Word: rafted
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...Force Weasel set out to rescue the cottagers and was swamped. A motor-launch crew tried three times to breast the gale and was blown back. Without a word to anyone, Reis Leming, clad in a rubber "exposure suit," waded into the icy waters, pushing a rubber raft ahead of him. Often the water swirled above his head, but "I just hung on until I could get a foothold again," he said...
...took the young airman half an hour to fight his way to the first cottage. Eleven people clambered off the roof on to the raft, and Leming pushed them back to safety. Without waiting for thanks, he started back again. On the second trip he rescued seven. The third time he was gone for more than an hour, and when he finally returned with nine more, he was moving very slowly. "Help me. My legs . . . Help me," the people on dry land heard him mutter. His exposure suit was badly ripped when they dragged him out. Another five minutes...
...fishing tackle and fine-mesh nets for gathering plankton could not obtain from the sea enough food and water to stay alive-and even healthy -for weeks at a time. Determined to prove his theory, he set out from Tangier one morning last August, alone aboard a 15-ft. raft buoyed up by rubberized-fabric pontoons, and christened L'Heretique...
...next seven weeks, he learned that his toughest problem was not food or drink but morale. The first few weeks were not so bad: the wind kept up, pushing him westward day by day, and life on the raft had not yet become grey, leaden monotony. But then the wind died away. For the next 27 days he just drifted, only now & then catching a faint breeze. Cheerful by nature, he often sank into deep troughs of depression as he looked out at the ever-empty horizon. Fortunately, there were daily chores to be done: fishing, keeping the log, plotting...
...quickly, chattering away happily in French-accented English, delighted to learn that his calculated position was only 20 miles off. He took a fresh-water bath, broke his marine diet by eating an egg and drinking coffee. After an hour and a half, he went back to his raft with some apples and a fresh battery for his radio. Passengers watched and waved until the raft dwindled to a speck on the horizon and disappeared...