“No one but Jimmy Claiborne,” answered Jonas. “Just as I came into the clearing I saw him runnin’ for dear life along the road to the Ayreses, to get help, I reckon, and that’s why I didn’t lose any time carryin’ the alarm. I knew he’d take it.”
“Jimmy Claiborne!” echoed the captain. A thought flashed into his mind, but he refused to consider it.
“I wonder if we couldn’t slide the blocks out from under her and let her drop down the ways,” he said. “She’s beginning to burn here at the bow, from the heat. We can’t keep her from burning. The ways are bound to go. Look, Jonas! Merciful goodness—Look out!”
The shed had caved in. The column of fire hung for a moment like the jet of a waterspout, then dropped back into the heart of the fire, and the flames billowed out in a huge circle that swept the bows of the ark and curled in blue threads about the ways on which it rested.
“We can’t do it singlehanded,” shouted Jonas, above the terrible roar of the fire. “We can’t move it. It’s got to go unless somebody comes to help us. It’s frozen to the ways and the tackle is all in the shed.”
“We’ve got to do it,” the captain shouted back. He took up a puncheon maul and began desperately pounding at the blocks that kept the ninety-foot hull from dropping down the snowy, ice-crusted ways.
“Great stars, man, can’t you let it alone?” cried the shipwright. “Can’t you see that even if you did start her she’d smash herself on the bottom of the creek? We’ve got to have men and tackle to let her down.”
There was a shout from the edge of the clearing, and Jonas and the captain turned to see Moses Ayer and Lewis Hoyt and Louis Gist come plunging towards them, having outrun their elders who were following.
“Run to Uncle Amasa’s to get his hoisting tackle,” cried Jonas to Louis Gist. “We’ve got to launch the ark, and everything we had here is burning up in the shed. Here, Mose, come and tote water.”
The two boys hurried to carry out his orders, and Lewis Hoyt caught up a board and began shoveling snow onto the ark. The heat was frightful, and the boys smelt their buckskins singeing as they rushed about the fire, and the cinders fell on them.