WORK AND SONG--SUNDAY SERVICE--BUILD A LARGER BOAT, THE
"ANGLO-FRANC"--COLLECTING WRECKAGE--COMMENCE A JETTY--OUR
COOKERY--BLASTING OPERATIONS--THE OPENING BANQUET.
During the remainder of March we worked away merrily in the garden and
in the fields on the top of the island. I was really astonished at the
work we could get through in a day, Alec, myself, and the donkey. Alec
laughed at my plough and the cart, and together we made some
improvements in them. We also improved the lower path right round the
island, by cutting away the furze and undergrowth; with spade and pick
we made it broader in the narrowest parts, and by filling the
inequalities, made it comfortable to walk upon.
Alec was a wonder for singing; in fact he was warbling all day long over
his work, and I must say he had rather a nice tenor voice, just such as
an Englishman would expect a Frenchman to possess. His répertoire of
songs was large, and embraced both ancient and modern, sacred and
secular, French and English; so there was plenty of variety.
Somehow or other, although he was of a most lively disposition, most of
his "best songs," as he called those he could sing with the greatest
ease and effect, were of the somewhat dismal or semi-lachrymose type, as
"Tom Bowling," "Half Mast High," "The Skipper and his Boy," etc. These
are all beautiful in their way, but with repetition pall upon one
somewhat, while your jovial song seems ever fresh, and will stand
singing many times before it becomes threadbare.
Sometimes of an evening, after supper and a pipe, we would indulge in
duet singing, and when we came to the end of the song we would praise
each other and encore ourselves.
"Let's have that one again. That's capital! Bravo!"
Then at it we would go again, sometimes till near midnight.
I had an old volume of sea songs in my trunk, several of which we both
knew, as "All's Well," "Larboard Watch," "The Anchor's Weighed," etc.
Alec's tenor and my deep baritone harmonized rather well, so we
thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. As we had no hearers we used to give
wonderful expression to our singing, possibly it was lucky no one could
hear us, for it would certainly unstring their nerves.
On Sundays we did no work, but at eleven o'clock had a kind of service
which lasted quite an hour and a half. I was parson and read the
service, while Alec was clerk and read the lessons and made the
responses, while, to pass the time away, we always sang two hymns
wherever only one should be sung. This was to give each of us an
opportunity of selecting his favourites. There was no levity in all
this, we did it as a duty to our Maker, in thankfulness for the manifold
blessings bestowed upon us during the week; for our health, welfare, and
all the other blessings which He bestowed upon us from day to day. Alec
had great cause to be thankful that he had been spared ever to put foot
on land again, while I, beside my numerous lucky escapes, had not had a
day's real illness since I landed. Before I left the island, Sankey and
Moody's "Sacred Songs" would scarcely hold together, so much had it
suffered from being turned by our great rough thumbs and fingers, while
to say that some of the pages were slightly soiled was putting it in a
very mild manner. A stranger might have thought that we hid the volume
up the chimney, when not in use, and the appearance would quite have
warranted his surmise.
Our first great work together was to build another boat, a larger one
than the "Yellow Boy," and on an improved principle. First we collected
whatever we thought would be of use in the construction of our craft,
which we christened, before a stick of her was laid, "The Anglo-Franc."
This was a curious commencement, I must own, but then we did some very
strange things on Jethou. The name was chosen because we, as
shipwrights, were respectively English and French. We scoured the whole
island for material, and succeeded in getting a huge pile together from
various sources, thus we were not so cramped as when I built the famous
"Yellow Boy."
Speaking of the "Yellow Boy" reminds me that after the big storm I
saved the portion which still depended from the cable, suspended from
the side of La Fauconnaire. These pieces were the two upper strakes,
fifteen feet long, and the fore and second compartments. The timber from
these helped us greatly in the building of the new boat. Besides this
there were a number of rafters and floor boards that I had collected
from the old store-house after the explosion; but our third and best
supply was obtained from the wreck of Alec's ketch, "Jeanette," the fore
part of which still remained jammed high up between two rocks, which
stood about twelve feet apart, near high-water mark, on La Creviçhon.
From this, by dint of three days' hard work, we secured several loads of
deck-timber and other very useful pieces, which "Eddy" dragged up for us
to the ruined store-house.
We found our cart wheels were not high enough to clear the big stones on
the beach, so we took them off and replaced them by two runners so as to
form a kind of sledge, which answered much better, although many pieces
were jerked off _en route_, by reason of the rugged path and primitive
construction of the sledge. As Alec remarked, they served as guide
posts, so that there was no losing the way. This idea I got by reading
Catlin's "North American Indians." By lashing two long tent poles at a
horse's sides, with the ends trailing on the ground, they form a kind of
sledge, upon which they can carry considerable loads upon transverse
sticks.
From the battered hulk we also brought a great number of bolts and other
iron-work, a companion ladder, windlass, pump, bowsprit bits, bell, a
torn jib, a quantity of cordage, and whatever else we could lay our
hands upon, that might have the most remote chance of being of future
use to us.
In story books it is usual to have a ship come ashore just in a
convenient spot, and with a full cargo; but ours, unfortunately, was
only half a battered hulk, perfectly empty, and in a most awkward
position to get at, as we had to cross the Creviçhon Channel at every
trip, so that we could only bring the wreckage over at low tide. We
could, however, continue our work of dismantling right through the day,
except for two hours, when the high tide flowed in and out through poor
"Jeanette's" ribs. These two hours we took for rest, food, and the
soothing pipe. Bless Raleigh!
When we had collected all our material, both iron and wood, we commenced
building the "Anglo-Franc," and in three weeks had her finished and
afloat. She was sixteen feet over all, by five feet beam, and was rigged
in the style peculiar to the Guernsey boats; that is to say she had two
small masts. The foremast was stepped exactly amidships, while the mizen
was placed close to the stern. This arrangement strikes an Englishman as
very strange, as they are in the habit of seeing the foremast very
nearly in the bows; but Ducas was a sailor, and knew the rig adapted to
these waters, and I must say that under most circumstances the
"Anglo-Franc" behaved herself admirably. She was a success in every way.
One special feature was, that we built a kind of half-deck forward,
which formed a small cuddy or cabin quite large enough for one of us to
have "a watch below" in, or for a regular sleep at night, or we could
both squeeze inside during a pelting rain. We spent several single
nights at sea in the "Anglo-Franc" during the summer, and by putting a
sail-cloth awning from the aft edge of the cuddy deck we lengthened our
cabin by four feet, and could thus both obtain a good night's rest, or
cook in any wind or weather.
When we had finished the boat we were rather at a loss to know how to
find accommodation for her when we did not actually require to use her.
In fine weather she could lie moored just off the house, and to enable
us always to keep her afloat, we rigged up an out-haul, so that standing
on the shore we could haul the boat out or in to its moorings whenever
we chose. This was all very well in fine weather, but when a fresh
south-west wind was blowing, and a heavy sea on, she would pitch and
roll to such an extent that we were afraid she would break loose and
drift away. We had therefore to cast about for some safer place for her,
and with this in view inspected the whole island round. When we came to
Lobster Bay, at the north-east corner, we agreed that that was the most
sheltered position we could find, and most suitable in every way for a
haven.
Quite at the angle of the island a promontory runs straight out to the
eastward for a distance of about forty yards, thus forming a shelter
from the rush of the rising tide through the Perchée Channel, while the
island of Herm kept the wind from the north-east in check.
"Now," said Alec, "if we could build a little stone breakwater from the
end of Cape Homard (Cape Lobster, as Alec called the point, because we
kept the lobster and crab pots there), we could make as safe a little
harbour as one could wish for."
This proposition seemed all very well, but the quantity of stone I knew
it would take rather staggered me, and I was a long time before I could
be brought to give my consent to help in the matter. But when Alec had
laid out his plans to me, I found them so consistent that I readily
agreed to help in the work.
Without wearying the reader by describing in too great detail the
building of our breakwater, I will just give an outline of how it was
built, and another great success achieved, although to ensure that
success we had to work like a couple of galley slaves. Still, with all
our hard work, we were as happy as a couple of schoolboys. We toiled,
sang, and ate with such appetites as only those who are used to hard
work in the sea air can know.
Our plan was to work on Monday; enjoy fishing, etc., on Tuesday; work on
Wednesday at the breakwater, at the garden on Thursday; on Friday at the
breakwater again; and on Saturday till noon also, after which we devoted
the rest of the day to baking, clothes washing and mending, and other
domestic duties. How my mother and 'Cilla would have laughed to see me
at the wash-tub, or hanging out the linen to dry on the furze bushes; or
to have seen Alec using a flat iron which, with great labour, we had
forged, and which was of a peculiar construction, but still very
efficacious in its work. Men are notoriously awkward in their manner of
wringing and other laundry work, and I expect we were no exception to
the general rule. We made our clothes _clean_, and that was all we
required.
Alec was a capital baker, so we had some excellent bread, while my
pastry was not to be sneezed at; in fact, at a rabbit pie I was quite a
_grand chef_. I also introduced several new culinary matters to Alec,
some of which he had never seen before; among them being the all-filling
Norfolk dumpling, which at first he did not seem to care for, but in
time he became inordinately fond of them, and would often ask me to make
him a _pouding de rien_ (a pudding of nothing), which was his idea of
these articles of everyday diet in East Anglia.
But I am not building my breakwater of dumplings, so will get back to
stone; not that I wish the reader to infer that my dumplings were ever
approaching that substance in their degree of firmness.
First we collected all the very large stones we could find in the bay,
and placed them as a foundation for our breakwater; but these only
formed a layer about a foot deep. All these were large stones (some of
them weighed nearly three hundredweight), so to cope with them we made a
kind of four-handled hand barrow, upon which we rolled our rock, and
then taking two handles each, staggered off with it. These large pieces
we placed near the end of the breakwater, and when we had denuded the
bay, we obtained, with "Eddy's" help, some large piece of massed rock
and mortar from the ruined boathouse. These pieces we took in the
sledge, and built into a kind of wall to form the outer shell of the
breakwater, while the interior we filled with any odds and ends of
rocks (none of them less than a man's head in size) which we could find
on the shore. The interstices we filled with shingle, and the detritus
of granite, but when we had raised our structure to the level of high
water our available stone gave out. This rather nonplussed us, but at
last we decided to open a small quarry and see what granite we could
obtain to raise our undertaking another four feet in height.
I had still several pounds of gunpowder left, and with part of this we
constructed some long thin cartridges for blasting. With these, a
pick-axe, and some long iron stanchions, which we used as levers, we
obtained a good supply of stone. The little quarry may still be seen, so
I am informed, although it is greatly covered with furze and weeds. It
is situated on the hill side, midway between the homestead and the ruins
of the boathouse. We chose an elevated position for our quarry, so that
we could roll the huge stones down the hill to the pathway below, where
we levered them up into the sledge, and dragged them to what we were
pleased to term "the works." Let it suffice to say that about the middle
of May our task was completed, and to commemorate the event we gave a
grand banquet on the pier head (for we called it a pier now, as it
sounded more dignified) to commemorate the event. Four of us sat down to
the banquet, or rather two stood and two sat. As architect I took the
head of the table (a wine cask), and Alec, as engineer, the foot; while
"Eddy," the donkey, as contractor, supported me on the right (dining
luxuriously on a bunch of carrots and some hay), and on my left was
dear old "Begum" as clerk of the works, enjoying two whole rabbits as
his share of the entertainment.
We drank "Success to Jethou Pier," and trusted it would take every care
of the "Anglo-Franc," which we now placed within its encircling arm for
the first time.
At low water we removed all the big stones from the little haven in
which our boat was now moored. This was for fear she might hurt her
bottom (as the tide left her careened half an hour before dead low
water), and thus made everything snug for her. At half-tide she floated,
so that for six hours out of every twelve we could go off just when we
liked, without any pushing or hard work of any kind; while to assist her
to her moorings, if we wished to bring her in at low tide, we rigged up
the windlass which we brought from the wreck, and thus we could at any
time haul her bodily out of the sea.
Now, having given up a whole chapter to hard work, we will proceed to
something a little more interesting and exciting.
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