第40章

Boat-building extraordinary - Peterkin tries his hand at cookery and fails most signally - The boat finished - Curious conversation with the cat, and other matters.

FOR many days after this Jack applied himself with unremitting assiduity to the construction of our boat, which at length began to look somewhat like one.But those only who have had the thing to do can entertain a right idea of the difficulty involved in such an undertaking, with no other implements than an axe, a bit of hoop-iron, a sail-needle, and a broken pen-knife.But Jack did it.He was of, that disposition which WILL not be conquered.When he believed himself to be acting rightly, he overcame all obstacles.

I have seen Jack, when doubtful whether what he was about to do were right or wrong, as timid and vacillating as a little girl, -and I honour him for it!

As this boat was a curiosity in its way, a few words here relative to the manner of its construction may not be amiss.

I have already mentioned the chestnut tree with its wonderful buttresses or planks.This tree, then, furnished us with the chief part of our material.First of all Jack sought out a limb of a tree of such a form and size as, while it should form the keel a bend at either end should form the stem and stern posts.Such a piece, however, was not easy to obtain, but at last he procured it, by rooting up a small tree which had a branch growing at the proper angle about ten feet up its stem, with two strong roots growing in such a form as enabled him to make a flat-sterned boat.This placed, he procured three branching roots of suitable size, which he fitted to the keel at equal distances, thus forming three strong ribs.Now, the squaring and shaping of these, and the cutting of the grooves in the keel, was an easy enough matter, as it was all work for the axe, in the use of which Jack was become wonderfully expert; but it was quite a different affair when he came to nailing the ribs to the keel, for we had no instrument capable of boring a large hole, and no nails to fasten them with.We were, indeed, much perplexed here; but Jack at length devised an instrument that served very well.He took the remainder of our hoop-iron and beat it into the form of a pipe or cylinder, about as thick as a man's finger.This he did by means of our axe and the old rusty axe we had found at the house of the poor man at the other side of the island.This, when made red hot, bored slowly though the timbers;and, the better to retain the heat, Jack shut up one end of it and filled it with sand.True, the work was very slowly done, but it mattered not - we had little else to do.Two holes were bored in each timber, about an inch and a half apart, and also down into the keel, but not quite through.Into these were placed stout pegs made of a tree called iron-wood; and, when they were hammered well home, the timbers were as firmly fixed as if they had been nailed with iron.The gunwales, which were very stout, were fixed in a similar manner.But, besides the wooden nails, they were firmly lashed to the stem and stern posts and ribs by means of a species of cordage which we had contrived to make out of the fibrous husk of the cocoa nut.This husk was very tough, and when a number of the threads were joined together they formed excellent cordage.At first we tied the different lengths together, but this was such a clumsy and awkward complication of knots, that we contrived, by careful interlacing of the ends together before twisting, to make good cordage of any size or length we chose.Of course it cost us much time and infinite labour, but Jack kept up our spirits when we grew weary, and so all that we required was at last constructed.

Planks were now cut off the chestnut trees of about an inch thick.

These were dressed with the axe, - but clumsily, for an axe is ill adapted for such work.Five of these planks on each side were sufficient, and we formed the boat in a very rounded, barrel-like shape, in order to have as little twisting of the planks as possible; for, although we could easily bend them, we could not easily twist them.Having no nails to rivet the planks with, we threw aside the ordinary fashion of boat building and adopted one of our own.The planks were therefore placed on each other's edges, and sewed together with the tough cordage already mentioned.

They were also thus sewed to the stem, the stern, and the keel.

Each stitch or tie was six inches apart, and was formed thus:

Three holes were bored in the upper plank and three in the lower, -the holes being above each other, that is, in a vertical line.

Through these holes the cord was passed, and, when tied, formed a powerful stitch of three ply.Besides this, we placed between the edges of the planks, layers of cocoa-nut fibre, which, as it swelled when wetted, would, we hoped, make our little vessel water-tight.But in order further to secure this end, we collected a large quantity of pitch from the bread-fruit tree, with which, when boiled in our old iron pot, we payed the whole of the inside of the boat, and, while it was yet hot, placed large pieces of cocoa-nut cloth on it, and then gave it another coat above that.Thus the interior was covered with a tough water-tight material; while the exterior, being uncovered, and so exposed to the swelling action of the water, was we hoped, likely to keep the boat quite dry.I may add that our hopes were not disappointed.