It was full light now. Dan chipped some ice with the axe, filled a cup, and Paul held it carefully beneath his jacket.
An examination of the boat was not reassuring. The forward planks on the port side were stove far in, and an attempt to repair the damage, even temporarily, appeared at first a hopeless task.
“I’m not seein’ just how to mend un,” remarked Dan, contemplating the damaged planks, “but Dad, he says to me, ‘Always try. Do un best. What looks like a hard job is very like to be an easy one in the end.’ He says to me, ‘Do all un can, anyhow, howsoever hard the job looks. The Lord may have you marked up to live to sixty or seventy year,’ says he, ‘and to die in bed, but if you gets in a tight place, and they’s somethin’ you might be doin’ to get out of un if you tries, and you lets un go without tryin’ because you’re not seein’ how to do un at first, the Lord’ll be sayin’ to the recordin’ angel, just change that feller’s markin’, and put he down to die now, and make un drownin’. Dad says the Lord’ll just be thinkin’ ’tain’t no use keepin’ a feller around the world what don’t care enough about livin’ to do what he can to save hisself, but leaves it all to the Lord to do.’”
Encouraged by this philosophy of his father’s, Dan worked with a will, and at the end of an hour succeeded in forcing the stove-in planking back into place.
In the meantime Paul’s ice had melted, and, refreshed by a half cup of slightly brackish water, he turned his attention to Dan’s success with the boat.
“Won’t that go all right without leaking much?” he asked.
“No, ’twill leak like a sieve,” answered Dan, surveying the boat. “I were seein’ that much to do from the first, but I weren’t seein’ how to make the planks hold where I put un, or how to make un tight, and I’m not seein’ ’t yet. Now if we had some bits of board and some nails, I’m thinkin’ we might make un tight.”
“There’s the grub box. Couldn’t we knock that to pieces, and use the boards and nails in it?”
“The grub box! Well there! And I never were thinkin’ of un!”