UNDER SAIL
“Now, Jackie, what will you have?” asked Tom briskly, as he sat under
the canvas shelter with the little lad. “Will you have ice cream,
or bread and milk, or a boiled egg or some cut-up pineapple, or cup
custard, or any of those things for your breakfast?”
“Oh, Tom, have you really got ’em?” asked the child eagerly.
“Why, yes, of course. We always have those things on wrecks--make-believe,
I mean,” added Tom quickly.
“Oh, make believe,” and Jackie was a trifle disappointed.
“Surely. Now here is some nice pineapple to start off with,” and Tom
shredded up some canned tongue, put it between two ship biscuits, and
passed it to the boy. Jackie laughed as he took it, and soon was eating
hungrily.
“Is it good--that pineapple?” asked Tom.
“Fine.”
“Then try some of this nice mooley-cow milk to wash it down with,”
suggested our hero, as he passed over a tin cup full of water. “The
milkman just left it for you.”
“Oh, Tom!” cried Jackie, “it’s just like a story in a book.”
“And I hope you keep on thinking so,” murmured Joe as he nodded at Abe
while they further made fast the canvas shelter.
Mr. Skeel helped himself to some of the food, as did the two sailors
when they had finished with their temporary work, and Tom ate also.
“Now, Jackie,” he said, when he had finished, “here is my knife,” and
he took it from his pocket. “It got all wet when I had to swim last
night, but it will cut yet, and I want you to whittle out some wooden
soldiers, and we’ll play a game pretty soon. You just sit here and
whittle, and take care not to cut yourself.”
“What are you going to do, Tom?”
“Oh, I’m going to get ready to make a wooden house for us to live in,”
was the answer.
Tom motioned for the two sailors to follow him to the other end of the
wreck. It was lower there, but now that the sea had gone down the waves
did not break over it. The stern was really well out of the water.
“What is it?” inquired Joe when he and his shipmate had joined our hero.
“I think we had better take an account of stock,” suggested Tom. “See
how much food and water we have, how long it will last us, and what we
had better do.”
“Right you are, captain!” exclaimed Abe admiringly. “I knowed we didn’t
make no mistake when we elected you.”
“First then, the food,” suggested Tom. “How long will it last us?”
Joe and Abe collected it--that which they had brought with them on
the abandoned life-raft, and that which had been in the boat in which
Professor Skeel had been found. That individual was sitting on the
stern, gazing moodily off into the distance.
“Well, if we don’t stuff ourselves too much, and keep at the drinking
water every time we’re thirsty,” said Abe, “we’ll have enough here for
a week, at least.”
“Good!” exclaimed Tom. “In that time something ought to turn up.”
“If we don’t turn up ourselves,” commented Joe grimly.
“Here! Stow that kind of talk,” said his mate quickly. “We’ve got a
captain who’ll navigate us anywhere we want to go.”
“I only wish I could,” spoke Tom. “The next thing to think of is making
some better kind of a shelter. Can we do it out of the wood we have at
hand?”
“I don’t see why not,” said Abe. “Joe here used to be a sort of
carpenter, and I’ve worked at the trade too. We have only an axe, but
that’s better than nothing.”
“Then let’s make a sort of deck house,” suggested Tom. “That canvas
awning won’t be much good in a storm.”
“Right, captain!” exclaimed Abe. “What next?”
“That’s all for the present. And I guess that’s enough.”
They first put the food and water in a safe place, on the highest part
of the derelict, lashing it fast with ropes found in the lifeboat, so
that it would not wash away. Mr. Skeel wanted to help in the work, but
at the first knot he tied Abe exclaimed:
“That’s too land-lubbery for me! It would fetch away at the first roll
of the derelict. You’d better take the axe and see if you can get out
some planks.”
It was hard work, but to the credit of the former teacher be it said
that he did manage to chop out some of the planks. He worked through a
hole in what had been the deck of the lumber vessel, for she had been
laden with planks in all her holds.
Soon quite a number of planks were at the service of the sailors, who
had finished securing the food. Jackie was still cutting away at the
toy soldiers, producing a vast quantity of shavings but not much else.
It was no easy task to make a wooden shelter, with no nails with which
to fasten it. But they made pegs of wood, chopped out with the axe and
whittled with the sailors’ knives and these served to hold the planks
together and to the deck of the derelict.
An inverted “V” shaped structure was made, with one end closed by
boards, and the other by a square bit of canvas. This had been built
over the place where the stores had been lashed fast, and made a sort
of deck house.
“Now then,” said Tom, “we don’t need the canvas awning, and so we might
as well take it down. It will do for beds.”
“Beds!” cried Joe. “Something better than that.”
“What?” asked Tom.
“For a sail! Look, we aren’t moving anything to speak of now, only as
the currents make us drift. Why not make some sort of a sail, and take
advantage of the wind?”
“Of course!” agreed Tom, wondering why he had not thought of that
before.
“And we’ll need a rudder to steer with,” added Abe.
“Certainly,” assented his mate. “We can rig up one out of some of the
planks.”
“Then hoist the sail, by all means!” cried Tom.
It was no easy work to chop out a rude mast from one of the planks, set
it upright and bend a sail to it, made from the canvas shelter. But
they did it at last. Then a rudder was made from another plank--a crude
and unsatisfactory affair but which served in a measure to guide the
derelict.
The canvas was hoisted. Its end was made fast. It filled with wind,
flapped and then bellied out.
“Hurray!” cried Tom in delight.
“We’re under sail!” shouted Abe.
“And now to lay a course,” added Joe. “Maybe we can get somewhere with
this ship after all.”