In the Sargasso Sea / A Novel

by Thomas A. Janvier

My preliminary investigations being thus well ended, and the morning ended too, I piped all hands to dinner; that is to say, I whistled to my cat—who had been sitting still and watching me pretty solemnly, his friskiness being for the time taken out of him by the pain in his paw—and when he perceived that I was paying some attention to him again he came limping to me on his three good legs and said with a miau that if I pleased he would prefer going to his dinner in my arms. And when I picked him up—as, indeed, I had to, for he positively insisted upon my carrying him—he forgot about his hurt and fell to purring to me at a great rate and to making little gentle thrusts against my arm with the fore paw that was sound. And so we went aft in great friendship and contentment and had a gay dinner together: the cat sitting on the table opposite to me with all possible decorum—but manifesting his daintiness by refusing to eat anything but tinned chicken, and only the white meat at that!

XXXIV

I END A GOOD JOB WELL, AND GET A SET-BACK

When my meal was finished I set myself first of all to getting off the hatch beneath which my boat lay; and this proved to be a bigger job than I had counted upon—each of its sections being so heavy that I could not manage it without tackle, and even with tackle the work took me a good hour. My plan of operations had included removing the hatch every morning and setting it back again every night, but when I found how much energy and time would be wasted in that way I changed my front a little and got at the same result along another line. All that I needed was a covering for the hatch that would keep the rain out; and what I did, therefore, was to knock together a light grating of wood to fit over it—sloping the grating downward on each side from a sort of a ridge pole—on which a tarpaulin could be stretched; and in that way I got shortly to a water-tight covering for my hatch that I could shift back and forth quickly and without any trouble at all. But the whole of what remained of the afternoon was spent in getting that piece of preliminary work finished to my mind.

The next morning I set myself to the examination of the stuff stowed in the boat—the several parts which I would have to put together in order to make my craft ready for the sea—and for this job also a great deal of preliminary arrangement was required. Many of the pieces—as the boiler, the cylinder, the shaft, the screw, and the sections of the cabin—were too heavy for me to lift without tackle; and as they all had to be got out and arranged in order ready for use, and then in due course put aboard the boat one at a time in their proper places, I first of all had to set up some sort of lifting apparatus to take the place of a crane.

In this matter the open hatch directly over the boat again was a help to me. Across it, running fore and aft, I stretched a heavy wire rope on which I had placed a big block for a traveller, and carrying the end of the rope forward to the capstan I fell to work with the hand-bars and got it strained so taut that it was like a bar of iron. Then to the traveller block I made fast my hoisting tackle—and so was able to swing up the heavy pieces from where they were stowed, and to run them along the taut rope until they were clear of the boat on either side, and then to let them down upon the deck: where they would remain until a reversal of this process would lift them up again and set them in place as they were required. But even with my tackle—and double tackle in the case of the heavier pieces—this was a back-breaking job that took up the whole of three days.

However, I finished it at last, and had the boat clear and all the pieces so arranged that as I needed them they would be ready to my hand; and the examination that I was able to make of them, and of the boat too after I had her empty, gave very satisfactory results. All the parts were there, and all numbered so carefully that they could have been assembled by much less skilful hands than mine; while the hull of the boat was completely finished, and the sockets and rivet-holes for attaching her fittings were all as they should be in her frame. Farther, I could see by the little scratches here and there on her iron-work that she had been set up and then taken apart again; and so was sure that all was smooth for her coming together in the right way. But, for all that I had such plain sailing before me in the actual work of refitting her, my courage went down a little as I perceived what a big contract I had taken, and what a very long time must pass before I could pull it through.

Moreover, I saw that while the boat was well built for pleasure cruising in smooth water—and, indeed, was so stout in her frame that she would stand a great deal of knocking about without being the worse for it—she by no means was prepared for the chances of an ocean voyage. Except where her little cabin and engine-room would be—the two filling about half of her length amidships—she was entirely open; and while the frame of her cabin was stoutly built, that part of it intended to rise above the rail was arranged for sliding glass windows—which would be smashed in a moment by a heavy dash of sea. It was clear, therefore, that in addition to setting her up on the lines planned for her—a big job and a long job to start with—there was a lot more for me to do. To fit her for my purposes it would be necessary to cover her cabin windows with planking; to deck her over forward in order to have my stores under cover as well as to guard against shipping enough water to swamp her in rough weather; and finally to rig her with a mast and sail upon which to fall back for motive-power in the event of my running out of coal. This additional work would not, in one way, present any difficulties—it being in itself simple and easy of accomplishment; but in another way it was not pleasant to contemplate, since the doing of it all single-handed would increase very greatly the time which must pass before I could start upon my voyage. However, as consideration of that phase of the matter only tended to discourage me, I put it out of sight as well as I was able and set myself with a will to finishing my preliminary work—of which there still was a good deal to do.

The steamer's machine-shop, as I have said, was unusually well fitted and supplied; but even in the short time that the vessel had been lying abandoned in that reeking atmosphere rust had so coated everything not shut up in lockers that all the tools in the racks and the fittings of the lathe—although the lathe had an oil-cloth hood over it—had to be cleaned before they could be used: a job that kept me busy with the grind-stone, and emery-cloth, and oiled cotton-waste, for a good long while. And after that I had to get the forge in order, and to bring up fuel for it from the coal bunkers. And in attending to all these various matters the time slipped away so quickly that a whole week had passed before I had done.

But I must say that as the cat and I labored together—though his labors were confined to cheering me by following me about on three legs wherever I went, and pretty much all the while talking to me in his way so that I should not fail to take notice of him—I got more and more light-hearted; which was natural enough, seeing that what I was doing in itself interested me and so made the time pass quickly, and that I had also a great swelling undercurrent of hope as I thought of what my slow-going work would bring me to in the end.