“I’m sure I don’t see how we can manage it,” replied his friend despairingly.
“Oh, don’t you?” answered David cheerfully, his spirits rising with the sense of action and the feeling of having something to do, and as happy and unconcerned as if he were safe on board the Sea Rover. “Oh, don’t you, Master Jonathan? Then allow me to inform you, as Dick Murphy says, that there are more ways of killing a pig besides hanging him; and that I see a way to our righting that boat.”
“How?” inquired the other.
“I’ll soon show you,” said David. “But I guess and calculate it will take a pretty considerable time I reckon, and you’ll have to help us, sirree.”
“Of course I will,” said Jonathan, laughing at David’s apt imitation of an American passenger on board their ship, who had unwittingly been the source of much amusement to the two boys, with his drawling voice, and habit of speaking through his nose in regular “down eastern” fashion.
“Well, bear a hand, old cock,” said David jocularly, pleased at seeing Jonathan laugh again, and getting off the boat’s keel gingerly on to their raft again. “The first thing we have to do, Jonathan, is to try and raise the bow of the craft on top of these timbers here—or rather, sink down the end of the wheelhouse roof so that it may get under the boat. We can do it easy enough by both going to the extreme point of it and bearing it down by our united weight; but mind you don’t slip off, old boy. Hold on tight.”
It was no easy task, as the motion of the waves hindered them, and the raft was lifting and falling as the surges rolled under them; besides which, the boat was heavy, and the suction of the water seemed to keep it down and resist their efforts.
However, they persevered, and, after innumerable attempts and failures, succeeded at length in getting part of the bow of the cutter on to the end of the raft, which it almost submerged, although it was itself lifted clean out of the sea.
“So far, so good,” said David, puffing and blowing like a grampus with his exertions, and Jonathan following suit. “We’d better have a spell off for a bit; the heaviest part of the work is yet to come.”
“Don’t you think,” said Jonathan presently, after a rest, “that it would be a good plan to float her stern round at right angles to the raft? Then the waves would force her on to it, almost without our help.”