Chapter Thirty Six.
Having determined to build a vessel, we set to work with great energy; and we hoped by ingenuity and perseverance to make amends for our want of skill and knowledge.
Our first task was to break up the wreck, and to convey it piecemeal to the bay; and in this work we were ably assisted by the Esquimaux, who understood that whatever portion we did not require was to be their perquisite. They also shrewdly suspected that we should leave them, if we went away, many of the other treasures we had in our possession. I believe, however, that they really had formed a sincere regard for us, and were sorry to find that we were about to depart; at the same time that they consoled themselves, as more civilised people are apt to do under similar circumstances, with the reflection that we should leave something behind us.
We first had to carry to our store the remainder of the salted provisions; which, had they been left a single night on board after the hatches were removed, the bears would inevitably have got hold of. We then carried off such part of the deck as we required, with some of the timbers and planks.
As we could not get at the keel, we were obliged to content ourselves with the mainmast, to serve as a keel for our new vessel. We laid her down close to the beach just above high-water mark, with a carriage-sledge under her, so as to be able to launch her over the ice. Our intention was to make her a vessel of about sixteen to twenty tons, which was as large as our materials would allow, and to rig her as a schooner for the same reason, and because she would thus be more easily handled.
After much discussion as to the ways and means, we laid down the keel and set up the stem and stern. We next commenced on the ribs, which puzzled us much more to shape them, so as to make the sides of the form we wished, and one side to correspond with the other. However, there is an old saying, that “Where there’s a will there’s a way;” and though not always true, it was so in our case, though we expended six times as much labour and time as we should have done had there been a good carpenter among us to superintend our work. We were unwearied in our labours; we worked all day, and a great part of the night too, for we all felt that on getting it done in time depended our escape from those icy regions that year.
I have described our imprisonment as passed more pleasantly than we could have expected; but yet none of us desired to spend another winter in the same way, and most of us had some friends or relations whom we wished again to see, and to relieve from the anxiety they must be feeling on our account.
We should have worked on Sundays, but Andrew Thompson urged us to desist. Some of the men answered that we were working in a good cause, as we should the sooner be able to return home.