CHARLIE LEARNING A NEW LANGUAGE.
WHEN Charlie first sat down to his oars, he was not in so happy and
jubilant a frame as when leaving the barn, after having completed the
timbering out of his boat; but as he pulled away from the island, the
calm hour, the beauty of the sea and shore, the glassy surface of the
bay touched by the rays of the setting sun, gradually tranquillized his
perturbed feelings.
“I have learned to graft, at any rate,” he soliloquized, “and I can get
some more scions of Mr. Welch.” And by the time he was half way to the
island he had begun to sing and talk aloud to himself.
Charlie’s love for the soil had by no means become weakened through his
devotion to boat-building; and now that the distress was over, and he
felt that he could do it, he bethought himself of other matters that
required looking after.
The garden must be seen to right away, the beets and carrots must be
weeded, the honeysuckle nailed up, the beans and squashes hoed, and
sticks put to the peas.
“There,” said he, “is that cabbage rose-bush, Mary Rhines gave me,
ought to have a hoop to hold it up. I’ll make one, like a Turk’s head,
out of willow, and stain it, and plane out three stakes of oak to hold
it up; and I’ll stain them; it’s the last green dye I’ve got; but I
don’t care.”
Charlie now had two objects in view: one was, to shoot a seal, and the
other, and more important one, to learn to growl like them. In summer
evenings, seals are very fond of resorting to the ledges at half tide,
and to the sand spits, where they lie and suckle their young, where
they feel safe, and much at home, growl, and are very sociable. The
many ledges lying off Griffin’s Island were frequented by seals; but
one in particular, called the Flatiron from its shape, was a favorite
resort, because, while the others were within gunshot of the island,
this was far beyond the range of any ordinary gun. Charlie, knowing
this, had brought, in addition to his own gun, Ben’s great wall piece,
the barrel of which was seven feet in length, and the stock looked as
if it had been hewed out with an axe. Uncle Isaac had often threatened
to make a new stock for it. Notwithstanding its bad looks, it was
a choice gun for long distances, and threw the charge where it was
pointed.
This ledge also possessed another attraction for the seals, as it was
flat, smooth, covered with a soft mat of sea-weed, and at the edges
slanted off into deep water; thus they could put their watchman on a
little ridge that rose up in the middle very much like the handle of
a flatiron, and when he gave the alarm, the whole band could, in an
instant, souse into the water.
Charlie knew that Uncle Isaac and Joe Griffin could imitate the noise
of seals so exactly as to draw them on to the ledge, they supposing it
to be another seal; and that Uncle Isaac had a seal stuffed, which he
would set on a ledge, as though alive, and then, concealing himself,
make a noise like them. The seals, hearing the noise, and seeing the
stuffed one, would endeavor to crawl up, and thus afford a shot.
Charlie was an excellent singer, and a pretty good mimic, and hoped by
practice to obtain sufficient accuracy to deceive a seal; and he wanted
to kill one to stuff, that he might try Uncle Isaac’s plan.
Landing, and crossing the island, he approached the bank abreast the
ledge. Near this bank was a ridge of shelly rock, rising, about two
feet from the grass ground, to a sharp edge, from which the land sloped
gradually towards the centre of the island--just the place to lie and
rest the big gun over the edge of the rock.
Although Charlie had no objection to shooting a seal, he was much
more anxious to practise growling. It was little after high water: he
crawled up behind the ledge, with the boat’s sail over him, to keep off
the dew, and lay down in the bright moonlight to watch the seals, who
were swimming around the top of the rock, that was just beginning to
get bare, preparing to go on to it. With the patience of a sportsman
Charlie waited; gradually the rock was left above the water. At length
one seal ventured to land; then others followed; and soon they began
to converse. Charlie had practised a good deal, at home, by striving
to imitate them from recollection, and now had come over here that he
might hear them more, and fix the sounds well in his memory: so he lay
and listened a long time to the sounds, imitating them in a low tone,
repeating them again and again. At length, flattering himself he had
caught the tone quite perfectly, he concluded to try it on the seals;
but the moment his voice rose on the air, every one of them went into
the water. Charlie was quite mortified at this; but it was evident
they were not much alarmed, for they soon came back, and resumed
their growling. After listening again for some time, and practising
as before, he made another effort aloud, when, to his great joy, they
remained; another attempt was equally successful; but the third time
some false note startled the wary creatures, and off they slid from the
ledge; but after swimming around a while they returned again.
Charlie, quite well satisfied now with his proficiency in the language,
determined to shoot one of his instructors. He took aim at a big
fellow who sat upon the highest part of the ledge and seemed to act as
watchman, and fired the old gun. It was heavily loaded with buckshot,
and the seal never moved after receiving the charge.
“So much for the big gun,” said Charlie.
On his way home he concluded not to meddle with the boat again till
some rainy day, or till he had put the garden and flowers to rights.
After skinning his seal, cutting the skin as little as possible, he
stuffed it with salt, intending to make a decoy of it. He rather
thought he should get into it, as the Indian got into the hog’s skin
to kill poor Sally Dinsmore, thinking he could growl a great deal
better in a seal-skin.
The mornings now were most beautiful; it was generally calm till ten
or eleven o’clock; and a busier or more attractive spot than Elm
Island presented it would be difficult to find. As the gray light of
morning began to break, you would hear far off in the woods a single,
sudden, harsh cry, breaking with explosive force from the mouth of an
old heron, instantly followed by others; the squawks would add their
contribution; then would follow the sharp screams of the fish-hawk,
mingling with the crowing of cocks,--of which there were no less than
three in the barn,--the clear notes of the robin, and the twittering of
many swallows from the eaves, that, with their heads sticking out of
little round holes in their nests, were bidding their neighbors good
morning.
As the sun came up, all were stirred to new emulation; the bobolink,
shaking the dew from his wings, poured forth his wild medley of
notes; and faint in the distance was heard the bleating of sheep from
Griffin’s Island.
As Charlie, mounted on a ladder, trained the honeysuckle over the
front door and windows, he often paused to listen, and sitting upon
the round of the ladder, inhaled the fragrance of the morning air, or
gazed from his elevation upon the beautiful scene before him--the noble
bay, smooth as a mirror, touched by the full rays of the rising sun;
the gray cliffs of the islands, frowning above, with their majestic
coronal of forests; and the green nooks, here and there upon them,
glittering with dew.
“I wish I was a bobolink--I do,” said he, as he listened to one, who,
more ambitious than his mates, was striving to lead the choir, from
the summit of a mullein stalk, with mouth wide open, wings and every
feather on him in motion.
The old bush Mrs. Hadlock had given her daughter, sacred to the
associations of childhood, was now bending beneath its weight of
flowers, while close beside it blushed the cabbage roses, hanging in
rich clusters over the edge of the ornamental hoop Charlie had put
around the bush.
To his great joy, Charlie found, on inspection, that his grafts were
not all destroyed. With the best intention in the world to do mischief,
Ben, Jr., had not accomplished his intent. The clay had baked so hard
around the scions, that he had broken part of them off, leaving a
couple of buds; for Charlie had put one bud into the cleft of each
stock, and they were coming through the clay.
“I don’t care a cent’s worth,” cried he, when he saw this; “in two
years I can get scions from these.”
He found that the pears and cherries that had escaped Ben’s notice had
most of them taken, and were starting finely.
You seldom find boys who have more to occupy their attention and take
up their time than Charlie had. He had wintered eight ducks and a
drake, and young ducks were everywhere, for he had kept the old ducks
laying, and set the eggs under hens. He had fifty hens (for there was
corn enough on Elm Island now), and troops of chickens. He also had
four mongrel geese, the offspring of the wild gander and the tame
goose, and six rabbits. He was raising two calves, intending to have a
yoke of oxen, and there were two cosset lambs; one of the mother sheep
had got cut off by the tide under the rocks on Griffin’s Island, and
drowned; the other was mired, and the eagles had picked out her eyes.
He had taught these cossets to drink cow’s milk. Ben, Jr., who was as
bright and smart as he was mischievous, attended to feeding them, and
they would follow him all around the premises; but even this was not
all. Uncle Isaac, in building fence that spring, had found a partridge
nest, with fifteen eggs; as the parent had not begun to sit on them, he
brought them over to Charlie, well knowing his fondness for pets.
“If you can tame them when they hatch,” said he, “you will do what was
never done before.”
The day before, little Ben had come upon a hen that had stolen her nest
in the edge of the woods, and was just beginning to sit. He came into
the house full of the matter to his mother, who, taking the hen from
the nest, put her under a tub to break her from wanting to sit. As
there was no other hen that wanted to sit, Charlie put the partridge
eggs in the same nest, and put the hen on them, as he was afraid she
would leave them if he put them in a new place: he intended to keep
watch of her, and as soon as the eggs were pipped, to take the mother
and young into the barn.
Whenever Charlie had a little leisure amid his numerous avocations, he
enjoyed a great deal in watching the proceedings of his large family,
commonly as they retired for the night, as he was generally about the
barn, and more at leisure then.
Although Charlie is now verging on early manhood, resolute to grapple
with danger, and yielding to no difficulties, yet he was peculiarly
boyish in his tastes; this tendency, in part native, had been fostered
by his isolated position, which compelled him to find enjoyment in
different sources from boys in general; his pets were his companions.
It is a great mistake to suppose that roughness is an attribute of
courage. It was Nelson who said, as he was dying, to his comrade
through whole days of bloodshed, “Kiss me, Hardy.”
Charlie had more moral and physical courage than Pete Clash, though he
had never lost his childish innocence. He loved to see the hens calling
their chickens together for the night, and collecting them under their
wings, to see their little heads sticking out from under their mothers’
breasts, and chirping, as though saying, “Mother, it ain’t night yet;
it ain’t time to go to bed;” or in another case, where the chickens
had outgrown their swaddling-clothes, two of them roosting on their
mother’s back. He also noticed the contrast between the hens, as they
went to roost, and the swallows, whose nests were hung to the rafters
and purlins, just above the high beams, on which they roosted. The hens
seemed inspired with the very spirit of discord the moment the hour
of retiring arrived. Madame Ebony, rejoicing in the dignity of age,
and a grandmother, was shocked that a yellow-legged, last year’s late
chick, that had not yet laid a litter of eggs, and those she had laid
not but a trifle larger than potato balls, should presume to roost next
to her, and began picking at her to drive her off the perch, while Mrs.
Yellowlegs exclaimed, “I’m a married woman! I’m as good as you are any
day in the year! I’ll call my husband!”
In the midst of this brawl, the white rooster, who prefers to do all
the fighting himself, flies up, and knocks them both down into the barn
floor, when every hen in the barn screams out at the top of her voice,
“Served them right!”
At length all is measurably quiet. A dispute commences between Mrs.
Brown and Mrs. White, in which all take sides, as to which has had the
most children. This is hardly over, and all about to compose themselves
for the night, when the old white rooster espies a younger one on the
end of the same beam, close to the eaves, and instantly calls out, “Ah,
you thought I didn’t see you! Get off that beam, you miserable upstart!”
“I won’t. I’ve as good right here on this beam as you have. It ain’t
any of your beam.”
Upon this, outraged dignity, to avenge himself, goes walking along the
beam, knocking the hens off, who, sputtering and fluttering, fly down
into the floor, where they are followed by the young upstart.
The pugnacious fowls have become quiet at last, except that
occasionally some aggrieved one cries in angry tones, “You crowd,”
while the other replies, “I don’t--’tis yourself.”
How different the swallows, who, having tarried later out of doors
than the fowls, to catch the insects that are then abundant, now
come gliding on swift and noiseless wing to their nests, through the
holes Charlie had cut for them. Here all is harmony, love, and social
affection. No bickerings, no struggle for preëminence, but, sitting
on the edge of the nest, they bid each other good night in a pleasant
twitter, and with head beneath their wing, sink to rest.
He also took pleasure in seeing the male swallow put flies into the
mouth of his mate, as she sat patiently upon her eggs, or watch them
feed their young on the wing. It amused him to see the ducks coming up
from the brook in Indian file.
As he had derived much pleasure from watching the eave-swallows as
they built their nests, he was equally interested in looking at them
after they were built and filled with birds,--their heads protruding
from the doors of their dwellings,--also the courage they displayed in
driving intruders from their premises.
He found they were not quite so mild in their dispositions as the
swallows that built within, and frequently engaged in contests with
them, in which they were generally the aggressors.