An Awkward Predicament

AN AWKWARD PREDICAMENT

Author – Heber Meiklejohn

In days gone by we occupied a house on a gentle slope near where the main river met a lovely harbour. For some reason our boat had been left on the far side of the river a little upstream from opposite. It was late in the evening when we got to know our boat would be wanted first thing in the morning.
As head of the household I decided to get her as soon as the evening meal was over. By this time it was almost dark, the sky being heavily overcast. I hurried to our landing and found the only thing that would float was a boat that a Maori had built, only a foot wide on the bottom and very highly timbered on the sides making a very dangerous contraption.

She was fastened with a plaited flax rope about twelve yards long attached to an oval stone for an anchor. I found a paddle and made a start. It was spring tides about three-quarters flood. I paddled out over the neutral water in our little bay, but as soon as the boat touched the current of the channel she tipped over, automatically anchoring herself. I held on to the boa t and did some quick thinking. I was fully dressed and had on a pair of’ heavy boots impossible to remove. It was black as pitch with all sense of distance and direction lost.

The tide was running like a sluice and the worst feature of all, the water was very cold. I was not the least bit afraid, although I admit I did not like the situation. As there was no time to be lost I made my way to the bow of the boat taking hold of an arm’s length of’ the anchor line, pulled this in and clipped it against the gun-whale or the boat with the thumb of my right hand and repeated the process several times until there was enough of spare line to go back to the middle of the boat where there was more buoyancy.

Unfortunately I was on the left hand side of the boat which threw all the work on my left arm. One can imagine just what an effort this was, as the anchor was holding, the submerged boat had to be forced against the terrific current an arm’s length at a time. I was thankful when the boat was brought perpendicularly over the anchor.

The next process was to lift the anchor from the bottom for a fraction of a minute so that the boat would rush upstream till her buoyancy was lost when she would need some slacked line to recover her buoyancy again. Somewhere upstream the channel turned away from the home side. I had an idea which proved to be correct that the boat would shoot across this bend.
I was thankful when my feet touched the bottom. A few more tugs at the anchor and the water was only waist deep. I was soon able to replace the anchor in the middle of’ the boat.

A brightness in the western sky gave me the direction and I was soon ashore. The moon just appeared at that time and gave a welcome light and I was glad to be home again having been away just two hours adding another link to my history.