THE RHINES FAMILY.
In order that you may know all about them, we will resume the thread of
our story, and trace the history of Captain Rhines and his family.
The captain was a strong-built, finely proportioned, “hard-a-weather”
sailor, not a great deal the worse for wear, and seasoned by the suns
and frosts of many climates. In early life he had experienced the
bitter struggle with poverty.
His father came into the country when it was a wilderness, with nothing
but a narrow axe, and strength to use it. His first crops being cut
off by the frosts, they were compelled to live for months upon clams,
and the leaves of beech trees boiled. There were no schools; and the
parents, engaged in a desperate struggle for existence with famine
and the Indians, were unable to instruct their children. Fishing
vessels from Marblehead often anchored in the cove near the log camp,
and little Ben, anxious to earn somewhat to aid his parents in their
poverty, went as cook in one of these vessels when so small that some
one had to hang on the pot for him. He was thus engaged for several
summers, till big enough to go as boy in a coaster. During the winters,
arrayed in buckskin breeches, Indian moccasons, and a coon-skin cap,
he helped his father make staves, and hauled them to the landing on a
hand-sled.
At nineteen years of age he went to Salem, and shipped in a brig bound
to Havana, to load with sugar for Europe. He was then a tall, handsome,
resolute boy as ever the sun shone upon, without a single vicious
habit; for his parents, though poor, were religious, and had brought
him up to hard work and the fear of God.
He was passionately fond of a gun and dogs, and what little leisure he
ever had was spent in hunting and fowling. As respected his fitness for
his position, he could “steer a good trick,” had learned what little
seamanship was to be obtained on board a fisherman and coaster, but he
could not read, or even write his name.
The mate of the vessel conceived a liking for him the moment he
came over the ship’s side, and this good opinion increased upon
acquaintance. They had been but a fortnight at sea, when he said to the
captain, “That long-legged boy, who shipped for a green hand, will
be as good a man as we have on board before we get into the English
Channel; he will reeve studding-sail gear, already, quicker than any
ordinary seaman. I liked the cut of his jib the moment I clapped eyes
on him. If that boy lives he’ll be master of a ship before many years.”
“I hardly see how that can be,” replied the captain, “for he can’t
write his own name.”
“Can’t write his own name! Why, that is impossible.”
“At any rate he made his mark on the ship’s articles, and he is the
only one of the crew who did.”
“Well,” replied the mate, “I can’t see through it; but he’s in my
watch, and I’ll know more about it before twenty-four hours.”
That night the mate went forward where Ben was keeping the lookout.
“Ben!”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“Where do you hail from?”
“Way down in the woods in Maine, Mr. Brown.”
“What was you about there?”
“Fishing and coasting summers, and working in the woods in the winter.”
“Why didn’t you ship, then, for an ordinary seaman, and get more
wages?”
“Because, sir, I was never in a square-rigged vessel before, and I
didn’t want to ship to do what I might not be able to perform.”
“I see you made your ‘mark’ on the brig’s articles. Were you never at
school?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“There’s no such thing where I came from.”
“Couldn’t your parents read and write?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then why didn’t they learn you themselves?”
“There were a good many of us, sir, and they were so put to it to raise
enough to live on, and fight the Indians, they had no time for it.”
The mate was a noble-hearted man; all his sympathies were touched at
seeing so fine a young man prevented from rising by an ignorance that
was no fault of his own. He took two or three turns across the deck,
and at length said,--
“I tell you what it is, youngster: I’ll say this much before your face
or behind your back: you’re just the best behaved boy, the quickest to
learn your duty, and the most willing to do it, that I ever saw, and
I’ve been following the sea for nearly thirty years; and before I’ll
see an American boy like you kept down by ignorance, I’ll do as I’d be
done by--turn schoolmaster, and teach you myself.”
Mr. Brown was as good as his word. While the rest of the crew in their
forenoon watch below were mending their clothes, telling long yarns,
or playing cards, and when in port drinking and frolicking, Ben was
learning to read and write, and putting his whole soul into it. He
stuck to the vessel, and Mr. Brown stuck to him. When he shipped the
next voyage as able seaman, he wrote his name in good fair hand.
They went to Charleston, South Carolina, to load with pitch, rice, and
deer-skins, for Liverpool. The vessel was a long time completing her
cargo, as it had to be picked up from the plantations. Ben improved the
time to learn navigation. From Liverpool they went to Barbadoes. While
lying there, the captain of the ship James Welch, of Boston, named
after the principal owner, died. The mate taking charge of the ship,
Ben, by Mr. Brown’s recommendation, obtained the first mate’s berth. He
was now no longer Ben, but Mr. Rhines, and finally becoming master of
the ship, continued in the employ of Mr. Welch as long as he followed
the sea. He then married, built a house on the site of the old log
camp, and surrounded it with fruit and shade trees, for, by travel and
observation, he had acquired ideas of taste, beauty, and comfort, quite
in advance of the times, or his neighbors. He then took his parents
home to live with him, and made their last days happy.
Although he was compelled by necessity thus early to go to sea, he had
a strong attachment to the soil, and would have devoted himself to its
cultivation in middle life, had he not met with losses, which so much
embarrassed him, that he was compelled to continue at sea to extricate
himself.
Captain Rhines’s fine house, nice furniture, and curiosities which he
brought home from time to time, excited no heart-burnings among his
neighbors, because they knew he had earned them by hard work, and did
not think himself better than others on account of that.
Thus, when he became embarrassed, instead of saying, “Good enough for
him,” “He will have to leave off some of his quarter-deck airs now,”
everybody felt sorry for him, and told him so.
Indeed, everything about the Rhines family was pleasant, and excited
cheerful emotions. The old house itself had a most comfortable, cosy
look, as it lay in the very eye of the sun, with an orchard before it,
green fields stretching along the water, sheltered on the north-west by
high land and forest. The shores were fringed with thickets of beech
and birch, branches of which, at high tide, almost touched the surface
of the water.
Some houses are high and thin, resembling a sheet of gingerbread set
on edge; they impress you with a painful feeling of insecurity, as
though they might blow over. Such houses generally have all the windows
abreast, so that when the curtains are up, and the blinds open, you
can look right through them. They seem cold, cheerless, repellent; you
shrug your shoulders and shiver as you look at them. But _this_ house
was large on the ground, and looked as if it grew there, with an ell
and long shed running to the barn, a sunny door-yard, a spreading beech
before the end door, with a great wood-pile under it, suggestive of
rousing fires.
There was a row of Lombardy poplars in front of the house, and a
large rock maple at the corner of the barn-yard, which the children
always tapped in the spring to get sap to drink and make sap coffee.
There was a real hospitable look about the old homestead; it seemed
to say, “There’s pork in the cellar, there’s corn in the crib, hay in
the barn, and a good fire on the hearth: walk in, neighbor, and make
yourself at home.”
But the popularity of Captain Rhines among his neighbors had a deeper
root than this. A great many of the young men in the neighborhood had
been their first voyage to sea with him; he had treated them in such a
manner, had taken so much pains to advance them in their profession,
that they respected and loved him ever after.
When it was known in the neighborhood that Captain Rhines was going to
sea, the question was not, how he should _get_ men, but how he should
get _rid_ of them, there were so many eager for the berth.
It would have done your heart good to have seen the happy faces of the
men grouped together on that ship’s forecastle, waiting, like hounds
straining in the leash, for the order to man the windlass; not an old
broken-down shellback among them, but all the neighbors’ boys, in their
red shirts, and duck trousers white as the driven snow, which their
mothers had washed.
As each one of them had a character to sustain, was anxious to outdo
his shipmate, and the greater portion of them were in love with some
neighbor’s daughter, and expected to be married as soon as they were
master of a ship, it is evident there was very little to do in the way
of discipline. It was a jolly sight, when there came a gale of wind,
to see them scamper up the rigging, racing with each other for the
“weather-earing.”
Captain Rhines, though a large and powerfully built man, was a pygmy
to his son Ben. Ben measured, crooks and all, six feet two inches in
height, weighing two hundred and thirty pounds. He was possessed of
strength in proportion to his size, and, what was more remarkable, was
as spry as an eel, and could jump out of a hogshead without touching
his hands to it. His neighbors called him “Lion Ben.” He obtained the
appellation from this circumstance.
One day when the inhabitants of the district were at work on the roads,
they dug out a large rock. Ben, then nineteen years of age, took it up,
carried it out of the road, dropped it, and said it might stay there
till they raised another man in town strong enough to take it back.
He was now twenty-six years of age, of excellent capacity, and good
education for the times, his father having sent him to Massachusetts
to school. It was very difficult to provoke him; but when, after long
provocation, he became enraged, his temper broke out in an instant,
and he knew no measure in his wrath. His townsmen loved him, because
he used his strength to protect the weak, and were at the same time
excessively proud of him, as in all the neighboring towns there was not
a man that could throw him, or that even dared to take hold of him.
He had a large chair made on purpose for him to sit in, and tools for
him to work with; and if anybody lent a crowbar to Captain Rhines,
they always said, “Don’t let Ben use it,” as in that case it was sure
to come home bent double, and had to be sent to the blacksmith’s to be
straightened.
He was passionately fond of gunning, and would risk life and limb to
shoot a goose or sea-duck. Though he had followed the sea since he was
seventeen years of age, yet he was greatly attached to the soil, and
when at home loved to work on it. It was a curious sight to see this
great giant weeding the garden, or at work upon his sister’s flower-bed.
He was a generous-hearted creature; when anybody was sick or poor he
would get all the young folks together, make a bee, get in their corn,
do their planting, or cut their winter’s wood for them. He had often
done this for the widow Hadlock, who was their nearest neighbor.
The widow Hadlock’s husband, a very enterprising sea captain, had
died at sea, in the prime of life, leaving his widow with a young
family, a farm, a fine house well furnished, but nothing more. The
broken-hearted woman had struggled very hard to keep the homestead for
her children, and the whole family together. Being a woman of great
prudence, industry, and judgment, with the help of good neighbors, she
had succeeded. Her oldest son was now able to manage the farm, and the
bitterness of the struggle was past.
The tax-gatherer came to the widow for the taxes.
“Why, Mr. Jones,” said the widow, “you tax me altogether too much; I
have not so much property.”
“O, Mrs. Hadlock,” said he, “we tax you for your faculty.”
Notwithstanding all the sterling qualities we have enumerated, the
personal appearance of Ben Rhines was anything but an exponent of his
character. There was such an enormous enlargement of the muscles of
the shoulders, and his neck was so short, that his head seemed to come
out of the middle of his breast. The great length of his arms was
exaggerated by the stoop in his shoulders: though his legs and hips
were large, yet the tremendous development of the upper part of the
body gave him the appearance of being top-heavy.
From such a square-jawed fellow you would naturally expect to proceed a
deep bass voice; but from this monstrous bulk came a soft, child-like
voice, such as we sometimes hear from very fat people; and unless
he was greatly excited, the words were slowly drawled: the entire
impression made by him upon a stranger was that of a great, listless,
inoffensive man, without penetration to perceive, or courage to resist,
imposition.
But never was the proverb, “Appearances are deceitful,” more strikingly
verified than in this instance. That listless exterior, and almost
infantile voice, concealed a mind clear and well informed, and a
temper, that when goaded beyond the limits of forbearance, broke out
like the eruption of a volcano.
In his position as mate of a vessel it became his duty to control men
of all nations. Being well aware that his appearance was calculated to
invite aggression, he took singular methods to escape it. He knew that
his temper, when it reached a certain point, was beyond his control.
He also knew his strength; and as the good-natured giant didn’t want
to hurt anybody when milder methods would answer the purpose, he
would come along just as the ship was getting under way, the men at
the topsail halyards, and reaching up above all the rest, bring them
down in a heap on deck, causing those that were singing to bite their
tongues. Sometimes when two or three sailors were heaving with the
handspikes to roll up a spar to the ringbolts, singing out and making
a great fuss, he would seize hold of the end of it, and heave it into
its bed apparently without any effort, while the men would wink to each
other and reflect upon the consequences of having a brush with such a
mate as that.
By proceeding in this way, though he had taken up one or two that had
insulted him beyond endurance, and smashed them down upon the ground,
kicked a truckman into the dock who was beating his horse with a
cordwood stick, he never struck but one man in his life, which happened
in this wise.
Ben was on board a ship in port, with only a cook and two boys, the
captain having gone home, and the rest of the crew being discharged.
He hired an English sailor to help the boys trim some ballast in the
hold; they complained that he kicked and abused them.
Ben told them to go to work again, and he would see about it. After
dinner he lay down in his berth for a nap, when he was disturbed by a
terrible outcry in the hold, and, going down, found the sailor beating
the boys with a rope’s end. He asked him what he was doing that for;
the man said they wouldn’t work, and were saucy to him. Ben replied
that the boys were good boys, that he had always known them, and that
he mustn’t strike the boys. The bully asked him if he meant to take
it up. Ben replied that he didn’t wish to take it up, but he mustn’t
strike the boys.
The sailor then threatened to strike him; upon which Ben stood up
before him, and folding his arms on his breast, in his drawling,
childish way, told him to strike. The man struck, when Ben inflicted
upon him such a terrible blow, that, falling upon the ballast, he lay
and quivered like an ox when he is struck down by the butcher.
“O, Mr. Rhines,” exclaimed the terrified boys, “you’ve killed him,
you’ve killed him!”
“Well,” he replied in his quiet way, “if I’ve killed him, I’ve laid him
out.”