The Young Ship Builders of Elm Island 15

The Young Ship Builders of Elm Island 15

Looking all around to see if anybody saw him, he began to dance around

the boat, and sing, “I’ve done it! I’ve done it! I’ve got something

that won’t split in two now! What will Fred, John, and Uncle Isaac say

to this? Won’t I be proud showing her to Uncle Isaac and Joe Griffin!

I must finish her up nice, for their eyes are sharper than needles.

There’s Sam Chase, who laughed when the West Wind split in two, and

said he was glad of it--mean, spiteful creature! I guess he’ll laugh

t’other side of his mouth this time. Now, I should like to wrestle

with somebody, or do something or other. Guess I’ll go look at the

apple trees, and see if the scions have taken. There’s the horn for

supper. Well, I’ll go after supper. It was well for me it rained this

forenoon, or I should not have accomplished all this.”

 

After supper, as Charlie sat playing with the baby, and telling

his father of his success with the boat, in came Ben, Jr., in high

feathers, with both hands full of scions, and covered with tow, and

flung them into his mother’s lap, laughing and crowing as though he had

done some great and good thing.

 

“O, you little torment!” cried Charlie; “if you haven’t pulled out all

the scions Mr. Welch gave me!”

 

It was even so. Ben, attracted by the bunches of clay covered with tow,

and the scions sticking up through them, had made a clean sweep, and

pulled out or broken off every one.

 

“Only see, mother!” said Charlie; “they’ve nearly all started! There’s

one got two leaves, and there’s two more with the buds opening!”

 

“I’ve a good mind,” said his mother,” to give him a good whipping.”

 

Ben, who loved Charlie with all his heart, seeing he was angry with

him, began to cry as if his heart would break.

 

“Don’t cry,” said Charlie, mollified in an instant. “I wouldn’t whip

him, mother. He didn’t know any better. I’m glad I didn’t graft all of

them.”

 

To change his thoughts, he took his gun and Sailor, and, getting into

the Twilight, pulled over to Griffin’s Island.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER IX.

 

CHARLIE LEARNING A NEW LANGUAGE.

 

 

WHEN Charlie first sat down to his oars, he was not in so happy and

jubilant a frame as when leaving the barn, after having completed the

timbering out of his boat; but as he pulled away from the island, the

calm hour, the beauty of the sea and shore, the glassy surface of the

bay touched by the rays of the setting sun, gradually tranquillized his

perturbed feelings.

 

“I have learned to graft, at any rate,” he soliloquized, “and I can get

some more scions of Mr. Welch.” And by the time he was half way to the

island he had begun to sing and talk aloud to himself.

 

Charlie’s love for the soil had by no means become weakened through his

devotion to boat-building; and now that the distress was over, and he

felt that he could do it, he bethought himself of other matters that

required looking after.

 

The garden must be seen to right away, the beets and carrots must be

weeded, the honeysuckle nailed up, the beans and squashes hoed, and

sticks put to the peas.

 

“There,” said he, “is that cabbage rose-bush, Mary Rhines gave me,

ought to have a hoop to hold it up. I’ll make one, like a Turk’s head,

out of willow, and stain it, and plane out three stakes of oak to hold

it up; and I’ll stain them; it’s the last green dye I’ve got; but I

don’t care.”

 

Charlie now had two objects in view: one was, to shoot a seal, and the

other, and more important one, to learn to growl like them. In summer

evenings, seals are very fond of resorting to the ledges at half tide,

and to the sand spits, where they lie and suckle their young, where

they feel safe, and much at home, growl, and are very sociable. The

many ledges lying off Griffin’s Island were frequented by seals; but

one in particular, called the Flatiron from its shape, was a favorite

resort, because, while the others were within gunshot of the island,

this was far beyond the range of any ordinary gun. Charlie, knowing

this, had brought, in addition to his own gun, Ben’s great wall piece,

the barrel of which was seven feet in length, and the stock looked as

if it had been hewed out with an axe. Uncle Isaac had often threatened

to make a new stock for it. Notwithstanding its bad looks, it was

a choice gun for long distances, and threw the charge where it was

pointed.

 

This ledge also possessed another attraction for the seals, as it was

flat, smooth, covered with a soft mat of sea-weed, and at the edges

slanted off into deep water; thus they could put their watchman on a

little ridge that rose up in the middle very much like the handle of

a flatiron, and when he gave the alarm, the whole band could, in an

instant, souse into the water.

 

Charlie knew that Uncle Isaac and Joe Griffin could imitate the noise

of seals so exactly as to draw them on to the ledge, they supposing it

to be another seal; and that Uncle Isaac had a seal stuffed, which he

would set on a ledge, as though alive, and then, concealing himself,

make a noise like them. The seals, hearing the noise, and seeing the

stuffed one, would endeavor to crawl up, and thus afford a shot.

Charlie was an excellent singer, and a pretty good mimic, and hoped by

practice to obtain sufficient accuracy to deceive a seal; and he wanted

to kill one to stuff, that he might try Uncle Isaac’s plan.

 

Landing, and crossing the island, he approached the bank abreast the

ledge. Near this bank was a ridge of shelly rock, rising, about two

feet from the grass ground, to a sharp edge, from which the land sloped

gradually towards the centre of the island--just the place to lie and

rest the big gun over the edge of the rock.

 

Although Charlie had no objection to shooting a seal, he was much

more anxious to practise growling. It was little after high water: he

crawled up behind the ledge, with the boat’s sail over him, to keep off

the dew, and lay down in the bright moonlight to watch the seals, who

were swimming around the top of the rock, that was just beginning to

get bare, preparing to go on to it. With the patience of a sportsman

Charlie waited; gradually the rock was left above the water. At length

one seal ventured to land; then others followed; and soon they began

to converse. Charlie had practised a good deal, at home, by striving

to imitate them from recollection, and now had come over here that he

might hear them more, and fix the sounds well in his memory: so he lay

and listened a long time to the sounds, imitating them in a low tone,

repeating them again and again. At length, flattering himself he had

caught the tone quite perfectly, he concluded to try it on the seals;

but the moment his voice rose on the air, every one of them went into

the water. Charlie was quite mortified at this; but it was evident

they were not much alarmed, for they soon came back, and resumed

their growling. After listening again for some time, and practising

as before, he made another effort aloud, when, to his great joy, they

remained; another attempt was equally successful; but the third time

some false note startled the wary creatures, and off they slid from the

ledge; but after swimming around a while they returned again.

 

Charlie, quite well satisfied now with his proficiency in the language,

determined to shoot one of his instructors. He took aim at a big

fellow who sat upon the highest part of the ledge and seemed to act as

watchman, and fired the old gun. It was heavily loaded with buckshot,

and the seal never moved after receiving the charge.

 

“So much for the big gun,” said Charlie.

 

On his way home he concluded not to meddle with the boat again till

some rainy day, or till he had put the garden and flowers to rights.

 

After skinning his seal, cutting the skin as little as possible, he

stuffed it with salt, intending to make a decoy of it. He rather

thought he should get into it, as the Indian got into the hog’s skin

to kill poor Sally Dinsmore, thinking he could growl a great deal

better in a seal-skin.

 

The mornings now were most beautiful; it was generally calm till ten

or eleven o’clock; and a busier or more attractive spot than Elm

Island presented it would be difficult to find. As the gray light of

morning began to break, you would hear far off in the woods a single,

sudden, harsh cry, breaking with explosive force from the mouth of an

old heron, instantly followed by others; the squawks would add their

contribution; then would follow the sharp screams of the fish-hawk,

mingling with the crowing of cocks,--of which there were no less than

three in the barn,--the clear notes of the robin, and the twittering of

many swallows from the eaves, that, with their heads sticking out of

little round holes in their nests, were bidding their neighbors good

morning.

 

As the sun came up, all were stirred to new emulation; the bobolink,

shaking the dew from his wings, poured forth his wild medley of

notes; and faint in the distance was heard the bleating of sheep from

Griffin’s Island.

 

As Charlie, mounted on a ladder, trained the honeysuckle over the

front door and windows, he often paused to listen, and sitting upon

the round of the ladder, inhaled the fragrance of the morning air, or

gazed from his elevation upon the beautiful scene before him--the noble

bay, smooth as a mirror, touched by the full rays of the rising sun;

the gray cliffs of the islands, frowning above, with their majestic

coronal of forests; and the green nooks, here and there upon them,

glittering with dew.

 

“I wish I was a bobolink--I do,” said he, as he listened to one, who,

more ambitious than his mates, was striving to lead the choir, from

the summit of a mullein stalk, with mouth wide open, wings and every

feather on him in motion.

 

The old bush Mrs. Hadlock had given her daughter, sacred to the

associations of childhood, was now bending beneath its weight of

flowers, while close beside it blushed the cabbage roses, hanging in

rich clusters over the edge of the ornamental hoop Charlie had put

around the bush.

 

To his great joy, Charlie found, on inspection, that his grafts were

not all destroyed. With the best intention in the world to do mischief,

Ben, Jr., had not accomplished his intent. The clay had baked so hard

around the scions, that he had broken part of them off, leaving a

couple of buds; for Charlie had put one bud into the cleft of each

stock, and they were coming through the clay.

 

“I don’t care a cent’s worth,” cried he, when he saw this; “in two

years I can get scions from these.”

 

He found that the pears and cherries that had escaped Ben’s notice had

most of them taken, and were starting finely.

 

You seldom find boys who have more to occupy their attention and take

up their time than Charlie had. He had wintered eight ducks and a

drake, and young ducks were everywhere, for he had kept the old ducks

laying, and set the eggs under hens. He had fifty hens (for there was

corn enough on Elm Island now), and troops of chickens. He also had

four mongrel geese, the offspring of the wild gander and the tame

goose, and six rabbits. He was raising two calves, intending to have a

yoke of oxen, and there were two cosset lambs; one of the mother sheep

had got cut off by the tide under the rocks on Griffin’s Island, and

drowned; the other was mired, and the eagles had picked out her eyes.

He had taught these cossets to drink cow’s milk. Ben, Jr., who was as

bright and smart as he was mischievous, attended to feeding them, and

they would follow him all around the premises; but even this was not

all. Uncle Isaac, in building fence that spring, had found a partridge

nest, with fifteen eggs; as the parent had not begun to sit on them, he

brought them over to Charlie, well knowing his fondness for pets.

 

“If you can tame them when they hatch,” said he, “you will do what was never done before.”