The Young Ship Builders of Elm Island 24

The Young Ship Builders of Elm Island 24

Away goes Charlie to feed the cattle. Thus you see a wood-shed was

very far from being felt a necessity on Elm Island, where many other

things, more needed, had hitherto been lacking. But _now_, among other

added comforts, Ben thought it would be well to have one: it would

save digging the wood out of the snow, and thus bringing water and

snow into the house, and also be convenient for many purposes. Another

consideration was, they would soon need a workshop, as the space in

the barn now devoted to that purpose would be needed for hay; neither

did he like to have shavings around the barn, and there was leisure

before the fall harvest to build it. He did not wish to interfere

with Charlie’s boat-building, as he saw he was very much pleased with

the idea of building a boat for Captain Rhines. It was an excellent

opportunity for this good boy, who was always ready to assist everybody

else, to do something for himself.

 

Charlie, as our readers well know, was never better pleased than when

he could plan some pleasant surprise for his adopted parents. Ben,

therefore, determined to surprise Charlie; he resolved to build the

shed a story and a half in height, to admit of having a corn-house

in a portion of the upper story. Corn-houses were set up on logs, or

stone posts, three feet from the ground, and detached from all other

buildings, on account of rats; but there was no objection to making it

in the shed, there, as neither rats nor mice had found their way to Elm

Island.

 

While Charlie was busily at work in the daytime upon his boat, and in

evenings studying surveying, Ben had got his timber from the woods for

the frame, and hauled it to the door. He then hired a man by the name

of Danforth Eaton, who was a shingle weaver, and a good broadaxe man,

to help him.

 

Together they sawed up the shingle bolts, and then Ben set Eaton at

work shaving shingles, while he hewed the timber. To Ben, who, since he

had lived on the island, had become an excellent axe man, it was mere

sport to hew pine timber: with his heavy axe and enormous strength,

striking right down through, every clip he sliced off the chips almost

as fast as he could walk, and soon began to frame it.

 

It was pretty lively times on Elm Island now: in the barn Charlie was

building a boat; under a rude shelter, made by setting four poles in

the ground, and placing some boards on them, Eaton, who was a splendid

shingle weaver, was shaving shingles;--I can’t tell you why shingle

makers are called weavers, unless it is on account of the motion of

their bodies back and forth when shaving;--and Ben mortising and boring

the timber.

 

Charlie’s boat grew with great rapidity; for besides knowing just how

to go to work, he had the command of his whole time, and moreover, the

boat being just like the other, had all his moulds ready. On rainy

days, Ben and Eaton sawed out his planks, helped him get out his

timbers, and put on his plank.

 

Charlie had been so completely absorbed in his boat, that he paid but

very little attention to what his father and Danforth were doing: to

be sure he glanced at their work as he passed back and forth from the

barn to the house; noticed that Danforth had done making shingles, and

was making clapboards, and that the timber was of great length; but

supposed his father had hewn his sticks of double length, intending to

cut them up. But a few days after, looking at a sill that was finished,

he perceived by the mortises that it was intended to be used the

whole length: he put on his rule and found it was fifty feet, and the

cross-sill was twenty-five.

 

“Why, father, are you going to have a shed as big as all this? You

won’t need a quarter part of this space.”

 

“You know I’m a big fellow: I want considerable room to turn round in;

almost as much as a ship wants to go about.”

 

“But you’ll not want half of this.”

 

“You know I want a corn-house overhead, and if we finish the rooms in

the chamber of the house, your mother would like to have some rough

place for her spinning and weaving in the summer, and to keep her flax

and wool in; and then what a handy place it would be to keep ploughs

and harrows, the Twilight, my canoe, and their sails, when we want to

haul them up in the fall! O, there’s always enough to put in such a

place; besides, you know I shall want a cider-house.”

 

Charlie burst into a roar of laughter.

 

“A cider-house! and the orchard ain’t planted yet.”

 

“Well, the ground is cleared for it, and the chamber will be a nice

place for Sally to dry apples.”

 

“Yes, when we get them.”

 

“We shall get them; I like to look ahead.”

 

The frame was raised and covered, and Ben parted off twenty-five feet

from the end farthest from the house, and laid a plank floor in it; the

other half had no floor. After laying the floor overhead, in that part

next to the house, he parted off the space for the corn-chamber, and

made stairs to go up to it.

 

The Perseverance had come in, and was landing fish at Isaac’s wharf.

Ben told Charlie he was going to Wiscasset in her, to get some nails to

put on the clapboards and shingles; but when he came back, he not only

brought nails, but bricks, lime, glass, putty, and Uncle Sam Elwell,

whom he set to building a chimney and fireplace in the farther end of

the shed, where he had laid a plank floor.

 

Charlie was now thoroughly mystified, and his curiosity greatly

excited. When Uncle Sam had laid the foundation, he proceeded to make a

fireplace, and by the side of it built an arch, and set in it a kettle,

which Ben had brought with him.

 

“Father,” asked Charlie, “what is the fireplace and the kettle for?”

 

“Well, it is very handy to have a fire; you often want to use such a

place late in the fall.”

 

“I should have thought you would have made the wood-shed at this end,

and put this place nearer the house; it would have been handier for

mother.”

 

“Your mother will want to go into the wood-shed ten times where she

will want to come in here once.”

 

“But what is the kettle for?”

 

“I’m sure I shouldn’t think you would ask such a question as that:

wouldn’t it be very handy in the spring, when the sap was running very

fast and driving us, to have a place where Sally could boil some on a

pinch; and wouldn’t it be nice for heating water to scald a hog?”

 

“Yes, I suppose it would.”

 

But Charlie was far from satisfied; he noticed that his father didn’t

say directly that the room was for such and such purposes, only asked

if it wouldn’t be suitable and convenient: he was more puzzled than

ever.

 

“Mother, what is father laying a floor, building a fireplace, and

setting a kettle in the wood-shed for? and he’s going to put in glass

windows, for he’s got glass and putty.”

 

“I’m sure I don’t know any more than you do: he don’t tell me.”

 

“I expect he’s fixing it for Sally and Joe to go to housekeeping in.”

 

“I’m sure he ain’t,” replied Sally. “I don’t expect to have half so

good a place as that. I expect to go into a log house or a brush camp.”

 

Sally and Joe had been engaged a long time. Joe had been saving up

money, and so had Sally. He had bought a piece of wild land, and they

were expecting to begin as Ben and his wife had. Sally was not hired.

She was a cousin to Ben on his mother’s side, and was making it her

home there, while getting ready to be married. A right smart Yankee

girl was Sally Merrithew. She could wash, iron, bake, brew, card, spin,

and weave. A noble helpmeet for a young man who had to make his way in

the world.

 

Sally Merrithew had six sheep, which her father had given her in the

spring. Ben put them on Griffin’s Island to pasture, and when he

sheared his sheep, sheared them for her. She had spun and was weaving

the wool into blankets. She had also bought linen yarn, which she was

scouring, and meant to make sheets of. She calculated to help Mrs.

Rhines enough to pay her board, and was not very particular whether

she did more or not. They bleached linen, washed, and sang together,

with the bobolinks and robins at the brook, and had the best times

imaginable.

 

Aunt Molly Bradish thought she was running a dreadful risk to marry

such a “harum-scarum cretur” as Joe Griffin; but Aunt Molly was

mistaken there. Sally knew Joe a great deal better than she did, and

knew that he was a smart, prudent, kind-hearted fellow as ever lived,

without a single bad habit, except that of playing rough jokes. She was

to the full as fond of fun as he, but did not approve of manifesting

it in that way, and exerted a constantly restraining influence upon

him, probably a great deal more than one would, who, of a less

sanguine temperament, was incapable of appreciating a joke, and had no

temptations of their own to struggle against.

 

There are people in this world who assume great merit for resisting

temptations they never experienced. Sally manifested that common sense

that is generally the accompaniment of true wit, when she replied to

Aunt Molly by saying, that if Joe was to undergo all the hardships

of clearing a farm in the wilderness, and experience the trials and

disappointments that were the lot of most people, he would need all the spirits he possessed to keep him up.