The Young Ship Builders of Elm Island 29

The Young Ship Builders of Elm Island 29

“There are no masts or spars on it of any great amount. It’s settling

land--hard wood growth. It ought not to bring more than fifteen cents

an acre; but he don’t care whether he sells or not, and might ask

fifty.”

 

“Do you know him?”

 

“Yes, indeed; known him this twenty years. He stopped at my house when

he bought that land, and three times as much more. I carried the chain

for Squire Eveleth when he run it out.”

 

“Uncle Isaac, I want a piece of land. You don’t know how much I’ve

thought about it! None of my folks ever owned an inch of land. Night

and day I have thought and dreamed about it, and I want _that_, and no

other in this world. The moment I came round the point into the cove,

and saw the sun shining on the trees, something said to me, That’s your

home.”

 

“I know what that feeling is, and all about it; and if you feel that

way, you’ll never be worth a cent, or be contented in any other spot.

There’s something comes out of the soil you love that puts the

strength into your arm, and the courage into your heart.”

 

“But how shall I get it?”

 

“Buy it. You’ve got money enough, when Fred pays you, to buy enough for

a farm, and more too.”

 

“But before that, some one that has got money to pay down might see it,

like it just as well as I have, and buy it right off; perhaps it’s sold

now.”

 

“No, it ain’t. People are not so fond of going on to wild land. They

had rather buy land that has been partly cleared. I’ll write to Mr.

Pickering, and get the price, and the refusal of it, and I’ll buy it

for you. When you get your money from Fred, you can pay me. You’ll have

enough from your boats, probably, to buy two hundred acres; and when we

hear from him, I’ll go over it with you. There’s a heavy growth of pine

back from the shore: I should want that; and there’s a pond, that the

brook is an outlet of: I should want command of that water. The brook

is a mill privilege. Boards will be worth something by and by; not in

my day, perhaps, but you are young, and can afford to wait.”

 

“Then there’s bears on it, Uncle Isaac. It is worth a good deal more

for that.”

 

“Most people wouldn’t consider that any privilege.”

 

“O, I should!”

 

“But the thing that toles the bears there, and makes them like it, is a

privilege.”

 

“What is that?”

 

“Acorns. There’s a master sight of acorns and beech-nuts on the whole

of that range along the shore, and hog-brakes in the swales. Hogs can

get their living in the woods, and, by clamming on the beach, all the

summer and fall.”

 

“Won’t the bears kill ’em?”

 

“Once in a while one; but then you can kill the bear, and he’ll be

worth as much as the hog. I would rather have ten bears round than one

wolf.”

 

“You know, Charlie,” said Hannah Murch, “bear’s grease is good to make

boys limber to wrestle. If you had served my bed-clothes as you did

Sally’s, I don’t know what I should have done to you.”

 

“I would have spoilt all the beds in the house for the sake of throwing

Henry Griffin.”

 

“It appears to me you are beginning in good season to get a farm. You

are not going to housekeeping?”

 

“The sooner the better,” said Uncle Isaac. “When a rat gets a hole, he

carries everything to it.”

 

“No, Mrs. Murch, nothing of that kind; but I do want a piece of the

soil that I can walk over and call my own, and have crops of my own,

that nobody can take from me. I love to work with tools; but I love the

earth that God made, and the woods. I love that spot, and am afraid

I shall lose it if I don’t get it now. If I can only know it’s mine,

that’s enough. Mrs. Murch, I think there’s something substantial about

the earth.”

 

“So there is, Charlie; and when you’ve got the land, you’ve something

under your feet, and it can lay there till you want it. There will be

no taxes of any amount till there’s a road made through it.”

 

“Hannah,” said Uncle Isaac, “the Bounty is loading with bark and wood

for Salem, in Wilson’s Cove. I’ll send my letter by her.”

 

“And I,” said Charlie, “must go home.”

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER XVIII.

 

CHARLIE BECOMES A FREEHOLDER.

 

 

CHARLIE was in high spirits when he weighed anchor; but on the way “a

change came over the spirit of his dream.”

 

He began to reproach himself that, carried away by the attractions

of Pleasant Cove, and the impulse of the moment, he had gone so far

without consulting his adopted parents. “Father will think that I ought

to have asked him. He would have bought the land for me if he had

thought best I should have it.”

 

When he reached the island, he told them all about it. Ben and Sally

seemed to understand his feelings perfectly.

 

“It would not have looked well,” said Sally, “after Uncle Isaac offered

to buy the land for you not to have accepted the offer.”

 

“You could not have found a better piece of land, or a more pleasant

spot,” said Ben. “That flat next to the beach is splendid wheat land,

and there’s an excellent boiling spring on the eastern side of the

cove.”

 

“I didn’t see that, but I saw the brook.”

 

The evenings were now quite long, and Charlie made rapid progress in

surveying. Uncle Isaac’s boat also grew apace under the new impulse he

had received. Every stroke of the hammer was so much towards buying

land.

 

Ben’s prediction in respect to increase of business was abundantly

verified. After Uncle Isaac’s boat was finished and gone, Charlie

set up another, without any model or guide except his eye, and the

knowledge of proportions which he had gained from the other boats.

He endeavored to unite the sailing qualities of the West Wind with

a greater capacity of burden, and ability to carry sail with a less

quantity of ballast.

 

Charlie did not intend to sell this boat, but to make her large and

able for rough weather and heavy seas, and keep her for a family boat

to go to the main land in. He had of late been smitten with a very

great desire to go to meeting on the main land, and to dine at Captain

Rhines’s, and he knew that his mother would like to go with him, as

she never was afraid of anything. But although he did not intend to

sell this boat, he designed her for a permanent model of others to be

sold. He perceived that the other boats, though infinitely better than

the dug-outs to get about in, were not what was required for fishing;

that, though great sailers, they were not capacious enough to hold fish

and ballast both, and required too much ballast to keep them on their

legs. It is by no means an easy attainment to unite in one boat all the

elements of a good fishing-boat, that will sail well, row easy, and

save life in bad weather. A fisherman wants a boat that will row easy,

for he often starts away at two o’clock in the morning, when it is

generally calm, and rows seven or eight miles, perhaps more, to reach

his ground. He cannot go without ballast, and he can get none after he

is outside, except he gets fish, which is by no means certain. On the

other hand, if he gets a large quantity of fish, he can throw some of

his ballast overboard, and he doesn’t want to row half a ton of ballast

eight or ten miles. But if his boat is stiff, and will carry reefed

sails, or a whole foresail, with a moderate quantity of ballast that he

can keep in all the time, not sufficient to overload her when fish are

plenty, and yet sufficient to make her safe, he is suited.

 

It is not a great deal, to be sure, to row four or five hundred weight

of ballast more, for once or twice, but when you have got to do it year

in and year out, when tired and hungry, it is a good deal. A fisherman

wants a boat, too, that is smart, stiff to bear a hard blow, buoyant,

will mind her helm, and work quick to clear an ugly sea, and sail well

on a wind. They often go twenty miles from land, tempted by weather

that appears “hard and good,” to particular shoals, where they get

large fish, when the weather suddenly changes, and in an open boat they

must beat in, and they do beat in. There are boats now built at Hampton

or Seabrook that would beat into Boston Bay, with a man in them that

knew how to handle them in a gale of wind, when a ship couldn’t do it;

for, when a big ship gets down to close-reefs, she won’t do much on a

wind. The people then knew where the fish were as well as we do now;

but they couldn’t go off to those places except in pinkies, and, when

they ventured to the inner shoals, reefs, and hake ground in their

canoes, it was real slavery. They had to row in if the wind came ahead,

or it was calm, and were liable to be blown to sea and lost.

 

Charlie meant to build a boat that would answer these requirements as

far as he was able. Then he meant to take moulds of every timber and

every streak of plank as he went along, so that he might work from

them, and build another of the same size, with one half the labor.

 

This he did, and built a boat twenty-two feet long on top, sharp under

water, and deeper in proportion to her length than the others, with a

pink-stern and lap-streak. It was less work to put on the planks with

a lap than with a calking-seam; there was less need of accuracy; for,

if the plank lapped too much in any place, you had only to take it off

with a plane or chisel.

 

When his boat was finished, he painted her by the streaks, and she

looked as neat as a pin. He thought she was a great deal handsomer than

a square stern; so did everybody.

 

When anchored beside the Perseverance, she looked so much like her that

he christened her Perseverance, Jr. As soon as the spars and sails

were made, Charlie and the whole family, except Sally Merrithew and

the baby, went over to meeting. People then came great distances to

meeting, taking a luncheon of “turnovers,” or doughnuts and cheese, and

going out to walk in the burying-ground to eat it, the intermission

between services being short.

 

The boat was anchored in the cove, right in front of the church, and

many were the curious eyes that scanned her proportions during the

intermission.

 

Henry Griffin had enjoyed his boat but three weeks, when he came on to

the island, and wanted to buy the Perseverance, Jr.

 

“What do you want of two boats?”

 

“There’s a man in Wiscasset wants mine for a pleasure-boat. I think

yours would be a great deal better boat for fishing in the winter, in rough weather. I will sell mine, and buy yours.”