Chapter XXIV

THE HARD-SCRABBLE WEIGHS ANCHOR.--CHARLIE GETS MARRIED.

During their absence Captain Rhines and Ben had filled Fred’s store with goods, to be sold on half profits, which enabled him to furnish his portion of the money without any detriment to his business.

Isaac having left a draw-bill, Mr. Welch had sent to Captain Rhines the money that belonged to him. The sails were done, and the boards to load the sloop were sawed. Letters had been received from Isaac, stating that he should not be at home till March. Thus they had abundance of time.

Captain Rhines took the furs to New York in the Perseverance, sold them there for a high price,--there was a great foreign demand, and furs were up,--and bought the rigging.

They found the vessel was so buoyant that the lumber they had cut would not load her. Captain Rhines advised them to carry part of a deck-load of spars.

John went to Portland, and Charlie began to clear a portion of his place large enough to set a house, and for a small field, it being just the time of year to fall trees while the leaves were on.

As Charlie was in hopes to have use for his timber in ship-building, he did not wish to burn it up, and therefore cleared but a small portion.

Ben and Charlie worked together. One week they worked on Elm Island, and the next on Pleasant Point. There was also another attraction at Elm Island--_a baby_. The time passed pleasantly with Charlie. The cherry and apple trees he had planted in the garden were in blossom; and, though he had outgrown his playthings in some measure, he had by no means outgrown his love for the children, who, falling heirs to all these treasures, enjoyed them with the highest relish.

The vessel was rigged in the course of the summer by Captain Rhines and Ben, and the rigging thoroughly stretched in the hot weather.

When John arrived at Portland, he found that Mr. Starrett had bought the cables and anchors of a vessel cast away at Gay Head, larger somewhat than the Hard-Scrabble, but nearly new. They were sold at auction for a reduced price; also a dipsey-lead and line, chest of tools, and compasses.

When the snow came, Charlie cut and hauled out spars enough to complete the deck-load of the vessel; but, although they piled them up ten feet above deck, they could not bring her deck to the water, she was so buoyant.

Captain March, as we must call him now, came home just as they were completing the lading.

John came home to see Isaac off, and to settle up the business. The crew were shipped, as in the Ark, for nominal wages and a privilege.

Sally had a liberal allowance of room given to her for a venture.

Peterson went before the mast, and his boy went as cook. Isaac persuaded Joe Griffin and Henry to go with him, Joe as mate. The rest of the crew were made up of the neighbors’ boys.

When they came to settle accounts, they found that the cost of outfit had been brought down to a thousand dollars, instead of fifteen hundred, as they estimated at first. There were several reasons for this. The canvas cost them much less than it would had they bought it at a warehouse. Captain Rhines had bought the rigging in New York, where he was well acquainted, cheap. Mr. Starrett had bought the cables and anchors for two thirds price, and would take no commission. Captain Rhines and Ben charged very low wages for making the sails, fitting and putting on the rigging, and the boys could not make them take any more.

“We’ve got the advantage of you now, boys,” said the captain. “You wouldn’t let us lend you money, but you can’t make us take more for our work than we like.”

On this account they were able to settle all their bills, provision the vessel for the voyage, load her, and even have something left, which exceeded their most sanguine expectations.

Isaac, whose proportion had all been paid in cash, had remaining but four dollars. John had nine shillings of the money resulting from his venture in the Ark, and the proceeds of hunting, although he had some wages due him in Portland. Fred, who had paid nearly every dollar of his proportion in orders, except what the cargo cost, could have advanced seventy-five dollars more without detriment to his business; while Charlie was better off in respect to ready money than either of them. There was sufficient reason for this. His wages as master workman had been more than the rest, and he had worked all the time in the winter making the spars, rudder, and windlass, and building the boats. He had also furnished the timber and spars for the cargo of the vessel. Fred could not pay this in orders; so he and the others had to pay Charlie one hundred and fifty dollars apiece in money, which left him better off than they, as he had his farm and a fourth of the vessel, while Isaac’s goods were the greater part on commission, and belonged to Captain Rhines, Ben, and Uncle Isaac.

It was a pleasant morning when the vessel weighed anchor, a fair wind, a little quartering, just right to make every sail draw; and all the population that could get there were assembled around the banks of Captain Rhines’s Cove. They had a singular fashion before, and for many years after, the revolution,--even till 1812 and later,--of rigging vessels into topsail sloops, and even sent them to the East Indies.

The old sloop Messenger, of Portland, and Stock, of Boston, owned by the Messrs. Parsons, were of this class.

The Hard-Scrabble presented a novel sight on that morning, and well did her appearance correspond to her name. As the sun shone upon her sides, wherever they were out of water, it revealed a streak of black and a streak of white, where the black pitch and white wood alternated. Her sails, though well made, of good material, and setting well, were the color of flax, not being bleached. Her lower mast was rather short in proportion to the top, top-gallant, and royal masts. The mainmast was set well aft, and raked a good deal. The bowsprit and jib-boom were long. She had a spritsail yard and double martingale. The fore-braces led to the end of the bowsprit, the others to the end of the jib-boom. In bad weather they had preventer-braces that led aft to the rail. She carried fore-topmast staysail, jib, and flying-jib. She had no sail on the lower yard, because, when they built her, they did not think they could afford it. Had they known how they were coming out, Charlie would have done it.

All the paint on her was the lamp-black and oil with which her name was put on, and a little more, where Ben had painted it on the brunt of her topsail. She was stowed so full of lumber that the men could only heave forward of the windlass, and it was piled so high that the mainsail was obliged to be reefed, and a false saddle put on to keep the boom up; while in glaring contrast to the rest of the structure was the beautiful boat, which Charlie had built to show what he could do, gayly painted, on the davits, and for which he had made a mast and sail.

In the warm sunshine, under lee of a high ledge that sheltered them from the wind, were seated Captain Rhines’s folks, Uncle Isaac and his wife, Ben and Sally, the boys, and old Mrs. Yelf, who was gazing with great complacency upon the royal her old fingers had woven,--a labor of love,--as it swelled out in the fresh breeze, and also Tige Rhines, a few paces in front, a most interested and observant spectator.

As she faded from view, and the forms of Isaac and Joe, standing on the quarter, could no longer be recognized, the boys turned their eyes upon each other in silence.

“Well, boys,” said Uncle Isaac, at length, laying his hand upon Charlie’s shoulder, “it’s been a hard scrabble; but you’ve done it, and she’s gone to seek her fortune and yours. May the Lord be with them!”

“You’ve done it, too, without the old folks,” said the captain; “and that, I suppose, makes it the sweeter.”

“No, we haven’t, Captain Rhines,” said Fred. “I never should have been able to have built my part of her without the old folks.”

“I shouldn’t have had anything,” said John, “if it hadn’t been for the folks that built the Ark, and carried my venture,--went into the woods, and showed me how to hunt and trap.”

“I’m sure,” said Charlie, “I never should have had anything, or been anything but a poor, forlorn castaway, if it had not been for father and mother, Captain Rhines, Uncle Isaac, and Joe,--yes, and everybody round here. And wasn’t mother the means of making the sails?”

“You may try as hard as you like to make out that you are not good for much,” said Ben; “but you’ll have hard work to make us, or anybody else, believe it.”

“Well, father, it makes boys smart to have friends to love them, encourage, and show them; tell them they are smart, and say ‘stuboy,’ to have plenty to eat, and see a little chance to do something for themselves, and folks trying to make them happy. If a boy has got anything in him, it must come out.”

“Yes,” said Uncle Isaac. “And if there ain’t anything, it can’t come out.”

After the rest had gone, the boys sat watching the vessel till she mingled with the thin air.

“Now, I’m glad we’ve done as we did,” said Charlie. “We might have hired the money of father, or Captain Rhines, have sent the vessel off, and, perhaps, paid for her, and paid them; but suppose she had made nothing, or been lost--then we should have been in debt, and felt mean enough; now she is ours, and paid for; if she is lost, we owe nobody: we’ve learned a good deal, and are young enough to earn more money.”

“What are you going to do now, John?”

“Going back to Portland.”

“I suppose I ought to go to Stroudwater. Mr. Foss wants me: he’s going to build two vessels.”

“I know what he wants to do,” said Fred.

“What’s that?”

“Get married.”

“Well, so I do, awfully.”

“Then,” said John, “why don’t you do it?”

“Yes,” said Fred. “It’s a leisure time now: the snow is about gone, and we’ll all turn to and put you up a log house in no time.”

“That’s it, Charlie. Come, you are the oldest; set a good example: I’ll raise the crew. Fred wants to follow suit.”

“I’m a good mind to build a log house before I go to Portland;” which resolution was the result of many previous conversations with Mary Rhines, in which they had determined to begin, as Ben and Sally, Joe Griffin and his wife, had done. The boys took good care not to let his resolution cool, but instantly set off, post-haste, for Captain Rhines’s, where they found Ben, Sally, and Uncle Isaac, and, taking them aside, commended the affair to them. Uncle Isaac needed no prompting, and in a fortnight the house was built, differing in no wise from Joe’s, except that it had a chimney and glazed windows, which Captain Rhines declared they should have: he said the bricks and the windows would do for another house.

John now started for Portland, and Charlie for Stroudwater, in order to earn all he could before settling down. He was never satisfied unless he could be making some improvement. In Portland (on his way to Stroudwater) he saw a vessel that had put in for a harbor. It was built for a privateer in the war, and of a most beautiful model.

He ascertained her proportions, and, after he went to work at Stroudwater, amused himself with trying to imitate her with a block of wood, making a half model, and got so much interested that he went into Portland to compare his work with the original, till he got it as accurate as possible; then he put a stem, keel, and stern-post on, and painted it, intending to give it to Bennie for a plaything, and, putting it up on a brace in the shop, thought no more about it; but one stormy day, sitting in the shop, and thinking about the proportions of a vessel he had been at work upon, his eye fell upon the model. A new idea was instantly suggested; he leaped from his seat, took square and compass, divided the model accurately into pieces an inch in thickness from stem to stern, then took a fine saw, and sawed it all up. He then planed a board smooth, fastened the keel, stem, and stern-post of his model on to it, placed inside of them the blocks corresponding to the forward, after, and midship frames, and several others between them, and fastened them to the board; he found he could, by placing his square on these blocks, obtain a water-line along her side, follow the model, shape his vessel accurately, and know just what kind of a vessel he was going to have when he was done. Here was an end to his sweeps on the beach, tumbling in timbers, and guessing, to a great extent. He had got a skeleton model, the latest improvement till the present one of close models.

While he was contemplating his work, Mr. Foss came along: he showed it to him. The old carpenter saw it in a moment.

“Charlie,” said he, “you’ve made a great improvement. I undertook to learn you, and you have learned me. That’s a great thing: that’s going to save money, time, and timber. With the rising line and shortening line, you can model and build a vessel, and know what you are going to do. I’ll give you the dimensions of this vessel we are getting the timber for, and I want you to make a model of her.”

“I will try it.”

Charlie modelled, and was successful. He returned home in June, and was married. He found that the trees which he had girdled in the fall had leaved; but the leaves were most of them small and withering. He had drawn a cordon, many rods in width, all around the buildings, and especially round the little peninsula, in the midst of which towered the great elm, sparing a handsome tree every now and then, so that after the girdled trees had fallen down, and been removed, they might be out of the reach of fires.

Charlie had been married but a few weeks when the young pair made their appearance at Elm Island.

“Mother,” said Charlie, “do you remember one night, when I first bought my place, I came home from there, you asked me what was the matter, and I put you off?”

“Yes; I saw you’d been crying, and that was what made me ask you.”

“I had been thinking about old times, and my mother. I wanted then, and I want now, as I have got settled on my place, to go to St. John, and get her body, and have her buried under an elm there is there. It is a lovely spot: it was almost the first thing that came into my mind when I saw the place, and that was what I had been crying about. When she died, I followed her to the grave in rags, no one to go with me but the Irish woman of whom we hired the room: she was a good-hearted woman, poor herself, but did what she could for us. Many a crust has she given me; and if she is living, I’ll let her know I haven’t forgotten it. Mother, now that I have a home of my own, I can’t rest any longer to have her lie in that miserable corner, among the worst of creatures, the place all grown up with bushes. I want to bring her here.”

“I am sure I would, Charlie.”

“Do you think father would go with me?”

“Go! to be sure he would. The Perseverance is out fishing now, but she will be in soon; she is only hired for one trip. I tell you what you do, Charlie: after haying, bring Mary over here, and leave her; you and Ben take the schooner, and go. When you get back, we’ll all of us attend the funeral, have the minister preach a sermon, and everything done as it should be; but two is not enough: there ought to be three.”

“We can run into Portland, and get John. I would rather have him go with us than anybody else.”

The noble boy accomplished his object, and deposited the ashes of the mother so dear to him in the spot he had chosen. It was a sweet resting-place: the branches of the majestic tree, green in the first verdure of summer, almost swept the grave; the brook murmured gently as it rounded the little promontory; the ground-sparrow built her nest, and reared her young, upon the turf that covered it; and the low-voiced summer winds breathed requiems over the sainted dead.

Often, on Sabbath evenings, as Charlie, with his young wife, visited the spot, did he lift up his heart in gratitude to Him who had given him a home, friends, and land of his own, and enabled him to pay the last tokens of affection to the mother he so dearly loved. Gratifying the tastes he had acquired in his native land, and aided by his wife, he surrounded the spot with flowers and shrubbery.

Charlie’s marriage, so far from involving him in any additional expense, increased his facilities for acquiring; for he had married one who was indeed a helpmeet. Captain Rhines would have furnished his daughter abundantly; but she, like John, preferred to earn it herself.

“I never saw such children as mine are,” said the captain. “They won’t let me do anything for them.”

“Wait, father,” said Mary, “till we get a frame-house, and our land cleared. We may burn this up, and it is good enough for that: besides, father, I know how Charlie feels; he abhors the idea of marrying on; he will feel a good deal better to get under way himself: you know, you can give me any time, if you want to. Charlie, John, and Fred are all alike about being helped.”

The very first thing Charlie did after he got into his house was to set a bear-trap; the next, to make a loom and all the fixtures for Mary. Some years before, her father had given her a pair of sheep, and now she had quite a flock, and had made blankets and other articles for housekeeping before her marriage; her mother had furnished her with flax, and the hum of her wheel kept time with the strokes of Charlie’s hammer, as he worked on his boats. He brought over a host of hens from Elm Island; but ducks and geese he didn’t dare to bring, the foxes were so plenty and destructive; but he calculated to trap them, and did hope the bears would get into his corn. O, how he did want to go into farming, down with trees, put in the fire, and raise corn and grain! But then he wanted to save his shade trees, and had a contract to build a lot of boats for vessels that were building in Portland. This paid better than farming, and must be done right off; therefore he must defer the gratification; so he hired Ricker to help him, and set to work upon his boats. Thus employed we must leave him, to follow the fortunes of Captain Murch, in the Hard-Scrabble.