BOAT-BUILDING.
When I roused the next morning the first thought that came to me was
about the building of the boat. It would be necessary to have a shed to
work under, large enough to contain a boat, both for shelter from the
rain and for shade from the pitiless tropical sun. The building of such
a shed was therefore the first task. As a suitable shipyard I selected
the side of the stream on the sands of the sea-beach, and far enough
above tide to be safe from a possible storm. Here I put up eight posts
in the sand. To get these posts (for they had to be hunted for among the
fallen wood), to carry them one or two at a time for a distance ranging
from half a mile to a mile and a half, and to set them up in holes dug
at the proper distances apart, was a whole day’s work, and left me only
time to overhaul my dry-salting before bed-time. I went over each piece
of meat, rubbing it again with salt, and turning it the other side up,
and finished by putting the weights on again as before. This salting and
turning every day would be necessary for about two weeks, and then the
meat would be ready for the smoke-house, which I would endeavor in the
meantime to get ready to receive it.
The next day I spent getting poles for rafters, and lashing them
together to form the roof of my workshop. Then a rain storm set in and
lasted three days, during which I was practically confined to the house,
and busied myself indoors with making an easy chair out of a dry stick
of cedar that split readily into straight pieces. It was a pleasure to
work in this soft, straight-grained, fragrant wood, and I made a good,
strong, comfortable arm-chair, dowelling and cording the parts together,
and framing a sort of base for it so that it would stand firm on the
sand floor. I could now sit and read with comfort, or look at the gray,
rainy sea as it stretched its misty plane away before my door. It was at
this time that I began to keep an irregular sort of journal, entering my
thoughts and doings from time to time as the enforced semi-idleness of
rainy weather prompted me. Besides pencils and pens there was paper
enough in my stock, wet and stained and wrinkled though it had been, to
last me indefinitely.
As soon as the rain was over I took the first day to construct my
provision and smoke-house, in order that I might store the meat in it. A
doorway was cut from my living-room into this store-room, and I purposed
fitting a tight door into it before smoking my pork. I busied myself
after that on my work-shed until it was finished. This roof I covered
with palm-leaves,--not leaves of the cocoanut-palm, but of the great,
spreading fan-palm, a single one of which was often three or four feet
in diameter. I had used these leaves in making my storehouse roof, and
had secured a giant specimen in a horizontal position over my front door
as a sort of porch, and to keep the sun out of the house when the door
was open.
The work-shed when finished was about twenty-four feet long by ten feet
wide, with a shed or single-pitch roof, at the upper side about eight
feet, and at the lower side--which was toward the sea--about five feet
from the ground. Underneath was the clean sand of the beach. I was now
ready to begin the actual work of boat-building, and my first need was
a supply of clay,--so great a quantity, in fact, as would take me
several days of hard work to raft down the stream to the boat-shed.
You will see as I proceed what part this material was to play. After a
great deal of labor, wading up and down the creek, digging, loading,
rafting, and unloading, I at last accumulated a sufficient amount for my
purpose in a great heap close to the boat-shed. I next proceeded to
smooth the sand beneath the shed, and to compact it into a smooth, hard
floor as follows: I took of perfectly dry clay several bushels in
fragments, and crushed these to a fine dust; this dust I sprinkled
evenly all over the sand floor to the depth of an inch or more,
sprinkling and wetting the dust and the sand liberally with a bough
dipped in the sea water. As the mixture grew dry I trampled it with my
naked feet until it was smooth and firm, sprinkling a little dry sand on
the surface and trampling it in. The result was a dustless, dry floor,
hard enough to support my weight readily, and smooth enough for my
purpose.
On this floor, with a stretched cord rubbed with charcoal, I marked, as
carpenters do with a chalk line, a straight line twenty-one feet long or
thereabouts; this was to be the length of the boat, and its centre line
from stem to stern. Using the cord as a measure, I laid off at each side
of this centre line, the horizontal outline of my proposed boat. The
greatest breadth of beam I made about six feet, and tapered both the
stem and the stern alike, after the manner of a whaleboat. At each end
of the centre line I drove a stake upright, and notched the top to carry
a guide line stretched from one to the other directly over the centre
line. Then, with tempered clay, I marked the outline of the boat by
building up a little wall about three inches in breadth and as many in
height all around from stem to stern on both sides. The space inside
this wall I filled with sand, sprinkled and compacted until it was level
with the top of the wall. Then I added to the wall another course of
clay and filled in again; and so kept on adding and filling and sloping
in the wall, until I had a mound of clay-coated sand, shaped like a boat
turned upside down.
This labor, simple as it sounds in statement, took me over a week, and
before it was done I was interrupted by the necessity for setting my
smoke-house in order for curing the hams and bacon. I built for the
smoking a slow fire of bark, which required attention only once or twice
each day. The clay form under the boat-shed I left to get dry and hard.
It was my design, as I have no doubt you have already guessed, to use
this clay form as a core or groundwork, upon which to shape my boat.
The next step was a most serious task; I had to procure a piece of
timber for a keel, and shape it and fit to it two pieces, one at the
stem, and one at the stern. The timber must be new and strong. There was
absolutely no way to get this timber except by felling a tree which must
be at least a foot in diameter. I could not hope to do this with a
pocket knife except by an appalling amount of labor, and at the
continual risk of breaking the blade; and, moreover, I did not want to
subject this valuable instrument to any more wear than was absolutely
necessary. I now carried it on my person tied securely to a lanyard as
my most highly prized possession. But I thought I could manage to get
down a tree by the aid of fire. Having selected the tree, I plastered
the trunk with wet clay all around for a height of five or six feet,
excepting a space of about two feet next the ground; then piled up dry
fuel on the windward side and set fire to it. After an hour or two the
trunk caught fire and slowly burned. I kept checking the fire from
eating upward by dabbing wet clay on, until finally the tree burned
through and fell. It was a much less difficult task to burn it in two at
the proper length after it was once down.
This done, the next thing was to reduce the stick to the correct lateral
dimensions, which should be ten inches by three or thereabouts. As there
was no saw, adze, or axe to be had, this reduction could be done in no
other way so easily as by splitting the trunk with hard-wood wedges. I
made several and charred them in the fire, then sharpened them and drove
four of them in a line into the wood of the trunk at equal distances
apart. By judicious management, driving them little by little, one after
another, the trunk was riven asunder, and a second split produced a
piece of the right size when a little had been split off from each edge.
The plank was not as smooth as if turned out by a saw mill; but it was
strong and was smooth enough for my purpose. I dragged it down to the
boat-shed, and went back to the log and split off in like manner a piece
of suitable size to make the stem and stern posts. I set the keel timber
up on edge on the clay mould, securing it temporarily with some lumps of
clay until I could mark the correct length. The stem and stern posts I
cut and halved on to the keel, pinning them on by pins.
The drill by means of which I bored the holes for the pins was fashioned
by inserting a piece of sharp chalcedony splinter into a split stick and
securely wrapping the stick with a piece of cord. This stick or shank,
which was about two feet in length, carried a ball of dry clay of three
or more pounds in weight, and mounted about six inches from the
chalcedony point. Through the upper end of the shank was a hole passing
through which was a cord secured at each end to a loose cross-stick
about a foot long. By twisting this cord around the shank the movement
up and down of the loose cross-stick would cause the drill to revolve
first in one direction and then in the other, the momentum of the
whirling ball of clay causing the apparatus to continue its motion far
enough to rewind the cord. This device is much used by primitive
peoples, and it certainly proved a most effective instrument to me; for
without renewing the drill point I bored five holes at each end, through
the keel piece and the uprights.
The gunwale I made by splitting cane into long, thin strips half an inch
in width, and laying these in a bundle tied securely round every three
or four inches with a wrapping of cord. By this means I produced a sort
of stiff, untwisted cable. I secured the ends of these gunwale cables
firmly to the stem and stern uprights by cord passed through holes. I
next got a great store of a sort of long, slender-stemmed creeper, which
I fancy must have been a species of climbing palm, though I am not sure;
for there was no description of it in my books. The wood of this creeper
was tough and exceedingly fibrous. Of it I proposed to make the ribs of
the boat, setting them about three inches apart along the whole length
of the boat. The creepers which I chose for this purpose were about half
an inch in diameter, and smooth and uniform in size. Holes drilled
through the keel piece close to the clay mould permitted the passage of
these ribs over the mould from gunwale to gunwale, where they were
fastened by being inserted in the mass of cane splints and securely tied
there with several wrappings of cöir. Of course I had to stop this work
from time to time to manufacture the necessary supply of cöir.
Such interruptions were a relief to me, and I would sit in the shade of
the palms spinning away and thinking of my Mohawk Valley home, or gazing
out upon the broad sea, where the perfect shading from deep blue to
faint cobalt and fainter green, the long swell, and the transparent,
curling breakers, the restless sea fowl, and the serene, cloud-flecked
sky, formed a view of which I never tired. It is a mistake, it seems to
me, to speak of the sea as a lonesome thing. Its ceaseless motion, its
constant change of color and of mood, never exactly alike and yet never
entirely unlike, all lend to it an indefinable charm. It may, indeed, be
filled with solitude, but it also is filled with companionship for the
solitary, as I learned then to realize.
The island was the home of an astonishing number of species of small
birds; several different varieties of the parrot family flew from tree
to tree in flocks; different kinds of finches, many of bright plumage,
in great numbers haunted the bushes about the stream; larks,
flycatchers, gorgeous scarlet tanagers, little wrens, and tiny
humming-birds were very numerous. The bird that I took most interest in
was a daring little fellow, perhaps some sort of wren, of a brownish
color, specked with pearly white spots. This self-contained and
self-satisfied little fowl had a habit of carrying his tail stuck
straight up in the air and cocking his head to one side in a most
comical manner. This species seemed quite fearless of me, and I often
saw them come hopping up on the ground near to where I sat, as though
bent on ascertaining what sort of creature I was. Scarcely bigger than a
walnut, with a tiny “chirp, chirp,” these dainty creatures seemed to be
introducing themselves politely to me, and deprecating any possible
unfriendliness that might have arisen, or might thereafter arise between
us on account of an occasional seed stolen from my stack. At one time I
had the notion to capture one or more of these little birds and train
them as pets; but their courage and confidence utterly disarmed me.
When all the vine ribs had been fitted to the boat the next thing was to
apply an exterior sheathing. This also I constructed of the long smooth
creepers, uniform in size and laid close together each piece extending
the whole length of the boat. I secured the ends of these vines to the
stem and stern pieces by setting them into a groove or rebate, and
dowelling a piece of wood down firmly upon them. At intervals I sewed or
tied the rib and plank vines together with strong thin cord. When this
was done I had the form of a boat, but of course it would leak like a
sieve, and moreover would be crank as a basket. The next thing was to
procure some sort of gum or resin, with which to coat the whole
structure and thus bind it all together and strengthen it, as well as to
make it water-tight.
There were trees of the pine or fir species growing on the island, high
on the rocky backbone. I could see them distinctly, and had little doubt
that they would furnish me with at least some of the ingredients for a
sort of pitch, that might be made to answer my purpose. Up to this time
I had never ascended the precipitous rocks and cliffs which formed a
miniature mountainrange running north and south through the centre of
the island. Now I resolved to make the attempt and to ascertain
definitely what could be found there in the way of pitch or resin, among
the several species of evergreens. To ascend these cliffs and rocks
through the thickets and tangled vines was no easy task. Giant beds of
fern, fallen tree-trunks, jungles of thorny bush, barred the way
apparently at all points. The most feasible route seemed to be up a
chasm through which came a tinkling rivulet to join the stream, with
many a fall and leap, boiling now, and now dashing in spray over the
fern-embowered rocks. It was a hard, hot climb. The humming-birds, like
flying jewels,--rubies, topazes, amethysts, lapis lazuli,--darted to and
fro in a dozen varieties, pausing to hover over the deep, scarlet
chalices of the trumpet flower. Far above in the clear, deep blue of
heaven slowly swung a circling vulture on motionless wing, a mere speck
against the light.
At last I reached the top, a sort of broken rocky plateau covered with
trees among which were numerous evergreens. After a brief rest to
recover breath, I examined some of the trees, and found to my great
delight a species of pitch pine among them. The scaly, reddish bark was
bedewed with tears of gum which I knew would with a little boiling or
drying be converted into a hard resin. Without losing any time I went to
work with my knife upon the trees. I bared a place of its bark on each
of a dozen trunks, about three feet in height and six inches in width,
and cut a notch at the bottom to collect the gum, scoring the bared
place with cross cuts at intervals of a few inches. This occupied me
until it was within two hours of sunset, and I dared stay no longer that
day, for fear of being benighted on the way home.
Early next morning I returned with my lasso, an earthenware vessel, and
my burning-glass. The wounded trees had already begun to yield a supply
of sticky sap or gum, which I scraped down and collected in the earthen
pot, until it was quite full. I placed this to melt and boil over a slow
fire and proceeded to wound about a dozen more trees. That night I slept
on the summit, and worked hard all next day collecting and boiling the
resin, so that when I went the next night to the house I was able to
carry with me twenty-five or thirty pounds of the material,--a hard,
dark resin.
At this labor I spent about a week longer, sometimes going home at
night, and sometimes sleeping on the rocks, until I had got together, as
I thought, sufficient for my purpose. Now I wanted some grease to mix
with the resin, and concluded to kill a pig for this purpose. I had to
wait two days to find the herd, but finally succeeded in capturing a
fine young porker, which yielded a good store of lard and fat, much more
indeed than I needed for the pitch kettle, as well as a fine supply of
fresh pork-chops and some meat for the smoke-house.
I melted the resin in my five-gallon pot, and added to it sufficient
melted pig-fat, so that the pitch when cold would be quite stiff and
hard, but not brittle. With this hot, tenacious pitch I payed the whole
exterior of the boat with a good thick coat, penetrating and filling all
the interstices. When this was hard and cold I tried to lift the boat
from the clay core in order to turn it over. To my disgust I found that
the pitch had stuck it fast to the core in a thousand places, so that it
could not be moved. There was nothing to do, therefore, except to
undermine the whole structure, dig the sand out, and take out the dry,
hard clay from below, piece by piece,--an immense labor, as you may well
conceive. But this was finally accomplished without injury to the boat.
I found that the structure was entirely too flexible for practical
navigation, and that it would be necessary to deck over the greater
part, if for no other reason than to stiffen it. I decided to make an
air-tight compartment at each end, extending about three feet, and carry
a deck fore and aft over the entire boat, excepting a well hole in the
middle, six feet long by three feet wide, which was to be surrounded by
a washboard, or raised edge, about six inches in height. Having cleared
away the débris, I turned my boat right side up.
I was very anxious to get this boat completed, and had been working hard
at it every day for over a month. I wanted to know if it would at least
float properly, and therefore labored from early dawn to dark without
cessation. One night I had been restless and wakeful, and got up without
appetite for parched seed and smoked meat. Fancying this was merely from
excitement about the work, and from want of variety in diet, I concluded
that the next day I would knock off work for a time and go fishing. But
when I went down to the shed and got to work I felt tired and languid.
There was a great pain in my head, chilly sensations ran up and down my
back, and pains in the limbs and a general depression of spirits warned
me of an approaching illness. Fearing a collapse I started for the
house, when suddenly I grew faint and fell on the sand, and lay there
for several hours, a fierce fever raging through me. An intense thirst
stimulated my feeble energies to make one or two attempts to reach the
house; but I failed and crawled back to the shed. Once I managed to
reach the creek and get a drink, but it was preferable to suffer thirst,
I thought, rather than make the attempt again. About sundown the fever
left me, and though much weakened I felt well enough to get to the
house, light a candle from the last sparks of my neglected fire, and
turn into my hammock.
Evidently I was seized with some malarious disorder. Anxious to know
what I could do for myself in the way of medicine, I got the
Dispensatory and began a search for febrifuges. I could not hope to find
Peruvian bark on the island as this region was, I conceived, out of its
habitat. However, I made pencil notes of everything I could find
mentioned as a febrifuge. Among other things I noted that it was
customary in the Campagna near Rome for the fever-stricken inhabitants
to make a sort of tea of sliced lemons, which was said to cure the
Campagna fever. Now I remembered to have seen wild limes growing along
the upper part of the creek, and thought if I could get strength enough
to gather some the next day I would try an infusion of them.
That night I slept pretty well, and in the morning got up feeling fairly
well. But warned by yesterday’s experience, I dreaded a recurrence of
the chill and fever, either that day or the next. So I went immediately
and gathered a quantity of the ripest of the limes. These I sliced thin
with my knife and poured boiling water over them in a small vessel, and
set them aside to steep. As soon as the infusion was cold I took a small
sip to see what the effect would be. I found no bad consequences, and in
an hour took another larger sip. This I kept up every hour all day, and
did some work on the boat. That night I drank about a quart of hot
water, and buried myself in a bed of dry grass in the house, with a
small fire going. I was soon in a profuse perspiration, and after a
while fell sound asleep and awoke in the morning hungry. Whether the
lime tea checked the fever, or whether the attack was no more than a
passing biliousness, I do not know. At any rate I soon recovered, and
was not ill again while on the island.
I now resumed work persistently on the boat, and finally the air-tight
compartments and decking, made like the rest of the vessel of vines
coated with pitch, were done. I got some rollers under the boat and
pushed it into the creek, where it floated true and buoyant as I could
desire. Mooring it securely I got on board and found it stanch, and
every way much better than I had hoped. To my great joy it did not leak
a drop, though I had expected to have a great deal of patching to do.
My next task was to rig a mast and sail. The mast I had already brought
down from the heights, in the form of a slender evergreen, trimmed and
peeled of its bark. Nor was I long in stepping and rigging it with the
necessary stays. The making of the sail was a much longer matter. I had
given this question a great deal of thought, and while at work on the
boat had carefully weighed several different devices, but had been
unable to hit upon a feasible plan. Therefore I deferred it until the
very last thing, fitting on a rudder and even making and burning a water
jar and a cover for it to contain a supply of fresh water on board,
before regularly beginning work on the sail. Finally, however, all was
finished except the sail, and I was forced to the task. The best thing I
could think of for the purpose was strips of bark woven on cord after
the fashion in which some window blinds are made from wooden slats and
cord; and as this could best be used with what I believe is termed a
latteen rig, that is to say a single short mast in the centre of the
boat, with a long yard suspended at its top and inclined upward from the
bow aft, upon which the sail is hung, I changed my mast and stepped it
to suit such a rig. Then I procured a long, slender, tapering pole for a
yard. I found a tree with a smooth, flexible inner bark, and after a
great deal of labor secured a sufficient quantity, cut in strips one and
a half inches in width, and some of it as long as the boom. Then I spun
a great quantity of cord, and tied doubled lengths of it to the boom at
intervals of a foot. Then laying the boom down on the beach I placed a
strip of the bark alongside it and tied it there with all the cords; by
the side of that I added another a little shorter and tied it, and so on
until I had built up a triangular sail of the bark strips attached to
the boom by the cords, the strips running parallel with the boom. In
order to make it hold the wind better, I punched holes in the edges of
the bark strips, and tied the edges of adjacent strips together.
When I had this sail complete and rigged to the mast the wind was
blowing away from the shore, and I had to wait until the next day to
give it a trial. But I made everything ready, including food and water
and a ballasting of stones, and on the next morning, the wind blowing
quietly on shore, I went on board, cast off, and poled the craft out of
the creek, watching a good chance to push her through the breakers at
the bar. I got safely out, and hoisted the sail. For a moment she fell
off and rose and sunk with the swell, but taking the wind fair,
presently leaned down until the lee gunwale was nearly buried in the
green water, and began to forge ahead rapidly, fairly sliding through
the water, with the wake running away behind and a white curl of foam
racing from the bow. I tried her on all tacks, on and off the wind,
ratching and running before it, and found that the best point of sailing
was on the wind. This was entirely satisfactory. So delighted was I with
the operation of the boat that I tacked away in stretches of two or
three miles until I had beat up a good league from the island, and then
turned and ran before the wind straight for the creek, where I arrived
safe, and moored the boat securely in her snug harbor.
The building of this boat had taken me three months; but it was at last
finished, and offered me a means, at the first fair wind, of sailing
away for Martinique or some adjacent island, a port which I could fairly
expect to make in two or three days at farthest. I went to bed that
night in a happier and more contented frame of mind than I had
theretofore experienced on the island.