“Well,” said Jonas, to whom the difficulty of getting any sort of skilled or regular labor was too familiar to cause annoyance, “we’ll just put her into the water and see what can be done about getting the boards. There comes Charlie Hoyt with another load of the Claibornes’ whisky.”
A wagon team was drawing into the shipyard clearing with a load of casks. Everyone about the ark went to the shed in which the cargo for the ark was being gradually piled up, and soon the men were busy helping Charlie Hoyt unload. When he had finally driven off again, considerable time had been wasted, and in the afternoon, when the boys trooped down after school to help in the launching, they found that it had been necessary to postpone it for another day. Next month, when the river should have risen with the melting snows, the delay of a day might mean all the difference between success and failure, safety and total wreck. But the Ohio was still locked between its ice banks, below the mouth of the creek, and a day meant little or nothing to the pioneers of the wilderness.
As thieving Indians occasionally slipped into the clearings at night, Jonas Sparks had volunteered to sleep in the shed, which served as storage warehouse for such portions of the cargo as the settlers had already brought down. He took his meals at the Royces, however, and it was sometimes late before he picked up his lantern and his rifle and went over to the shipyard.
It was late that night. There was no moon, and his lighted lantern showed the tree trunks like moving shapes in the snow; but the old shipwright trudged along as fearless as in the open day, swinging his lantern as if it did not make him a target for any unseen red or white enemy who might be skulking through the woods.
Suddenly he began to run. Flames had shot up in the clearing around the shipyard, and he heard the crackle of the huge pillar of fire that flared and waved to the height of the treetops.
“The ark is burning!” he shouted, forgetting in his excitement that no one could possibly hear him. He rushed down to the clearing and saw the great flames lapping up the shed like thirsty dogs. Bright embers floated out over the trees, and some circled down onto the ark, which had not yet begun to burn. As the old shipbuilder saw all this, he realized that the fire was too far along for anyone to stop it or to hope to save any of the cargo in the shed. The light in the sky would soon bring all the settlers in the neighborhood, accustomed as they were to an alert vigilance against Indian surprises. So he hurried down to the creek to break through the covering of snowy ice and carry bucketful upon bucketful of water, which he poured over the half-decked boat. The intense heat of the fire so close at hand was scorching the timbers and the steam rose in white masses as the icy creek water ran in thin streams over the ark.
Marion Royce was the first to reach the fire. The flames were at their height, waving long streamers above the treetops so that their light could be seen for ten miles down the river, and settlers farther down thought that Marietta was burning.
“What could have started it?” asked the captain, as he and Jonas came up from the creek with a hogshead nearly filled between them.
“I can’t imagine,” said the shipbuilder. “The Indians would rather have stolen the stuff than burnt it up, and no one round hereabouts has any grudge agin’ the ark.”
“You didn’t see anyone?” asked the captain.