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She was of course built of wood, and was beautifully moulded fore and aft; her stem and stern-posts were carried to a height of five feet above her rail; and the former was finished off with a rather roughly hewn but vigorously modelled horse's head, whilst the latter terminated in an elaborately carved piece of scroll-work.
And finally, not to dwell at undue length upon this discovery, important though it was, he also found the keel, stem and stern-posts, rudder and trunk, deck-beams, wales, stringers, skin and deck-planking in short, every scrap and item of material and fittings required for the little vessel; so that nothing remained but to put the whole together.
It is well adapted for keel-pieces, stern-posts, capstan-heads, and heavy beams: and its fibres are so closely matted and interwoven together, that it is scarcely possible to split it. It grows in lengths of from 30 to 60 feet, and measures from 15 to 30 inches in diameter.
But what surprised me most was its immense length, which I measured carefully, and found to be a hundred feet long; and it was so capacious that it could have held three hundred men. It had the unwieldy outrigger and enormously high stern-posts which I had remarked on the canoe that came to us while I was on the Coral Island.
This tree, then, furnished us with the chief part of our material. First of all, Jack sought out a limb of a tree of such a form and size as, while it should form the keel, a bend at either end should form the stem and stern-posts.
I was at first angry, but came at length to an agreement with him, to give him a four-pistole piece as soon as the stern and stern-posts were up, and 100 dollars when the bark was finished, and the money to be committed to the keeping of any one he chose to name.
Whether great or small, long or short, whether clothed in patrician copper or smeared with plebeian tar, they all start on their first voyage with their stern-posts acting the part of cut-water, and, also, without masts or sails. These necessary adjuncts, and a host of others, are added after they have been clasped to the bosom of their native sea.
A mad rush up the gangway followed, and in a moment a hundred and eighty-three pale-faced, trembling women stood upon the deck, gazing with horror at a great helpless hulk ten feet to the rear, fastened by broken ropes and odd pieces of rigging to the stern-posts of the House-boat, sinking slowly but surely into the sea. It was the Gehenna!
The old man led the way out into the yard; and there, indeed, amid an indescribable litter of timber wreckwood in balks and boards, worthless lengths of deck-planking, knees, and transoms, stem-pieces and stern-posts, and other odds and ends of bygone craft, condemned spars, barrel-staves, packing-cases a boat reposed on the stocks; but such a boat as might make a sane man doubt his eyesight.
The stem and stern-posts of a couple of boats still dangled from her davits; which seemed to point to the conclusion that when disaster overtook her the crew had been allowed little or no time in which to provide for their safety. Gaunt was an excellent swimmer, and, having no boat, he thought his quickest mode of reaching the vessel would be by taking to the water.
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