WADE BROOKS MAKES A TRADE.
Wade Brooks felt like a new boy. The breakfast was a meal to be
remembered; for there was nothing like it in the past, and the future
at the house of Obed Swikes was equally blank in prospect. His meals
there were hardly better than the pigs had, and were often short at
that.
“I hate to go back to the home of Obed Swikes,” said he to himself,
as he walked from the house of the kind lady to the river. “I have to
work like a dog, and sometimes I can’t get enough to eat; and he and
the old woman say I don’t earn my salt. Both of them are growling at me
all the time, and I have no peace of my life. They haven’t any claims
on me; and they say I belong in the poorhouse. I don’t believe I should
be any worse off if I were in the poorhouse. I shouldn’t have to work
any harder, and I couldn’t be fed any worse. But then, I don’t like the
name of it.”
By the time he reached the river, he had about made up his mind not
to return to the house of Obed Swikes. It was a big thought; and,
seating himself in the standing-room, he gave himself up to it. The
runaways were going to New York, and he had expected to go with them.
He believed he could find work there, and earn his own living.
But how could he get to New York? He had the old boat, and it was not
more than sixty miles distant. It might take him two days to get there;
but the boat would certainly take him to his destination if he kept her
going. The dollar Capt. Trustleton had given him would supply all the
provision he needed, and even leave him something to spend after he
reached the great city. The question was settled in the boy’s mind.
Some folks in Midhampton would miss the old boat; but Wade felt that he
had the best right to her, for she had belonged to his father. Hoisting
the mainsail, he stood down the river; and, when he had passed the
bridge, he set the jib. He expected to find a town before he reached
the Sound, where he could buy the food for the cruise; but no such
place appeared. Wade Brooks had heard of the Sound, but he had no clear
idea what it was. He had been to school in the winter since he was old
enough to do so, and had studied geography. He had seen the Sound on
the map, and thought it was like a very wide river. He knew that he
must go west to reach New York, and he had no doubt that he should find
it.
The wind was fresh and fair, and in less than half an hour the
“Mud-turtle” reached the mouth of the river. The Sound looked like the
trackless ocean to Wade, for at this point he could not see across
it. He did not like the idea of going out on such a broad sea; for he
had never sailed anywhere except on the river, and had never been out
of Midhampton before. But he could keep near the shore, and if a storm
came up he could put in at some of the towns he had seen on the map.
After he got out of the river, he found a point of land extended over a
mile to the south, and had a light-house at the end of it. He doubled
this cape, and found that a great bay stretched inland. It was seven
or eight miles across the mouth of this bay, and he did not like to
venture out so far. Besides, several vessels and a small steamboat were
bound up the bay, which indicated that there was a large town at the
head of it.
The water was alive with craft of all sorts farther out in the Sound;
and, if the old sail-boat did break down, there were vessels enough
near to save him. After he had run a couple of miles more, he could see
the town at the head of the bay. He could just discern a light-house
at the point where the bay began to be very narrow; and he headed for
this, as all the other craft were doing. But the wind was dead ahead,
and he had to beat all the way; but it was not more than three miles
from him.
“What town is that?” asked Wade of a man in a boat loaded with oysters,
which he was rowing towards the town, as the “Turtle” passed near him.
“That’s the city of Bridgeport,” replied the oyster man. “Don’t you
know where you are?”
“No, sir, I don’t: I never was here before,” answered Wade, with candor
and simplicity. “I want to go to some place where I can get some
crackers and things to eat.”
“Where did you come from?”
“From Midhampton, up the river.”
“Where are you bound?”
“To New York.”
“If you are bound up to town, and will take my boat in tow, I will
pilot you up. It’s a crooked channel up to the city, and you will have
a head wind part of the way,” added the oysterman.
Wade agreed to this arrangement, and ran the “Turtle” alongside the
oyster-boat. The man passed his painter to the stern of the sail-boat,
and then took his place at the helm.
“Whose boat is this?” asked the new skipper, as he looked the
“Mud-turtle” over with a critical eye.
“She belongs to me,” replied Wade.
“You are rather young to own a boat,” added the oysterman.
“If she don’t belong to me, I don’t know who owns her.”
“Where did you get her?”
Wade had no secrets, and he related the history of the boat. The man
wanted to know something more about the young boatman’s history, and
he kept looking the boat over all the time as he asked question after
question. Wade told his story without any reserve, except that he did
not mention the fire.
“I don’t see as that man has any claims upon you,” said the pilot. “If
he did not use you well, I don’t blame you for leaving him.”
“Obed Swikes said I belonged in the poorhouse; and he and his wife kept
saying they should send me there,” added Wade.
“What are you going to do in New York?” asked Loud; for that was his
name.
“I expect to find work when I get there.”
“What are you going to do with this boat?”
“I don’t know: I hadn’t thought of that,” replied Wade blankly. And he
did not think the boat was of much consequence any way.
“I think this boat will do me more good than she will you,” said Loud,
feeling his way to the subject that had been uppermost in his mind from
the beginning.
“It don’t seem to me that I should want to row that load of oysters as
far as you have to go,” replied Wade, though he did not yet see what
the oysterman was driving at.
“You can’t do any thing with the boat in New York,” added Loud, looking
into the locker astern of the tiller. “She isn’t much of a boat; but
you couldn’t even sell her there, if you wanted to.”
This was a new idea to the young boatman. It had never occurred to him
before, that there was any value in the old “Mud-turtle,” which had
been used in Midhampton by everybody who wanted her, without hire or
even thanks. He saw that the man wanted to buy her for use in bringing
in his oysters. She was just the thing for that. She was old; but she
was still sound, and scarcely leaked at all. He was a New-England boy,
and he had an instinct for trade; and he made up his mind that Loud
should not get her for nothing.
“I should say that New York was a better place than this to sell a
boat,” said Wade, when the man began to run down the boat, and to make
it appear that she was useless to her owner.
“I don’t think so. They have so many nice boats there, that an old
thing like this don’t stand much chance.”
“If she were only painted up, she would be as nice as any of them,”
replied Wade, who remembered how handsome he thought she was when his
father had put her in first-rate order two or three years before he
died.
“It would cost a good deal of money to fix her up; and I don’t know as
she is worth it. She will do to bring up oysters from the beds in; and,
if you will sell her for any fair price, I should like to buy her,”
continued Loud, looking her over more carefully than before.
“I didn’t think of selling her; but I will let her go, if you will give
me what she’s worth,” said Wade, deeming it wise not to appear too
anxious to drive a trade.
“Well, what will you take for her?” asked Loud, in an indifferent way.
This was a hard question for Wade to answer; but he recalled a time
when his father talked of selling the boat, and he had heard the
conversation on the subject. Mr. Brooks had asked seventy-five dollars
for the boat; but then she had just been painted and repaired.
“I will take fifty dollars for her,” replied Wade, after some
hesitation; and this, he thought, would be a good figure at which to
begin the trade.
“Oh, get out!” exclaimed Loud, with great contempt in his manner. “She
is not worth half that.”
Wade did not think she was, but he did not say so: that was not the way
to trade.
“I know my father would not sell her for less than seventy-five; but I
didn’t want to be hard, and I made her cheap to you.”
“I should think you did,” said Loud with a laugh,--“fifty dollars for
this old tub! I can buy a bigger and better boat here in Bridgeport for
half the money.”
“Well, if you can, there isn’t any law to keep you from doing so,”
added Wade good-naturedly.
“This boat will answer my purpose very well; and I thought, as she will
be of no use to you, she might be bought cheap.”
“And so she can be: what will you give for her?”
“I made up my mind, if you would let her go for ten dollars, I should
take her; but I didn’t mean to give much more than that for her.”
“Oh, get out! ten dollars for this boat!” exclaimed Wade: “there is old
iron enough to bring more than that.”
For an hour they haggled about the price. Wade saw that the oysterman
wanted the boat, in spite of the indifference he tried to assume. Loud
said there was some risk in buying a boat of a boy; but the trade was
finally closed at twenty dollars. When they landed at the city, Loud
went for the money, and paid Wade the cash, requiring him to sign a
receipt for it.
Wade was glad to have the boat off his hands; and he would have sold
her for ten dollars rather than keep her, if he could have got no more.
Just now, with twenty dollars in his pocket, he was a wealthy young
man; and he felt better off than the rich showman in the place where he
was. But the boat was gone; and the question now was, how he should get
to New York.