“Why not bend the leadline or boat’s sheet on?” said Bill.
“Better still,” I answered. “We have the blocks of the sheet and halyards. We can reeve a jigger, and make it fast to the top of our lever, and the other end we’ll bring down to that palm there.”
This at last answered, and with each shift of our tackle we were able to haul the boat up about six inches, and in little more than an hour we had got her half out of the water, and altogether on rollers, and found that the water that remained in her no longer ran out. So we set to work and bailed her out, and then she was so much lighter that we were able to dispense with our purchase and long levers and use our short ones again, and before another hour was past we had her high and dry on the beach.
We now left her and set to work about our hut again, and lashing small palm trunks to the four corner-posts, we had the frame of our shanty pretty well up before the sinking of the sun warned us that it was time to prepare for the night.
We spread the torn sail over the weather side to protect us from the wind, and Bill went to the nearest pool to get some fresh fish for our supper, for we would not touch those we had put to smoke; and they were soon grilling on the embers, and furnished us with a capital meal, which we washed down with cocoanut milk.
Supper finished, we made our beds of leaves, and laid us down to sleep, thoroughly tired with our day’s work; but first of all Tom proposed that we should have prayers, and return thanks to God for the mercies shown to us; and this good custom once established, we never departed from it.
When we woke in the morning, Tom and Bill said they would thatch our hut, and that I, as the carpenter of the party, should examine the boat and see what I could do to repair her.
At first sight my task seemed nearly hopeless, for many of her planks were split, and her seams were open and gaping over all the fore part of her, and I had neither nails nor planks with which to mend her.
CHAPTER VI.
A VOYAGE OF EXPLORATION.
Tom and Bill went on with the hut, and rapidly thatched the roof and weather side, while I was trying, with the fibre of the husks of cocoanuts, to calk the seams and splits in the boat; but I found that instead of doing good I only did harm, for as I forced my extemporized oakum into the openings they gaped wider and wider, and I had to come to the conclusion that to repair a clincher-built boat by calking was beyond my power.