Our most pressing necessities having been attended to, I found time to attend to the matter which seemed to come next in importance. Hitherto we had been favoured with the finest of fine weather—nothing but the bluest of skies, often without the smallest shred of cloud, no rain, and only the most gentle of zephyrs. But I knew that such a condition of things could not last for ever. A change must inevitably come sooner or later; and if that change should chance to take the form of a gale from the southward, I had scarcely a shadow of doubt that, unless it should happen to be of the very briefest character, the wreck would go to pieces under our feet. Therefore it seemed to me that the task which now clamoured most loudly for our immediate attention was the construction of a craft of some sort which would enable us to escape in the last resort.
Now, there are very few tasks in connection with his craft which mercantile Jack cannot perform in a more or less efficient manner. He can unrig his ship, and rig her afresh. If any of her spars should be sprung, he can fix them up in such a fashion that they will serve their purpose very well until a new spar can be procured. He can knot and splice rigging; he can patch or rope a sail; and there are a thousand other things that he can do very deftly. But there is one thing which he cannot do, unless he has served an apprenticeship, or at least part of an apprenticeship to it, and that is—build a boat. He can repair a damaged boat, I grant you, put in a new plank, or replace a damaged timber. But to build a boat, as we understand the term, is altogether beyond him. The best that he can do is to construct some sort of a makeshift; and the problem that now confronted me was, what form was my makeshift to take?
First, what were my requirements? If it came to our being obliged to abandon the wreck, either through stress of weather or because of a conviction that our appeals for help had gone astray and that we must give up all hope of rescue and effect our own deliverance, it would mean a boat voyage. This in its turn would mean that the craft must be a good sea boat, capable of facing any weather, weatherly, a reasonably good sailer, and big enough to accommodate six people—four of whom were women, whose comfort and welfare must receive special consideration—together with a stock of provisions and water sufficient to last us all for, say, five weeks at least. I had already discussed this matter with Mrs Vansittart, and she had expressed a determination to try for Manila, in such a case, that being an American possession. Secondly, had we the materials, and had I the skill and strength to build such a boat, with such assistance as my companions could afford me? That was the question which now demanded an answer, and, in consultation with Mrs Vansittart, I now diligently proceeded to seek the reply.
Chapter Eleven.
A Suspicious Sail heaves in Sight.
As I have already hinted, I was no boat builder. I knew a good boat when I saw her, and I had a very fair notion of the correct proportions of such a craft; but when it came to the point of draughting a vessel’s lines, I very soon discovered, upon making the attempt, that I was all at sea. Nor could Mrs Vansittart help me. As a matter of fact, we quickly came to the conclusion that we knew just enough of the subject to be painfully conscious of our own ignorance. Of course I might have laid a keel, attached to it a stem and stern post, and then, with the help of a few moulds, roughed out something resembling a boat; but when in imagination I had got thus far, I found myself face to face with the mystery of properly shaping the planks, and, when this was done, of bending them to the correct curves. Then I realised that the job was too much for me.
It was clear that a boat of the usual form was out of the question, so something very much simpler must be thought out—something that should be all straight lines, or if there were any curves they must be of such a character as to be producible without such special apparatus as, for instance, a steaming trunk.
Then Mrs Vansittart and I began to overhaul our memories in search of the most simple form of floating craft that we had ever seen, and it was not long before we decided that the Thames punt “filled the bill”. That craft, so familiar to frequenters of the reaches of the Thames, and examples of which may be seen in Boulter’s Lock any Sunday in summer, is, as everybody knows, a thing of straight lines, flat-bottomed, flat-sided—in fact, an open box, with its two ends sloping instead of perpendicular; and we quickly decided that anyone with enough of the carpenter’s skill to knock a box together ought to be able to build a punt. Later on we discovered that we were not quite right in this assumption, but it was sufficiently encouraging to form a basis upon which to make a start.