The Boat Who Wouldn't Float by Farley Mowat Page A

were sweating almost as much water back into the bilges as we were pumping out. We pumped. The tidal current slackened and turned and began to help us on our way. We pumped.
    Occasionally one of us crawled on deck to breathe and to rest our agonized muscles for a moment. At eight o’clock I stuck my head out of the companionway and saw the massive headland of Mistaken Point a mile or so to leeward. I glanced at Enos. He was staring straight ahead, his eyes half shut and his mouth pursed into a dark pit of despair. He had taken out his dentures, a thing he always did in moments of stress. When I called out to tell him we were nearly holding the leak he gave no sign of hearing but continued staring over the bow as if he beheld some bleak and terrible vision from which he could not take his attention for a moment. Not at all cheered I ducked back into the engine room.
    And then the main pump jammed.
    That pump was a fool of a thing that had no right to be aboard a boat. Its innards were a complicated mass of springs and valves that could not possibly digest the bits of flotsam, jetsam, and codfish floating in the vessel’s bilge. But, fool of a thing or not, it was our only hope.
    It was dark by this time so Jack held a flashlight while I unbolted the pump’s face plate. The thing contained ten small coil springs and all of them leapt for freedom the instant the plate came off. They ricocheted off the cabin sides like a swarm of manic bees and fell, to sink below the surface of the water in the bilges.
    It does not seem possible, but we found them all. It took twenty-five or thirty minutes of groping with numbed arms under oily, icy water, but we found them all, re-installed them, put back the face plate, and again began to pump.
    Meanwhile the water had gained four inches. It was now over the lower part of the flywheel and less than two inches below the top of the carburetor. The flywheel spun a niagara of spray onto the red-hot exhaust pipe, turning the dark and roaring engine-room into a sauna bath. We pumped.
    Jack crawled on deck for a breather and immediately gave a frantic yell. For a second I hesitated. I did not think I had the fortitude to face a new calamity—but a second urgent summons brought me out on deck. Enos was frozen at the helm and by the last light of day I could see he was steering straight toward a wall of rock which loomed above us, no more than three hundred yards away.
    I leapt for the tiller. Enos did not struggle but meekly moved aside. His expression had changed and had become almost beatific. It may have been the rum that did it—Enos was at peace with himself and with the Fates.
    â€œWe’d best run her onto the rocks,” he explained mildly, “than be drowned in the cold, cold water.”
    Jack went back to the pump and I put the vessel on a course to skirt the threatening cliffs. We were not impossibly far from Trepassey Bay, and there still seemed to be a chance we could reach the harbour and beach the vessel on a non-lethal shore.
    At about eleven o’clock I saw a flashing light ahead and steered for it. When I prodded him Enos confirmed that it might be the buoy marking the entrance to Trepassey harbour. However before we reached it the fog overtook us and the darkness became total. We felt our way past the light-buoy and across the surrounding shoals with only luck and the Old Man to guide us.
    As we entered the black gut which we hoped was the harbour entrance, I did not need Jack’s warning shout to tell me that our time had about run out. The bullgine had begun to cough and splutter. The water level had reached her carburetor and, tough as she was, she could not remain alive for long on a mixture of gasoline and salt sea water.
    Within Trepassey harbour all was inky black. No lights could be seen on the invisible shore. I steered blindly ahead, knowing that sooner or later we must strike the land. Then the engine coughed, stopped, picked up again,