When at last I fairly got started at my building I was in a still more cheerful mood—there being such a sense of definite accomplishment as I set each piece in its place, and such a comfort in the tangible advance that I was making, that half the time I was singing as I made my bolts and rivets fast. But for all my cheerfulness I had a plenty of trouble over what I was doing; and I was sorry enough that I had not somebody beside my cat to help me, or that I myself had not another pair or two of hands.
Almost at the start, when I began to swing the pieces of machinery inboard, I found that I had still another bit of preliminary work to attend to before I could go on. My travelling tackle crossing the boat amidships had worked well enough in getting the stuff out of her, but when I came to hoisting the parts aboard and setting them exactly in their places, and holding them steady while I made fast the rivets, it would not in any way serve my turn. What I had to do was to stretch another wire rope across the hatch—at right angles with and a couple of feet above the first one, and parallel with the boat's keel—and to rig on this two travellers, to one or the other of which I could transfer each piece as I got it inboard and so run it along until I had it exactly over the place where it was to be made fast. But I was a whole day in attending to this matter—and it was only one of the many makeshifts to which I had to resort to accomplish what was too much for my unaided strength; and in meeting such like side difficulties I lost in all a good many days.
But though my work went very slowly, and now and then was stopped short for a while by some obstacle that had to be overcome in any rough and ready way that I could think of, I did get on; and at last I had my boat together on the lines that her builders had planned. Yet while, in a way, she was finished, there still was a weary lot to do to her to fit her for my purposes; and in decking her over, and in making her cabin solid, and in fitting a mast and sail to her, I spent almost two months more.
All this work went slowly because I had to spend nearly as much time in making ready for what I wanted to do as in doing it. Before I began my planking I had to rip up from the steamer's deck the material for it; and this was a hard job in itself and did not give me what I wanted when it was done—for while the stuff served well enough for my beams and braces it was clumsily heavy for the decking of my little launch. But it had to answer, and in the end I got it well in place and the joints so tightly caulked that I was sure of having a dry hold. And that my deck might the more easily turn the water in a sea way I made it flush with the rail; and I had no hatch in it—arranging to get to the hold by a scuttle that I set in the forward end of the cabin—and that gave me a still better chance of keeping dry below.
For my mast I got down one of the top-gallant masts—and I had a close shave to coming down with it and so ending my adventures right there. The best way that I could think of to manage this piece of work—and I have not since thought of any way better—was to make fast a line to the lower end of the top-gallant mast just above the cap of the topmast and to carry this line through the top-block and so down to the deck, and there to pass it through another block to the capstan and haul it taut and stop it; and when all that was in order, and the stays cut, to get up into the cross-trees and saw through the spar just below where I had whipped it with my line. My expectation was that as the spar parted and fell it would be held hanging by my tackle until I could get down to the deck again and lower it away; and that really was what did happen—only as it fell there was a bit of slack line to take up, and this gave such a tremendous jerk to the cross-trees that I was within an ace of being shaken out of them and of going down to the deck with a bang. But I didn't—which is the main thing—and I did get my mast. It was a good deal heavier than my boat could stand, and I had to spend a couple of days in taking it down with a broad-axe and in finishing it with a plane until I got it as it should be; and from the flag-staff at the steamer's stern I got out with very little trouble a good boom and gaff.
After that I had only my sail to fit; and as I did not trouble myself to make a very neat job of it this did not take me long. Indeed, I grudged the time that I spent on my mast and sail—close upon a fortnight, altogether—more than any like amount of time that I gave to my task; for my hope was strong that I would not need a sail at all, but would be able to manage—by a way that I had thought of—to carry enough coal with me to make my voyage under steam. But I was not leaving anything to chance—so far as chances could be foreseen—in the adventure that I was about to make, and so I got my sail-power all ready to fall back upon in case my steam-power failed. And when that bit of work was finished I was full of a joyful light-heartedness; for my boat in every way was ready for the water, and I was come at last to the good ending of my long job.
That night I made a feast in celebration of what I had accomplished, and in hope of my greater good fortune that I believed was soon to come—with a place duly set on the opposite side of the table for my only guest, and with a champagne-glass beside his plate to hold his unsweetened condensed milk (for which, when I found it among the ship's stores, he manifested a strong partiality) that he might lap properly his responses to the toasts which I pledged him in champagne. And I don't suppose that a man and a cat ever had a merrier meal anywhere than we had in that queer place for it that evening; nor that any two friends ever were happier together than we were when, our feast being ended, he went through his various tricks—of which he had learned a great many, and with a wonderful quickness, after his paw got well—and then settled himself for a snooze on my lap while I sat smoking my cigar and thinking that at last I had sawn through my prison bars.
And it was while I was sitting in that state of placid happiness that suddenly I was brought up all standing by the reflection—and why it had not come sooner to me is a mystery—that a dozen turns of the screw of my launch in that weed-covered ocean would be enough to foul it hopelessly, and so at the very start to cut short the voyage under steam that I had planned.