CHARLIE UNCONSCIOUSLY PREFIGURES THE FUTURE.
THE hay harvest was now secured. From the additional land cleared on
the island, and from the large field of natural grass on Griffin’s
Island, Ben had obtained a noble crop, and also one of rye.
He had a large piece of corn planted on a burn, also potatoes, flax,
and wheat. The garden was in fine order, and everything wore the
appearance of plenty and comfort. The land, at the burning of which
Fred Williams had so nearly met his death, he had not planted again, as
he intended it for an orchard, and did not want to wear it out.
On this piece Charlie and his father now set to work. They cut all the
sprouts that had come up from the stumps, cut down a good many old
stubs that had been left in clearing, picked up all the brands and
pieces of logs, then mowed down all the fire and pigeon weed, that had
come up in quantities, and when it was dry, set it all on fire.
Ben intended, in the fall, to set out his apple trees right among
the stumps and ashes, and never to plough the ground, but to keep the
growth of sprouts and weeds down with the axe and scythe.
When Charlie again resumed work upon his boat, a new train of thought
took possession of his mind, which, although it troubled him not a
little, led eventually to very important results. It was this--that
notwithstanding he had succeeded thus far, received the praises of Ben
and Sally, and felt sure he should complete his boat, yet thus far he
had been, and would still be, a copyist; that he had taken the model
of the West Wind from a mackerel, the model of this boat from the West
Wind, and that all he had originated were the trifling alterations he
had made in the first model. Resolved to be something better than an
imitator, he set to work, and modelled a boat from a solid block, three
feet long, and entirely different from the West Wind.
“There,” said Charlie, “that is mine, at any rate; and now, if I take
the shape of that with pieces of boards and imitate it, it will be my
own contrivance.”
It now struck him that this was a roundabout way to build a boat, and
that no person could ever get his living building boats in the way he
was doing--making a model, and then taking the shape of that with
pieces of boards. There must be some general principles, as there were
in framing buildings.
“There’s some rule, I know,” said he, “and I’ll not strike another clip
till I have done my best to find out what it is. I don’t like to work
altogether by guess, and in the dark.”
He measured his boat. She was eighteen feet long, four feet beam
(wide), and eighteen inches deep. He then measured from the keel up
to where the top streak entered the stem, when he found it was a half
more than the depth amidships. He then measured from the keel to where
the top streak met the transom. It was a quarter more than the depth
amidships. Thus the rise from the dead level at the middle was nine
inches at the stem and four and a half at the stern. To be sure this
made the boat curve very much; but it was the fashion in that day, both
in respect to vessels and boats, to give them a great sheer. It was not
without its advantages. They were safer, for when laden there was more
of them out of water.
Charlie had given his boat a rank sheer even for that day; but, as
usual, he had a very good reason for it. He wanted room inside, and, as
he could have only the width the log would allow, he had compensated
for it by giving her all the length he thought prudent. He next
endeavored to gain all the room he could in height at the ends, and
this rise of nine inches forward and four and a half aft would, when he
came to finish, afford him a splendid chance for lockers, in which to
put all those matters that boys want to carry. He measured her width at
the forward floor timber on top. It was three feet. At the after floor
it was three feet eight inches.
“At any rate,” said he, “I have got some guide for the top. Now for the
bottom.”
He chalked it out on the barn floor to see what it looked like, and set
down the dimensions in his book, then measured across the head of the
middle floor timber.
“Whew!” cried he; “it’s just half the length of the beam. Wonder if
they’re all in that proportion.” By measurement he found they were.
“Now there’s a rule for you. The length of the floor timbers is half
the breadth of the beam. Just half as fast as she narrows above she
narrows below. I’ve got a water-line.”
Down goes that in his book. But, upon reflection, he perceived this was
not all he wanted.
“I thought I’d got what I wanted, but I haven’t. This will give me a
water-line along the heads of the floor timbers, but not the shape
of the bottom below; that’s what I want. There are no rules and
regulations, after all; you’ve got to make a frame, set it up, work a
ribband along, and squint at it, cut and cut, fuss and fuss, till you
get it to suit your eye; or else make a model and go through all the
slavery with pieces of boards that I have in building this boat thus
far. O, it’s an endless job to build a boat.”
Vexed and disappointed, he flung his rule into the boat; when the
slight irritation had passed by, he took up his rule again.
He flung it with such violence between the two garboard planks that it
had taken their shape and that of the sharp riser beside which it fell,
and being new, and the joint stiff, retained it.
“How much that looks like the letter V! That’s quite a different shape
from the midship timber.” He put the rule beside this timber, and
spread it apart till the shape corresponded. “How shoal it is!” holding
it up.
The sight put an idea into the head of the keen-witted boy in an
instant. He perceived that the shape of the bottom below the heads of
the floor timbers corresponded exactly to the depth from the heads of
the floor timbers to the keel; he laid a long rule across the heads
of the middle floor timber, and measured the distance from the centre
of that rule to the keel; it was three inches: he measured the forward
one; it was six; the after one; it was six and a half: she was sharper
aft than forward. He found that there was a regular gradation in the
depth from the middle timber, both forward and aft. He took a board the
length of the floor timber, found the centre of it, which corresponded
to centre of the keel; from this point he drew a line three inches in
height, then drew two others of the same height at an inch distance on
either side, to represent the width of the keel: he then drew two lines
from the edges of the keel to the ends of the board (fig. 1),
[Illustration: _Fig. 1_]
when he found that he had the exact shape of the middle floor timber,
and of course of the bottom at that place: he then took the shape of
the forward one (fig. 2).
[Illustration: _Fig. 2_]
He had mastered the carpenter’s principle of the dead rise, although he
didn’t know what to call it.
“Hurrah!” shouted the exultant boy, flinging the mould up over his
head with such force that it knocked two hens, who were just settling
themselves for the night, from the roost, and excited a general
uproar. “I’ve got something to start from now; it’s the rise from the
keel that shapes the bottom. When anybody is going to build a boat,
they always know the length, width, and depth, and from that they can
get all the rest. If I am going to build a boat eighteen feet long,
four feet wide, and eighteen inches deep, she would be at the forward
frame three feet on top; aft, three feet eight inches; middle, four
feet. A line drawn through these points to the stem and stern gives me
her shape on top; a depth and a half forward and a depth and a quarter
aft gives me her sheer; half of her width on top gives me her shape at
the heads of the floor timbers. Then all I’ve got to do to shape her
bottom is, to lay off my rise, making it greater or less according as
I want her full or sharp, dividing it up on the timbers, till I have
twice as much in the forward floor timber as amidships, and a little
more than that aft. I have got the top and bottom; I can get the shape
of the side between those points by my eye; if I can’t I must be a
fool.” The forward and after floor timbers determine the shape of the
boat forward and aft; the timbers after that are V shaped; they do not
cross the keel; and all that is necessary is to have a true taper to
the stem and stern. “I feel kind of satisfied now; there seems to be
some foundation, something to go upon; it ain’t all mixed up: now I
have got all these moulds, it wouldn’t be half the work to timber out
another boat of the same dimensions. Boat-building is real nice work
after you know how; but to build a vessel--that would be the best. Now
I’ll go in swimming, then look at my birds and go and see how my grafts
come on.”
The next night, as he was busily at work after supper, getting out his
gunwale, a well-known voice exclaimed,--
“Halloo! What’s all this?--steam-box, boat-building. I guess Elm Island
will be a city soon.”
“O, Joe! I’m so glad to see you.”
“You be? I thought you didn’t like to have critics round, when you were
at work.”
“O, yes, I do, _you_.”
“Who timbered out that boat?”
“I did.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, all alone; no soul helped me, or told me anything.”
“Where did you get your moulds?”
“Took them from the West Wind;” and he showed Joe the moulds.
“Well, I never should have thought of that way. I should like to know
how you got those streaks on, especially the garboards.”
Charlie showed him the patterns, and told him all about it, and how
terribly he was puzzled.
“How long did it take you to get on them garboards?”
“Two days.”
“I should have thought it would have taken you a week. It is done
handsome, my boy,”--patting him on the back; “nobody can better that.
But, life of me, why didn’t you make a rule staff, and take spilings,
instead of going to work in such a roundabout way as that? You couldn’t
have done it any better; but you could have done it in a quarter part
the time, and no fuss about it.”
“Then, there’s a rule?”
“To be sure there is.”
“What is a rule staff? What do you mean by taking spilings?”
“I’ll show you by and by.”
Charlie then told his friend the discovery he had made in relation to
the floor timbers.
“That is what carpenters call the dead rise, and those middle
timbers, that rise but little, are called dead flats. Now, my little
boat-builder, I’ll show you how to take spilings. I suppose you
wouldn’t be willing to take that garboard off again, because taking the
spilings of a garboard is a little different from the rest.”
“Yes, I would; it isn’t nailed fast.”
“It is a little too narrow, though it is _put on_ as well as I could do
it.”
Joe took one of Charlie’s thin boards, planed and made one end of it as
wide as the end of the streak he was to put on, and cut it something
near the shape of the stem, and of the length he wanted his plank
to be; this, he told Charlie, was a rule staff. He then put the end
very near to the rabbet at the stem, and brought it along over the
bow, close to the keel, just as it naturally came, without twisting
sidewise, to the timbers, where he intended to make his butt, and
fastened it; then took the rule, and measured, at frequent distances,
from the outside edge of the rabbet at the stem, to the lower edge of
the rule staff, till he had gotten round the sweep; then he measured
only at the timbers, he made a scratch fit every measurement, and
chalked down the measure on the rule staff.
He now took the rule staff and laid it on the board of which the streak
was to be made, and with the compass set off all these distances, then
took a ribband that would bend edgewise, put it on the compass pricks,
and scratched the whole length of the plank.
“You see,” he said, “that this rule staff, being bent on, has followed
exactly the twist of the timbers; so of course this line of pricks,
taken from it, will do the same, and give the shape of the edge of the
streak; that is all the rule staff does; now you must measure the width
of your plank from them. I have made these measures at the end very
near together, because I am working for a very particular body, and I
want my work to compare.”
He now steamed the plank and put it on, when it fayed to a hair.
“Now, Charlie, before I fasten this plank, I want you to squint along
the edge of it.”
“I see a bunch on the luff of the bow.”
“Now look at the counter.”
“It is the same.”
“We must take out a little there; I should have done it when I lined
the plank, but I wanted you to see it; the twist throws the plank up:
if you could take spilings of both edges, it would take it out.”
“How nice that is? Why couldn’t I have thought of it? I might by this
time have had the boat all done and in the water. Are ships’ planks put
on in this way?”
“Yes, somewhat; but they do not have to be so particular, except at the
fore and after woods: they line them as crooked as they can, and then
jam them down edgewise with wedges; and you can’t do that with boat
plank, but must cut to a sixteenth of an inch, if you want your work to
look well.”
“You are very good, Joe; now all my difficulties are over; but I’m glad
you didn’t come before.”
“Why so?”
“Because, if you had shown me about the dead rise, I shouldn’t have
found it out myself. Joe, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, if I get
this boat off.”
“And she don’t split in two, you mean.”
“If she works well, I’m going to make one out of my own head, without
any model to work from.”
“I tell you what it is, Charlie: there will be some staring when you
appear out in this craft.”
“I guess there will; they all think what happened to the West Wind
sickened and discouraged me; but I reckon they’ll find out to the
contrary. I do hope that neither Uncle Isaac, nor Fred, your Hen,
Captain Rhines, nor any of them, will find it out till I come out.
Don’t tell; will you, Joe?”
“You will soon finish her now; you can take a spruce pole, split it in
two with a saw, and it will make a grand gunwale: that’s what they use
in Nova Scotia.”
“A spruce pole! I guess I shall. I’ll have a nice piece of oak, planed
and rubbed with dog-fish skin. Do you know what I want to do, Joe?”
“It would be hard guessing; you have so many projects in your head.”
“I want two things, and then I shall be satisfied.”
“Then you are more easily satisfied than most folks.”
“I want to build a vessel. Think I ever can?”
“Yes; you can learn to build a vessel as well as a boat; it’s pretty
much the same thing on a larger scale. But what is the other thing?”
“I want to own a piece of land: it’s what none of my folks ever did,
to own a piece of land; a man must be rich to own a piece of land in
England.”
“Well, you can certainly do that, for you have got money of your own,
and can buy wild land for ten or fifteen cents an acre, and clear it
yourself.”
“That’s what I mean to do, when I get my money back from Fred, and find
some place that just fills my eye, right by the water. I wouldn’t take
the gift of a piece of land that the salt water didn’t wash. Then I
must have a brook; I couldn’t live without a brook.”
“Nor I either: by the way, we are going to run to the westward and fish
off the cape; I think very likely I shall run into Portland, and see
John.”
“Then I’ll write him a letter; he don’t know anything about this boat,
for I hadn’t thought much about building her when I saw him last.”
Charlie finished his boat, putting four knees to each of the middle
thwarts, and two to both the forward and after one. He was resolved
this boat should not split in two. At the bow and stern he decked her
over, and made a splendid locker forward and aft, with doors, and in
which he could put powder, fishing-lines, and whatever he wished to
take with him. Under the middle thwart he made a locker, just the shape
of a gun, with a door hung on wire hinges, so as to keep his gun dry.
He was already provided with spars, sails, rudder, and oars, as this
boat was just the size of the West Wind. His paints were all gone,
except a little vermilion that the English captain had given him, and
there was none at the store. Indeed, there was seldom anything in the
form of paint at the store, except lampblack, and red or yellow ochre,
and they were used only on the inside of houses, or on vessels, and
generally with fish oil. It was a rare thing that white lead or linseed
oil was found there, it being so little called for. Captain Rhines’s
house was the only one in the place that was painted outside. He and
some others had one room painted lead-color; the general custom being
to keep the walls and floors white, and scour them. But Charlie was
determined to have paint for this boat, and sent to Portland by Joe for
both paint and oil.
The iron-work of the other boat was suitable for this, and she was
now calked and all done except painting. Charlie had oiled the planks
to keep them from renting, as he had no paint to prime her. How he
longed for that paint to come! Indeed, he thought so much about it,
that none of his usual sources of enjoyment seemed to afford him any
gratification, or to occupy his thoughts. The flowers were passed by
unheeded, the song of birds won no regard, and even the baby received
slight attention. He enjoyed himself most when occupied about that
which was in some way connected with the boat. He passed a good many
moments in thinking how he should paint her. As she was altogether too
precious to lie aground even in the quiet harbor of Elm Island, he
prepared a mooring for her. He borrowed Uncle Sam’s drill, and made a
round hole in a large flat rock, then dug up a small tree by the roots,
cut it off about fifteen feet from the roots, removed the bark, shaved
the trunk smooth, ran it through the hole in the rock, till the roots
prevented it from going farther, and then put it off in the harbor.
Over this pole, standing upright in the water, he slipped an oak plank,
which floated on the water, and travelled around the pole as the wind
veered, and slipped up and down on it as the tide rose and fell. To
this traveller he fastened a rope, with an eye-splice in it to slip
over the boat’s stem, and then he could go to her in the Twilight.
When all these preparations were made, he began to think of a name. He
didn’t like to give her the name of the old boat, because he thought
she had been unlucky, and it would revive unpleasant memories.
“There’s only one thing about her I should like otherwise,” said he. “I
wish she was pink-sterned and lap-streaked. These square sterns look
chopped off to me. I think the eye requires that both ends should be
alike. I wonder how a fish would look with a square stern? or a tree
with a square top? Well, I’ll build another, when I shan’t be tied to
the dimensions of a log, and can have her wider and deeper, with plenty
of room to knock about in. This boat will be like old Captain Scott’s
boat, in Halifax, that was so small and full of trumpery, he said there
wasn’t room enough in her to swear. Well, I don’t want to swear. I
think it’s real mean. So there’ll be room enough for me.”
All at once he thought of something to divert attention and occupy his
leisure time, which was, to study surveying. The science of angles was
congenial to his mechanical tastes, and he was soon so absorbed in
the pursuit as well nigh to forget the paint, for which he had been
longing. The evenings were growing longer, and he had a competent
instructor in Ben. Ben also had another scholar, Seth Warren, who had
come over to the island to study navigation.
“Mother,” said Charlie, one night, as they were milking, “do you
suppose there will ever be a vessel built in this bay?”
“I don’t know. Not in my day, I guess.”
“Why not, mother? Didn’t father build the Ark on this island? and
couldn’t he, and Captain Rhines, and Uncle Isaac build a vessel if they
had a mind to?”
“Why, Charlie, the people here have hardly got their land cleared up,
and got to living themselves. There are no carpenters but Joe Griffin
and Robert Yelf, no blacksmith but Peter Brock, and he’s worn out.
Besides, there’s nothing for a vessel to do, except to carry wood to
Salem or Boston, or to fish. Your father and Captain Rhines had rather
put their money into a vessel with Mr. Welch.”
“Mother, carpenters and blacksmiths go wherever there is work. I’m sure
there’s lumber and spars enough here, and vessels come here to load. I
don’t see why a vessel couldn’t be built here, where there’s timber to
build her, and lumber to load her, and take it to the West Indies, and
get molasses and sugar to sell in Boston or Portland, just as Captain
Rhines did the cargo of the Congress. I heard him say he had half a
mind to keep her, load, and run her.”
“I never saw such a boy as you are, Charlie! You’re always planning
out something. What in the world put this in your head, just now?”
“Because I was thinking what a sight of ducks, chickens, geese, and
turkeys there are around this barn. Why, you can’t step, hardly,
without treading on a hen or a duck! I can’t hardly pitch a fork full
of hay off the mow without disturbing a hen’s nest! And only see the
beets, onions, and potatoes there are! I was thinking, if there was
only some vessel here going to the West Indies, what a slap you and I
could make by sending a venture, as we did in the Ark! Why, only think
how much butter you could send! Then, I thought, here is Seth Warren,
learning navigation. He ought to have a vessel built for him here,
instead of going to Wiscasset; and Joe Griffin and Robert Yelf ought to
help build her, instead of going out of town to work, as they often do.”
“Well, Charlie, you were born twenty-five or thirty years too soon!
Such things may do to talk about, but they can’t be done in the woods,
in a new country.”
“Captain Rhines was born and brought up in the woods; but he’s been all
over the world, for all that.”
“Well, Charlie, you’d better leave alone building castles in the air,
and take that calf away. He’s biting the cow’s teats all to pieces.”
“I tell you, mother, there will be a vessel built in this bay before
five years. You mark my words for it.”
“Perhaps there may--a wood-coaster.”
“No; a vessel to go to the West Indies.”
“Well, when I see it, I’ll believe it, and I’ll send a venture in her.”