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The colonists were driven to their last entrenchment, and although the upper seams of the vessel were not yet calked, they decided to launch her at once. Pencroft and Ayrton therefore set about the necessary preparations for the launching, which was to take place the morning of the next day, the 9th of March.
They calked the seams with the long moss which hung in profusion from the neighboring trees; the pines supplied them with pitch; the Indians made for them a kind of cordage; and for sails they sewed together their shirts and bedding. At length a brigantine worthy of Robinson Crusoe floated on the waters of the Chenonceau.
When, eventually, he fell in the river and was counted out, old Hector donned his son's calked boots and, with a whoop such as he had not emitted in forty years, entered the lists against the young fellows.
I got in, and the conscious waters immediately began vigorously spurting through the cotton wadding wherewith the craft was calked. Had we got out into the stream we should have had a swim for it, and they do say the Mississippi is the most dangerous river for that healthful exercise in the known world. "See it now for true, massa. Nobody able to tell dat till massa get in, tho'."
Already her seams, calked with moss and pitch, had opened in so many places that she leaked badly, and only constant labor at the pumps kept her afloat.
She told me she'd had a middlin' hard time of it and didn't mind a change. That surprised me a little, because I jedged from Aleck's talk she was an upstandin' critter but, pshaw! Aleck would think a worm was a sassy thing if it squirmed in his direction. Then I telegraphed Con Foster to have me a buggy and a minister ready for the three o'clock train, and to keep his yawp calked up.
Seizing upon the heavy calked boots they worked the body inch by inch up the steep slope, and the dry lips of the old squaw curled in a snaggy grin as she noted the shattered leg and the toe of the boot twisted backward a grin that deepened into a grimace of sardonic cruelty at the feel of the grating rasp of the shattered bone ends.
But she did not sleep, save in uneasy periods of dozing, until midnight was long past. Then Fyfe and her brother came in, and by the sounds she gathered that Fyfe was putting Charlie to bed. She heard his deep, drawly voice urging the unwisdom of sleeping with calked boots on, and Beaton's hiccupy response. The rest of the night she slept fitfully, morbidly imagining terrible things.
They calked the seams with the long moss which hung in profusion from the neighboring trees; the pines supplied them with pitch; the Indians made for them a kind of cordage; and for sails they sewed together their shirts and bedding. At length a brigantine worthy of Robinson Crusoe floated on the waters of the Chenonceau.
When the last hide was stowed away, the hatches calked down, the tarpaulins battened on to them, the long-boat hoisted in and secured, and the decks swept down for the night, the chief mate sprang upon the top of the long-boat, called all hands into the waist, and, giving us a signal by swinging his cap over his head, we gave three long, loud cheers, which came from the bottom of our hearts, and made the hills and valleys ring again.
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