Stark-eyed, shivering people stood far back among the trees throughout
the rest of the night and watched the work of months go up in flame
and smoke. Noth-ing could be done to save the ship. Hewn from the
hardiest trees in the forest, caulked and fortified to defy the
most violent assaults of water, she was like paper in the clutch of
flames. In the grey of early morn the stricken people slunk back
to their cabins and gave up hope. For not only was their ship
destroyed but the priceless tools and implements with which she had
been built were gone as well. It was the double catastrophe that
took the life, the spirit, out of them.
And while the day was still breaking, the man who had slept at his
post, stole off into the forest and cut his throat from ear to ear.
But now, months afterward, another ship is on the ways. Indomitable,
undaunted, the builders rose above disaster and set to work again.
New tools were fashioned from steel and iron and wood,--saws,
chisels, sledges, planes and hammers--in fact, everything except
the baffling augurs. Resolute, unbeaten hands toiled anew, and this
time the humble craft was not to be given a luckless name.
Superstition was rife.
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