the real program. Mapes sent me back into the vacant space just forward of the paddle-wheel, seeking a lost cant-hook, and, as I turned about to return the missing tool in my hand, I paused a moment to glance curiously out through a slit in the boat's planking, attracted by the sound of a loud voice uttering a command.
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