Pirates a League of Brothers by H, J, Macey (phonics books TXT) 📖

The sun had just risen as they reached the hulls, giving them a full day of sunlight to get the hulls in the water and around to the other side of the island. The last high tide had left its mark on the soft white sand, in a line of driftwood the tide had left behind. They would have to get the hulls beyond this mark for them to float, and the soft sand was making it hard to do this. As the hull's weight moved onto the bamboo poles, they sank a little in the sand.

On the hard grassy slopes above the beach, they had rolled under the hulls as they moved forward. Now as they sank the hulls slowed their forward movement, until they stopped altogether. Matto and Dorian had to attach the ropes to the other ends of the hulls and tug the hulls bit by bit the rest of the way. Luckily the outside skin of the bamboo poles had a slippery texture, as did the black hardened tar they had coated the hulls with.                                              

 They achieved their goal just as the water was lapping at their feet, maybe an hour before high tide. Now they climbed onto the hulls and had something to eat, as they waited for the tide to flout them off the beach. Dorian must have dropped off to sleep in the warm sun, for when he awoke. Matto was quietly propelling the hulls through the shallow water with one of the long bamboo poles, and Dorian quickly followed suit.

The shallow waters inside the reef were as clear as could be, and Dorian wondered at the many brightly coloured fish he could see. Along with the turtles, there were triangular fish with long tails. Some fish were so brightly coloured, Dorian called them rainbow fish. Some fish jumped out of the water when they were chased by other fish, and looked like they were flying before diving back into the lagoon. Where they would dart about, then leap into the air again.

Matto had made two long steering ores, that were pivoted between the hulls and joined together by a bamboo crossbeam. Ocasanly he would adjust the angle of the steering ores, by adjusting the rope he had tied to them. Dorian watched as he did the adjustment, and found it a simple example of friction that held the ores in place. With the rope tied to each ore and past around a post on each outer hull, then back and forth between two posts in the centre of the hulls.

The tension of the rope caused friction between the two posts in the centre of the hulls, holding the ores where Matto had placed them, to steer the course he wanted. It was obvious Matto was no stranger to this type of boat, Dorian asked himself why in the years he and Seeua had been on the Island, hadn't he built one for himself. Even with the language barrier, Dorian had got the feeling Matto wasn't building this boat with Dorian to sail away himself.

He tended his crops and livestock as if he intended to stay on the Island, the boat seemed a side attraction to Matto. Something he enjoyed doing with Dorian, something he was enjoying doing with another person other than Seeua a friend maybe. It was the same feeling he had with Seeua, she had mothered him from the first day they rescued him. Even now she greeted him with a hug each time he and Matto returned from their wondering about the Island.

Dorian was surprised, at how easy it was to propel the hulls through the water with the bamboo poles. Looking through the clear water, he could see the shadow of the hulls moving over the multi-coloured corals on the shallow bottom. The beach they had launched the hulls from, had long since been left in the distance. Then the beach became a shoreline of mangrove trees, with a wooded forest behind it that stretched up the higher slopes. 

Then they were moving along a rocky coastline, where the land rose steadily upwards to the highlands, where Dorian has stood on the hights to take in the whole visiter of the Island.  They must have been on the other side of the island, opposite the bay and Matto's home. Still, the land rose higher above them as did the sun, it had past over the Island just after they had left the launch site, almost at high tide, just when Matto had planned.

Dorian had watched the tide rise and fall, while they had built the boat, and was beginning to understand the tides. There were two a day, but their arrival varied from day to day by a small amount. Then the tides varied in the height they were, according to the fullness of the moon. While they had built the boat, the tide came partway up the beach. While at other times, it almost reached the low grass-topped dunes that divided beach from grassland.

Matto had watched the tides rising, and had indicated to Dorian that today's high tide would be the highest. The tides to follow would begin to be lower until the tide and moon changed again. As he watched the Island slip past them, Dorian tried to calculate how long they had been paddling the hulls. They had left at about midday, it must be mid-afternoon by now, giving them about three hours of daylight left to get to the bay.

If it took that long, it would be low tide when they entered the bay at almost darkness. One of them would have to stay on the hulls all night, as the new tide came in just to tend the ropes. They would have to be taken in as the tide rose, so the hulls would be left high and dry at the highest tide mark to work on, where only the highest tides would float the hulls. Steadily they rounded the end of the Island, with Matto giving the steering ores small adjustments.

When the entrance of the bay came into view, they were in the shadow of the island and the last of the ebbing tide was flowing out of the bay. The island encircling reef was high out of the water, and the entrance through it which the pirate's ship was swept through was visible. Plus the water pouring from the lagoon could be seen in turmoil as it thundered through the gap. The nearer to the bay entrance they got, the less water rushed out of the lagoon.    

The deepness of the entrance channel was now too deep for the bamboo poles, they had used in the shallow lagoon. Abandoning them Matto and Dorian, used the rowing bamboo poles Matto had made from two sizes of bamboo. Matto had cut an arm's length, off the large bamboo trunk they had cut down for the mast's. Spiting it in two had made two scops he had attached to two poles, which they now rowed the hulls into the slack waters of the bay.       

The inside of the circular bay was like a crabs claw, with each side of the entrance being sheltered from the frequent storms that suddenly rose out at sea. The right-hand side was the best anchorage, as a finger of land there curled slightly into the bay. Giving excellent shelter if a wind should rise without notice, which they did from time to time. The left-hand side was less protected and had a rocky shoreline, and was where Matto kept his small canoe and his fishing traps.

They entered the bay as twilight was falling, and headed for the sandy beach the pirates had used. Matto had already driven two posts into the grassy bank there, for securing the hulls too. When they heard the sound of the hulls grounding, Matto lept from the hulls into waist-high water. Then wadded ashore taking the end of a rope with him, which he had already tided the other end to the hulls. By the time Matto secured the rope to the posts ashore, the hulls were firmly aground.

Matto waved to Dorian to indicate he was going home, as Dorian pulled in the slack of the rope and secured that. Before settling down to have a meal of fruits, that they had picked on the far side of the island and stored on the hulls. Then he waits for the tide to turn, and his night vigil to haul the hulls up the beach to the high watermark. It was pitch black when the tide turned, though as the moon and tide rose, the bay was bathed in bright silvery moonlight.

Slowly the hulls moved up the beach inch by inch, as Dorian steadily hauled in on the rope. Until with the moon high in the heavens, high tide was reached and Dorian tided off the rope one last time. Now until the deckhouse was built and the masts were stepped in place, the hulls would remain high and dry. Only then would Dorian and Matto take the twined hulled boat, out on a trial sail in the shallow lagoon where he would learn to sail her.                                     

The deckhouse soon began to take shape, after Matto had stepped the marts into place. With the hulls at the highest reach of the tides, they would not float again until the next full moon. With them firmly aground, Matto built a solid framework over the hulls and used the horizontal beams to host the masts up so they could be dropped into the housing Matto had made for them. With the ropes holding the masts in an almost upright position, wedges were hammered in to secure them.

Now they built uprights for the deckhouse to aline alongside the masts, so the masts would be held firmly in place by the finished deckhouse. Using the framework they lifted the poles for the roof of the deckhouse onto the uprights. Laying them two bamboo poles deep across and lengthways, they made a soiled roof to the deckhouse that held the masts in a firm grasp. Now the rigging had to be made, to hold the mastheads in place and to raise the sails.

Seeua had been spinning the husks of the coconuts into twine, then weaving it into several squares. Which she joined together to make two large squares, and one triangular sail. Strips of bamboo were made into small platted hoops around the rope from the masthead to the bow of the boat, then