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Updated: June 13, 2025
Yet the bo'sun assured us that he had no doubts but that she could be made seaworthy, though it would take a greater while than hitherto he had thought needful. Having concluded his examination of the boat, the bo'sun sent one of the men to bring the bottom-boards out of the tent; for he needed some planking for the repair of the damage.
Then, as I continued to stare at the interior of my watch-case, wondering what it all meant, my memory of the events of the preceding night I knew it must be the preceding night, because my watch was still going all came back to me, and I understood where I was. Scrambling giddily to my feet, I looked about me and saw a bucket rolling to and fro on the junk's bottom-boards.
Long before they reached Devil's Point the tumble had upset Hancock's stomach completely. He had lost his oar; somehow it slipped off between the thole-pins, and in his weakness he forgot to cry out that 'twas gone. It drifted away in the dark the night all round was black as your hat, the squalls hiding the stars and he dropped off his thwart upon the bottom-boards.
Sir Ommaney, stepping ashore, stretched out a hand; but she disregarded it, as she disregarded the Commandant's, held out to take the painter and make fast. "Thank you" she stooped, apparently groping among the bottom-boards. "I will moor the boat myself. But wait: I have something for each of you to carry." In the darkness she passed up a double tackle and a coil of rope.
Our friends lay piled on the bottom-boards and under the thwarts like a catch of fish. One or two lifted clenched fists: and the boatmen, eyeing them nervously, fell to their oars for dear life. As the fog swallowed them, someone took me by the ear.
Stretched along the bottom-boards lay a tall young man with straw-coloured hair and beard: and in his arms, tightly clasped, and wrapped in a shawl and seaman's jacket, a young woman. Her arms were about the young man and her face pressed close and hidden against his side. He must have taken off his jacket to warm her; for the upper part of his body had no covering but a flannel shirt and cinglet.
The men flung their oil-skins over their shoulders, and ranging themselves along the weather side of the boat, seated themselves on the bottom-boards, and away we went, jerk-jerking through it, the sea hissing and foaming past us to leeward, and the spray flying in a continuous heavy shower in over the weather-bow and right aft, drenching me through and through in less than five minutes.
It miscarried only after we had righted the boat and were dragging it across the strip of shingle between the meadow bank and the water's edge. A quick-eared sentry caught the sound and challenged at two gunshots' distance. I had the boat's nose afloat as I heard his feet stumbling over the uneven foreshore: but the paddles and even the bottom-boards were lying on the beach behind us.
Now I had not felt any call to sleep, and so had followed the bo'sun to the boat, giving him a hand to remove the bottom-boards, and finally to slue her bottom a little upwards, so that he might examine the leak more closely. When he had made an end with the boat, he went over to the stores, and looked closely into their condition, and also to see how they were lasting.
I don't know that Bligh saw much in the scenery, but it may have helped to soothe his mind: for by and by he settled himself on the bottom-boards, lit another pipe, pulled his hat over his nose, and lay there blinking at the sky, while the boat drifted up, hitching sometimes in a bough and sometimes floating broadside-on to the current, until she reached this bit of marsh and took the mud very gently.
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