Читать книгу The Ark of 1803. A Story of Louisiana Purchase Times онлайн

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Jonas Sparks, the old Marietta shipwright, who was overseeing the work, nodded at the captain. There was still a vast amount of decking or roofing to be done, and for this some of the lumber was still to be brought over from Marietta sawmill.

“It would be a good job done,” said Jonas Sparks, “if you could get your timber sawed up to Marietta while she is swelling. It will save that much time.”

“The new Pittsburgh mill hands haven’t come,” said the captain, “and they can’t get enough men at Marietta to work on the new brig and run the mill. The men won’t work. I expect we’ll have to go up and saw the lumber ourselves. What do you think?”

“Well,” said Jonas, to whom the difficulty of getting any sort of skilled or regular labor was too familiar to cause annoyance, “we’ll just put her into the water and see what can be done about getting the boards. There comes Charlie Hoyt with another load of the Claibornes’ whisky.”

A wagon team was drawing into the shipyard clearing with a load of casks. Everyone about the ark went to the shed in which the cargo for the ark was being gradually piled up, and soon the men were busy helping Charlie Hoyt unload. When he had finally driven off again, considerable time had been wasted, and in the afternoon, when the boys trooped down after school to help in the launching, they found that it had been necessary to postpone it for another day. Next month, when the river should have risen with the melting snows, the delay of a day might mean all the difference between success and failure, safety and total wreck. But the Ohio was still locked between its ice banks, below the mouth of the creek, and a day meant little or nothing to the pioneers of the wilderness.