In addition to their weapons and personal belongings the Dutchmen had taken some ship’s gear with them. It consisted of the following:
1 long stout rope (spare topsail halyard).
1 coil of thin rope.
1 small anchor (belonging to the longboat).
1 stout iron bar (spare handle of deck pump).
1 strong net of rope (used for hoisting out of the hold).
2 saws.
3 axes.
4 adzes.
1 two-inch auger.
1 big hammer.
1 bag of nails and other small matters.
On arriving at the narrow part of the river, Vanderdecken walked to and fro with his mate, looking at all points. At length he stopped and said, “This is where we get busy.”
The opposite cliff was not very far away (possibly about two hundred feet) and there were many trees about, growing close to the edge, as the King had said. Far below could be seen flashes of white where the torrent broke into foam as it roared on in the gloom.
A tall young tree, of a springy character, was cut down and the branches were lopped off. Two sides were then cut away until it looked something like a very long thick plank; the Snergs working at it with great fury, so that the air was full of chips. Then they....
No, on second thoughts I consider it inadvisable to give a detailed description of the device which Vanderdecken made. It would be to turn from a narrative of adventure (with a moral) to a cheap treatise on mechanics. Let it suffice to say that with great labour of all hands he made a fairly good imitation of a Roman balista, which was so useful in inducing besieged peoples to be reasonable by heaving tons of rock at them. This shows the advantage of a classical education.
Instead of rock he was going to heave the anchor, with the rope attached to it and neatly coiled up, to the other side of the river. The other end of the rope was tied to a tree, and all that had to be done was to cut another rope that acted as the trigger of this deadly arrangement.