Charlie Bell, The Waif of Elm Island
by Elijah Kellogg · English · Gutenberg #51141 · 376,729 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Charlie Bell, The Waif of Elm Island
Author: Elijah Kellogg
Release date: February 7, 2016 [eBook #51141]
Most recently updated: October 22, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARLIE BELL, THE WAIF OF ELM ISLAND ***
[Illustration: CHARLIE SURPRISED.--Page 158.]
ELM ISLAND STORIES.
CHARLIE BELL,
THE WAIF OF ELM ISLAND.
BY
REV. ELIJAH KELLOGG,
AUTHOR OF “SPARTACUS TO THE GLADIATORS,” “LION BEN,” “THE BOY
FARMERS,” “THE YOUNG SHIP-BUILDERS,” “THE HARD-SCRABBLE,”
THE “PLEASANT COVE STORIES,” THE “WHISPERING
PINE SERIES,” ETC.
_ILLUSTRATED._
BOSTON
LEE AND SHEPARD PUBLISHERS
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by
LEE AND SHEPARD
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY ELIJAH KELLOGG.
All rights reserved.
CHARLIE BELL.
INTRODUCTION.
There is a period in the life of all boys, when, in the homely phrase
of Uncle Isaac, “they stand up edgeways.” At this critical period, as
streams are tinged by the soils through which they filter, so their
character for life is in a great measure shaped by their playmates, the
examples set before them, and the associations amid which they grow up.
Lion Ben, the principal character in the first volume of the series,
with nothing but his hands, narrow axe, and a true-hearted, loving
woman,--his equal in enterprise,--goes on to an island, an unbroken
forest in the midst of breakers, that, by reason of the peril of living
on it, can be bought cheap, thus coming within their scanty means,
there to struggle for a homestead and acres of their own.
Though bred a seaman, yet cherishing a love for the soil, with
qualities of mind and heart commensurate with his great physical power,
he appreciates the beauty of the spot.
His reluctance to devote it to axe and firebrand excites him to efforts
equally daring and original, in order that he may so husband his
resources as to pay for the land without stripping it of its majestic
coronal of timber and forests, any farther than is necessary to render
it available for cultivation.
In this he is aided by the counsels of an old friend of himself
and his family,--a most original and sagacious man,--Isaac Murch.
In their sayings and doings is represented the subsoil of American
character--the home life and modes of thought of those who made the
culture and progress; thus endeavoring, in a pleasing manner, to teach
those great truths which lie at the foundation of thrift, progress, and
morality.
Charlie Bell, the hero of the second volume of the series, is an
English orphan, flung at a tender age upon the stormy sea of life, to
sink or swim, as it should please Heaven. Friendless, starving on a
wharf at Halifax, he ships in a vessel with men, who, under the guise
of fishermen, are little better than pirates. Landing at Elm Island,
they insult the wife of Lion Ben, who inflicts upon them a merited
chastisement, and adopts the orphan.
In his boy life, and that of his young associates, their daily
employments, and those exciting adventures which a new country, rude
state of society, and a ragged reach of sea-coast afford to boys full
of blue veins and vitriol, are seen the germs of qualities that ripen
into characters of the greatest usefulness.
As the volumes are closely connected, it is hoped this sketch may
render the second volume readable to those who take it up without
having read the first.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. ROUSING THE LION 9
II. CHARLIE BELL 17
III. JOHN GOES TO SEE THE NEW BOY 33
IV. GRIT AND GRATITUDE 45
V. CHARLES RETURNS JOHN’S VISIT 58
VI. CHARLIE IN A SNOW SQUALL 70
VII. CHARLIE PLANS A SURPRISE FOR SALLY 85
VIII. CHARLIE’S HOME LIFE AND EMPLOYMENTS 97
IX. BEN FINDS A PRIZE 111
X. HOW THEY PASSED THE WINTER EVENINGS 123
XI. BEN REVEALS HIS LONG-CHERISHED PLAN TO
HIS FATHER 139
XII. THE MYSTERIOUS PIG 151
XIII. A NOVEL CRAFT 171
XIV. THE BURN 183
XV. FITTING AWAY 203
XVI. A WELL-DESERVED HOLIDAY 215
XVII. UNCLE ISAAC’S PLEDGE 250
XVIII. GENEROSITY AND PLUCK 264
XIX. FRED’S SAND-BIRD PIE 285
XX. A HAIR-BREADTH ESCAPE 296
XXI. THE BOYS AND THE WIDOW 315
CHARLIE BELL OF ELM ISLAND.
CHAPTER I.
ROUSING THE LION.
When the English army, during the war of the Revolution, were driven
out of Boston by the batteries of Washington, erected upon Dorchester
Heights, those traitors to the liberties of their country (called in
those days Tories), who had taken part with the British, accompanied
them to Halifax, being more than a thousand in number, as they were
fearful of the vengeance of their countrymen if they remained behind.
During the war that followed, they, with their British friends, were
accustomed to come along the coast and islands of Maine in vessels and
armed boats, and maltreat and plunder the unarmed inhabitants. These
vessels were called “shaving mills,” and they were wont to shave very
close.
In Eaton’s History of Thomaston and Rockland, it is said that a Tory
by the name of Pomeroy, who was captain of one of these mills, took
Robert Jameson from his mowing field, carried him on board his vessel,
and put him in irons, while his men killed a yoke of oxen and three fat
hogs, and put them on board the vessel, together with three firkins of
butter and two guns. Jameson vowed revenge.
As is usual in such cases, Pomeroy’s ill-gotten gains did not thrive
with him. After the war he became poor, and finally shipped before the
mast in a coaster, commanded by Paul Jameson, Robert’s brother, who
told him that if they met his brother he would protect him, as he was
the stouter of the two. But Robert got on board the vessel in Paul’s
absence, and gave Pomeroy his choice to fight or take a whipping.
But he refused, endeavoring to excuse his conduct by the usages of
war, saying that, now the war was over, all ought to be forgotten and
forgiven.
Jameson replied, “Strip and defend yourself! fight! only fight! I shall
be satisfied.”
But the other refusing, he began beating, kicking, and bruising the
passive Pomeroy, still trying to induce him to defend himself, but in
vain. At last he took a bayonet, and pricking him a little, to see
if life remained, left him with the assurance that this was only the
payment for his butter; and that wherever and whenever he found him, he
should, in the same manner, take pay,--first for his hogs, and then for
his oxen.
After peace was concluded, both the ports of Maine and Nova Scotia were
full of old privateersmen, returned soldiers of low character, and
vagabonds of all sorts, who, having become accustomed to plunder, and
unwilling to labor, would get hold of some vessel or large boat, go
along shore, fish a little to keep up appearances, and when they came
to an island or lonely point, where the men were timid, would take fish
off the flakes, a lamb out of the flock, dig potatoes, or gather corn;
sometimes enforcing submissiveness with knives or pistols. When the men
were away fishing, they would compel the women to get them food and
liquor (which every family in those days kept in the house), and abuse
and frighten them most outrageously.
A crew of such fellows, running the shore along to see what they could
find, and being rather short both of liquor and provisions, made Elm
Island at daylight, and seeing there was but a single house on it, and
a good harbor, while the occupant was too far from neighbors to obtain
help in case of need, thought it a most excellent opportunity to
obtain all they wanted.
Sally knew something, and had heard more, of her husband’s vast
strength; she knew that when he took her up, to carry her from the boat
to the shore, she was a feather in his hands; she knew, also, that John
Strout and Uncle Isaac, who were both strong men,--especially Uncle
Isaac, who was celebrated for his strength,--had as much as they could
do to haul up the great log canoe, but Ben would haul it up, with her
in it, apparently without an effort. Sally had also heard the young
folks say that he had an awful temper when he did get started, and that
when he rose he was the devil all over; but she didn’t believe it, for
she had known him ever since they were children, and had never seen
anything of it.
Ben had gone into the woods to hew a stick of timber. Sally had just
washed up her breakfast dishes, and was singing at her wheel, when
suddenly six savage-looking fellows appeared at the door, and ordered
her, with curses, to get them some victuals, and be quick about it,
too. Sally’s heart was in her throat. She told the leader, who, like
his companions, was armed with pistols, and a sailor’s knife in his
belt, that she was willing to give them breakfast, but they must
give her better language, or she should call her husband; upon which,
drawing a sheath-knife from his belt, he flourished it in her face, and
told her she might call him as soon as she pleased, and he would cut
his throat for him.
Her first impulse was to run for Ben; but she was afraid they might
kill her before she could accomplish her purpose; or, as they were so
many, and fully armed, kill him. She instantly put the best she had in
the house before them. They soon called for liquor, when she took a
gallon jug of rum, which they kept in the house for special occasions,
and placed it on the table.
Beginning to feel at home, they took their pistols from their belts
and laid them on the table, as they were drinking and singing vulgar
songs. Sally contrived, while waiting upon them, to shake the priming
from their pistols. They were now become so abusive, that, watching her
opportunity, she ran for the woods, and urged Ben to take the canoe
and flee, and leave the house to them. At her news, Ben’s face assumed
an expression like that of a wild beast; all the grosser elements of
his tremendous animal power came uppermost. Hissing out the words
between his teeth, he asked her to describe the leader, and where he
sat. So absolute was his self-confidence, that he never even took the
broad-axe with him, but, striking it into the timber with a force that
split through the eight inch stick, left it quivering. Sally, afraid to
stay behind, followed, running to keep up with the long strides of her
husband, who, kicking off his shoes, crept in at the eastern door, like
a lion upon his prey. His face was livid with passion; his lips covered
with foam and drawn apart, showing his great white teeth and square
jaws; his bare arms and breast covered with hair; and his immense
frame, increased by the swelling of the muscles, gave him a terrible
appearance.
As he entered the door, he came face to face with the leader of the
gang, who, sobered by fright, grasped a pistol; but, before he could
cock it, Ben caught him by the nape of his neck, lifted him over the
table, and catching the slack of his breeches with the other hand,
raised him to the ceiling, and smashed him down upon the stone hearth
with such violence that the blood gushed from his mouth and nostrils,
and he lay quivering and moaning in helpless agony. Seizing the one on
his right hand, he flung him against the walls of the house, from which
he dropped senseless upon the bed that stood in that part of the room.
The one on his left hand succeeded in getting his head and shoulders
out at the door, which Ben noticing, he clapped his foot against it and
held him as in a vise, while he reached after another, who was running
for the front door, and, catching him by the leg, dragged him back,
and slapping him first upon one side of his head and then the other,
completely disabled him. Catching up the one imprisoned in the door,
who had been screaming murder with all his might, he shook him as a cat
would a mouse, till his rum and his breakfast ran out of his mouth,
then flung him into the fireplace among the ashes, telling him if he or
one of them moved till he came back, he would finish him.
The other two, escaping at the front of the house, ran for the vessel,
cut the cable, and were hoisting the foresail. Before they could
accomplish their object, Ben was alongside in his canoe. The cook, whom
they had left to take care of the vessel, catching sight of Ben first,
instantly leaped overboard, and swam for the shore. He caught the other
two as they were mounting the rail to follow, and taking them to the
windlass, flung them across it, on their bellies, and bringing their
necks and heels together, fastened them with a rope, then flogged them
till the blood ran. One of them, hoping to find mercy, cried out, “I am
an American.”
“Then you shall have double,” said Ben.
He then ordered them to run the vessel on to the beach, where, as it
was ebb tide, she stuck fast; and thus they were completely in his
power, and needed no watching, at least for six hours, till the tide
made.
CHAPTER II.
CHARLIE BELL.
Ben now jumped into his canoe, and gave chase to the one who had jumped
overboard, and was swimming with all his might for the shore. On coming
out of the water he ran for the woods, but meeting Sally (who, afraid
to stay among the groaning, bleeding sufferers, had set out for the
beach), he flung himself at her feet, and, clinging to her dress,
begged for mercy.
“Don’t touch him, Ben,” cried Sally, flinging her arms round him;
“don’t you see he’s but a child, and hasn’t been in the thing at all?”
Ben, who had been blinded by rage, now saw that he was, as she said, a
pale, slender-looking boy, and stayed his hand.
The poor boy, on his knees, pale as death, the tears running down his
cheeks, exclaimed, “O, don’t kill me, sir! I’m only a poor, friendless
little boy, and haven’t done any wrong. I ain’t to blame for what the
others did; truly, sir, I’m not a bad boy.”
“If you are an honest boy, how came you in the company of such
villains?”
“Indeed, sir, I didn’t know what kind of men they were till I got on
board; I’ve been ever since trying to get away, and can’t.”
“Why didn’t you run away?”
“They watch me too closely; and when they can’t watch me, they tie or
lock me up, and tell me if they catch me trying to run away they will
shoot me.”
“Let me talk to him, Ben,” said Sally; “you frighten him; don’t you see
how he quivers every time you speak?”
“What is your name, my boy?”
“Charles Bell, marm.”
“Where do you belong?”
“In England.”
“Are your parents there?”
“No, marm; they are dead. I have no kindred in this country, nor any
friends.”
“Well,” replied Ben, whose passion was rapidly cooling, “I shall let
you off; but I advise you next time to look out how you get into bad
company. Come, Sally, let’s go to the house and clear these ruffians
out.”
When they returned to the house, they found it presenting the
appearance of a butcher’s shambles, although none of the occupants were
dead, as Sally had supposed.
The leader still lay insensible on the hearth; and the blood had run
from him the whole length of the room. The one Ben had flung against
the wall lay on the bed, the sheets and pillows of which were soaked in
blood that issued from his nose and mouth. The one he threw into the
fireplace still lay on his back across the andirons, with his head in
the ashes, for Ben told them, if one of them moved, when he came back
he’d make an end of them.
“Here, boy,” said Ben, giving him the key of the cuddy, “go and let
those fellows loose, and tell them to come up here and take away their
comrades, and bear a hand about it, too, or I shall be after them.”
The men came, pale and trembling, bringing with them a hand-barrow,
such as is used by fishermen to carry fish. On this they laid the
captain, and carried him on board. The others were able, with
assistance, to stagger along. Sally wanted to wash the captain’s face,
and pour some spirit down his throat, to bring him to; but Ben would
not allow her, saying, “He is not fit for a decent woman to touch; and
if he dies there’ll be one villain less in the world.”
“But he’s not fit to die, Ben.”
“That’s his lookout,” was the stern reply; “away with him.” The boy
still lingered, though he eyed Ben with evident distrust, and shrunk
himself together every time he spoke. But as soon as the men were all
out of the house, Ben assumed an entirely different appearance; his
voice lost its stern tone, the flush faded from his face, his muscles
relaxed, and he asked the trembling boy to sit down, as it would be
some time before the vessel would float that he came in.
Sally now gave him some water to wash his hands, that were bloody from
handling his comrades, combed his hair, and gave him a piece of bread
and butter.
“Here comes John Strout,” said Ben, looking out at the door.
“O, dear!” said Sally, “what a looking place for anybody to come into!”
“What’s all this?” said John, looking at the blood on the floor and
bed-clothes; “have you been butchering?”
“Almost,” replied Sally.
“What schooner was that in the cove, Ben?”
“I don’t know.”
“Where does she hail from?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are they fishermen?”
“No; thieves.”
“What did they come here for?”
“To see what they could get of me.”
“How many of them have you killed?”
“Well, I haven’t killed any of them outright; but there’s one of them
never’ll do much more work, I reckon.”
He then told John the whole story. “I’m sorry I hurt that fellow so
much; there was no need of it, for I could have handled them without
hurting them so much; but they frightened Sally so, and used such
language to her, that I got my temper up, and then they had to take it.”
“These same chaps (at least I think they are the ones) went to a house
on Monhegan, and frightened a woman who was in a delicate condition, so
that she afterwards died. Boy, what is that vessel’s name?”
“The Albatross, sir.”
“That’s the name; I remember now. Pity you hadn’t killed him.”
“Come, Ben,” said Sally, “you and John go out doors and talk; I want
to clean up here; and when it’s dinner-time I’ll call you.”
“I can’t stop,” replied John; “I came to borrow your menhaden net, Ben,
to catch some bait to-night, for I must go out in the morning.”
“Well, then, just stay where you are to-night; when the flood tide
makes, there will be any quantity of menhaden round the Little Bull,
and I’ll help you sweep round the school, and then you can go off as
early as you like in the morning.”
When they left the house, the boy offered to assist Sally in cleaning
the floor, brought her wood and water, and put the dishes on the table.
When he saw how different Ben appeared, now that his anger had cooled,
he shrank from the idea of leaving them and going back to his prison.
The tide was fast making, and the vessel would soon be afloat; and as
he looked out of the door and saw that the vessel, which had lain on
her broadside on the beach, had now righted up, he approached Sally,
and, with tears in his eyes, said, “Mrs. Rhines, I don’t want to go
with those men. I’m afraid some time when they are drunk they’ll kill
me; I don’t want to be with such bad men. Can’t you let me stay with
you? I’ll do all the chores; and I can catch fish, cut wood and bring
it in, and do anything that I am able, or that you will show me how to
do.”
Sally, who had taken to the boy the moment she had a good look at him,
and heard him speak, was deeply moved by his distress. She reflected a
moment, and replied, “I should be willing, with all my heart; I will
see what Mr. Rhines says. Ben,” said she, going out to where he was
talking with John, “that boy wants to stay with us; he is, I believe,
a real good boy; he is afraid those fellows will kill him, or will be
hauled up for their wickedness, and he shall have to suffer with them.”
“There’s a great risk in taking up with a boy like that; we can’t know
anything about him; they all tell a good story.”
“I know that’s a good boy, Ben; I feel it in my bones.”
“It will make you a great deal of work, Sally; you will have to spin
and weave, make clothes, knit stockings, and wash for him.”
“And he’ll bring in wood and water, churn, feed the hogs, and help me.
I know what it is to take care of a boy; I’ve taken care of all ours.
I made every stitch of clothes that our Sam wore till I was married;
besides, when you begin to plant and sow, such a boy will be a great
help.”
“That is all true, Sally; and I would not hesitate a moment if I knew
he was a good boy; but suppose he should turn out like that Pete, Uncle
Smullen and his wife did so much for, and got no thanks for; and even
if he is good, boys that have got a notion of running about can’t stay
long in a place, and settle themselves down to steady work; they want
to be among folks, and with other boys. Now, we might take him, and you
go to work, as I know you would, and clothe him all up, and then he get
lonesome on this island, get on board some vessel, and run off.”
“It seems to me, Ben, that this poor little boy, without ‘kith or kin,’
has been thrown into our hands by the providence of God, and, if we
let him go back to these wretches, when we can keep him just as well
as not, and drive the poor little harmless, trembling thing from our
threshold, with the tears on his cheeks, that we shall not prosper, and
ought not to expect to.”
“Enough said; I’ll take him.”
“You’ll be kind to him--won’t you? because he trembles so every time
you speak to him.”
“I’ve not altered my nature, Sally, because I treated those villains as
they deserved.”
When Sally came back, she wanted to press the wanderer to her heart;
but she recalled Ben’s caution, and merely said, “My husband is willing
you should stay with us, and I hope you will try and be a good boy.”
A flush of inexpressible joy lit up the pale features of the forlorn
boy at these words, and, too full to speak much, he said, “O, how much
I thank you!” and sitting down, covered his face with his hands, while
tears of joy ran through his fingers from an overcharged heart, that
had shed so many tears of bitter agony that day.
The vessel was now afloat, and, spreading her sails, was soon out of
sight, to the great relief of the boy, who could hardly believe himself
safe as long as she remained in the harbor.
Ben and John took him with them when they went to sweep for menhaden,
and found that he could pull an oar, was handy in a boat, and knew how
to dress the fish for bait. The nights were now cool, and the boy had
brought in a good pile of wood. They made a cheerful fire after supper,
and Ben asked him some questions in respect to his history. He told
them his father was a basket-maker; that all their people had followed
that business, which was good in England, where wood was scarce; and
baskets and sacks were used to transport everything, instead of
barrels and boxes, as in this country. They made a comfortable living,
his father employing several hands; and he was sent to school till he
was eleven years of age; then his father put him to work in the shop to
learn the trade.
“I should not think it was much of a trade,” said Ben; “I can make a
good basket.”
“But not such baskets as they make there,” replied the boy. “The
basket-makers there make a great many other things besides. My father
was pressed into the navy, and, before the vessel had got out of the
channel, was killed in an action with a French frigate. My mother had a
brother in St. John’s. She sold her effects, put the younger children
out, and spent nearly all the money she had to pay our passage; but
when we got over, my uncle had gone to Melbourne. Soon after that my
mother took sick and died.”
“Was she a Christian woman?” asked Sally.
“Yes; she belonged to the Wesleyan Methodists; so did my father. If my
poor mother had died at home, she would have had friends to take care
of her, and to follow her to the grave, for everybody loved her; but
there was nobody but me to do anything for her; and only myself and
the Irish woman we hired a room of went to the grave. It took all but
one pound to pay the rent, and expenses of my mother’s funeral. The
landlady permitted me to sleep on the foot of her bed, with my head on
a chair, because I carried her washing home, and her husband’s dinner
to him, for he worked in a foundery.”
“Couldn’t you find any work?” said Ben.
“No, sir; no steady work: I wandered about the streets and wharves,
getting a day’s work now and then, till my money was all gone, and then
I was glad to ship in the Albatross as cook.”
“Who owned the vessel?” asked Ben.
“They said the captain bought her; he seemed to have money enough. She
was an old condemned fisherman; if we pumped her out dry at night, the
water would be up to the cuddy floor in the morning.”
“Where did they belong?”
“I don’t know, sir; the captain was Portuguese; his name was Antonio.
They had all been together in a slaver, and the captain was mate of
her; and from things they used to say, I think they must have been
pirates.”
“How did they treat you?”
“They treated me very well when they were sober, but when they were
drunk I used to be afraid they would kill me. They would hold me, and
spit tobacco juice in my eyes, and pour liquor down my throat, and make
me drunk, which was the worst of all, for I had promised my mother I
would never drink.”
“If they poured it down your throat against your will, that wasn’t
breaking your promise,” said Sally.
“One night I was so afraid of them that I jumped overboard and swam
under the stern, holding on to the rudder; and I heard them talking,
and the captain began to cry and take on at a great rate. After they
had gone to sleep, I swam to the cable and got on board.”
“Why didn’t you swim ashore?”
“It was too far; we were way off on the fishing ground; the water was
cold, and I should have been chilled to death. My mother, before she
died, told me to read the Bible, and pray to God when trouble came, and
He would take care of me; but I think He must have forgotten me, for
though I have prayed to Him every day, I have found nothing but misery
ever since she died; and now I’m friendless and alone in a strange
land.”
“No, you ain’t!” cried Sally, drawing him towards her, and kissing his
forehead, “for I will be a mother to you.”
At this, the first word of kindly sympathy the poor boy had heard since
his mother died, he hid his face in her lap, and sobbed aloud. Sally
flung her apron over his head, and patted him, and in a few moments,
worn out with all he had passed through that day, he fell asleep. As
they had but two bedsteads in the house, one in the corner of the
kitchen, where Ben and his wife slept, and the other a spare bed in
the front room, which was partly filled with shingles and staves, and
was parlor, bedroom, and workshop, Sally had made a bed for him in the
garret, and Ben, taking him carefully in his arms, carried him up and
placed him on it.
“It’s my opinion, Ben,” said John, “that is a good boy, and that it
will be a good thing for you and him both that he has fallen in here;
that boy never was brought up on a dunghill, I know; he’s smart, too.
Did you see how handy he takes hold of an oar? Why, he can dress a fish
as quick as I can.”
“I took him at first,” replied Ben, “for one of these Liverpool
wharf-rats, that are rotten before they are ripe; but his story holds
together well, and he tells it right; he don’t make out that he
belongs to some great family, or call upon God Almighty, as such ones
generally do when they are going to tell some great lie.”
“He looks you right in the face, too,” said John; “I like that; yes,
and then he didn’t begin to pour out blessings on your head; perhaps
he’ll show his gratitude in some other way.”
Sally had made a piece of nice fulled cloth that summer, and from it
she soon made Charlie breeches and a long jacket. She also made him a
shirt from some cloth, part linen and part woollen; and as the weather
was coming cool, and she had no time to knit a pair of stockings, she
made him a pair from some of Ben’s old ones. She then cut his hair, and
knit him a pair of mittens, and Ben made him a pair of shoes.
He almost worshipped Sally, calling her mother, and being every moment
on the watch to oblige her, and anticipate her wishes. But in respect
to Ben, he seemed timid, always calling him Mr. Rhines, or captain, and
starting nervously oftentimes when he spoke to him. He evidently could
not forget the terrible impression made upon his mind when he supposed
Ben would kill him.
Sally felt grieved at this, and she saw that it worried her husband.
One evening, when he patted him on the head, and praised him for
something that he had done that day, Sally made a sign to Ben that he
should take the boy on his knee, which he did, when Charlie put his
arms around his neck (that is, as far as they would reach), and ever
after that called him father.
When John came to bring the net home, Charles met him at the shore.
“Good morning, Captain Strout!”
“Good morning, my lad; how do you like Elm Island?”
“It is such a nice place! O, I’m as happy as the days are long! I hope
I’ve had all my sorrows!”
“If you have, you’ve had good luck; better than most people; for you’ve
got through before the most of people’s trials begin. Now, my lad, you
have a chance to make something of yourself. If you stay here, and fall
into the ways of our people, it will make a man of you, and you will
find friends, for everybody is respected here that works. I have known
Mr. Rhines ever since he was a boy; have been shipmate with him, and
owe my life to him. Though he’s a hard master to such reprobates as
those you came with, he is kind to everybody that does right.”
“I think, captain, that he is like some of those good giants I’ve heard
my grandmother tell about in England, that went about killing dragons,
wicked giants, and robbers, and protecting innocent people.”
CHAPTER III.
JOHN GOES TO SEE THE NEW BOY.
One of old Mr. Yelf’s grandsons was going as cook with John Strout; and
in the morning, when John came alongside his vessel, after his return
from Elm Island with the net and fish, he found the old gentleman on
board, who had come to bring his grandson. He told the old man the
story as it really was, but he was quite hard of hearing, and John
was in a hurry, and could not stop to repeat and explain, and thus he
obtained a very confused and incorrect account of it. John made sail
and went out fishing, and the old gentleman hastened ashore to give a
most exaggerated account,--to which, every one adding a little as it
went from mouth to mouth, it at length assumed monstrous proportions.
Captain Rhines was as anxious to get accurate information as anybody,
but felt no alarm, because all the reports agreed in this, that the
pirates had the worst of it, and that neither Ben nor Sally was
injured. He could not leave to go on, as he had stripped the shingles
from the roof of his house, and was trying to get it re-shingled before
a storm should come. John had heard about the new boy, and that John
Strout was very much pleased with him, and he was very anxious to get
on there and see him, for he had a presentiment that they were made for
each other, and was prepared to like him, even before seeing him.
Captain Rhines, at length worn out with the solicitations of John,
which were aided by his own desire to know the truth of the matter,
went over to Uncle Isaac’s, and said to him, “I wish you would take
John and my canoe, and go over to the island (for I can’t go), and see
how many Ben’s killed, or if he’s killed anybody; and about that boy,
or if there is any boy. John is teasing me to death about it, and he
won’t be able to do any work till that is settled; for he’s thinking so
much about it, he can’t drive a nail into a shingle without pounding
his fingers.”
“Well, I should like to know myself as much as anybody; I’ll be along
right after dinner.”
“I’m going to put some squashes and potatoes in the canoe, for he
hasn’t planted a hill of anything this year; I don’t see how people can
live so. I should think, when he has such a nice place for a garden
under the ledge, he would have a few peas and potatoes.”
“Ben believes in doing one thing at a time; and a mast that he can cut
in an hour will buy as much garden stuff as he would raise in a whole
summer. He won’t dabble with farming till the island is his, and then
you’ll see some of the tallest kind of farming, or I’ll miss my guess.”
All the way to the island John was remarkably silent, apparently
engaged in deep thought. At length he said, “Uncle Isaac, is it right
to like an Englishmun?”
“Bless me! yes; what is the boy thinking about?”
“We’ve just done fighting and killing the Englishmun, and they’ve been
killing our people, and wanted to hang General Washington, and I didn’t
know as it would be right to like ’em; and they say this boy is an
Englishmun.”
“It isn’t the nation, John, it’s the character, that makes a person
good or bad; your grandfather and mine were both Englishmun; so you
need not be afraid to like him on that account.”
When they landed Ben was eating supper. “You’ve come in good time,” he
said; “sit down with us.”
The moment supper was over, Uncle Isaac said, “Now, I want to hear all
about the pirates, for there are all sorts of stories going; it’s all
come through Uncle Yelf, and he has drunk so much rum that he’s lost
what little wit he ever had; and he never had brains enough to cover a
beech leaf, and is deaf to boot.”
They told him the story from beginning to end.
“It was a good thing for me, at any rate,” said Ben, in conclusion;
“for they left a new cable and anchor on the beach, and a first-rate
little boy behind them.”
“It’s amazing how things will gain by going,” said Uncle Isaac. “We
heard that there was a dozen pirates landed, and that one of them got
Sally by the hair, pulled her down on her knees, and was going to cut
her head off with his cutlass, when you come running in from the woods,
and broke his neck short off over your knee, smashed another one’s
brains out against the jambs, and threw the grindstone at another and
killed him; the rest run to the vessel, but before they could get the
anchor you was on board; then they run below, and you fastened them
in; that there was a woman and a little boy in the vessel, that they
had prisoners; and that they fired at you and missed, and the bullet
went into her side; and that then you took the boy, and fastened them
all into the cuddy, and brought the ones you had killed ashore, and set
fire to the vessel, and burnt them all up together; and a great many
believed it, because they saw a fire on here; but your father said he
didn’t believe a word of it, for you wasn’t such a fool as to burn up a
vessel; and if the men were armed they could have shot you.”
“I was burning some brush that was in my way,” said Ben; “that was the
fire they saw.”
“So this is the boy,” said Uncle Isaac, turning to Charlie; “well, I
wish you well; I hear that you are a good boy, and industrious, and
those are great things. I was a poor boy at your age, and had nothing
but my hands, as you have; but, by God’s blessing, I have got along,
and so will you, and be happy and respected, for you’ve come to a
good country, a better one for laboring people than the one you have
left. Poor men get rich here, but poor people grow poorer there, and
sometimes starve to death, which is awful in a place that pretends
to be a Christian country; but you see there’s too many sheep in the
pasture--they are too thick; it ain’t so here--there’s room enough.”
In the mean time the two boys stood--the one beside Sally’s chair, and
the other by Ben’s--eying one another, and each longing to hear the
other speak. John thought he had never seen a finer looking boy than
Charlie, and Charlie was internally paying the same compliment to John.
“Uncle Isaac,” whispered Sally, “how shall we get these boys together?
shall I introduce them?”
“Nonsense; I’ll soon fix that. Ben, have you got a bushel basket?”
“Yes.”
“Well, let this youngster--What’s your first name, my lad?”
“Charles, sir.”
“Well, let Charles go down with John to the canoe, and fetch up some
things your father sent over. That’s the way,” said Uncle Isaac; “they
don’t want any of our help; they will take care of themselves.”
The two boys took the basket, and proceeded to the canoe. John, feeling
that as he was a native, and Charles a stranger, it was his duty to
speak first, by way of breaking the silence, which was getting to be
oppressive, said, “How old be you?”
“Fifteen,” was the reply.
“I’m fourteen,” said John; “shall be fifteen in July.”
“I shall be sixteen next Michaelmas.”
“What do you mean by Michaelmas, Charles?”
“Why, St. Michael’s Day, the 29th of September.”
“Well, what does it mean?”
“I don’t know. All I know is, that in England everybody that can get it
eats a goose that day, and if you do you’ll have enough all the year
round. Do you know how to row?”
“Yes; I can row cross-handed, and scull. Can you scull a gunning float?”
“I never saw one; what are they for?”
“They are made like a canoe, only smaller and lighter; and there’s a
scull-hole in the stern, just above the water, to put the oar through;
and then we lie down on our backs in the bottom, and take the oar over
our shoulder, and scull up to the sea-fowl, and shoot them. Don’t they
go gunning in your country?”
“The great folks do; but the poor folks and common people are not
allowed to.”
“That’s a queer country; I wouldn’t like to live in such a country as
that. Do you know how to shoot?”
“No; I never fired a gun in my life; you couldn’t shoot a sparrow--I
was going to say a ‘bumble-bee’--in England, without being taken up.”
“What did you do?”
“I made baskets. Can you wrestle?”
“Yes. Wouldn’t you like to learn to shoot?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’ll show you some time what I know. Do you know how to mow or
reap?”
“No.”
“Nor chop?”
“No. I’ve got a plenty to learn--haven’t I?”
“I should think you had.”
They were a long time getting up the things; but when they were all up,
Charles said to his mother, “Can John and I go over to the White Bull?”
“Yes; and when it is time to come back I’ll blow the horn for you.”
They had taken supper early; and as Uncle Isaac said he had as “lieves”
go over in the evening as at any time, it being bright starlight, she
did not blow the horn till dark.
“Look there,” said Sally, pointing to the shore, soon after she had
blown the horn. The boys were returning with their arms over each
other’s neck.
“I’m so glad they take to one another,” said she. “John thinks it’s the
greatest happiness of life to come over here; we are as glad to see him
as he is to come; and, if he likes Charlie, he’ll want to come more
than ever; won’t they have good times!”
“Uncle Isaac,” said John, as they were rowing home, “don’t you love to
be out on the water in the night among the stars?”
“Yes, I do, John; and I like to go along the edge of thick woods, when
there’s a bright moon, and watch the shadow on the water. But I think
the best of all is, to go in a birch,--they don’t make any noise, and
there’s no splashing of oars; but they go along just like a bird, and
they float in so little water that you can go along the very edge of
the beach, and listen to the noise of the water on the rocks, and
the little breath of wind among the trees. I think I have the best
thoughts then I ever have; I feel solemn, but I feel happy, too. I
think sometimes, if ministers could be in some of the places, and have
some of the feelings we ignorant people have, and we could have some of
their learning to go with our feelings, it would be better for both. I
am not a good man; but I have often kneeled down in the woods, in the
moonlight, hundreds of miles from any house, in the trackless forest,
and prayed to God, and it has done me good.”
“Uncle Isaac, I love to hear you talk about such things.”
“It is talk that won’t do either of us any harm, John; and I trust you
are not a prayerless, as I know you are not a thoughtless, boy.”
“I say the Lord’s prayer, as my mother taught me. Uncle Isaac, are you
in any hurry to get home?”
“No; I don’t care if we don’t get home till midnight.”
“Then let us talk; it’s calm; let her drift; I want to tell you what I
think. I think Charles and I were made for each other; it seems so to
me, and I can’t make it seem any other way. Don’t you like him?”
“Why, I haven’t seen enough of him to know yet; I never set eyes on him
till about three hours ago. They say a person is known by the company
he keeps, and he certainly came in very bad company.”
“You say that just to plague me; you don’t believe in your heart that
he went with those men because he liked them, or that he is a bad boy.”
“I like his appearance, and I think he’ll turn out to be a good boy. He
has, no doubt, been obliged to take up with company that was not his
own choice, for misery makes strange bedfellows.”
“_Turn out to be a good boy!_ He’s a good boy _now_! I know he is; he’s
good clear through!”
“Well, time will show.”
John, finding it impossible to inspire Uncle Isaac with his own
enthusiastic confidence, let the matter drop, and for a while they
rowed on in silence. At length John said, “I tell you what makes me
think that boy is a good friend for me; he knows a great many things
that I don’t know, and I know a great many things that he don’t. I know
he’s tender-hearted.”
“How do you know that?”
“I asked him if he had any mother, and he almost cried when he told me
she was dead. Now, when a boy loves his mother, isn’t it a good sign?”
“The best sign in the world, John.”
“And then the way he talked about her, and about good things. I don’t
know as he’s a religious boy,--what mother calls pious,--but I know
he’s a good boy; you know anybody can tell.”
“Well, John, I guess you’re right; you have found out more about him in
one hour than I could in six months.”
“Well, we’re bound to be thick together, I know that.”
CHAPTER IV.
GRIT AND GRATITUDE.
It was now the month of October. The early frosts had rendered the
air sharp and bracing. The nights were long, affording abundance of
sleep, and the forests were clothed in all the tints of autumn. Ben,
encouraged by the unexpected success he had met with in the sale of his
timber, assured that his wife was contented and happy, and his mind
buoyant with hope, drove the axe through the timber in very wantonness
of strength. It was no trifling addition to his happiness to find that
Charlie was not only industrious, but had a natural aptitude for the
use of tools.
He bought him a light, keen-tempered axe, that he might cut up the
small wood at the door, and split up oven-wood for Sally. When he
brought the axe from the smith’s, he said to Charles, “I will put a
handle in it, and then we will grind it.”
“I think,” he replied, “that I can put a handle in it, if you will tell
me what kind of wood to make it of.” Charles was not acquainted with
the different sorts of trees in this country.
“There is no white oak on the island,” said Ben; “but here is a
straight-grained hornbeam: I will take that.”
He cut down the tree, and splitting from it a suitable piece, left the
boy to make it himself. When he came in to dinner, the boy had made the
handle, and put it in the axe. Ben examined it with surprise.
“I couldn’t have made it any better myself,” he said. They now ground
the axe, and Charlie went into the woods every day with Ben. He would
chop into one side of the tree what little he was able, while Ben
chopped into the other; but when it was down, he was quite useful in
trimming off the limbs with his little axe: thus he learned to strike
true, and to chop with either hand forward.
Ben, every once in a while, came across a maple or oak, that stood
in the way: as he knew that by and by he should want a cart, plough,
harrow, and other tools, he cut them, and taking them to the mill with
his logs, had them sawed into joist and plank of different dimensions,
and then put them in the front room to season under cover, that they
might not warp or crack.
Charlie could not accomplish much in the woods, because he had not yet
become accustomed to chopping, and was not strong enough; yet it was
very pleasant for Ben to have company. But there were other ways in
which, boy as he was, he was exceedingly useful, and a source of direct
profit, which may serve to show to any little boy who reads this, how
much a boy, who has the will and pluck, may do. In the first place he
took care of the hens. Now, there never were any hens that enjoyed
themselves better, or laid more eggs, than Charlie’s. The stumps of
the trees Ben had cut were alive with bugs and wood-worms, also sow
bugs, that harbored in the decayed roots; here the hens scratched, and
scratched, and feasted. “Cock-a-doodle-do!” cries the rooster; “I’ve
found some worms!” and all the hens would run and gobble them up. You
will remember that the ledge, in which the middle ridge terminated,
was perpendicular; not a breath of north or east wind could get there,
because all back of it was forest, and there in the hot sun the hens
dug holes, and rolled in the mellow earth, where, even in winter, it
was warm when the sun shone, and Charlie scraped the snow away for them
down to the ground; they could also go to the beach and get gravel,
as the island was so far at sea that there was seldom any ice on the
beach.
Charlie also milked, and took care of the calf which they were raising,
and fed him with meal and potatoes. Hens like fish as well as cats, and
he caught flounders, tom-cod, and dug clams for them, so that they laid
most all winter. This was a great help to Sally, as Charlie’s coming
into the family made her a great deal more work, for she had stockings
and mittens to knit, and cloth to spin and weave, to make clothes for
him. She had to do it, too, at a great disadvantage; for, as they had
no sheep, and raised no flax, and had no loom, she was obliged to buy
the wool and flax, and send the yarn to her mother to weave. This took
a great deal of time, because her mother was only able to do Sally’s
work after she had done her own.
Charlie cut all the wood, except the large logs: these Ben cut, and
Charlie hauled them in on a hand-sled. Now, all this saved Ben’s time;
but he did more: he dug clams for chowder, and caught lobsters. The
rocks on the White Bull were a great resort of lobsters; many were
found under the eel-grass and the projections of the rocks. Whenever
he saw a bunch in the eel-grass, he would pull it away and find a
great lobster, which he would put in his basket. He would also peep
under the rocks, and say, “I see you, old fellow,” and with his
flounder-spear pick out another. He also caught smelts, which are
a first-rate pan fish. Round the points of the ledges were cunners
(sea-perch) and cod: these he caught also. This all went directly to
the support of the family.
Children reared in hardship, and thrown upon their own resources,
develop fast; and never was Charlie more happy than when, bringing home
a mess of fish, he felt he was of direct benefit to his benefactors.
In the enjoyment of abundance of food, warm clothes, plenty of sleep,
and breathing the bracing sea air, with the consciousness that he was
useful and beloved, he began to grow with great rapidity, and increase
in vigor and enterprise every day. When he first came he hardly dared
speak above his breath, and the most he attempted was a sickly smile.
But now he sang at his work or play (for he had good ear and voice),
could laugh as merry as Sally herself, and often put the squawks in an
uproar with his merriment. His pale cheeks had regained their color,
and his eyes all the fire of youth, for he loved, and felt that he
was beloved, and his finely-cut and delicate features were full of
expression.
Charlie, during his wandering life, had acquired considerable
experience in fishing. Within less than a mile of the island was an
excellent fishing-ground, where schools of large codfish would soon
come to feed. Charlie knew, if he could catch these, it would not only
be a valuable supply of food for winter, but they would sell for cash
at the westward, or at the store for half cash and half groceries.
But the great difficulty in the way was, he could not venture to go
there in the canoe. Ben was a giant, and everything he worked with was
made upon a corresponding scale. Charlie could hardly lift his axe.
His canoe was twenty-five feet in length, and the blades of the oars
were twice as wide as common, so that they might take stronger hold of
the water. Ben made them before he went to Boston, that, if the wind
came to the north-west, he might be able to exert all his strength;
otherwise, in a severe blow, he would have only pulled the oars through
the water without forcing the boat ahead.
Charlie could hardly move this great thing in the harbor, much less in
a sea, and against the wind.
Joe Griffin now came to chop, which increased Charlie’s anxiety to
catch the fish, as there were more mouths to fill, and Joe’s held a
great deal. He at length broached the matter to Ben, saying, if he only
had a light canoe, that he could pull, he could catch fish, for he had
been used to fishing.
“I would make you one,” said Ben, “if I had time; but Joe is here, and
the oxen are coming from the main, and I must chop.”
“But,” persisted Charlie, “I could dig it out; if you told me how, I
think I could make the outside.”
“Well,” said Ben, pleased with the boy’s evident anxiety to be useful,
“I will cut the tree, and you can be working it out, and we will help
you in rainy days, and at odd times.”
“O, no, don’t,” said Charlie; “I want to cut the tree, and make it all
clear from the stump.”
“Why, Charlie, it takes the largest kind of trees to make a canoe; it’s
no use to cut a valuable tree to make a plaything; it ought to be as
large as you can cleverly pull, or you’ll outgrow it. It will take you
a week to cut down such a tree with your little axe.”
“No matter; do let me try.”
Ben picked out the tree, marked out the direction of the kerf on the
bark with his axe, and left him. When Charlie came in to dinner,
the perspiration stood in drops on his face, and he was as red as a
turkey-cock.
“Well,” said Joe, “have you got through the bark?”
“Almost,” replied Charlie.
At night the boy showed evident signs of fatigue.
“Let me look at your hands,” said Ben. There were large blisters on
each; he pricked them with a needle, and Sally rubbed some butter on
them.
“I’ll give you a dozen or two of my round cuts in the morning,” said
Joe.
“O, no; I don’t want you to. I can cut it down.”
“Perhaps I shall go out after you are abed, and cut it down.”
“O, don’t,” cried the boy, his eyes filling with tears at the very
possibility of such a catastrophe.
“He don’t mean to do any such thing,” said Sally; “he’s only in fun;
nobody shall touch the tree.”
Relying on her assurance, the wearied boy went to bed.
“He’ll be sore enough in the morning,” said Joe; “but I like his grit,
any how.”
“Don’t tease him too much, Joe,” said Sally; “he’s a tender-hearted
thing, and takes everything in earnest.”
“Well, I won’t, if I can help it.”
The next day, at dinner, Charlie said to Ben, “I have cut the whole
length of the axe-handle on both sides; can’t I cut on the edges?”
“No; for then you cannot tell which way it will fall; and it might fall
on you and kill you. If you’re going to be such a chopper, you must
have an axe-handle as long as ours; take this afternoon and make one,
and that will rest you.”
Charlie did so, and in the morning, as soon as he could see, was in
the woods. About nine o’clock the enormous tree began to totter. He
had received a promise from Ben that nobody should come near him till
the tree was down. He stood at the end of the kerf, just where he had
been told to, and watched the top of the tree as it wavered in the air,
trembling all over, half with fear, and half with excitement, while
the perspiration, unheeded, dropped from his chin. Still the enormous
tree did not fall. Charlie put his shoulder against it, and when he
felt it waver, pushed till the sparks came in his eyes; but he soon
found this was useless. He didn’t like to stand right in front and cut;
at length, summoning all his resolution, he stepped to the larger
kerf, on the side towards which he expected it would fall, and, with
set teeth, plied the axe: snap went the wood; he jumped aside; the top
now began evidently to incline; crack! crack! and then with a great
crash, that made the boy’s heart leap into his throat, the enormous
cone fell, crushing the smaller growth, and sending broken limbs thirty
feet in the air, and shaking the ground all around. The boy leaped upon
the prostrate tree, and burst into loud cheers. It was the battle of
Waterloo to him.
“Let us go and see,” said Ben; “it will do him so much good.”
“You’ve done well, Charlie,” said Joe; “you never will cut many bigger
trees than that, if you work in the woods all your lifetime.”
“Now, father, where shall I cut it off?”
Ben marked the place. “You had better go in now, Charlie, and rest till
dinner-time, and cool off.”
[Illustration: CHARLIE’S BIG JOB.--Page 56.]
“I ain’t a bit tired,” said the proud, resolute boy; but Ben made him
go in, when he found, after the excitement was over, that an hour or
two of rest did not come amiss, for he laid down before the fire, and,
falling asleep, did not wake till dinner-time. After dinner he began
to dig it out, and, under Ben’s direction, hewed off a good deal of
the outside. Ben then took it on his shoulder, and carried it into the
front room, so that he could work on it rainy days and evenings till it
was done. He made the oars himself, and seats and thole-pins, and dug
it out, so that it was very light for a canoe; and, for fear it might
split, Ben made some oak knees and put in it. When put into the water
she was found to be stiff, and row easy.
No captain was ever prouder of his new ship than was Charlie of his
canoe. It was his own (the first thing he had ever owned), and by the
best possible right, for he had made it from the stump.
“There’s a mechanical principle in that boy, Ben,” said Joe; “do you
see how naturally he takes to tools, and what good proportions there is
to them oars, and how true the bevel is on the blades, and how neat he
cut the head and stern boards into that canoe?”
There was nothing Charlie now longed for so much as a calm day. In the
mean time he made himself a fisherman’s anchor. He took an oak limb,
which was a little sweeping, made it flat, and broader than it was
thick, and sharpened the ends; then he procured a crotch, and boring
two holes in the flat piece, put a flat stone, larger a little than
the piece of flat wood, edgeway upon it, and run the two forks of the
crotch down each side of the stone, and through the holes, and wedged
them, and put a wooden pin through to hold them. When this was thrown
overboard, the sharp points of the wood would stick into the bottom,
and the weight of the stone would hold them there. The stone, being so
much larger than the cross-piece of wood, always brought the wood into
the ground. These anchors, when the bottom is rocky, are much better
than iron ones, as you can pull them out of the rocks, or pull them to
pieces; and they will hold a boat as long as it is safe to stay, or
smooth enough to fish; whereas an iron one will often stick fast in the
rocks, and you must cut your cable. Hence these sort of anchors are
much used by fishermen who are often round the rocks; besides, they
cost nothing but the making.
The pleasant day came at last; by light Charlie was on the
fishing-ground, all in sight of the house. By two o’clock in the
afternoon he was rowing home with three hundred weight of fish.
A prouder boy there never was, as he came home before a pleasant
southerly wind, not having to pull any, only just to steady the boat
with the oars. Every few moments he kept looking over his shoulder to
see if anybody saw him; but Ben and Joe were where they could not see
him. By and by he saw Sally come to the door and look; he put his cap
on an oar, and held it up; she waved her hand to him, caught up some
dry brush, and ran in. Presently he saw a black smoke. “She’s putting
on the tea-kettle to get me a good hot supper. Won’t it go good? for
haven’t I earned it?” said he, as he glanced at the codfish, some of
which he had hard work to master, and get into the boat, they were so
large. By the time he had eaten his supper and dressed his fish, the
men came in from their work, when he received many and well-deserved
praises for his day’s work.
CHAPTER V.
CHARLES RETURNS JOHN’S VISIT.
The orphan boy, whom his mother in her dying moments committed in faith
to God, had fallen into good hands. He, who through storm and tempest
directs the sea-bird to her nest amid the breakers, and hears her young
ones when they cry in their lonely nest on the ocean rock, had numbered
his steps. Ben knew how to treat a boy, because he liked them, and
understood their feelings.
The reason John was so much attached to his brother Ben, who was so
much older, arose, not merely from his being his brother, but because
Ben not only loved him, but always made due allowance for a boy’s
nature and feelings. The amusements and employments of men, and boys
also, in those old times, were not so far apart as they are now; they
could fish and hunt in company, and the boy could be very useful to the
man, and this brought them together, and kept their mutual sympathies
alive and fresh. He did not, therefore, because Charles had caught
three hundred weight of fish, tell him he must be up by daylight the
next morning and catch four hundred; he knew boys better than that;
knew that while Charles needed no other stimulus than his own noble,
grateful heart to urge him on to exertions, yet he was aching to let
John know what he had done. He said to him, “Well, Charles, we’ll
have a chowder out of the heads of some of these biggest cod (there’s
nothing equal to a cod’s head for a chowder), and save a couple to fry,
and take the rest over to the main land in the morning; you can go to
the house and get John to go to the store with you, and sell them, and
get half money and the rest in groceries. You can stay all night with
John, and come off the next morning.”
Charles’s eyes flashed with delight at this, and he could hardly
contain himself till Ben was out of sight; and then he got behind a
bush and jumped right up and down with delight. He lost no time in
going to tell the good news to Sally, between whom and himself there
were no secrets, but the most perfect sympathy.
“O, mother!” he cried, “don’t you think father’s going to let me take
the fish to the store, and stay all night! _only think!_ stay all
night with John, mother!”
Sally added (if possible) to his happiness by saying, “I’m glad of it,
Charlie, for I want some errands done; and I want you to take over some
eggs and butter, and get some coffee, sugar, and flax, and carry some
yarn to Hannah Murch, for her to weave for me. Now you see how much
help you can be.”
“Yes, mother; and what a good thing it is to have my canoe to go in,
and catch fish to sell, and get things; it pays--don’t it?”
“I guess it does pay; for, if you didn’t go, Ben would have to leave
his work and go.”
“And I shall see Mr. Murch?”
“Yes; John will go over there with you; and I’ll get breakfast by
daylight, so that you can make a long day of it.”
“Mother, I like Mr. Murch; he’s such a pleasant way, and he says such
cute things, somehow you can’t help liking him; when I hear him, it
seems just as if something was drawing me right to him. Don’t you like
him, mother?”
“Like him! I love him, Charlie! After my father died, I don’t know what
my mother would have done, if it had not been for Uncle Isaac. He used
to come over and tell her to trust in God, and encourage her; tell Sam
what to do, and plough for us, sow our grain, shear the sheep, and help
us every way.”
“Perhaps he’ll like me, and let me call him Uncle Isaac, same as John
does, when he’s acquainted with me.”
“I dare say he will.”
“Mother, does John ever come over here alone?”
“He never has; his folks don’t like to have him.”
“Then I shall do to-morrow more than he’s ever done; leastways, I’ll
try.”
“I don’t know as it is hardly the thing for you to go; ’tis a good
ways.”
“It is not much farther than I go a fishing. I wish you could see how
I can make my canoe _hum_, if I have a mind to; come down to the shore
just a minute, and see how quick I can pull over to the White Bull and
back.”
Sally went down. Charlie got into the canoe, took his oars, spit on
his hands, and stretched himself for a mighty effort. The canoe went
through the water in fine style; but, when about half way to the Bull,
one of the thole-pins broke short off, Charlie went over backwards into
the bottom of the canoe, and had to paddle back with one oar.
“Never mind, Charlie,” said she; “I can see that you make her go like
anything.”
“I’m glad it broke now, and not when I was off in the bay,” said he, to
hide his mortification, and resolved next time he undertook to show off
to look well to his thole-pins. He didn’t sleep much that night. I’ll
let John know, thought he, as he lay in bed anticipating the morrow,
that I can do something besides make baskets; he didn’t seem to think
much of that. He thought I had a great deal to learn, but I’ll let him
know I’ve learned something already. The next morning was fair, and he
was off by sunrise. When he came to the other side, John received him
with great pleasure; and as they were just at breakfast, Captain Rhines
insisted on having Charlie sit up with them, saying that a boy who was
growing could eat any time, especially when he had pulled six miles.
“Did you come in Ben’s big canoe?”
“No, sir; the oars are so large I can hardly lift them.”
“So I thought; but what did you come in?”
“My own canoe, sir.”
“Has Ben made you a canoe so quick?”
“No, sir; I made it myself; but he showed me.”
“Whew! Who cut the tree down?”
“I did, sir.”
“What do you think of that, John?”
John and Charles went to the store, and sold the fish and other things;
then John showed Charles his gun, and yoke of steers he was raising;
then they yoked them up, and put them on to a light sled, that they
could haul on the bare ground, and gave Charles a ride. He also showed
him his powder-horn, and all his playthings, and a tame gray squirrel,
and hens. Then they went to the shore and saw John’s gunning float; and
John made Charles lie down in the bottom of her, and showed him how
to scull. Putting the sail up, they sailed round the bay; and going
round a little point, they saw some birds; they then lay down in the
float, and John sculled up to them, and shot two. This excited Charlie
very much. As he took the dead birds in his fingers, the passion for
shooting, for which he had never felt the least inclination, seemed to
be inspired by the very contact.
“We will have them for dinner,” said John; “let us go home, so that
mother will have time to cook them.”
This was all new to Charlie, for Ben had been too busy to gun since he
came.
“Are they good to eat?” asked Charlie.
“First rate; and you can sell them at the store. The feathers fetch a
first-rate price at the westward, and you can sell them at Witchcassett
(Wiscasset) to the English vessels.”
“I never knew that before. If I could shoot, I might kill some on the
island.”
“I guess you could; there ain’t such a place for gunning along shore.”
“I might earn something to help along.”
“Yes, indeed! Come, let us hurry home; I’ll show you how to load and
fire; and there are guns enough on the island; you can practise there;
Ben will show you.”
When they got home, Charlie fired John’s gun five or six times, and
learned to load it. “John,” said his father at the dinner-table, “where
is that little gun of yours?”
“Up chamber.”
“Why don’t you give that to Charles?”
“I will, father.”
This was a gun that Ben had cut off, in order to make it lighter, and
got Uncle Isaac to make a light stock for it, and given it to John; but
his father having given him a larger and better one since he had become
accustomed to gunning, he didn’t use it.
“I’ll give you a real nice horn, Charles,” said the captain, “and you
can scrape it and put the bottom in yourself.”
After dinner they set out for Uncle Isaac’s. They both rode on one
horse; John got into the saddle, and Charles sat behind him on the
pillion that Mrs. Rhines rode on when she went with her husband; he
put his arms round John’s waist just as the women did when they rode.
They had fun enough going over, and when they arrived found Uncle Isaac
making cider.
“Well, boys,” said he, “you’ve come in the nick of time; I’m just going
to lay up a cheese, and want some help to squat it.”
“We’ll help you,” said John; “we’re just the boys for that, and we can
drink the cider, too.”
A very few of our readers may know how they made cider in those days
in the new settlements, and a good many may not even know how it is
made now. We will describe his cider mill and press. At the end of his
orchard was a large white oak tree, more than four feet through; under
this he had placed a large trough, dug out of a log; in this he put
the apples. He then took an oak log about six feet in length, and six
inches through, in the middle of which a hole was bored, and a round
stick put through for a handle. A rope was attached to the top end,
which reached, and was fastened, to a large branch of the tree. When
he took hold of the handle, and struck the pounder down on the apples
in the trough, the spring of the limb helped to lift it up, which was
the hardest part of the work. Uncle Isaac had been pounding apples all
the forenoon, and was now about to press them. Fred Williams now came
along, whom John introduced to Charles as one of his playmates, and a
real good boy. Fred blushed at this, for he felt that it had been but a
very short time that he had deserved such a character.
Between the tree and the trough was an elevated platform of plank,
jointed together, and watertight; on this was a square frame of boards,
about four feet across, and six inches high; he laid some long straw on
the edge of this frame, and then put in the apples; when the frame was
full he turned the straw over the edge, and tucked it into the mass of
bruised apples; he then lifted the hoop up the width of it, put on more
straw, and piled it up again, till he had a square pile four feet high.
The straw was to bind the edge, and keep the pomace from squatting out
sidewise when he came to press it. This was called the cheese.
The boys helped him lift up the hoop, tuck in the straw, and shovel
in the apples, with right good will. Planks were now placed upon the
cheese, and some short blocks of timber on them, when the cider began
to run from the edges through the straw, and was led by a gutter, which
ran round the platform, into a half-hogshead tub.
Uncle Isaac now sat down to rest, and eat an apple, while the boys,
providing themselves with straws, began to suck the cider from the
gutter as though their lives depended on their diligence. Every once
in a while you would hear a long-drawn sigh as they stopped to take
breath. As the cheese had now settled together, and become a little
firm, Uncle Isaac prepared to press it.
This is done nowadays with a screw, but it was not the fashion then. He
had a white oak beam forty feet in length and ten inches square; one
end of this enormous stick was placed in a mortise cut in the tree, the
other on a horse. The stick extending over the middle of the cheese,
a pair of shears and a tackle were placed at the end, and Uncle Isaac
and the boys hoisted up the end of the great beam, took the horse away,
and let the beam come down on the cheese, not very hard at first, but
gradually; this set the cider running at a great rate. As the cheese
settled, he lifted the beam and put under more blocks, and at length
he and the boys piled great rocks on the end of the beam, and got on
themselves, till they squat it dry.
Nothing would do but they must stop to supper; Uncle Isaac would not
hear to their going home.
“Only think,” whispered Fred to John, “if we had succeeded in killing
Uncle Isaac’s orchard last spring, I shouldn’t have been sucking cider
and eating apples to-day.”
“I’ve heard mother say,” was the reply, “that a person couldn’t injure
another without injuring himself, and I believe it.”
John told Uncle Isaac that Charles had cut down one of the biggest
pines on the island, and made a float, oars and all, made an
axe-handle, and caught three hundred weight of codfish.
When they went home, Uncle Isaac told the boys to fill their pockets
with apples, and gave Charles a bag full and a jug of cider to carry to
the island.
John and Charles slept together, and lay awake and talked half the
night, laying plans for the future.
“I’ll tell you what you can do, Charles; you can make a paddle, and
cut a scull-hole in your canoe, and she’ll make a first-rate gunning
float.”
“So she will; I never thought of that.”
It seemed to the boys the shortest day they had ever spent; it
certainly had been a very happy one. In the morning they separated,
John going half way home with Charles in his float.
CHAPTER VI.
CHARLIE IN A SNOW SQUALL.
Charles would have been more than human if he could have rested easy
without a sail for his canoe, after seeing John’s, and sailing with him
in his float. He tried a hemlock bush, but he came near filling his
boat by means of it. He didn’t like to ask Sally to weave him cloth to
make one, as she had to buy her flax and cotton, nor to ask Ben to let
him sell fish for it. He therefore set his wits to work to compass his
end. He noticed the bottom of the chairs, and asked Ben what they were
made of: he told him, of basket-stuff, and how it was made.
He cut down an ash, pounded it, and stripping it very thin, wove it
into a mat, and made a sail of it. A great deal of wind went through
it, to be sure; but then it answered a very good purpose, and saved him
a deal of rowing.
At length he espied a birch-bark dish, that Uncle Isaac had made for
Sally to wash dishes in. He examined it very attentively, and thought
he had at last found the right stuff; but, to his great disappointment,
the bark wouldn’t run at that time of the year. Joe told him to make a
fire and heat the tree, when he found it would run. He obtained some
large sheets, and made it very thin; he found some difficulty in making
the stitches hold, as the bark was so straight-grained it would split,
and let the thread out; but he found a way to remedy this, by sewing
some narrow strips of cloth with the bark at the seams and edges.
He now found that he had a sail that was a great deal handsomer and
lighter than the other, and that not a bit of wind could get through.
Having by this time got a birch-bark fever, he made himself a hat of
it, and a box to carry his dinner in.
He continued to fish every pleasant day, and, as fast as the fish were
cured, he put them in the chamber; and the larger the pile grew, the
more anxious he became to add to it.
There had been a week of moderate weather for the time of year, with
light south and south-west winds, and Charles had caught a great many
fish, sailing home every afternoon as grand as you please. At length
there was an appearance of a change in the weather. Ben thought he
had better not go; but seeing he was eager to do so, did not prevent
him. It was a dead calm when Charlie rowed on to his ground, and
continued thus till nearly noon; but the clouds hung low, and the sun
was partially hid. The fish bit well, and Charlie was too busy in
hauling them in to take note of a black mass of clouds, which, having
first gathered in the north-east, were gradually coming down the bay,
accompanied with a black mist reaching from the water to the sky, till
in an instant the wind struck with a savage shriek; the waters rolled
up green and angry, and he was wrapped in a whirlwind of snow, so thick
that he not only lost sight of the island, but could not even see three
times the length of the canoe. His first impulse was to haul up his
anchor and row for the island; but the moment he put his hand to the
cable he was convinced that he could make no progress, nor even hold
his own against such a sea and wind.
There was nothing for him but to remain where he was, in the hope that
Ben would come to seek him. But perils now multiplied around him; the
wind, and with it the sea, increased continually. The cold became
intense; the spray flew into the canoe, which was deeply laden with
fish, freezing as it came. It seemed very doubtful to him whether Ben
could find him in the darkness, which, as the day drew to a close,
became every moment more intense.
“Must I perish, after all,” thought the poor boy, “just as I have found
a good home and kind friends?” The tears gushing from his eyes froze
upon his cold cheeks. He now recollected his mother’s last words.
“When trouble comes upon you, my child, call upon God, and he will help
you.”
Kneeling in the bottom of the boat, he put up a fervent prayer to God
for mercy. The flood tide now began to make, which, running against the
wind, made a sharp, short sea; the canoe stood, as it were, on end, and
it seemed as if every sea must break into her. He was fast giving way
to despair, when a large quantity of water came in over the bow. Roused
by the instinct that engages us to struggle for life, he threw it out.
“These fish must go overboard to lighten her,” said he, and laid his
hand on one of the largest, when a faint “Halloo!” came down the wind.
His stupor vanished; the blood rushed to his face; uttering a wild cry
of joy, he seized the club which he used to kill the fish with, and
pounded with all his might upon the head-board of the boat, at the
same time shouting loudly. He soon heard distinctly, “Boat, ahoy!”
shouted, in the tones of Joe; and in a few moments the great canoe came
alongside.
“God bless you, my boy! I was afraid we had lost you,” cried Ben,
catching him by the shoulder, and lifting him into his lap as though he
had been thistle-down. He then wrapped him in a dry coat, and gave him
a dry pair of mittens. As they had a compass, they could have hit the
land by steering in a northerly direction; but they might have been a
great while doing so, without any permanent point of departure to start
from. Ben had provided for this. In the first place, they put a good
part of the fish into the large canoe; then, taking a large cedar buoy,
which he had brought with him for the purpose, he fastened it to the
cable of the canoe, and flung it overboard; then he fastened the small
canoe to the stern of the large one; thus he had the buoy left for a
mark to start from.
“Now, Joe,” said Ben, “do you bring that buoy to bear south-south-west,
astern, and steer north-north-east, and I’ll see if little Ben Rhines
can drive these boats through this surf.”
Joe sat in the stern, with a steering paddle, and the compass before
him on the seat. Charlie stood in the bow of the big canoe, holding
the end of the mooring-rope, which confined them both to the buoy. Ben
now sat down to his oars, putting his feet against Joe’s for a brace.
“Let go, Charlie,” cried he, as he dipped the blades in the water, and
the boats began to move ahead. The canoe quivered beneath the strokes
of the giant, as, warming up, he stretched himself to the work; and as
by main strength he forced her through the sharp sea, the water came
over the bows in large quantities, but Charlie threw it out as fast as
it came.
For a long time no sound was heard but the dash of waves, and the deep
breathing of Ben, like the panting of an ox. It was now fast growing
dark. At length Joe said, “I believe I see something like the shade of
woods.”
All was still again for a while, and Ben increased the force of his
strokes.
“I see the eagle’s nest on the tall pine,” said Charlie, “and the point
of the Bull.”
“That’s what I call a good ‘land-fall,’ when you can’t see a thing,”
said Joe.
They were now soon at the island, where a roaring fire, smoking supper,
and joyous welcome awaited the chilled and hungry boy.
“O, mother!” said Charlie (as with a cloth dipped in warm water she
washed the frozen tears, and the white crust of salt left by the spray,
from his cheek, and kissed him), “I didn’t think I should ever see you
again.”
How great a matter sometimes hinges upon a very little thing! Ben and
Joe were in the thickest part of the woods, so busily at work getting
down a tree that had lodged as not to notice the sudden change in the
weather. As soon as they heard the roar of the wind they ran for the
beach. On the White Bull was a breastwork of stones that Ben had made,
to stand behind and shoot ducks.
“Joe,” he cried, “get the range of that canoe over the breastwork, and
keep it, while I go and get the compass.” When he returned with the
compass, Charlie’s canoe was entirely hidden by the snow; but as Joe
had not moved from the spot, they took the range over the rock, and ran
directly upon him. Had it not been for this he would have perished,
while they were endeavoring to find him by guess in the snow, for it
was pitch dark in an hour after they reached the island.
About eight o’clock the gale came on with tremendous fury; and as
Charlie lay in his warm bed that night, and listened to the roar of
the surf and the sough of the tempest, he drew the blankets over him,
and nestling in their warm folds, lifted up his heart in gratitude to
the Being his mother had taught him to call upon in the hour of peril,
and not forget in that of deliverance.
When the gale was over, the wind coming to the north, the sea fell, and
it was soon smooth, and Charlie wanted to go a-fishing.
“No, Charlie,” said Ben, “the weather is too catching; you have fished
enough for this fall.”
“But I must have my anchor.”
“Well, go and get that, and come right back; don’t take any bait, nor
stop to fish.”
Charlie rowed down to the fishing-ground, where he found the buoy
floating on the glassy surface of the water, with a great mass of kelp,
as large as the floor of the house, fast to it; he took out his knife,
and cut them off from the ropes, and watched them as they floated away
with the tide.
Charlie thought the southerly wind would come in at twelve o’clock, and
save him the labor of rowing home; so he made his canoe fast to the
buoy, determined to wait for it. Whether it was due to the reaction
consequent upon the terrible excitement he had of late passed through,
the beauty of the day, or a mingling of both, he felt deliciously
lazy; so, taking his birch-bark dinner-box from the little locker in
the stern of the canoe, he stretched himself upon the oars and seats,
and with a piece of bread and butter in his fist, began to meditate.
“What a strange thing the sea is!” thought he; “three days ago I lay
in this very spot, fastened to this very rope, in such an awful sea,
expecting to sink every moment, and now it is just as smooth as glass;
and where it was breaking feather white against the Bull you might now
lie right up to the rocks.”
Charlie was very different from John; he was more thoughtful; liked
to be studying out and contriving something. John was more for mere
excitement and adventure.
The southerly wind now came, and Charlie began to haul in his cable;
but he found that the two canoes, riding to it in the gale, had bedded
it so well in the sand that he could not start it.
“I’m no notion of working to-day,” said he; “contrivance is better than
hard work.”
It was now flood tide; he pulled the canoe right over her anchor,
hauled in the slack of the cable as tight as he could, and made it
fast, then stretched out in the sun, and returned to his bread and
butter. As the tide made, the cable grew tighter and tighter, till at
last it began to draw the bows of the canoe down into the water; at
length it drew her down till the water was about to run in, and Charlie
began to think the anchor was under a rock, when all at once it gave
way with a jump.
“I thought you’d have to come,” said he; and, putting up his sail, he
went home before the light south-westerly wind.
Ben had said to Charles, when he went away in the morning, “I shall be
in the woods when you come back, and I want you to bail out the big
canoe, as I shall want to use her to-morrow.”
When Charles came to the beach he made his boat fast, and went to look
at the big canoe. The sea had broken into her as she lay on the beach,
and there was a great deal of water in her.
“This is one of my lazy days, and I’m going to carry it out. I’ll be
blest if I’ll throw all that water out.”
He went to where the sea had flung up a vast quantity of kelp in the
recent gale, and drew out from the heap the largest one he could find.
Perhaps some boy, who has never been on the seashore, might say, “I
wonder what kelp is.” It is an ocean plant that grows on the deep
water rocks. The roots cling to the rock, and send up stalks from ten
to fifteen feet in length, with a leaf or apron nearly as long as the
stem, a foot wide in the middle, tapering towards each end, and of
the color of amber. This stem, which is hollow, and filled with air,
causes it to float on the surface of the water, where it is exposed to
the sun, without which it could not grow. The hollow in a large stem
is about half an inch in diameter. They come to the surface about half
tide, and thus are exposed a few hours while the tide is ebbing and
flowing.
Charlie cut the large leaf and the root from the kelp, when he had a
limber hollow stem five or six feet long. Putting one end into the
canoe, and the other into his mouth, he sucked the water through it;
then putting the end down on the beach the water continued to run in a
steady stream over the side of the canoe. He was contemplating his work
with great satisfaction, when, hearing the sound of oars, he looked up,
and saw John doubling the eastern point.
It was impossible for Mrs. Rhines to keep John from going to the island
alone any longer, since Charles had been off alone, and he was much
larger and stronger.
“What are you about, Charlie?”
“Making water run up hill.”
“But that is running down hill; the beach is lower than the canoe.”
“But it runs off over the side of the canoe; come and see.”
“So it does, sure enough. What makes it go up over that turn?”
“That’s just what I want to know,” said Charlie, “and I mean to know,
too; but I suppose it’s the same thing that makes water come up hill in
a squirt.”
“Why, the plunger in a squirt sucks it up.”
“How can it suck it up? it has not any fingers or lips to suck it or
lift it; that’s only a saying; I don’t believe that.”
“Well, if you don’t believe that, how does it come up? What makes it
follow the stick in the squirt?”
“That’s what I want to know; there must be some reason. Do you suppose
Uncle Isaac knows? he knows most everything.”
“No; he don’t know such things; but Ben does; he can navigate a vessel,
and has been to Massachusetts to school. Father asks Ben when he wants
to know things of that kind.”
“Well, I must ask him.”
“I’m sure I don’t care what makes it come; I know it does come; that’s
enough for me. That’s a great sail in your boat, Charlie; it’s the
first time I ever heard of a birch-bark sail: what in the world made
you think of making a sail of that?”
“Because I had nothing else; I made one out of basket stuff. I tell you
what, these folks that live on islands have to set their wits at work;
they haven’t a store to run to for everything they want.”
“I don’t think much of your contrivance to make water run out of a
boat; only look at it; you and I could take two pails and bail it out
in half the time it will be running out through that, and then we could
go and play.”
“But we can go and play now, and let it run.”
“I never thought of that; let’s go then.”
“I must ask father first; perhaps he wants me to help him; you go ask
him.”
John ran to the woods where Ben was at work, and soon came back with
liberty for them to play.
“Let’s have some fun here with this water; it’s real warm and pleasant
here in the sun, and we can do lots of things.”
“What shall we do?”
“Let’s make water-works, as they do in England. They carry the water
miles and miles.”
“What do they carry it in?”
“Lead and iron pipes, and hollow logs; and they have fountains that
send the water up in the air, ever so high.”
“Let us see how far we can carry water, Charlie.”
They had not the least trouble in procuring pipe, as there were
cart-loads of kelps on the beach. They went to the heap and drew out
the longest and largest stalks they could find, and putting the small
end of one into the large end of the other; then made the joints tight
with clay, and put them under ground, and covered them up. They did not
give up till they carried the water the whole length of the beach into
the bay, and then invited Sally to come out and see it.
“Water,” said Charles, “will rise as high as the place it came from. I
am going to have a fountain.”
So he stopped up the end of the pipe with clay, and near the end where
the water ran quite fast, he made a little hole, and put into it two
or three quills of an eagle, joined together, to make a pipe, and
the water spouted through it into the air. As the day was now fast
spending, they tore up their pipes, and putting them all into the
canoe, and sucking the water through them, set them all running; and
when Sally called them to supper the water was nearly all out of the
canoe.
CHAPTER VII.
CHARLIE PLANS A SURPRISE FOR SALLY.
There was a certain article of household use that Charles had for a
long time been desirous of making for his mother; but he wanted to
surprise her with it. This seemed to him almost an impossibility, as
she never went from home; but the opportunity now presented itself.
When they were all seated at the supper-table, John said to Ben,
“Father sent me over to see if you and Sally would come home to
Thanksgiving,--it’s Thursday,--and stay over Sabbath, and have a good
visit.”
“I should like above all things to go,” said Sally; “but I don’t see
how I could leave home so long.”
“Yes, you can leave,” said Ben; “you haven’t stepped off this island
since we came on it. It will do you good, and do us all good.”
“O, do go, mother,” said Charlie, who had his own reasons for wishing
to get her out of the house, and was rejoiced at the prospect of
accomplishing it; “it will soon be so rough that there will be no
getting over, at least for women folks, this winter.”
“But who will take care of you?”
“Take care of me! I’ll take care of myself, and everything else, too. I
can milk, and cook, and see to everything.”
“But would you not be afraid to stay here all alone?”
“Afraid! Poor vagabond children, like me, don’t have any fears; they
can’t afford to. It’s rich people’s children, that are brought up nice,
have fears. Such wanderers as I am, if they only have enough to eat,
and a place to put their head in, they are all right.”
“What a speech that is!” said Joe. “I’ve always heard that a barrel
might have as large a bung-hole as a hogshead, and now I believe it.”
“I’ll come over and stay with him,” said John; “I’m sure I would rather
be here than at home.”
“Father and mother wouldn’t agree to that, John; but you may tell them
we’ll come and stay over Sabbath.”
The next Wednesday morning, to Charles’s great delight, they started,
and Joe with them, as he was going home to Thanksgiving. The moment
they were out of sight, Charlie commenced operations. He went up
chamber, where was some clear stuff,--boards and plank,--which now
would be worth eighty dollars a thousand, if indeed such lumber could
be procured at all, and taking what he needed, brought it down to the
bench in the front room. He then went up on the middle ridge, cut down
a black cherry tree, and taking a piece from the butt, split it in
halves, and brought it into the house. As he now had all his material,
he made up a good fire and went to work. His saw and hammer went all
the time, except when he was asleep, or doing the necessary work. As
for cooking, he lived most of the time on bread and milk, because he
did not wish to take the time from his work to cook. He had, indeed,
abundance of time to do what he was intending, a regular mechanic would
have done in a third part of the time; but Charlie was a boy, and
though very ingenious, had to learn as he went along, and stop very
often and think a long time how to do a thing; and sometimes he made a
mistake and did it wrong, or made a bad joint, and then away it went
into the fire.
“If I make a blunder,” said Charles, “nobody shall be the wiser for
it.” Charles was by no means the only apprentice who has spoiled
lumber in learning, as the stove in many a joiner’s shop would
testify, if it could speak.
Ben and Sally had a most delightful time. They staid Wednesday night at
Captain Rhines’s; Thursday they went to meeting, and Sally saw all her
old friends, and the girls she knew before she married, and had to tell
over the story about the pirates I don’t know how many times.
But there was a little incident that took place at meeting that
mortified Ben very much. He entertained a very great respect for
religion, and would not for the world have done anything in a light or
trifling manner in the house of God. It was the fashion in those days
to wear very large watches, and very large seals attached to a large
chain. Ben had a watch-seal that was made in Germany, in which was a
music-box, that, being wound up, would play several very lively tunes.
After being wound up, it was set in operation by pressing a spring.
In the morning, before they went to meeting, Ben, in order to gratify
John and Fred Williams, who were in to go to meeting with him, had
been playing with it, and Uncle Isaac coming in, he left it wound up,
and went to meeting. While the minister was at prayer, Ben, in leaning
against the pew, pressed the spring, and off started the music-box
into a dancing tune. There was no such thing as stopping it till it
ran down. It is useless to attempt to describe the effect of such
unwarranted and unhallowed sounds breaking upon the solemn stillness of
an old-time congregation.
Ben’s face was redder than any fire-coal, while his body was in a cold
sweat. Sally felt as though she should sink through the floor. Mrs.
Rhines looked up to see if the roof was not about to fall and crush
them all; while the young people, totally unable to suppress their
merriment, tittered audibly. Ben stood it a few moments, and then left
the assembly, the seal playing him out.
After stopping a night at the widow’s, they went over to Uncle Isaac’s,
as he declared, unless they spent a night with him, he would never step
foot on the island again. He invited John Strout and all the Rhineses
to tea. John had a great many inquiries to make of Ben, in respect to
Charles, who told him about his being caught in the snow squall.
“He’s good grit--ain’t he?” said John.
“Yes, John; he’s a good, brave, affectionate boy as ever lived; and I
love him more and more every day.”
“There, Uncle Isaac!” cried John Rhines, “what have I always told you?
You’ll give up now--won’t you?”
“Yes, John; I’ll give up. I suppose you feel better now--don’t you?”
“Yes, Uncle Isaac, I do feel better; for I never could like anybody as
I want to like Charlie, that you had any doubt about. I don’t believe
in liking at the halves.”
Upon their return Charles met them at the shore, delighted to see them,
and evidently bursting with some great secret.
“Charles has been doing something special, I know,” said Sally; “just
look at him.”
The boy was hopping and skipping along before them, scarcely able to
contain himself.
They went to the end door, which Charles flung open with a great air.
Behold, there was a sink under one of the windows. It had a wooden
spout that went through the logs out doors, a shelf on top to set
the water-pails on, and another long shelf over it on which to keep
milk-pans or pails, or any other things, which, being in constant use,
it was important to have always at hand. Underneath the sink was a
closet, with a door hung on the neatest little wooden hinges that you
ever saw, of a reddish color, polished so that they shone, and wooden
buttons to close it. In addition to this, he had made a little wooden
trough of cherry tree, that would hold about a quart, with a handle on
one side, that was made out of the solid wood: this was to keep the
soap in that was used about the sink.
Sally screamed outright with joy. “O, how glad I am!” she said, and
gave Charlie a kiss, that more than paid him for all his labor. “I
shall have such a nice place to keep all my kettles under the sink, and
my milk-pails and other things on this long shelf. I can wash my dishes
right in the sink, and shan’t have to run to the door with every drop
of water, and let so much cold in every time I open it. A sink in a
log house! O, my! I never thought I should arrive at that. There’s not
another one in town. If anybody wants to see a sink, they have got to
come on to Elm Island. How came you to think of that, you good boy?”
“Why, the people in England have sinks, and I meant you should. There’s
not a woman in England so good as you are.”
Ben stopped up the sink-spout, and turned in two pails of water. He
then examined the joints. It didn’t leak a drop. After this he turned
his attention to the hinges.
“What did you make these hinges of, Charles? They are almost as
handsome as mahogany.”
“Of cherry tree.”
“How did you know that cherry tree was a handsome wood?”
“Because I saw a gun-stock John had, that he said was made of it; and
he showed me the tree.”
“How did you give them such a polish?”
“I rubbed them with dogfish skin, and oiled them.”
“Where did you get a dogfish this time of year?”
“Uncle Isaac gave me the skin.”
“Where did you get an auger small enough to bore these hinges?”
“I borrowed it of Uncle Isaac.”
“How long have you had this in your head?”
“Ever since the time you let me go over to see John. I wanted to do
something, and I thought of this.”
Ben was highly gratified, not merely with the excellence of the work,
but at the evidence it afforded that Charlie had a grateful heart.
Charlie knew very well that Ben’s object in sending him over with the
fish was not so much for the sake of selling the fish, and obtaining
the groceries, as to afford him an opportunity to see John, and do him
a kindness; and he longed in some way to repay it.
Sally, in the mean while, had been looking with great curiosity at the
table, which was set back close against the wall, evidently covered
with dishes that contained something, which, whatever it might be, was
concealed by two large table-cloths.
“What is on that table, Charles?” said she.
“My! that’s guessing, mother.”
He removed the cloth, and there were a chicken-pie, and two apple-pies,
and a baked Indian pudding.
“Didn’t I tell you I could cook, mother?” said Charlie, greatly
delighted at her astonishment.
“Well, Charlie,” said Ben, “that is as good a piece of work as any
joiner could make. You could not have employed your time better than
you have in making that sink. It will be a great help to your mother in
doing her work, and a daily convenience and comfort to all of us. There
is but one thing it lacks; that is a moulding where the closet joins
the sink, to cover the joints, and make a finish.”
“Yes, father; I had not time to make that, because I wanted to get
dinner, that mother might not come home, and have to go right to
cooking the moment she got in the house.”
“To make it look just right, there should be a bead on the edge, or
something of the kind; but I have no tool that it can be done with.”
“I have, father; I borrowed one of Uncle Isaac.”
“You must have got well into the good graces of Uncle Isaac, for he
don’t like to lend his tools. But how did you bring these tools, that I
have never seen them?”
“You know when I went over to see John, Uncle Isaac sent you a bag of
apples.”
“Yes.”
“Well, I put them in there; and when I came to the shore I hid them in
the woods, in a hollow tree, on the western point.”
“I know how you feel. I suppose you would not like very much to have
anybody see it in an unfinished state, or till you get that moulding
on.”
“I shouldn’t like to have Uncle Isaac or John see it; and I should like
to get it all done, if I could, before Joe gets back, because he’s a
real judge of things, and would be apt to make some queer speech, if it
was not finished.”
“Well, then, you may finish it to-morrow; and take all the time you
want, and make it as nice as you please.”
“O, thank you, father; I am ever so much obliged to you.”
“Come,” said Sally, “let us see what this boy’s pies and cookery tastes
like. O, you rogue! I see now what you was so anxious to get me away
from the island for. But what have you lived on, Charlie; I don’t see
as you have cooked much.”
“I couldn’t afford the time to cook; so I lived on bread and milk, and
bread and butter; but I am going to make it up now.”
They had a real social meal, and pronounced Charles’s cookery
excellent. They also told him all the news,--where they had been, what
they had seen, and what John was doing. They said that there was a
great quantity of alders in a little swale near the house, almost as
large as a man’s leg; that they made a real hot fire, and would burn
well when they were green; that John was cutting these, and hauling
them with his steers, on a sled, for there was snow on the main land,
though there had been none to last any time on the island. It was
often the case, that, when it was snowing on the main land, it rained
upon the island. It also, when it fell, thawed off much sooner, as
the sea-water kept the temperature down. Thus, all the snow that came
during the storm Charles was caught in, had already disappeared from
the island, while on the main John Rhines could haul wood.
As Charles was in a great measure cut off from all society of his own
age, he was never happier than when working with tools, seeming to
take the greatest delight in making those things that were useful. Ben
permitted him to have the stormy days to himself, when he was always at
work at the bench, and did not set him to making shingles or staves,
except occasionally, in order that he might learn the art; for it is
quite an art to shave shingles well and fast. Joe Griffin was the boy
for that.
Saturday night brought Joe, and the work in the woods was resumed.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHARLIE’S HOME LIFE AND EMPLOYMENTS.
Though every boy, almost, in America knows that baskets are made of
ash and oak, it was an entirely new thing to Charles. However, by
the instruction of Ben, and the practice of making his sail, he had
acquired a knowledge of its properties, and how to pound and prepare it
for making baskets. By pounding an ash or oak log the layers of wood
may be made to separate, and then the end being started with a knife,
they may be run into long, thin strips, suitable for the purpose.
In stormy days he pounded and prepared his material, and in the long
winter evenings that were now approaching, he wove it into baskets, as
he sat and chatted with the rest before the blazing fire. He made them
beautifully, too; some of them open, and others with covers.
“Well, Charlie,” said Joe, as he sat watching him, “you are a workman
at basket-making, any how.”
“I ought to be,” said he, “for I have worked enough at it; but in our
country they don’t make them of such stuff as this.”
“What do they make them of?”
“Sallies,” replied Charles.
“Sallys! they must be a barbarous people to cut women up to make
baskets of. What makes them take Sallys? why don’t they take Mollys and
Bettys, too; it ain’t fair to take all of one name.”
“It is not women,” said Charlie, laughing, “but a kind of wood.”
“Is it a tree?”
“It will grow into a small tree; but they cut it every year, and take
the sprouts. It grows in rows, just as you raise corn, and just as
straight and smooth as a bulrush, without any limbs, only leaves. They
peel it, and the leaves all come off with the bark, and leave a smooth,
white rod--some of them eight feet long. If they become ever so dry,
and you throw them into water, they will become tough as before. If I
only had sallies, I could make a basket that would hold water, and the
handsomest work-baskets for mother that ever was, and color them if I
could get the dye-stuffs. When we make farm-baskets and hampers, we
leave the bark on; but when we make nice baskets, we peel it off. We
call this whitening them.
“We also strip it into stuff as thin as a shaving, to wind round the
handles of nice baskets and fancy things, and call it skein work,
because this thin stuff is made up into skeins, for use like yarn.”
“What does it look like?” said Ben.
“It has a long, narrow leaf of bluish green; and in the spring, before
anything else starts, it has a white stuff on it like cotton-wool; we
call it palm; and on Palm Sunday the people carry it to church; and if
you put a piece of it on the ground, in a wet place, it will take root.”
“I know what it is. It’s what we call pussy-willow and dog-willow, but
I never thought it was tough enough to make baskets; besides, it grows
crooked and scrubby.”
“Perhaps it is not like ours; but ours would not grow straight except
they were cut off. A sprout is different from a branch. Does the
willow, as you call it, grow on the island?”
“Yes; down by the brook and the swamp.”
“Tell us something about the folks in the old country,” said Joe. “What
else did your father do besides make baskets? Did he own any land?”
“Nobody owns any land in England but the quality and the
rich esquires. Poor people don’t own anything; not even their
souls,--leastways, that is what my grandfather used to say,--for they
had to ask some great man what they ought to think. My father was a
tenant of the Earl of Bedford. My grandfather once lived by the coal
mines at Dudley, in Staffordshire. It was named after Lord Dudley Ward,
who owned extensive iron mines. Occasionally he came to visit his
property, with carriages, and servants, and livery, and a great parade.
On holidays he sometimes gave them beef and ale. These poor, simple
miners thought he was more than a man. One day when he was riding by,
the horses prancing, the people cheering, and the footmen in their red
suits, a little boy was looking on with amazement. At length he said
to his father, ‘Fayther, if God Almighty dies, who’ll be God Almighty
then?’ ‘Why, Lord Dudley Ward, you foo’.’”
“Jerusalem!” said Joe Griffin; “I did not think there were any people
in this world so ignorant as that. They don’t know so much as a yellow
dog. Were the people where you lived so ignorant?”
“No; they were Wesleyan Methodists, and their children were taught to
read and write. It is in the mines where the greatest ignorance is. We
lived in the fens.”
“What is the fens?”
“What we call the fens is the greater part of it low, flat land, which
has some time been under water; but the water has been drained off by
canals and ditches, and pumped out with windmills, and now the most of
it bears the greatest crops of any land in England. But there are some
places so low that they could not be drained.
“Such was the place where we lived, which was so wet that nothing could
grow but sallies and alders. No cattle could be kept; so the people
keep geese and ducks instead. The geese and ducks are their cattle.”
“But geese and ducks won’t give milk,” said Joe.
“Well, some of them make out to keep a cow, and others a goat or two;
and the others get their milk where they can, or go without.”
“What do these people do for a living?”
“They are basket-makers and coopers. Alders grow taller and straighter
there than they do here; and they make baskets of the sallies, and
hoops both of the sallies and alders.
“The fens are full of frogs, and bugs, and worms, and the fowl get
their living. We had hundreds of geese and ducks, and picked them
three or four times a year. But the folks are poor there--them that are
poor. We hardly ever saw any meat from year’s end to year’s end.”
“Couldn’t you eat your geese?”
“Eat our geese! No, indeed; they had to be sold to pay the rent.”
“Rent for living in a quagmire! I should think you ought to be paid for
living there.”
“Rent! yes; and high rent, too. Why, there’s tallow enough in that
candle on the table to last a fen cottager three weeks.”
“I don’t see why a candle shouldn’t burn out as fast in England as
here.”
“They would make that candle into ever so many rush-lights.”
“What’s a rush-light?”
“They take a bulrush, and take the skin off from each side down to the
white pith, leaving a little strip of skin on the edge to stiffen it,
and make it stand up,--that is for a wick; then they dip it a few times
in melted tallow, and make a light of it; but it’s a little, miserable
light.”
“I shouldn’t think they could see to read by it.”
“There’s but very few of them can read. They don’t have schools, as
they do here: and the poor people can’t send their children, for so
soon as a child is big enough to open a gate, or turn a wheel, or mind
another child, run of errands, hold a horse, or scare the rooks and the
birds from the grain, they are obliged to put that child to work, in
order to live and pay rent.
“Women in England spin twine and make lines with a large wheel, which a
little boy turns; and when the little boy gets tired, the woman sings
to him, to cheer him up,--
‘Twelve o’clock by the weaver’s watch,
The setting of the sun;
Heave away, my little boy,
And you’ll leave off when you’re done.’
And the little boy will brighten up, and make the wheel fly,
because he’s going to leave off when he’s done.“
“You are a little boy, Charlie,” said Sally, who was listening with
great attention, “to know so much about the affairs of older people.”
“Ah, mother, misery makes boys sharp to learn. If you was a little boy,
and your mother had but one cow, and she churned, and you asked her
for a little piece of butter, and she said, with the tear in her eye,
‘No, my child, it must go to pay the rent;’ if you brought in a whole
hat full of eggs, and had not eaten an egg for a year, and should long
for one, O, so much, and cry, and say, ‘O, mother, do give me just one
egg!’ and she said, ‘No, my child, they must all be sold, for we are
behindhand with the rent;’ you would know what paying rent means.”
“Well, Charlie, you shall have all the butter you want every time I
churn; and I’ll spread your bread both sides, and on the edges.”
“I shouldn’t think,” said Joe, “a man could get a living by
basket-making. It can’t be much of a trade. Anybody can make a basket
that has got any Indian suet. I can make as good a basket as anybody.”
“You can make a corn-basket or a clam-basket; but the basket-makers
make chairs, and cradles, and carriages, and fishing-creels, and
work-stands. It is as much of a trade as a joiner’s or a shoemaker’s.
There is more call for basket-work in England than here. Timber is very
scarce there. They would no more think of cutting down such a young,
thrifty ash as that I am making this basket of, than they would of
cutting a man’s head off; and, when they cut down a tree, they dig up
every bit of the root and use it for something, and then plant another
one. They don’t have boxes, and barrels, and troughs to keep and carry
things in, as they do here; but it is all crates, and hampers, and
baskets, and sacks. If a man should cut a tree as big as a hoe-handle
on the Earl of Bedford’s estates, he would be transported or hung.”
“It wouldn’t be a very safe place for me to go,” said Joe, “for I’ve
the blood of a great many trees on my conscience.”
“They raise trees there from the seed, and plant and set out thousands
of acres. O, I wish you could only be in the fens in picking-time, I
guess you would laugh.”
“Why so, Charlie?”
“You see the women and children take care of the fowl. When they want
to pick them, they put on the awfulest-looking old gowns, and tie
cloths round their heads, and shut the geese and ducks up in a room,
and then take ’em in their arms and go to pulling the feathers out.
The old ganders will bite, and thrash with their wings; they will be
plastered from head to foot with feathers.
“An old woman, with her black face all tanned up (for the women work in
the fields there), looks so funny peeping out of a great heap of white
feathers and down! and then such an awful squawking as so many fowl
make! Don’t you have any lords and dukes here, father?”
“No; we are all lords and dukes. We have presidents, and governors, and
folks to do our thinking for us; and if they don’t think and govern to
suit us, we pay them off, turn them out, and hire better ones.”
“Who is your landlord, father?”
“Mr. Welch, in Boston, till I pay him for this island.”
“Who is Uncle Isaac’s, and Captain Rhines’s, and the rest of the folks
round here?”
“They are their own landlords.” He then explained to the wondering boy
how it was that people in America got along, and governed themselves
without any nobility or landlords, and owned their land; that he was
now paying for his, that he might own it, and that was the reason he
came on to the island. He also told him, that in some parts of the
country land was given to people for settling on it.
“What! is it their ointy-dointy, forever and ever?”
“Yes; as long as they live; and then they can sell it or leave it to
their children, or give it to whom they have a mind to.”
“O,” cried Charlie, jumping up, and reddening with excitement, “how my
poor father and mother would have worked, if they could have thought
they could ever have come to own land for themselves! According to
that, all that the people here do on the land they do for themselves,
and they are their own landlords.”
“To be sure they are.”
“Only think, to own your land, and have no rent to pay! I should think
it was just the country for poor people to live in.”
“We think it is.”
“I’m glad you told me all these things, father. I mean to do all I can
to help you and mother pay for the land, and by and by, perhaps, when I
get to be a man, I can have a piece of land.”
“I’ll tell you what you can do, Charles. Make baskets in the evenings
and rainy days, and sell them. I will let you have all you get for
them.”
“I thank you, father. I could make the house full before spring.”
“I,” said Joe, “when I am not too tired, will pound some of the
basket-stuff for you. It is hard work for a boy like you.”
“So will I,” said Ben. “I can pound enough in one evening to last you a
month.”
“Yes,” said Joe; “you and John might form a company, and go into the
basket business--Rhines & Bell. No; the Rhines Brothers; John and you
are brothers. John could pound the basket-stuff at home, and bring it
over here; you could make them, and he could sell them to the fishermen
in the summer. They use lots of baskets. If you sell them to the store
you won’t get any money, only goods; but the fishermen will pay the
cash.”
“Won’t that be nice! I tell you the very first thing I mean to have;
I’ll swap some baskets at the store, and get some cloth to make a sail
for my boat.”
“I’ll cut it for you,” said Joe.
“I’ll sew it,” said Sally.
“And I,” said Ben, “will rope it for you (sew a piece of rope around
the edge), and show you how to make the grummet-holes.”
“Then the next thing I’ll do, will be to get some powder, and, when the
birds come in the spring, I will learn to shoot and kill them, and have
feathers to sell, to help pay for the island.”
“If,” said Joe, “you don’t learn to shoot till the birds come, by the
time you get learned the thickest of them will all be gone. You ought
to fire at a mark this winter, and practise, and then when the birds
come you will not have so much to do.”
“I can’t get any powder till I sell my baskets; powder and shot cost a
good deal.”
“I’ll advance you the money, so that you can get a little powder and
shot. You can use peas and little stones part of the time: they will
go wild, but it will help you to get used to hearing a gun go off, and
learning to take sight, and hold her steady. Our folks will want some
baskets in the spring, and when I get through I will take them; but I
will let you have the money now.”
“Thank you a thousand times! What a good country this is, and how good
everybody is!” said the happy boy. “Everybody seems to want to help me;
it ain’t so in England.”
“That is because you are a good boy, and try to help yourself and
others.”
“There’s one other thing I must have, because I want it to make
baskets--that is a knife.”
“To be sure; a boy without a knife is no boy at all; he’s like a woman
without a tongue.”
“Then I’ll have some bits, and a bit-stock, and a fine-toothed saw. O,
if I only had the tools, wouldn’t I make things for mother! I’d make
a front door, and ceil up the kitchen, and cover up the chimney, and
make a closet, and a mantelpiece, and finish off a bedroom for father
and mother, and shingle the roof.”
At this they all burst into peals of laughter.
“Well, Charlie,” said Ben, “you’ve laid out work enough for five or six
years. You had better go to bed now, and all the rest of us, for it is
past ten o’clock. I am sure I don’t know where this evening has gone
to.”
CHAPTER IX.
BEN FINDS A PRIZE.
The next morning Charles went to look at the willows. He said they were
different from the sallies they made baskets of; that the same kind
grew in England, but they called them wild sallies there, and never
made baskets of them; but he thought if they could be made to grow
straight he could make a basket of them. So he got the axe, and cut off
a whole parcel of them, in order that they might sprout up the next
spring and grow straight.
Intercourse with the main shore was so difficult and dangerous in the
winter, as there was nothing better to go in than a canoe, that Ben
went off to procure provisions and breadstuff to last him till spring.
When he returned he brought Charles powder and shot.
“Father,” said Charles, “you never got all this powder and shot with
the money I gave you.”
“No, Charles; I put a little to it, because I wanted to make my little
boy a present.”
“Thank you, father.”
“John told me that he would like very much to go into the basket
business with you, and would pound a lot of basket-stuff, and make it
all of a width, and trim the edges smooth and handsome, and get out
the rims and handles. He wants to know if you are willing to take Fred
Williams into partnership with you and him, because he wants to go in.
His father is a miller, and he can sell a good many baskets to folks
that come to the mill. Nova Scotia people often come there after corn,
and he could sell them to them, to sell again to the fishermen down
their way.”
“Yes, father; I should like first rate to have him.”
“John Strout is going to the West Indies this winter, and will bring
the Perseverance over here, and leave her, because she’ll be safe. John
will send basket-stuff over by him, and you can send back word whether
you will take Williams into partnership.”
“I don’t know what would have become of me, if you and mother had not
taken me in. Now, John told me all about Fred. He said that he didn’t
want him to go with him and Uncle Isaac, because he knew that they
should have so much better time together; but he said one day, when
they were off together in a boat, Uncle Isaac told him that we ought
to deny ourselves to help others, and talked to him in such a way that
he felt ashamed of himself, and couldn’t look Uncle Isaac in the face,
but had to look right down in the bottom of the boat. Since that he had
gone with Fred, and was right glad of it, for he had become a real good
boy, and he’s as smart as lightning. I saw that the day I was over to
see John.”
“He has become a first-rate boy. Everybody that goes to the mill says
there is not a better, more obliging boy in town; and they are always
glad when he is in the mill, his father is so cross.”
“You know I would rather be with John alone; but if he made a sacrifice
to get him good, I ought to help keep him good.”
“That’s right, Charlie; that is a good principle.”
“Do you know, father, it seems to me just like this about Fred. When I
get out an ash rim for a basket, it is hard work to bend it; and if,
after I have bent it, I don’t fasten it, but throw it down on the floor
and leave it, in the morning it will be straightened out just where it
was before; but if I fasten it till it gets dry and set, it will stay
so; and I think we ought to do all we can to keep Fred good till he
gets fairly set in good ways, and then he’ll stay set.”
Ben had scarcely removed the provisions from the canoe, and put it all
under cover, when the weather suddenly changed. As night came on, the
wind increased, with snow; and afterwards hauling to the south-east,
blew a hurricane, the rain falling in torrents through the night; but
at daylight hauled to the south-west, when it became fair.
Ben and Joe were at work in the front room making shingles. At morning
high-water they heard a constant thumping in the direction of the White
Bull for more than an hour, when it gradually ceased. At night they
heard it again.
“Joe,” said Ben, “let us take the canoe after supper, and go over and
see what that thumping is. It is not the surf, nor rocks grinding on
each other, I know.”
When they reached the spot they found the bowsprit of a vessel, with
the bobstays hanging to it, having been broken off at the gammoning,
with the gripe attached to it. There was also the fore-mast and
fore-topmast, with the yards and head-stays, the mast being carried
away at the deck. The chain-plates also on the starboard side and
channels had been torn out, and hung to the shrouds by the lanyards.
On the port side there were only the shrouds and the upper dead-eyes.
The sails were on the yards, while braces, clew-garnets, clew-lines,
leach-lines, bunt-lines, and reef-tackles,--some nearly of their entire
length, others cut and parted,--were rolled around the spars, and
matted with kelps and eel-grass, in almost inextricable confusion. In
the fore-top was a chest lashed fast, and filled with studding-sail
gear, which having been fastened, the rigging remained in it. These
ropes were very long, and had been but little worn.
“Well,” said Ben, looking upon the mass with that peculiar interest
that a wreck always inspires in the heart of a seaman, “I am sorry for
the poor fellows who have met with a misfortune; but this rigging,
these sails and iron-work, are a most precious God-send to me.”
Iron and cordage were both very valuable articles in the country at
that time, as the British government had forbidden the erection of
rolling and slitting mills before the Revolution, and the manufactures
of the country were just struggling into life. Withes of wood were used
in lieu of ropes and chains.
“The long bolts in that gripe,” said Joe, “will make you a crane.
A few more links put to the chain on that bobstay will make you a
first-rate draught chain. The straps of the dead-eyes welded together,
and a little steel put on the point, will make a good crowbar.”
But Ben had ideas, which he did not make known to Joe, very different
from the construction of cranes or crowbars. These it were which
occasioned his joy at the sight of the wreck.
“These are the spars of a big ship,” said Ben; “neither the sea nor the
wind took these sticks out of her.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because, if the ship had gone ashore, and gone to pieces, the spars
and this gripe would have gone where she did. She never lost that mast
by the wind. If she had, the chain-plates wouldn’t be hanging to the
shrouds, for no rigging would hold to tear the channels from a ship’s
side.”
“No more it wouldn’t. I never thought of that; but how did she lose it?”
“She has run full splinter on to an iceberg, and struck it with her
starboard bow. An iceberg would scrub her chain off as easy as you
would pull a mitten off your hand.”
“Then she went down with all hands.”
“Perhaps not. I’ve seen a vessel keep up, and get into port, that had
her stem cut off within four inches of the hood ends. Look there,”
pointing to the larboard shrouds of the fore-rigging; on the dead-eyes
and the shrouds were the marks of an axe. “Somebody did that in cutting
the lanyard to let the spars go clear of the ship. They would not have
done that if she had been going down.”
They built a shed of boards to put the rigging and sails under, and
yards, while Charles burnt the mast, bowsprit, and caps to get the iron.
Snow having now fallen, they began to haul their spars and logs to
the beach. John Strout now came over and brought the basket-stuff,
and Charles sent word by him to John that he would like to take Fred
Williams into partnership.
John brought word that Fred’s father was going to repair the mill, and
that while that was going on, Fred would like to come over and see
Charles, and learn to make baskets. Charles sent word back that it
would be agreeable to him to have him come. He was now quite excited.
Here was company coming, and nowhere for them to sleep but on the
floor. There were but two bedsteads in the house,--one in the kitchen,
where Ben and his wife slept, and the other in the front room, where
Joe slept. This was the spare bed, and the best room, though it was
made a workshop of, and was half full of shingles and staves; but they
could do no better.
Charlie, as usual, went to Sally for counsel.
“I should not care for him,” said she; “I should as lief he would sleep
on the floor as not. If you give him as good as you have yourself, that
is good enough.”
“But, mother, I shouldn’t want him to go home and say that he came to
see me, and had to sleep on the floor; besides, John might hear of it,
and then he wouldn’t like to come.”
“John! he’d sleep on the door-steps, or a brush-heap, and think it was
beautiful. I’ll tell you; I’ll ask Joe to sleep in your bed, and let
you and Fred have the front room.”
“O, no, mother! I’m afraid he won’t like it; and then he will play some
trick on us. I have thought of a plan, mother.”
“Let us hear it.”
“There are some yellow-birch joist up chamber, all curly, with real
handsome whorls in them. I think I could make a bedstead of them;
and then, you know, it would be my own, and we should have it if any
company came. I have got an auger that I borrowed of Uncle Isaac, to
bore the holes for the cord, and the earings on the sails that came
ashore would make a nice cord.”
“I would, Charlie; that will be a first-rate plan.”
“But I don’t like to ask father for the wood. He has saved it to make
something, and perhaps I might spoil it, and not make a bedstead after
all.”
“Ask him yourself. I’ll risk your spoiling the stuff. If you do,
there’s plenty more where that came from.”
Charlie asked for and obtained the joist. As he didn’t want Joe to look
at and criticise him, when he saw him coming from the woods to his
meals, he put it up chamber. At length he finished making it. Then he
scraped it with a scraper made of a piece of saw-plate, and then rubbed
it with dogfish skin, which made all the curls and veins in the wood
to show, and put it in the front room for Ben and Joe to see when they
came in to dinner.
“If I only had,” said Charles, “some dye-stuff, how handsome I could
make this look!”
Joe told him there was a little red ochre in the schooner, which he
would get for him. This Charles mixed with vinegar, and rubbed a little
on the wood, which brought out the beauty of the wood, and gave it a
nice color.
“If I were you, Charlie,” said Ben, “I would have a sacking bottom to
your bed, instead of bare cords.”
“What is that?”
“Why, there is a piece of canvas that was torn from one of the sails,
take that, and make it almost large enough to fill up the bedstead;
then hem it, and make a row of eyelet-holes all around the edges, and
cord it tight into the bedstead. It will be first rate to sleep on.”
“Ben, shew Charles how to sew with a sailor’s thimble, which is held in
the hollow of the hand;” and he made it and put it in.
Fred now came over, and Charles taught him to set up and make a basket.
He made a good many, and burnt them up in the fire, till at length he
made one that would do. After this he got along very well.
The two boys now began to fire at a mark, as Fred had brought some
powder and shot, and a gun with him. Charles, at first, shut up both
eyes when he fired, and almost dropped the gun when it went off,
and was afraid it would kick; and Fred could show him as much about
shooting as he could Fred about basket-making; but he soon got so that
he could fire without winking, and hold the gun firm to his shoulder,
and hit a mark quite well. Then they took a block of wood, and made it
in the shape of a Whistler, and anchored it in the water, and fired
at that, as it was bobbing up and down in the water; and at length
Charles got so he could hit that twice out of four times. When they
had expended their ammunition, they took, instead of shot, peas and
gravel-stones.
One day, after dinner, Charles came running into the house all out of
breath, saying there was a little child in the woods.
“How do you know?” said Ben.
“I have seen its tracks and its bare foot-prints in the snow. O,
father! do come and help me find it; it will freeze to death.”
“It is not a child’s track, Charles.”
“What is it?”
“It is a raccoon track thawed out; they look like a child’s track.”
“What is a raccoon, father?”
“They are about twice as large as Sailor, and live in the woods on
mice, fish, and berries. I will show you one some day.”
“May I shoot him; me and Fred?”
“No; I want them to breed.”
They now began to take what Charles called real solid comfort. The days
were short; as Ben said, only two ends to them. They had abundance of
time to sleep, and were all in full health and vigor.
CHAPTER X.
HOW THEY PASSED THE WINTER EVENINGS.
One evening they made a rousing fire. Ben got out his shoemaker’s
bench, and was tapping a pair of shoes. Boots were not worn by them;
they wore shoes and buskins.
Fred and Charles were making baskets, and Joe an axe-handle, or rather
smoothing it. Sally was knitting Charles a pair of mittens. As for
Sailor, he had the cat on her back on the hearth, while he was astride
of her, trying to lick her face with his tongue, the cat keeping him
off with her paws, but when he became too familiar, would strike him
with her claws.
“Charlie,” said Joe, looking up from his work, “tell us some more about
England, like as you did the other night.”
“Yes, do, Charlie,” said Fred. “Was your father a cooper? You said they
made hoops of willow and alder.”
“No; he was a basket-maker, and so were all my folks--my grandfather
and great-grandfather. We cannot remember when our folks were not
basket-makers. But then, as I have told you, we mean by basket-makers
those who work with sallies, and make all kinds of things with
it. My mother’s brother made a tea-set, and presented it to the
queen,--plates, and cups and saucers, and tea and coffee pots, and
tumblers. Of course they were only to look at; but they were just as
beautiful as they could be, and all colored different colors, like
china. He was four years about it, at spare times, when he could leave
his regular work that he got his living by. My father employed four or
five men, and we paid our rent, and got along quite comfortable, till
my father was pressed.”
“Pressed!” said Fred; “what is that?”
“Why, in England, they are in war-time always short of men in the navy;
and then they take them right in the street, or anywhere, and put them
by force into the men-of-war, to serve during his majesty’s pleasure. I
have heard people say that means during the war; and that as England is
always at war with somebody, it was the same as forever. That is what
pressing means.”
“A cruel, barbarous thing it is, too,” said Ben, “and ought to bring a
curse on any government.”
“They press sailors generally,” said Charles; “but when they are very
short of men they will take anybody they can get hold of. I have heard
say they couldn’t press a squire’s son, or a man that owned land, and
that they can’t go into a man’s house to take him; but, if they catch
him outside, or going into the door, they will take him.”
“Can they take any of the quality?”
“No, indeed! all the misery comes on the poor in England.”
“I shouldn’t think,” said Fred, “that a poor man would dare to go out
of doors.”
“Well, they don’t; leastways, in the night, when the press-gang is
about. There was one time (I have heard my mother tell of it) when they
were pressing blacksmiths.”
“What did they want of blacksmiths?”
“She said at that time they took blacksmiths and rope-makers, calkers,
and shipwrights, and set them at work in the dock-yards on foreign
stations, where they were building and repairing men-of-war. My uncle
was a blacksmith; he had been warned that the press-gang were about,
and was on his guard. But one night, just as he was getting into bed,
there was a cry of murder right at his door-step. He ran out to help,
and there was a man lying on the flags, and two others striking at
him. The moment my uncle came out, the man who was crying murder jumped
up, and all three of them rushed upon my uncle. It was the press-gang
making believe murder to get him out of doors. He caught hold of the
scraper on the step of the door, and cried for help. My aunt ran out
and beat the press-gang with her broom, and the people in the block
flung coals, and kettles, and anything they could lay their hands on,
upon their heads. One woman got a tea-kettle of hot water, and was
going to scald the press-gang; but she couldn’t without scalding my
uncle. The people now rose, and came rushing from all quarters; but the
police came, too, to help the press, and marines from the guard-house
with cutlasses and pistols. His wife clung to him, and his children,
and cried as though their hearts would break; but they put handcuffs on
him, and dragged him away, all bleeding, and his clothes torn off in
the scuffle.”
“What a bloody shame!” cried Ben, his face assuming that terrible
expression which Charles had seen on it when the encounter between
him and the land-pirates took place. “I wish I had been there; I’d
have given some of them sore heads. But they are not so much to blame,
after all. It is those that make the laws, and that set the press-gang
at work. I should like to wring their necks for them.”
“I shouldn’t think,” said Joe, “such men would fight very well for the
government that used them so.”
“They don’t,” said Ben; “and they dare not trust them; but they scatter
them through the ship, a few in every mess, and put them where they can
watch them. I was taken once by an English man-of-war. They put a prize
crew on board of us; part of them were pressed men. We rose and retook
her; the pressed men all joined us, and went into our army.”
“I should have thought they would have gone into the privateers or
men-of-war.”
“They thought they were less likely to be taken again in the army,
for if the English had got hold of them, they would have hung them.
They told me that whenever they got into action with a French vessel,
they threw the shot overboard, if they could get a chance, instead of
putting it in the guns, in order that they might be taken; and that
they sometimes revenged themselves by shooting their officers in the
smoke and heat of the action.”
“I should think the officers would keep a bright look out for them.”
“So they do; and are very careful not to go under the tops, and keep
well clear of the masts, lest a marline-spike should come down on their
heads, or a block unhook, or a heaver fall, as accidents of that kind
were very apt to happen when pressed men were aloft. I don’t believe a
man could be so on his guard that I could not kill him in the course of
a three years’ cruise, if I wanted to, and appear to do it by accident,
too.
“I have seen hundreds of these men, and they all tell the same story.
I’ve seen a poor fellow who was pressed when he was nineteen; his
mother was a widow, and he was her sole dependence. I’ve seen him, when
he was telling me the story, jump up and smite his hands together,
while the tears ran down his cheeks, and pray God to curse that
government, and hope that he might live to see its downfall; but I
never heard them curse the country; they seemed to love that; it was
the government they hated and cursed.”
“Was your father pressed when your uncle was?” said Joe.
“No; about four months after.”
“Tell us about that, Charles,” said Sally.
“I don’t like to tell or think about it; but I will tell you. At the
time my uncle was taken, it made a great noise. People were very much
frightened, and kept very close, never going out in the evening if they
could help it.”
“I don’t see,” said Ben, “in a country where the law allowed them to
seize people in the street, and carry them off, why they could not go
into the house and take them.”
“Perhaps they could; but that was what folks said, that an
‘Englishman’s house was his castle,’ and they couldn’t come into the
house to take them, and they never did. We didn’t think they would
press my father, because he was neither a rope-maker nor carpenter;
but they were short of men, and all was fish that came to their net.
Nevertheless, we kept such strict watch that my father would not have
been taken; but he was sold to them by a blood-seller.”
“What is a blood-seller?” said Sally.
“A man that will go to the captain of the press-gang, and tell him
where he can find a man, and how he can get hold of him; and they get
paid for it.”
“O, that is the meanest, wickedest thing I ever did hear tell of.”
“It is often done in England, though; but this man didn’t do it for
money.”
“What did he do it for?”
“He and my father courted mother when they were both young men; but she
liked my father best, and married him. He always hated my father after
that; told lies about him, killed his geese, and tried to injure him in
his business. But when he found the press-gang were about, he thought
if he could sell him to them, and get him out of the way, mother would
marry him.”
“He must have been a fool, as well as a villain, to think a woman would
marry a man that did that.”
“But he did not think that would ever be known; but it came out. He
knew that my father had engaged to make cases for the army to carry
instruments in.”
“What are they?”
“Why, little square baskets, with partings in them, and covered with
leather, to put the doctors’ things in. They are so light that a man
can carry them on his back just like a knapsack.
“My father set out from home, to go to the government workshop, long
before daylight, that the press-gang might not see him; he had about
four miles to go. If he could only get there, and put his name on the
roll, he would be safe, as then he would have a passport given him to
go and come, and the press couldn’t touch him. He could make better
wages working at home, but my mother persuaded him to work for less
wages, for the sake of being safe.
“The blood-seller knew all about this, and told the press-gang. He was
in sight of the workshop, and hurrying on with all his might, when four
men jumped out from a hedge and seized him,--one of whom put his hand
on his shoulder, and told him he must go and serve in the navy during
his majesty’s pleasure. Before daylight he was out of sight and hearing
of everybody that knew him.”
“Poor man,” said Sally, “when he was almost in safety.”
“But how did you know what had become of him?” said Joe.
“He was going to board with his cousin, and come home Saturday nights.
They looked for him till the middle of the week, and, when he didn’t
come, his cousin came over to our house, and said to mother, ‘Where is
John? I thought he was going to work for the army.’
“‘He went from here at three o’clock last Monday morning.’
“‘He has not been at our house, nor at the workshop, for I have been to
see.’
“‘Not been at your house! Why, he told me he was going to enter his
name on the roll, and be mustered in, and get his protection, and then
go to your house to dinner.’
“‘My God! then the press-gang have got him!’
“As he uttered these awful words, my mother screamed out, ‘The thing
that I greatly feared has come upon me,’ and fell senseless on the
hearth. We children thought she was dead.”
“Poor soul,” cried Sally, “how she must have suffered! Your cousin
ought to have broke it to her more gently. But what did you do then?”
“He put her on the bed, and called some women that lived over the way,
and they brought her to. All her folks and friends came to see her, and
tried to comfort her, and told her that perhaps he had gone on some
unexpected business, and would return; and that even if he was pressed,
he might be discharged when the war was over.”
“How long before you found out what become of him?”
“In about ten days my mother had a letter from him. It was all blotted
over with tears. He said he was on board the hulk at Sheerness, and
that if we came quick we could see him, as he might be ordered away at
any time.”
“What is a hulk?” said Fred.
“It is an old man-of-war, not fit for service, and made a prison-ship
of, to keep the men in till they want them in the ships they are going
in. My grandfather went with us to the ship; there we found him with
two thousand more men.”
“O, my!” said Sally; “were all these poor men pressed?”
“No; my father said most of them were sailors who had shipped of their
own accord. He was so pale and heart-broken I should have hardly known
him. He wanted to be cheerful, and comfort us, but he couldn’t. The
tears ran down his cheeks in spite of him.
“He took my mother in his arms, and said, ‘My poor Nancy, what will
become of you and these little ones, now they have no father to earn
them bread, and keep want from the door; and poor old father, too, that
when we had food always had part of it.’ Little William, who was just
beginning to go alone, clung around his neck, and sobbed as if his
heart would break.
“‘We shall be at home, John, among friends; but you are going among
strangers into battle, to be exposed to the dangers of the seas.’
“They now told us we must part, for we had been together two hours,
though it seemed to us but a few moments. We had to see and talk with
him right amongst a crowd of men: some were swearing, some wrangling,
and some laughing and talking, for the sailors seemed to be as merry
as could be, and in their rough way tried to cheer us up. Father asked
my grandfather to pray with him before they parted; and when my father
told some of the sailors what he was going to do, they went among the
rest, and it was so still that you might have heard a pin drop. I saw
tears in the eyes of many of them when we went away, and they said,
‘God bless you, old father!’ in a real hearty way, to my grandfather,
and shook hands with him.”
“Sailors are rough men,” said Ben, “for they live on a rough element,
and see rough usage; but there was not a sailor in all that ship’s
company would have betrayed his shipmate, as that blood-seller did your
father.”
“While we were on board the guard-ship, one of the marines told my
father who it was that betrayed him to the press-gang, for he overheard
him talking with the captain about it.
“It was bitter parting. We never expected to see him again, and we
never did; for it was but a few months after that when he was killed in
battle.”
“What did your mother do,” said Ben, “when she heard that your father
was dead?”
“At first she took to her bed, and seemed quite heart-broken. After a
while she kind of revived up, and said it was her duty to take care
of us, for father’s sake. Then she hired men, and went into the shop
herself; and the neighbors and our relations helped us cut and whiten
the sallies, and pick the fowl, and we made out to pay the rent, and
were getting along very well, when there came a new trouble.”
“What was that?”
“Why, this same man, Robert Rankins, that sold my father, began to
come into the shop, and make us presents, and help us, and finally
asked my mother to marry him; but she spit in his face, and called him
a blood-seller, and told him what he had done to my father; but still
he would come; when, to be rid of him, she put the children among my
father’s folks, and took me and came to the States; and the rest you
know,” said the boy, his voice shaking with the feelings which the
recital called up.
Charlie’s stories were not all so sad as these. Many of them caused
them all to laugh till their sides ached.
“How did you get your living, Charles,” said Ben, “before you shipped
with the pirates in the shaving mill?”
“I ran of errands, and piled up wood on the wharves, picked up old
junk round the wharves and sold it, and went round to the doors of the
houses and sung songs; did everything and anything that I could get a
copper by, except to beg and steal. I never did beg in my life, but
sometimes I thought I must come to it or starve.”
“Sing me a song, do, Charlie,” said Fred.
“Some other time, Fred, I will; but not to-night. I have been talking
about things that make my heart ache, and I don’t feel like it.”
If Charles could tell them many things that were new and interesting,
they could equal him in all these respects. Joe could tell him stories
of logging, camp-life in the woods, and hunting; Ben, of the seas and
privateering.
Charlie was exceedingly curious and inquisitive in respect to
everything that related to the Indians. He had read and heard a great
many stories about them in his own country, from old soldiers that had
been in the British armies, and of whom every village and hamlet had
its share, and who had fought in all the Old French and Indian wars;
but he had never seen a savage, or any of their work.
“They are the fellows for making baskets,” said Joe, “and they can
color them too.” Then he told him about their canoes of birch bark.
Ben showed him a pair of snow-shoes, and put them on, and a pair of
moccasons worked with beads.
Sally showed him a box made of birch wood, covered with bark, and
worked with porcupine quills of different colors--blue, white, and
green.
“Where did they get the colors?” said Charles.
“Out of roots and barks, that no one knows but themselves.”
“What color are they?” said Charles.
“Just the color of that,” said Joe, taking a copper coin from his
pocket.
But he was the most of all delighted when he discovered that Uncle
Isaac had lived among them, and knew all their ways, and promised
himself that he would have many a good time talking with him.
“You must get the right side of Uncle Isaac if you want Indian
stories,” said Joe.
“I guess he has done that already,” replied Ben, “or he never would
have lent him his tools. Uncle Isaac don’t lend his tools to everybody.
If you only knew the secret of the Indian colors, Charles, you might
make your bedstead look gay.”
“Yes, father, and not cost a penny either. I would color the sacking
bottom green; no, red; no, blue, I think, would look the handsomest.”
CHAPTER XI.
BEN REVEALS HIS LONG-CHERISHED PLAN TO HIS FATHER.
The spring was now approaching. Ben had a large amount of lumber cut;
but, as the spars had been pretty well culled out before, much the
greater proportion of it was logs, fit only for boards. He might have
cut more spars, but he did not mean to clear any more of the island
than was needed for pasture and tillage, if he could possibly avoid it.
He had already realized a good deal of money by running some risk,
when he took his spars to Boston, and saved nearly all the expense of
transportation. But he now had determined upon a still more adventurous
plan, which he had been revolving in his mind, and preparing for all
the previous summer, and during the winter.
This was no less than to take his boards to the West Indies in a raft,
or rather to make them carry themselves. For this reason he had brought
his boards back from the mill, and stuck them up to dry, instead of
selling them there, as he might have done. It was for this reason that
he cut the cedar, and piled it up to dry, that it might be as light as
possible.
But to encounter the tremendous seas of the Gulf Stream, and keep such
an enormous body of timber together in a sea way, was quite a different
matter from going to Boston on a raft. Still the gain was in proportion
to the risk.
“If,” reasoned Ben, “men can go thirty miles up the rivers, cut logs,
raft them down, manufacture them into boards, take them to Portland,
Boston, or Wiscasset, sell them to another party, pay wharfage, pay for
handling them over two or three times, freight them to the West Indies,
and then make money, how much could a man make who cut them at his own
door, made them into boards at a tithe of the expense, transported them
at a trifling expense compared with the others, and sold them in the
same market!”
Ben did not lack for mechanical ability and contrivance, and was equal
to any emergency. He believed he had devised a plan to hold the timber
together, and put it into a shape to be transported.
But another and more embarrassing question was, who would go as
captain of the strange craft? He could think of no one who possessed
sufficient capacity as a seaman and navigator, and who would be willing
to take the risk, but John Strout; but John was liable to get the worse
for liquor, and therefore would not do.
“What a fool a man is,” said Ben to himself, “to make a beast of
himself with rum! Now, there is John Strout, as capable, noble-hearted
a fellow, and as good a seaman and navigator, as ever stepped on a
vessel’s deck, and likes to go to sea, which I never did (only went to
get money), poking about these shores in a fisherman, when he might be
captain of as fine a ship as ever swum, kept down by rum, and nothing
else. I wish Sally would let me go. I am a good mind to ask her.”
Ben at length became so possessed with the idea, that, unable any
longer to keep it to himself, he broached it to his father, fully
expecting to be ridiculed, when, to his utter astonishment, the old
seaman said, “I think it can be done, Ben. I see no difficulty but what
can be got over;” and, as usual with him, forgetting all the risk in
the profits of the adventure, exclaimed, “What a slap a fellow could
make, hey! Ben, if he only gets there. The Spaniards are hungry for
lumber, for they have been kept short through the war.”
“But the greatest difficulty of all is, who will go as master? You know
I promised Sally not to go to sea. I won’t break it.”
“No difficulty at all, Ben. I’ll go myself.”
“You go, father!”
“I go? Yes; why not? I guess I haven’t forgot the road; I’ve travelled
it often enough. I never promised my wife that I’d stay at home, only
that I’d try; and I have tried bloody hard, and I can’t. I thought I
was worn out, but I find I ain’t. I’m live oak and copper-fastened.
I’ve got rested and refitted, and am about as good as new. She can’t
sink, that’s a sure case; and I’m sure she can’t spring a leak.
She’ll be like the Mary Dun Dover the old salts tell about,--three
decks and nary bottom, with a grog-shop on every jewel-block, and
a fiddler’s-green on every yard-arm. She’ll be like the Irishman’s
boots,--a hole in the toe to let the water in, and another in the heel
to let it out; so there will be no pumping.”
It is often the case in our plans that one prominent difficulty
prevents for the time all considerations of others, which being
removed, the lesser ones present themselves. It was thus with Ben. At
first the great difficulty was to find a master; now others presented
themselves.
“Can you sell a cargo of lumber for money? Won’t you have to take sugar
or molasses? They all do; and then you will have no way to get it home,
without costing more than it is worth, for you will have to pay just
what freight they have a mind to ask.”
“The Spaniards have got money enough; your lumber is of an extra
quality, and if you offer it a little less for cash, there will be no
trouble. They will jump at it like a dolphin at a flying-fish. You can
afford to sell it a good deal less, and then make your jack.”
“Do you think you can get men to go in such a craft?”
“Go? yes. These boys round here will go to sea on a shingle with me.
John Strout will go for mate, to begin with. I tell you, my boy,”
slapping him on the back, “you’ve hit the nail on the head this time.
Only think what the doubloons will be worth here, where it takes five
dollars of our Continental money to buy a mug of flip. If you offered
Mr. Welch the gold, he would discount the interest on your debt, and
part of the principal, and be glad of the chance. Suppose you should
take the gold, and go to the farmers, who haven’t seen any hard money
this ten years,--think you wouldn’t get your corn, wheat, and meat
cheap!”
Our readers will bear in mind, that in the war of the Revolution the
Continental Congress issued bills that became depreciated, so that at
the close of the war they were not worth much more than the rebel money
in the Secession war; and Captain Rhines’s statement that it took five
dollars of it to buy a mug of flip, was literally true.
Some of the soldiers, who were paid off in this currency, were so
enraged when they found how worthless it was, that they tore it up and
threw it away; but wealthy and far-seeing men bought it of the soldiers
for a song, kept it till it was redeemed, and thus became immensely
rich.
This will explain to our young readers why it was that the people were
put to such shifts to get along; had to use withes for chains and
ropes, make their own cloth and dye-stuffs, and resort to all kinds of
contrivances to get along; because, although the country after the war
was filled with foreign goods of all kinds, none but the wealthiest had
any money to buy them with; and the wealthy people were very few indeed.
Almost all the trade was by barter--swapping one thing for another.
Rum, coffee, and sugar were more plenty on the seaboard than anything
else, because they could exchange lumber for them in the West Indies.
Lumber, too, was sold to the English vessels for money, in the form of
spars, and ton-timber ten inches square, which led the people to work
in the woods to the neglect of the soil--a thing which, as we shall see
by and by, Ben took advantage of.
“I can tell you, my boy,” continued the captain, “your going to Boston
with the spars wasn’t a priming to this; there’s money in it; I know
there is.”
Ben then told his father about the wreck of the masts and spars that
came ashore. “Isn’t that a God-send, now?”
“What sails were they?”
“A fore-course, fore-topsail, fore-topmast staysail, and
fore-topgallant yard, with the sail on it, and almost the whole of the
topsail halyards, with both blocks.”
“They will make glorious throat-halyards. Were the shear-poles wood or
iron?”
“Iron.”
“They will be first rate to cut up for bolts. Now, Ben, you get your
logs to the mill, and get them sawed, and the boards home; and when the
weather comes a little warmer, I’ll hire somebody to work on the farm
with John, and I’ll come over to the island, and we will put her right
through. I can hew and bore, but you must be master-carpenter. When it
comes to making sails and fitting rigging, I can do that, or we’ll do
it between us.”
Ben now dismissed all misgivings. He knew that his father was at home
in all kinds of craft, from a canoe to a ship; had stowed all manner
of cargoes; and having from boyhood been flung upon his own resources,
was fertile in expedients. The quickness of decision manifested by the
captain was by no means an indication of superficial knowledge, but his
mind was quick in all its movements; and all seafaring matters had been
with him subjects of mature thought and practical experience from early
life, and his judgment was equal to his resolution.
In short, he belonged to that class of men called lucky, which was one
reason why men liked to go with him. In all his going to sea, he had
never lost a man overboard.
“The greatest difficulty I see,” said Ben, “is keeping the timber
together, and high enough out of water to keep the sea from breaking
over her; but I think I have found a way, for I have been studying upon
it more than six months.”
He then told his father how he meant to build the raft, or craft,
whichever it might be called, which he highly approved. In maturing his
plan, Ben had fixed upon the summer as the best time in which to make
the voyage, as the winds were then moderate; but his father dissented
from this entirely. “In the first place,” said he, “if the winds in the
summer are light, they are more likely to be ahead; and such a thing
as that will not work to windward; and, if you heave her to, she will
make leeway at a great rate; all her play will be before the wind, or
with the wind on the quarter. October is a better month than July or
August; then we always have northerly or north-west winds. We might
take a norther that would shove us across the gulf. The summer is a bad
time on account of the yellow fever, and men will not be so willing to
go.”
“I see, father, it’s just as you say; besides, there is another thing I
did not consider; we cannot get canvas to put sail enough on her to do
much without a fair, or nearly fair, wind.”
“Just so, Ben.”
“There is another reason, father. The boards that are sawed this
spring, having all summer to season, will be dry and light, and the
craft will not be half so deep in the water, which will be a great
thing.”
“I guess it will; for the most danger will be of the sea overtaking and
breaking on her. In the fall of the year,” said the captain, “there
will be fowls, potatoes, and other things we can carry as a venture,
that will help pay expenses.”
When their deliberations became known to Mrs. Rhines, she was by no
means pleased with the turn matters had taken. “I thought, Benjamin,”
she said, with a reproachful look, “that after you had been gone almost
all the time since we were married, you would stay at home with your
family, and make my last days happy, and not go beating about at sea
in your old age, when you’ve got a good home, and enough to carry you
down the hill of life. I declare, I think it is a clear tempting of
Providence, after you have been preserved so many years. I shouldn’t
wonder if something should happen to you, and I don’t thank Ben for
putting it into your head. He won’t go himself, and leave Sally, but
he’ll send his old father.”
“Goodness, wife! don’t take it so serious. What’s a trip to the West
Indies? just to cheat the winter, and get home to plant potatoes in the
spring. I’ll bring you home a hogshead of sugar, and you can make all
the preserves you like. I’ll bring you home guava jelly, and tamarinds,
and pine-apple preserves; and you know you like to have such things
to give to sick folks. Most all the neighborhood is sick when you have
them.”
“These things are all well enough in their way,” replied his wife,
while a tear stole down her cheek, “but they cannot make up for your
absence; but I suppose it must be.”
“Don’t cry, wife. I don’t want to grieve you, and I’m sure I don’t want
to leave you; but you know what a good child Ben has been to us; how
nobly he stepped forward when I was in trouble, and helped me out, and
is now feeling the want of the money he then gave me. There’s nobody
can take charge of this craft, and help him now as I can, and I think I
ought to do it.”
When Ben returned from his visit to his father, he told Sally and Joe
the whole matter.
“Now I know,” said Sally, “what you have been thinking about so long,
and talking about in your sleep all this winter.”
“And I,” said Joe, “know what all these boards stuck up to dry, and
that cedar, mean; and what made you so delighted when all that rigging
and iron-work came ashore. I should have thought you would. Good on
your head, Ben! I’ll stand blacksmith, for I have worked most a year
in a blacksmith’s shop; and when you get her ready for sea I’ll go in
her; and, if I go, Seth Warren will go, too, for he can’t live without
me, and there will be two good corn-fed boys at any rate.”
They now improved the few remaining days of winter in hauling the
remainder of the logs from the woods, and then began with all despatch
to raft them to the mill, bringing the boards back as fast as they were
sawed, and sticking them up to season. They found the Perseverance,
that lay in the cove, very convenient for towing their rafts.
CHAPTER XII.
THE MYSTERIOUS PIG.
It was now the last of March. The fish-hawks and herons began
to return, and the whistlers and sea-ducks to come in on to the
feeding-grounds.
Charles had business enough. He began to put in practice the lessons he
had learned in the winter, and killed four whistlers out of the first
flock that came. He launched his canoe, and began to catch rock-fish on
the points of the Bull, and a reef that lay about half a mile from the
island; he also carried a lot of baskets over to John and Fred to sell.
Often in the morning, just as the day was breaking, Ben and Sally would
be awakened from sleep by the report of Charlie’s gun, as at that time
the fowl began to come from outside, where they had passed the night
sleeping on the water, to their feeding-grounds round the ledges.
Old Mr. Smullen’s black and white sow had twelve pigs. Ben heard of it,
and determined to have one of them. Charlie heard him talking about it
with Sally. A few days after he went to Sally, and said, “Mother, you
know that money that I got for baskets the other day?”
“Yes.”
“I was going to buy some cloth, and have you make me a sail for my
boat; but I mean to take the money and buy one of Mr. Smullen’s pigs
for father.”
“O, Charlie, I never would do that. You know how you have been looking
forward all winter long to having a sail to your boat, and how that
birch-bark sail plagues you; it is always ripping out, and coming to
pieces, and you have to keep making it over. Ben can buy the pig well
enough.”
“But, mother, you know how good father is to me; just as good as he
can be. He often lets me go over and see John, when I know he needs me
at home, and got all that powder and shot; and he needs every penny to
pay for the island, because he has to pay the interest to Mr. Welch,
and that, you know, is just the same as paying rent. O, that’s an awful
sound! The rent day is dreadful.”
“But, Charlie, it isn’t so here, and Mr. Welch is not like your
old-country landlords.”
“Do let me do it, mother. I have made you a sink, and a press-board,
and a rolling-pin, and a great wooden spoon, and a bread-trough; but I
have never made father anything.”
“Well, Charlie, you are a good boy, and you may do as you wish.”
“Mother, you mustn’t tell him. I want to get the pig and put him in the
sty before he knows anything about it.”
“I don’t see how you are going to work to leave the island, and get a
pig, and he never know it.”
“O, mother, when a boy gets anything in his head, he is bound to do it,
by hook or by crook.”
That very day, when Ben came in to dinner, he said, “Sally, we ought
to have that pig to eat the milk. It is too bad to throw away all the
skim-milk and buttermilk. I guess I must take time and go over to-night
and get him.”
“I wouldn’t go to-night, Ben; you will be going with a raft next week,
and I can save the milk till then.”
That night, as soon as the rest were asleep, Charles crept down stairs
barefoot, and, sitting down on the door-step, put on his shoes and
stockings. He then got into his canoe, and pulled across the water
for Captain Rhines’s. When he reached the house Tige was lying on the
door-step; the old dog knew Charlie, and came towards him, stretching
himself, yawning, and wagging his tail. “Good dog,” said Charlie,
patting him on the head. Tige held out his paw to shake hands. Charlie
knocked at the door, while the dog stood by him. Captain Rhines put his
head out of the window to inquire who was there.
“It’s Charlie.”
“Is anybody sick?”
“No, sir; but I want to see John.”
“What do you want of John, this time of night?”
Charlie told him. The captain called John, and in a few moments the
boys were hurrying off for Smullen’s, where they called the old man
out of bed, and got the pig, and Charlie was soon on his return to the
island. He put the pig in the pen, and creeping up stairs as still as a
mouse, got into bed just as the gray light was beginning to break.
As they were eating breakfast they heard a strange sound.
“Hark! what noise is that?” said Ben.
“It sounds like a pig squealing,” said Joe.
“But we haven’t got any pig.”
“I guess it’s a fish-hawk,” said Charles, scarcely able to contain
himself at beholding the puzzled look of Ben and Joe.
In a few moments a louder and shriller sound arose. “It’s a pig, as I’m
a sinner!” exclaimed Joe. Ben rushed out of doors, following the sound,
to the sty, where was a bright little black and white pig, about eight
weeks old.
“O, what a beauty!” cried Charlie; “I am so glad. Where do you suppose
he came from, father?”
“That is what I should like to know.”
“It came from Uncle Jonathan Smullen’s sow, I know,” said Joe; “for
it’s just the color, and about the right age. I don’t believe but he
brought it on, and is round here somewhere now.”
“He’s too old a man to come on here alone; besides, he never would
leave the island without first coming to the house to get something to
wet his whistle.”
“Didn’t Uncle Isaac,” said Sally, “know that you were going to have a
pig of Smullen?”
“Yes; for I sent word to Smullen by him to save me one.”
“Perhaps he and Uncle Sam have gone over to Smutty Nose, or somewhere,
gunning, and brought the pig; they didn’t like to disturb us before
day, and so put him in the pen.”
“That’s it, Sally, and they will be here to dinner.”
Ben looked in vain for Uncle Isaac all that day; no Uncle Isaac came;
but he satisfied himself with the idea that he brought the pig.
The next day, as Ben was sitting after dinner smoking, Charlie came
running in, crying that the pig had got out, and run into the woods.
“Then we shall never find him,” said Ben.
Charlie burst into tears.
“Don’t cry, Charlie. Which way did he go?”
“He took right up among the brush and tree-tops, where you cut the
timber. I didn’t see him, but I heard him, and followed the sound.
There it is again.”
The pig was now heard squealing among a great mass of tops of trees;
and, as they followed the sound, it grew fainter in the distance, and
finally ceased altogether.
“Is there no way to get him, father?” said Charlie, with downcast
looks, while the tears stood in his eyes.
“Perhaps he will come out to-night, and come round the house when he
grows hungry, and all is still. I will set a box-trap, and put some
corn in it, and we can, I think, catch him.”
While they were talking they heard a squealing in the direction of the
sty, and, looking around, saw the pig poking his nose out between the
logs, and squealing for his dinner.
With a shout of joy, Charlie jumped over the fence, and caught the pig
up in his arms, and hugged him, and scratched him. “You pretty little
creature!” said he, “you shall have some dinner. I thought I had lost
you. But, father, mother, how did he get back into the pen and we never
see him?”
“He never did get back; he has never been out of it.”
“Then, what pig was that in the woods?”
“That’s more than I know, Charles.”
It was Charlie’s turn to be puzzled now, as well as the rest. They
examined the pen all round; there was not a crack large enough to let a
pig through.
“I declare,” said Sally, “I’m almost frightened.”
“I can’t tell what it means,” said Ben; “there’s certainly another pig
in the woods.”
When Ben went to work he told Joe. Joe agreed that it was very strange.
About dark they heard it again. That night they set the trap close by
the pig-pen, and put some corn in it. “He will hear the other pig,”
said Ben, “and come out after we are all abed, and we shall catch him.”
Charlie was up by daylight in the morning; the trap was sprung. He
made sure he had caught the pig. They took the trap over into the
pen to let him out. Sally and Joe came out to look. “Father,” cried
Charlie, “only see that little rogue of a piggee, he’s lonesome. Only
look at him, father, smelling round the trap; he thinks he’s going to
have a play-fellow and bedfellow.”
While Charlie was chattering away, Ben opened the trap. Charlie was
stooping down, with both hands on his knees, looking at the place where
the trap was to open. Out jumped a raccoon, right in his face, and went
over the side of the pen in an instant. Charlie was so frightened,
that, in trying to jump back, he fell on his back, and the pig snorted
and ran to his nest. The rest burst into roars of laughter. Joe was so
tickled that he lay down on the ground and rolled.
Charlie got up, looking wild and frightened.
“What was it, father, a wolf?”
“No, Charlie, a coon. That was the creature whose tracks you saw in the
snow, and thought they were a little child’s.”
“I wish I could see it. I was so startled I had no time to look.
Couldn’t I set the trap again, and catch him, and keep him, and have
him tame for a pet?”
“I wouldn’t. You have got a pig, and the little calf that came the
other day. He would be apt to kill the chickens, and suck the eggs, and
be a great plague.”
The next morning was one of those delightful spring mornings, which one
who has witnessed them on the shore can never forget. The trees partly
leaved, were reflected in the glassy water and fish and fowl seemed
actuated by an unusual spirit of activity. Ben told Charles it was so
calm he wanted him to go over to his father’s, and tell him that he
was going to begin to work on the timber the next day, and to ask his
mother if she would let one of the girls come over and keep house a
little while, as Sally wanted to go home and make a visit.
“Well, Charlie,” said Captain Rhines, “have you come after another pig?”
“No, sir; we’ve got two pigs now.”
“Two pigs!”
“Yes, sir; leastways when we catch one of them.”
He then told him about the pig in the woods--how they tried to find
him, and set a trap for him, and caught a raccoon.
“I know who the pig in the woods is,” said John; “it’s Joe Griffin; he
can talk like anybody, or imitate any kind of critter. It’s him, I’ll
wager my life, and he’s been making fools of the whole of you.”
“I never knew he could do such things.”
“But,” said the captain, “Ben and Sally do; and I should have thought
they would have taken the hint before this time. Have they found out
where the other pig came from?”
“No, sir; they think Uncle Isaac brought him on when he was going
a-gunning.”
“I tell you what you do, Charlie; the next time you hear the pig
squeal, you set the brush on fire (the fire won’t do any harm this time
of year), and see what comes of it.”
“That I will, sir; I’ll warm his back for him.”
“Did Ben say you must come right back?”
“No, sir; he said it was a good ways for a boy like me to pull, but
that I might stay till afternoon; and, if the wind blew hard, stay till
it was calm.”
The boys went down to the cave, because Charlie wanted to see Tige
catch sculpins and flounders. Then they sat down under the great willow
to talk, and John showed Charles the place where Tige tumbled down the
bank when Pete Clash and his crew were beating him.
“What kind of a time did Fred have on the island?”
“O, he had a bunkum time. He said he never had so good a time in his
life.”
“Did he like me?”
“Yes; he liked you first rate. He said he was so glad you didn’t know
how to shoot.”
“What for?”
“Because, he said, you knew so much more than he did, and could do
so many things, that he should have felt as if he was a fool, if he
couldn’t have shown you something.”
“I can shoot now. I shot a blue-bill, and three old squaws, and
horse-headed coot last week. When I first got up I saw them in the
mouth of the brook; they were playing and diving. When they would dive,
I would run up while they were under water, till I got behind some
bushes, and then I crawled up and cut away.”
“Fred told me about your bedstead,--how handsome it was,--and about the
sink; I must come over and see that. I want you to tell me what you
told Fred about the time your father was pressed; won’t you, Charlie?”
“I will, John, some time when we sleep together. I don’t like to tell
you in the daytime, because it makes me cry, and I don’t like to cry
before folks; but in the night, when we are in bed, I’ll tell you. I
liked Fred very much, and so we all did; you tell him I said so--won’t
you?”
“Yes; we’ll go over and see him after dinner; by that time the wind
will be at the eastward, and you can sail home. Fred has got some tame
rabbits.”
“Where did he get them?”
“Some of them are young ones the cat caught, and he got them away from
her before she hurt them; and the rest are old ones that he caught in a
trap. Are there any rabbits on the island?”
“No, not one; but there’s raccoons and squirrels. Don’t you think,
there ain’t any birds there,--only the sea-fowl. Sometimes wild
pigeons, woodpeckers, robins, and blue-jays come on there, but they
fly right off again; I wish they would stay and build nests. We have
such a sight of birds in Lincolnshire! O, I wish you could hear a lark
sing! they will start from the ground, and go right up straight in the
air, singing all the way; and when you can’t see them you can hear them
sing. Why, the swallows build right in the thatch.”
“Thatch! what is that?”
“Why, they cover the houses with straw, instead of shingles.”
“I should think the water would run right through.”
“It won’t; they’re just as tight as can be.”
“Can you do it?”
“Yes; I’ve helped my father mend the thatch a hundred times.”
“Some time let’s make a little house, just as they do there, and you
make a straw roof.”
“Well, so we will. They make houses there mostly of stone, and we can
get plenty of stones, on the island. They make bee-hives there of
straw.”
At dinner-time Captain Rhines said, “Wife, you must tell Ben whether
you will let him have one of the girls.”
“Indeed, if you are going on there to work, I’ve a good mind to go,
too; I ought to know how to keep house by this time.”
“You never said a better thing, wife; you know how much Ben thinks of
his mother; he would be in ‘kingdom come.’”
“Well, you are going away this winter, and if I thought the girls could
get along--”
“Get along, mother! we’ll get along first rate,” was the unanimous
response.
“But then there’s the soap; I was thinking of making soap this week.”
This was only adding fuel to the fire. Filled with the idea of making
soap, the girls were now determined she should go.
“Why, mother,” said Mary, the eldest, “we can make the soap. I have
helped you make it a great many times, and if there is anything I don’t
know, I can get Mrs. Hadlock to show us. What shall we be good for, if
we are always tied to your apron-strings, and never try to do anything
for ourselves?”
“Sure enough,” said the father; “’twill be a good thing for you and
John both; you can take care in the house, and he out of doors.”
“I’ll set up the leach for you,” said John; “and after the soap is
made, if we have good luck, we’ll have a celebration, and make candy.”
“Come, wife, make up your mind; don’t worry about the children; if
I ain’t afraid to leave the farm to John, I’m sure you needn’t be
afraid to leave the house to the girls. I’ve no idea of doing with our
John as old Peter ---- did with his boy Jim. He never learnt Jim to
do anything, or contrive anything, for himself, from the time he was
hatched. ‘James,’ the old man would say in the morning, ‘do you go into
the barn-yard, and look in the north-east corner, and you will find a
hoe; take that hoe, and go down to the western field, and begin to hoe
on the acre piece, and stick two punkin seeds in every other hill.’
After the old man died, Jim was good for nothing, because he never knew
where to find the hoe; lost his land, and is now working out at day’s
work, and is as poor as Lazarus.”
Mrs. Rhines was not at all convinced that she was of such little
consequence in the household, and that affairs could proceed so easily
without her.
“There is that quilt,” she said, “that I meant to have had put into the
frames next week.”
This ill-judged speech only made her absence more desirable.
“O, mother!” was the unanimous cry, “we can quilt the quilt.”
“There, girls, hold your tongues; you know you can do no such thing.”
“Yes, mother, we can; because we can get Hannah Murch, Aunt Molly
Bradish, and Sukey Griffin, and do it first-rate.”
“I want the fun of quilting it myself. Well, I will go; the quilt can
stand till I get back. Charlie, you tell Ben I’m coming to keep house
for him, but he must come after me himself, in his great canoe; I’m
a scareful creature by water; I ain’t a bit like Mrs. Hadlock or
Sally--willing to go any where in a clam-shell.”
The next morning Ben took Sally to the main land, and brought his
mother on to the island. It was a great gratification to Ben to have
his father and mother on the island, in his own home; and the hours of
relaxation from labor were seasons of heartfelt enjoyment.
Charlie lost no time putting into execution Captain Rhines’s directions
in respect to the pig, having first enjoined upon them the greatest
secrecy, not even permitting them to tell Ben and Sally of his plots
and suspicions, lest Joe, who was very quick of perception, should
divine what was in store for him.
In the first place, he made a fire of some old oak and maple stumps
and chips, in a hollow of the ledge, that he might have some brands at
hand whenever he might want them. A day or two passed away, and nothing
was heard of the pig. The fire smouldered away in the old roots, and
Charlie once in the while flung on fresh fuel.
At length, one day, just after Joe had eaten his dinner, and gone to
work, while Ben and the captain sat down to talk a little while with
Mrs. Rhines, he heard him squealing in the midst of a great mass of
brush, composed of the tops of several large pines, and branches from
other trees which had been flung upon them, in clearing a road to
haul the logs. The whole mass lay up very high from the ground, and
underneath the pig was running about and squealing for dear life. The
brush, which had been cut the year before, was full of pitch, and as
apt to catch as tinder. The moment Charlie heard the noise, he ran
to the place, and began to call, “Pig, pig;” and piggy replied by
squealing with all his might.
“Poor piggy, are you hungry? Wait a minute, and I will get you some
corn.”
He ran to the house and got some corn in a dish, and to the fire for a
brand; he called the pig, rattled the corn in the dish with one hand,
and with the other lighted the brush in different places, as he walked
around the heap.
“Chook, chook,” cried Charlie; squeal, squeal, went the pig.
The cunning boy had now fired the heap in a dozen places, completely
encircling the pig. A slight breeze now sprang up as the flood tide
made, and in an instant the fire, which had been gradually making
progress, began to roar and crackle, and soon swept through the brush
in a sheet of flame.
“Jerusalem, what is this!” bellowed a voice, and Joe Griffin leaped
out from the midst of the burning pile; the brands rolled off the back
of his woollen shirt, which was thoroughly singed, while a fox-skin
cap he wore was scorched to a crisp, as was his hair; he ran round and
round, as though he was mad, blowing his fingers (which where slightly
burned), and slapping them on his thighs, while on his face was a
mingled expression of pain, arising from the burn, and anger at being
outwitted.
“Pig, pig, pig-e-e!” screamed Charlie, rattling the corn, and laughing
as though he would split between every word.
“Shut up, you little brat!” cried Joe, flinging a pitch knot at him
with a good will, that, if he had not dodged, would have broken his
head.
Roused by the uproar, and smelling the smoke, the whole family ran to
see what was the matter. They could not help laughing to see the figure
Joe made dancing about, and blowing his fingers.
“What is the matter, Joe?” asked Ben.
“The pig has bit him,” cried Charlie. “O, I wish John was here.”
Joe ran off to the beach to cool his fingers.
“What in the world,” said Ben, “is the reason, that when all of us have
always known what a mimic Joe is, that we couldn’t have thought it was
him squealing, and making such fools of us. How did you know it was
him, Charlie?”
“John told me; and I don’t believe he’ll try to be pig in the brush
again.”
“Father,” said Ben, “do you know whether Uncle Isaac has been on any of
the islands gunning?”
“No; but I don’t believe he has fired a gun these three weeks; he’s
been too busy. Why?”
“Because there’s a pig in the pen that came there we don’t know how;
all we know is, that we found him there.”
“Why,” said Mrs. Rhines, looking up from her work, “Charlie got a pig.”
Captain Rhines gave his wife a nudge to keep dark, but it was too late.
Ben had heard the remark, and insisted upon knowing.
“Well,” said his mother, “I suppose I am telling tales out of school;
but Charlie came to our house in the middle of the night, and called
John out of bed, and they took off, as though they were possessed, to
Jonathan Smullen’s, after a pig.”
“That was well planned, Charlie,” said Joe; “and I’ll forgive you for
singeing me so.”
“I should never have thought of setting the brush on fire, Mr.
Griffin, if Captain Rhines had not told me to.”
“We are square now, Joe,” said the captain; “your scorching will do to
offset the fright you gave me, when I thought I had shot Ben, having
put one bullet through the window, and the other into a milk-pan of
eggs, on the dresser.”
CHAPTER XIII.
A NOVEL CRAFT.
John Strout now came from the West Indies, and went to work with them.
He brought home tamarinds, guava jelly, and other good things for
Sally; a hat made of palm-leaf for Ben, and some shells for Charlie.
He also brought Ben a cocoanut to keep liquor in; the end of it, where
the eyes are, was made in the shape of a negro’s face; the two little
round places, where we bore to let the milk out, serving the purpose of
eyes, with eyebrows cut over them, and filled with some red matter; in
the mouth was a lead pipe to drink from; large ears were also made, and
a nose; the figure looked somewhere between a monkey and a negro, funny
enough, and was full of rum. He also brought them home twenty-five
pounds of coffee, and a hundred weight of sugar.
Charlie was very much puzzled to know how the meat was got out of the
shell without breaking it. John told him that he bored the hole for the
mouth, and then turned the milk out, filled it with salt water, and
set it in the sun, when, the meat decaying, he washed it all out; then
scraping the outside with a knife and piece of glass, oiled it, and
made the face with an old file, which he ground to a sharp point.
Ben and Joe now commenced their craft, laying the keel on the beach,
making the rough skeleton of a vessel. As their object was neither
beauty nor durability, only to serve the present occasion, they used
all the cedar possible, that she might be the more buoyant.
They took the iron from the spars, and Joe, who had worked in a
blacksmith shop, took it over to the main land to a shop, and made
their fastening. They, however, used but very little iron, making
wooden treenails answer the purpose. They made a bow and stern frame,
and set up two ribs on a side where the masts were to come, laid a
rough deck at the mast-holes, and forward for the windlass and the heel
of the bowsprit to rest on; the remainder was all open. They then put
on two streaks of plank next the keel, to hold the ends of the timbers,
and hung the wales.
As Uncle Isaac had finished his planting, he now came to work with
them; they made the windlass, rudder, and spars; they also sheathed
the bow and stern with boards, where she entered and left the water, so
as to diminish the friction somewhat. The spars looked queer enough:
they were beautiful sticks, as straight as a rush; but there was no
labor expended upon them, except what was absolutely necessary. She was
to be rigged into a schooner,--and an awful great one she was, carrying
more than three hundred thousand of timber. The masts, where the hoops
were to run, were as smooth as glass, but as to the part below the deck
it was just as it grew; so with the other spars,--where there was no
necessity of their being smooth, the bark was left on the stick.
Ben now ascertained that there was a large trade carried on from
Wiscasset in spars and ton-timber, that was shipped to Europe. He
accordingly took what he had, and making them into a raft, sold them
there, and bought his rudder-irons, a second-hand jib and flying-jib,
and provisions for his workmen.
She now sat on the beach ready for her sails and cargo, and the tide
ebbed and flowed, and the winds blew through her frame. It must be
confessed she was a craft of magnificent distances, and probably
could not have been insured at Lloyd’s. It was not desirable to load
her till near the time of starting, in order that the cargo might
not water-soak, as the great object was to render her as buoyant as
possible. Ben therefore discharged his men, while he and his father
went to work on the rigging. Uncle Isaac went home, while Joe went on a
fishing cruise with John Strout.
During all this period Charlie had been by no means idle; there were a
great many things he could do to help along. When the men were hewing,
he, with his narrow axe, could score in and beat off for them (that
is, cut notches in the timber, close together, and then split out the
wood between), which very much facilitated the labor of hewing. He
could also drive treenails; and when the men were not using the broad
axe, would hew out small sticks with a skill that called forth many
compliments from Uncle Isaac, who took great pains to show him, and
found a most apt scholar.
Charlie now became very anxious to see his mother. Every day or two he
would say to Ben, “What does make mother stay so long? she never did
before; she used to think she could not go to be gone a day, and now
she has been gone almost a month.”
At length, one pleasant morning, Ben, to his great joy, took the
canoe, and went to bring her home. If Charlie went down to the eastern
point once that day with the spy-glass, he went fifty times.
“I can’t do anything,” he said to Captain Rhines, “nor set myself about
anything, till I know whether mother is coming.”
It was about the middle of the afternoon when Charlie saw the white
sail of the canoe in Captain Rhines’s cove, and she soon came into view
before a light southerly wind. Charlie saw through the glass his mother
sitting in the stern, and, jumping into his canoe, went to meet them.
“Why, mother!” said he, “what makes you look so pale? are you sick?”
“No, Charlie; I never was better in my life.”
When they neared the shore Charlie pulled ahead, and landing, stood
ready to hug his mother as soon as she should get out of the canoe.
“Don’t hug me hard,” said she, kissing him, “for you might do some
damage.”
“O, mother! what is that under your shawl? do let me see. Is it the
cloth for my breeches?”
“Look,” said she, opening the folds of her shawl.
“O, a little baby! Whose is it? Where did you get it? What a wee bit of
a thing! what little mites of hands! I wish it would wake up and open
its eyes. I do love babies so! and how I shall love your baby,--our
baby. It will be my brother--won’t it, mother?”
“Yes, Charlie; but let us go up to the house, and let Captain Rhines
and his wife see the grandchild.”
“Now, mother,” said Charlie (after the grandparents had seen and
admired the baby, and they had drunk a cup of tea in honor of his
arrival), “I want you to go and see my pig, and the rabbits. You don’t
know how piggy has grown. Mrs. Rhines told me it would make him grow to
wash him; so every Monday, when she had done washing, I put him in the
tub, and washed him, and the black on him is just as black as ink, and
the white as white as snow. I have made him a nest in the woods, and he
goes there every night and sleeps.”
It was not the custom in those days to put pigs in pens and keep them
there; they let them run about the door, and feed in the pasture with
the cattle, only putting them up in the fall to fatten; or when they
bought a strange one in the spring, they shut him up till he got tame.
“Mother, would you believe that a pig knew anything? I’ve taught him
to follow me all round, just like a dog, and come running out of the
woods when I call him. I’ve named him Rover; and don’t you think he
knows when the tide is down just as well as I do; then he goes to the
beach, and digs clams with his nose; he never goes a clamming at high
water. When I am fishing for flounders he will sit by me till I pull
up a fish, and then he will swallow it in no time; sometimes I say,
‘Rover, you can’t have that; it is for the house;’ and he will look so
wishful I have to give it to him.”
“I never heard of such a pig before, Charlie; I expect you will learn
him to play with sea ducks.”
“I never thought of that, mother; I don’t believe but I will. Mother,
you know Fred Williams gave me some rabbits?”
“Yes.”
“Well, they have got young ones. O, they are the prettiest little
things that ever were; come and see them;” and, getting her by the
hand, he drew her out of doors.
“Mother,” he said, “it was not altogether to see the pig that I got you
out here.”
“I thought as much, Charlie.”
“Well, sit down on this nice log; I want to tell you what good people
Captain Rhines and his wife are; you don’t know how good they are.”
“Yes, I do, Charlie; they’re real estate--both of them. I never
shall forget when my father died, and mother was left poor and
broken-hearted, with a family of little children, and knew not which
way to turn. Captain Rhines was at home that year; they were building a
vessel for him; he came over every night to see her, and every time he
seemed to lift some of the load from mother’s heart. Somehow, it seemed
to me that he did more good than the minister, for when he came she
would sit and cry all the while he was talking to her, and after he was
gone; but when Captain Rhines came, he gave her life and courage, and
she would go about the house quite cheerful; sometimes he would slip
money into her hand.”
“I suppose,” said Charlie, “she needed that more than praying, because
she could pray for herself.”
“I tell you what it is, Charlie; if Captain Rhines should live to be
old, and needed some of his children to take care of him, wouldn’t I
pay that debt up, principal and interest, as far as was in my power?”
“I’ll bet you would, mother; and I’d help you.”
“I’ve waked up at sunrise many times, and seen Captain Rhines and Ben
ploughing for mother; they would plough till nine o’clock, then go
home, eat their breakfast, and then do their own work, while mother and
I, with Sam to drop the seed, would plant it, and the next day they
would get more ready.”
“Now, mother, I want you to see the pig.” Charlie began to slap his
hands on his sides, and cry, ‘Rover, Rover,’ when a great rustling was
heard in the woods, and the pig came on the gallop, his black and white
sides glistening in the sun as he ran. Living on grass, and in the
woods, with the milk from the house, he had not that protuberance of
belly which swine reared in sties possess, and really merited Charlie’s
encomium of being handsome; he jumped up on his master and rubbed
against his legs, with low grunts, expressive of satisfaction.
Ben and his father now built a shed just sufficient to shelter them
from the sun and rain, and let in the cool summer breeze. Here they
fitted the rigging, and altered the ship’s sails into those of a
schooner; and so well versed were Captain Rhines and his son in all
nautical matters, that, by dint of splicing and piecing, they managed
to get all the standing rigging, and nearly all the running gear, out
of the materials of the wreck. They now put the rigging over the
mast-heads, and set it up, and all was ready, except bending the sails.
In the spring, soon after Ben had told his father of his plan, the
captain said to Charlie, “Now you set all the hens you can, and raise
chickens, and when I go to the West Indies you can send them out as a
venture, and get coffee, sugar, and cocoa-nuts.”
Charlie told his mother, and they put their heads together, and set
every hen that was broody, insomuch that Ben complained that he could
not get an egg to eat. In addition to this, Charlie went and borrowed
sitting hens of Uncle Isaac, Sam Yelf, and Joe Bradish.
“I tell you another thing you do,” said the captain: “negroes there use
lots of baskets, that they carry on their heads, filled with oranges
and other things; they also use them in loading and unloading vessels,
and sometimes they carry them by straps of green hide that go over
their shoulders. Now, you make some handsome square baskets, with flat
bottoms, and they will be so much better than theirs that they, or
their masters, will buy them.”
“How can the slaves buy them? Do they have money?”
“Money! yes.”
“How do they get it?”
“Why, they have Sundays and holidays to themselves, and what they earn
they have. Many of them have earned enough to buy their freedom, and
are well off. Do you go over to our house, and ask John to give you
some turnip-seed, and sow it on that ground you burned over when you
was roasting Joe Griffin, and see what turnips will grow there; you can
hack the seed in with the hoe; turnips will sell first rate in the West
Indies; I’ll tell them they are Yankee yams.”
“But how will you get your things home? you will have no vessel to come
in.”
“Let me alone for that, Charlie; I’m an old traveller.”
It may be well to inform our readers that in those days but
comparatively few vegetables were carried there, and they brought a
high price in the way of barter.
Charlie was by no means slack in acting upon these suggestions, and
made baskets with all his might.
It was a most comical sight to see Ben holding his baby; his thumb
was bigger than the infant’s leg, and his great hairy arms contrasted
strangely enough with the white, delicate flesh of the new-born child.
He held it, too, in such a funny way, with the tips of his fingers,
as if afraid he should squat it to death, and with an expression of
anxiety upon his face amounting almost to anguish.
“I mean to make a cradle for him,” said Charlie.
“You are too late,” said Ben; “for the cradle was made before he was
born, long enough.”
He then told Charlie to go up chamber, and look under some boards in
the north-east corner; and there he found the cradle that Sam Atkins
made for the boy, whose birth Seth Warren, in a spirit of prophecy,
foretold upon the day the house was raised.
CHAPTER XIV.
THE BURN.
It was now the latter part of summer. The vessel being completed as
far as was possible at present, Captain Rhines went home, leaving Ben
and Charlie alone. There was now a large piece of land running along
the eastern side of the island, beside the middle ridge, which was
ready for a burn. From this land Ben had hauled his spars, and logs for
boards, leaving the tops of the trees and all the brush; in addition to
this there was left quite a growth of other trees, that were not fit
for timber; these he and Joe had cut early in the spring, so that the
soil was completely covered with a dense mass of combustible matter,
as dry as tinder. Ben was very anxious to burn this. He had now two
cows, a bull, and a yoke of oxen, and was obliged to buy hay and bring
on to the island for them, which, was a great deal of work. He had to
hire his oxen pastured away in the summer, as the island was so densely
covered with wood that it afforded but little pasturage, which was
eked out by falling maple trees for them to browse. It was therefore
of the greatest importance to burn this land, and get it into grass as
soon as possible; but Ben hesitated a long time, fearing that he might
burn himself up, it was so dry, and hoping that a shower would come
to wet the grass, so the fire would not run. At length it was evident
he must burn it, or it would be too late to sow, as he would soon be
engaged in loading his timber, and have no opportunity.
One morning, when the dew was very heavy, almost equal to rain, and the
slight wind from the south-west blew directly away from the buildings,
he determined to make the attempt. In the first place they removed
everything from the house to the beach; then they hauled Charlie’s
canoe up to the house, and filled it with water; they also filled all
the barrels, troughs, and tubs about the premises, and drove the cattle
to the beach, lest the fire should run into the woods.
Ben would have ploughed two or three furrows around his buildings,
which would have been the most effectual preventive; but, after the
vessel was built, he had put his oxen away to pasture.
The settlers run great risks in clearing their lands, either of
burning up their houses, or of destroying the timber they wish to spare.
A few years since there were fires in Maine that burned for weeks, and
destroyed thousands of acres of timber, and cattle, houses, barns, and
many human beings, and even crossed streams.
But there is no other way. Here was a quantity of ground covered with
brush, logs, and bushes: to have hauled all this away would have been
an endless job, and after that the ground could neither be ploughed nor
planted, being entirely matted with green roots, and cold and sour;
besides, the moment the sun was let into it, sprouts would begin to
spring up from the stumps, and weeds, blackberry, and raspberry bushes
from the ground, and cover it all over. But a fire in a few hours will
lick up every stick and leaf, except the large logs and stumps, burn
up all the bushes, and the whole network of small roots that cover the
ground, so that nothing will start for months, as it destroys all the
seeds of the weeds and trees, of which the ground is full; and if it
is dry, and a thorough burn, will so roast the large stumps that very
few of them will ever sprout again,--while, as in Ben’s case, most of
them are spruce, pine, or fir, that never throw up any sprouts from the
roots. There is then left a thick bed of ashes, which receives and
fosters whatever is put into it.
Our readers will perhaps recollect, that along the shore of the island
was a cleared spot covered with green grass. This cleared land extended
back on both sides of the brook for quite a distance, and was dotted
over with elms; and on a little knoll, about half way between the brook
and the middle ridge, was an enormous rock maple, with that perfect
symmetry of proportions which this noble tree often presents. The large
lower limbs, bending downwards, came so near to the ground that Charlie
could reach the tips of them, by standing on a stone.
How the boy loved this tree! It was beautiful in the spring, with its
red buds; beautiful in summer, with its masses of dark-green foliage,
and its refreshing shade; but most beautiful of all in the autumn, with
its crimson tints, relieved by the lighter colors of the surrounding
trees. Here he made his whistles; here he was quite sure in a hot day
to find the pig stretched out in the shade, with his nose stuck in
the moist, cool earth under a great root, and the cattle lying round
chewing their cuds.
He also had a swing under the limbs, made of two long beech withes,
that Joe Griffin had twisted for him; and often, after supper, Sally
would take her sewing, come up and swing with him; and sometimes he
would swing the pig, for he had made a basket that he could put into
the swing.
Under ordinary circumstances this large piece of cleared ground would
have proved a perfect protection; but it was a sharp drought, and the
grass was dead, dry, and inflammable. Nevertheless, as the dew was
so heavy, and the grass damp with a fog which had set in the night
before, Ben thought there could be no danger, and put in the fire. As
it ran along the ground, and gradually crept away from the house, he
congratulated himself that all danger was over; but the wind suddenly
shifted to the north-east, and drove the fire directly towards the
house. Had Ben set the fire at first along the whole line of the brush,
there would have been burnt ground between him and the mass of fire,
which would have cut off the communication, and he would have been
safe; but he set it on one corner, and when the wind shifted, the flame
driven by it dried the moisture from the grass, and made rapid progress
towards the house, while a large strip of dry grass made a bridge for
the fire to travel on.
As the wind was not yet strong enough to prevent the fire from running,
it made good progress in the right direction, burning all the more
thoroughly that it burned slowly; but, on the other hand, it was
constantly coming in the direction of the house, increasing its pace as
the wind and heat dried up the moisture from the grass.
Soaking blankets in salt water, they spread them on the roof of the
house, wet the ground around it, and urged to desperation by the fear
of losing their home, beat out the flame from the grass with hemlock
boughs, which is the best way to stop fire that is running in grass.
But the wind now began to rise, and as fast as they beat it out in
one place it caught in another, as the wind blew the tufts of blazing
grass in all directions. Ben’s hair and clothes were singed. Sally
was frequently on fire, and had it not been that she was clothed in
woollen, and that Ben threw water on her, she would have been burned
up. The baby, during all this time, had been quietly sleeping in the
cradle, but now, waked by the smoke, it began to sneeze and cry.
“Charlie,” said Sally, “I can do more at fighting fire than you can;
take the baby to the shore, and take care of it.”
They were now almost worn out with exertion; their eyes and lungs were
full of smoke,
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