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What had been a semi-underground place composed of scantlings, branches of trees and mother earth, with a kind of vaulted roof, had been made into a sort of Chinese temple.
Suddenly, glancing up at the dim cloud of sails above, I saw that we were aback and making sternway. We might have tossed a biscuit aboard the big Serapis as she glided ahead of us. The broadsides thundered, and great ragged scantlings brake from our bulwarks and flew as high as the mizzen-top; and the shrieks and groans redoubled.
The rude cross surmounting the gable above its entrance was twined with morning-glory vines that had found their way to it after hiding the low, thick, black walls beneath; and surrounding the building was a fence of scantlings built every spring by the chaplain to keep the troop horses and the commissary's cows from grazing off its sides, and stolen every fall by the half-breeds when the first frosts came that served as a hitching-post for raw-boned army mounts and scraggy Indian ponies.
The next proceeding was to fix, at equal distances apart across the rough framework of the roof, a series of slender scantlings cut from the deck planks by splitting them with an axe, which Ben was forced to make use of on account of his having no saw, that and other similar useful instruments having been left in his tool-chest, which had been placed in the long-boat when the first preparations were made for abandoning the Nancy Bell.
Two were left to lay the sods, and the other set about sawing scantlings into lengths for the framework of the hip-roof, while their mother came out and bound straw into flat bunches for the thatch. Up in the river meadows, the little girl, secure in her seat on the pinto, rode to and fro along the southern edge of the herd, in front of the lowered foreheads and tossing horns of the cattle.
As for wisdom and judgment, with those other out-of-fashioned qualifications which have been so highly esteemed heretofore, they have not been found to be so useful in this age, since it has invented scantlings for politics that will move with the strength of a child and yet carry matters of very great weight; and that raillery and fooling is proved by frequent experiments to be the more easy and certain way; for, as the Germans heretofore were observed to be wisest when they were drunk and knew not how to dissemble, so are our modern statesmen when they are mad and use no reserved cunning in their consultations; and as the Church of Rome and that of the Turks esteem ignorant persons the most devout, there seems no reason why this age, that seems to incline to the opinions of them both, should not as well believe them to be the most prudent and judicious; for heavenly wisdom does, by the confession of men, far exceed all the subtlety and prudence of this world.
"You'll not be roastin' by the stove no more this summer," observed Pat. The widow came out. She looked at the rough roof supported by the four scantlings, and then at her boys. "Sure, 'tis a nice, airy kitchen, so it is," she said. "And as for the surprise, 'tis jist the koind of a wan your father was always thinkin' up. As you say, I'll not be roastin' no more.
The mill-hands lounging in the gangways scurried for their stations in the mill; men climbed to the tops of the lumber-piles, while other men passed boards and scantlings up to them; the donkey-engines aboard the vessels rattled; the cargo-gaffs of the steam schooner swung outward, and a moment later two great sling-loads of newly sawed lumber rose in the air, swung inward, and descended to the steamer's decks.
The sweat from the exertion streamed down his face and showed through the undershirt across his shoulders. He managed to get into the chair, where he panted in a state of collapse. In a few minutes he roused himself. The boy held the end of the telescope against one of the veranda scantlings, while the man gazed through it at the sea.
This detail attended to, they went to the carpenter's little shop and cut two scantlings of a length to correspond to the measurements taken, and in addition Mr. Reardon prepared some thin cleats with countersunk holes for the insertion of screws. He worked very leisurely, and it was eleven o'clock when he had everything in readiness.
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