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Updated: June 22, 2025
As soon as we had had breakfast, which was very much like supper, we set off to join the rest of the party at the bay. We found them all busily employed, some in caulking the boat, others in splitting a tree to form planks.
There they hammered and knocked and made a noise as if they were really caulking and repairing her, in order to her being launched off and put into their possession; but towards night he obliged Gow to write to the men that Mr. Fea would not deliver the boat until he was in possession of the ship, and therefore he ordered them all to come on shore, without arms, and in a peaceable manner.
We notice in this description the use of the adze of the double-edged axe; of augers for boring the beams; the caulking of the hull; the decking made of planks; the single mast; the yard from which the sail was spread; the use of the rudder and the helm; "foot-ropes and ropes aloft;" while, for safety, a wicker-work of cordage surrounds the deck, and much "ballast" is stowed within.
After the workmen left in the late afternoon, we boys swarmed over the ships three-masters, smelling deliciously of new wood and caulking, and played we were sailors. When the rope ladders were finally in place, we raced up and down them, sitting in the crow's nest on a line with the church weather vane, and pretending to reef the sails. It was an event when the ships were launched.
We went to work the next morning when the whistle sounded at the dredge. Beyond caulking a few leaks in the boats, little was done with them. The tin receptacles holding our photographic plates and films were carefully coated with a covering of melted paraffine; for almost anything might happen, in the one hundred miles of rapid water that separated us from our home.
As the sun crossed the line the weather moderated, and by the 25th of September all was again calm and fair, and the crew busy caulking the decks, which had leaked terribly during the gales. They were followed by a succession of calms and light baffling winds, the delay occasioned by which was turned to advantage in practising the crew at the battery, and with small arms.
For six hours the picket there held out against all assaults, but the absence of flank defences enabled the enemy to come close up to the walls. They then began to make holes through them, and to burrow underneath. The little garrison rushed from place to place repelling these attacks. But it was like caulking a sieve.
And yet, at the moment of writing this, Charmian is in her state- room at the typewriter, Martin is cooking dinner, Tochigi is setting the table, Roscoe and Bert are caulking the deck, and the Snark is steering herself some five knots an hour in a rattling good sea and the Snark is not padded, either.
It seemed that every blow against the boat would wrench it to atoms, but if any part had given way it was not apparent. Harry, who sat nearest the housed structure, suddenly sprang up, and pointing down, cried out: "It is leaking; look how it boils!" It was forethought on the part of the Professor to put in a supply of the oakum used for caulking purposes.
The muddy streets, in a few days, dry up; groups of young fellows are now seen seated on the shady sides of the cottages making arrows and knitting fishing-nets with tucum twine; others are busy patching up and caulking their canoes, large and small; in fact, preparations are made on all sides for the much longed-for "verao," or summer, and the "migration," as it is called, of fish and turtle that is, their descent from the inaccessible pools in the forest to the main river.
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