The Young Ship Builders of Elm Island 23

The Young Ship Builders of Elm Island 23

“Nobody. After I had her almost done, Joe told me how to take spilings.”

 

“‘_Wings of the Morning_,’” said Henry, looking at the stern. “What a

singular name! What made you think of that name, Charlie?”

 

“I’ll tell you, Henry. I had been thinking for some time what I should

call her, and one morning I went out just at sunrise. I stood on the

door-stone, and looked off in the bay. The water was as smooth as

glass. There was an eagle sitting on the edge of his nest on the big

pine. They are not shy of me at all, for I am very often up in the

tree, and feed them. By and by he pitched off, and came sailing along

slowly, moving his great wings, just clearing the ridge-pole of the

house, and close to me. While I watched him, this came right into my

head. I couldn’t get it out; so I put it on the boat.”

 

“Charlie, what was in that long box we brought down in the schooner?”

 

“Paint to paint this boat, and putty and oil.”

 

“I thought so. But what was the need of so long a box?”

 

“To hold this,” holding up the anchor. “John made it, and for this

boat, while you were there.”

 

The canoes now began to run in. Charlie made sail, and soon left them

all astern, tugging away at their oars against wind and ebb tide. He

had been at home a long time,--indeed, it was after supper,--when Henry

and Sam came into the cove.

 

“Charlie,” said Henry, “I shall never pull a canoe any more. I must

have that boat, for I am going to fish a good deal this fall. What will

you take for her?”

 

“I don’t want to sell her. I haven’t hardly been in her myself.”

 

“Well, there’s time enough to talk about that.”

 

“Come to the house, and get some supper. You won’t go from here

to-night.”

 

After supper, Henry repeated his request for the boat, adding, “You

don’t want her, Charlie. You only built her to see what you could do,

and can build another. You are no fisherman; but I want her to catch

fish in to sell to Isaac.”

 

“Yes, I do want her,” replied Charlie. “If I want to go anywhere, I

must go by boat; for we are on an island, six miles from the main, and

if I sell this boat, I must go in a canoe. I don’t like to pull a canoe

any better than you do.”

 

“But it’s different with you. You can go to the main on pleasant days,

and, if you are obliged to go in rough weather, you can take the

Perseverance; while I go out fishing in the morning, when perhaps it

is as pleasant as can be; before night it comes on to blow, and I’ve

got to pull in, or go to sea. You know old Uncle Jackson was blown off,

last winter, and never heard from; whereas, in that boat, with reefed

sails, I could beat in any time. It might be a matter of life and death

with me. Come, Charlie, let me have her--that’s a good fellow! You can

build another. I’ll give you a dollar a foot for her.”

 

That was a tremendous price in those days, when corn was four shillings

a bushel, pork six cents a pound in the round hog; when the best of

men, in haying-time, got only a dollar a day, and at other times

could be hired for fifty or seventy-five cents. Besides, it must be

remembered that Charlie had built this boat on rainy days, and at hours

outside the regular day’s work.

 

“I’ll give you a dollar a foot,” continued Henry, “just for the boat.

You may take everything out of her--sails, spars, anchor, and cable.

The sails are larger than I want, for I don’t want to be bothered with

reefing in cold weather. I can get Joe to cut and make sails for me.

He’s a capital hand, I can tell you.”

 

“The truth is, Henry, I’ve built this boat by hard knocks. I’ve got

up as soon as I could see to work on her, and have worked after I had

done a hard day’s work, and was tired. I have puzzled over her till my

brains fairly ached, and on that account think more of her. To-day is

the first time I’ve ever been out of the harbor in her, and I don’t

feel as if I could part with her.”

 

“I’ll give you nine shillings a foot for her.”

 

“Sell her, Charlie,” said Ben. “Let him have her.”

 

“I would, Charlie,” said Sally. “He needs her, and you can build

another, as he says. He has offered you such a great price, too!”

 

But Charlie remained firm. Henry was about to give up the matter, when

he said, “Henry, I don’t want you to think I am holding off to make you

bid up. You offered me all the boat was worth when you offered a dollar

a foot. I’ll do this with you: I’ll sell her to you, the bare hull, to

deliver the first day of October, at a dollar a foot. I shan’t take any

more, and I won’t part with her till then.”

 

“I’ll do it, Charlie; and when Joe comes in, I’ll go another trip with

him.”

 

“I don’t see,” said Ben, after the boys had gone to bed, “what makes

Charlie so loath to sell that boat. I should think he would be proud to

have an offer for her so quick. He likes Henry, too, and I have always

thought he was rather too willing to put himself out for other folks.

Besides, he has spent some money for tools and paint, and that would

make him all whole again.”

 

“I’m sure I don’t think it at all strange he is loath to sell her. Any

one thinks a great deal of the first things they make. I’ve got a pair

of clouded stockings in the chest of drawers. I spun the yarn and knit

them when I was eight and a half years old, and had to stand on a plank

to reach the wheel, and I don’t think Henry Griffin or anybody else

could buy them.”

 

“I don’t believe but there’s some other reason.”

 

“Perhaps so.”

 

“It may be that he wants to go off, and have a sail and a grand time

with Fred somewhere, as they did before.”

 

“I shouldn’t wonder.”

 

“Perhaps he’s got some word from John, by Joe Griffin, that he’s coming

home, and he’s keeping her for that.”

 

“If he’d heard anything of that kind, he would have told us the first

thing.”

 

“Well, whatever the reason is, he’ll tell you when he gets ready.”

 

But he didn’t tell Sally, nor did he tell the boys after they had gone

to bed that night, but chose a very different confidant.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XV.

 

THE SURPRISER SURPRISED.

 

 

THE next morning, as they were chatting after breakfast, the door

opened, and in walked Captain Rhines.

 

“Why, father,” cried Ben, overjoyed, “you took an early start.”

 

“I had pressing business.”

 

“It is an age since you have been here. I’m real glad to see you,” said

Sally; “I thought you had forgotten us. I’ll have some breakfast on the

table in a few moments.”

 

“Charlie, I want to buy that boat. I hailed you after you pulled away

yesterday; but you didn’t hear me. We had a hard pull yesterday,

against the wind and tide; I told Isaac and Sam, we had pulled canoes

about long enough, and it was time we had some easier way of getting

back and forth.”

 

“You’re too late, Captain Rhines,” said Henry. “I’ve bought her.”

 

“You have? Then, Charlie, you must build another for me, right off,

just like her.”

 

“I will do that, sir, for I have got stuff enough to make the keel,

stern, and transom, all sawed out, and crooks for timbers. I’ll begin

to-morrow; that is, if father can spare me.”

 

“I’ll paint her, and make the spars and sails. Uncle Isaac wants you to

build him one: he would build one himself, but he can’t get the time.

He expects to go over to Wiscasset, to work on spars, and is driving on

to get his work at home done.”

 

“Does he want her the same dimensions as this one?”

 

“Yes; but he is in no hurry for her; you’ll have boats enough to build,

Charlie; so you had better lay out for it.”

 

“I shouldn’t dare to build a boat for Uncle Isaac.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Because, he’s such a neat workman himself, I’m afraid I shouldn’t suit

him.”

 

“I’ll risk you; you’ll suit him to a hair, and ’twill be a feather in

your cap to work for him.”

 

Such a thing as a wood-shed did not exist at Elm Island; indeed,

there was not the necessity then for many things that are now really

necessary. There were always plenty of dry limbs and trunks of trees

in the woods to start the fire with, and the tremendous heat generated

in one of those old fireplaces (with a log four feet long and three

feet thick, a back-stick on that half the size, and a fore-stick

eight feet long), would burn green red oak, and even black ash, when

once fairly under way. When dry wood was wanted, Ben or Charlie would

go into the woods and soon find a tall pine which had been dead for

years, the bark all fallen off, and nearly all the limbs, and streaked

with pitch, which had exuded and hardened in the sun on the outside.

Laid low by the axe, the top would be broken into many pieces, thus

rendering the cutting up a light labor. To be sure, when hauled to the

door, it lay in summer exposed to all the rains, and in winter half

buried in snow. But what did that matter. When night came, Charlie

filled the great oven--which, being in the back, was always nearly

hot enough to bake--with this pine, and great clefts of green beech,

which in the course of the night would get warm, and a little dry on

the outside. In the morning there would be a bushel of live coals on

the hearth, the remains of the old log. Raking them forward, on go the

green log and back-stick, the green fore-stick, dry pine, half pitch,

on top of the glowing coals, top of that the clefts of beech, and

perhaps a dry bush crowns the summit.

 

A few waves of a hemlock broom--whew! up goes a column of spiral flame roaring up the chimney