A GLAD SURPRISE.
IN the course of three hours, it was evident that both of the rescued
persons were reviving fast. Though unable to speak, they swallowed
eagerly all that Captain Rhines thought proper to give; the expression
returned to their eyes and features, and their limbs twitched with
convulsive starts.
“Charlie,” said the captain, “I’ll take these people home in the
schooner.”
“Leave them here, we can take care of them; and leave the schooner too.
I’ll make a new mast and windlass for her.”
“It is too much for Mary, with a young child,—two invalids to take
care of.”
“No, it ain’t, father; they will be all right, as soon as it will do to
let them eat and drink.”
“I’ll take the young man, at any rate, and you may have the boy.”
They wrapped him in a blanket, and he was so emaciated that Charlie
took him in his arms as though he had been an infant, and put him into
the whale boat.
“Wife,” said the captain, the next morning, as he sat watching his
charge, as he lay sleeping, after having eaten more than he had allowed
him at one time before, “do you know that since this young man has come
to himself a bit he looks very natural to me. I’ve seen him, or some of
his folks, before.”
“It wouldn’t be at all strange if you had, for you have been a
traveller all your life.”
“It beats all how familiar his features look; and the more I look
at him, the more the likeness grows upon me. He’s the very image of
somebody I’ve known and loved right well, but to save me, I can’t tell
who. He’ll be strong enough to talk when he wakes, and I’ll know who he
is, and all about it. Only see, Mary, how the color has come into his
lips! they are not drawn apart as they were. See how his eyeballs are
filled out, and his fingers; and his nose is not so sharp as it was.
He’s doing first rate.”
As the captain had predicted, the young man, who had been within a
hair’s breadth of eternity, awoke a few minutes before noon, extremely
weak, but free from stupor, and in partial possession of his faculties,
and inquired where he was.
“You are among friends, young man, and safe; make yourself easy. Where
are you from?”
“Salem.”
“Salem! Was you born and brought up in Salem?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What is your name?”
“Brown, sir.”
“What is your father’s business?”
“He was a shipmaster, but he is not living.”
“Was his name Arthur?” cried the captain, more eagerly, his face
flushing, and then becoming very pale.
“Yes, sir.”
“And was he cast away in the Roanoke on Abaco, and all hands lost?”
“Just so, sir.”
“God bless you, my son,” shouted the captain, leaping from his chair,
and grasping both hands of the seaman, while tears of gladness,
streaming from his eyes, fell thick and fast on the pale features of
his wondering guest; “your father was one of God Almighty’s noblemen;
the first and best friend I ever had. All I am and all I’ve got in the
world I owe to him. Didn’t you never hear him tell about Ben Rhines,
the long-legged boy just out of the woods, with pine pitch sticking to
him, that had to make his mark on the ship’s articles, that he learned
to read and write, and made a shipmaster of?”
“O, yes, sir, a great many times.”
“Well, I’m Ben Rhines, what there is left of him. Is your mother
living? and what family did your father leave?”
“My mother is living in Salem. Father left three children, two girls
and myself; he also took a nephew to bring up after his father died.”
“Did he leave property?”
“No, sir. He owned a large part of the Roanoke, and there was no
insurance on her. My mother was left poor; father wasn’t a man to lay
up money.”
“No, he had too large a heart. I’m glad of it. I’ve got enough for
both, thank God! I thought I’d got enough to take me well through, and
shouldn’t try to make any more,—but I will. I’ll just give my mind to
making money. I’ll make lots of it. I’ll go to sea again. I’ve got a
glorious use for money now. But how came you in an English ship? Among
all the friends your father had, and the hundreds whom, to my certain
knowledge, he helped into business, was there not one who thought
enough of his obligations to do for his son?”
“Yes, sir. After father was lost, mother kept a boarding-house for
masters and mates of vessels, and many of his former friends boarded
with her, and set up our girls in a dry goods store. My cousin went
into a grocery store. I was the youngest. When I left school I went on
board a ship, belonging to a friend of father’s, as a cabin boy. He
put me right along. I am only twenty-one last July, the fourteenth.
The ship was sold in Liverpool; and by the captain’s good word, I got
a mate’s berth in an English ship, knowing if I got across to Halifax,
I could easily get home from there. The ship sprung a leak: the crew
and second mate took the boats, nautical instruments, and nearly all
the provisions, and left. They didn’t like the captain; he was a hard
man, and there had been quarrelling all the voyage. Finally they put on
their jackets (they might have kept the ship free), and told him they
had as many friends in hell as he had, and left. They offered to take
me with them; but I thought it my duty to stick by the captain and the
ship.”
“But how came the cook, the seaman, and the boy to stick by you. Why
didn’t they join the strongest party?”
“The black was a slave in Jamaica. The captain took a liking to him,
bought him when he was nineteen, and gave him his liberty. He wouldn’t
leave the captain. The sailor was a townie and shipmate of mine in the
other ship; the boy belongs in Salem, the son of one of our neighbors,
and was also with me in the other ship, and a better boy never stepped
on a vessel’s deck. We three stuck together. Captain Rhines, is there
any way I can get a letter to my mother, to inform her of my safety,
and also of the boy’s? She knows I was on my passage in the Madras to
Halifax, and that it is time for the ship to arrive there, and if the
crew are picked up or get ashore they will report us as lost.”
“We have a mail now once a week. It will go day after to-morrow.”
At this period of the conversation Mrs. Rhines came into the room, when
the captain, rushing at her, half smothered her with kisses.
“Why, what is the matter, Benjamin?” she exclaimed, noticing his
flushed face, and the traces of tears on it.
“Matter, Molly!” bursting out afresh; “the matter is, we’ve got another
boy. You know, wife, how much you have heard me tell about Mr. Brown,
the mate of the first square-rigged vessel I went to sea in, that did
everything, and more too, for me?”
“Indeed, Benjamin, I guess I have.”
“This is his boy, lying here on this lounge!—his only son, named for
him.”
“How glad I am, Benjamin!—glad on your account, and on my own, for the
sake of his mother.”
“Don’t you think, wife, when I took his father by the hand, to bid him
good by, as I was about to step aboard the James Welch as first officer
(through and _only_ through his means), I said, with a full heart, ‘Mr.
Brown, how can I ever repay you?’ His reply was, ‘Ben, do by other
young men you may fall in with, and who are starting in the world with
nobody to help them, as I have by you.’ And now a kind Providence has
put it in my power to save the life of his son, so help me God, if ever
a debt was paid, principal, interest, and _compound_ interest, this
shall be. Kiss him, wife.”
Mrs. Rhines kissed the wasted cheek of the young man, and assured him
that she was, equally with her husband, interested in his welfare, and
rejoiced to receive him as a member of their household.
“Now, Arthur,” said the captain, “you are our boy. You are just as much
at home in this house as we are ourselves, and the more we can do for
you the better we shall like it. John, here is your brother.”
This whole-souled declaration elicited no reply. The young man,
exhausted by the long and exciting conversation, had fallen asleep.
“Poor boy! he is weak. Only see the great sores on him. See what a
sight of little boils are coming out all over his arms.”
“That, wife, is soaking in salt water so long; and the sores are where
the ropes he was lashed with chafed him.”
Utterly unable to keep the discovery confined to himself and family any
longer, he mounted his horse, and rode full speed to tell Uncle Isaac
and Charlie. When he reached Charlie’s, he found the boy (who was less
accustomed to exposure) had recovered strength much more slowly than
the mate. The moment he saw the captain, he wanted to know how Mr.
Brown was getting along.
“You like Mr. Brown?” said the captain, after replying to his question.
“_Like_ him, sir! You can’t help liking him. Every man on board liked
him. The men wanted him to go with them in the boats; but they wouldn’t
have the captain, and he thought it was his duty to stick by him.”
“Do you think you will want to go to sea any more?”
“I shall go if Mr. Brown goes. How can I get home, sir, when I get my
strength again?”
“It will be some time before you will be fit to go. When that time
comes, I’ll get you home.”
“Could I send a letter, when I am able to write?”
“Mr. Brown’s going to write to-morrow to his folks and yours. What is
your name, my boy?”
“Edward Gates, sir. They call me Ned on board ship.”
“You are from Salem, too?”
“Yes, sir. Mr. Brown and I live on the same street—King Street. His
house is only four doors from mine.”
“Then you’ve always known him?”
“O, yes, sir. I went to school with him. He was one of the big boys,
and I was a little one. I used to say my lessons to him when the master
was busy, and sometimes he kept school when the master was sick.
Sometimes, when his father’s ship was in port, he would get her yawl
boat, and give us little fellows a sail.”
After the building of the Casco, Charlie had been enabled to gratify
his taste for cultivating the soil and improving his place. The
Hard-scrabble, under the command of Seth Warren, and the Casco, under
that of Isaac Murch, had made profitable voyages. Charlie and John
found themselves in possession both of means and leisure. Charlie had
built a large house, roomy enough to contain his men whenever he wanted
to build more vessels, a barn, workshop, and other out-buildings. Hard
wood stumps soon decay, white pine will last fifty years, and oak much
longer than beech, maple or birch. The slope in front of the house
presented a most enchanting view. Directly in front of the house was
a most noble growth of forest trees, where the birch, beech, maple,
and oak, in associate beauty, intermingled their huge trunks, covered
with moss, and of such majestic height as to permit the buildings to
be seen between their stems. A footpath wound among them to the outer
edge, where, between their gnarled and twisted roots, gleamed the clear
waters of Silver Spring.
Almost any summer or autumn morning, about nine o’clock, you might see
a gray squirrel sitting on one of the great tree roots, viewing himself
in the transparent water, washing his face, and making his toilet by
its aid. Scattered all along on the surface of the slope margining
the beach were clumps and single trees, of peculiar beauty and vast
size, which Charlie, by abstaining from the use of fire, had spared;
thus preserving what it would have required seventy years, and a large
outlay, to have obtained by planting.
Neither the mill nor the shop could be seen, except in one direction;
that is, when you were directly in front, they were so embosomed in
foliage, Charlie having left the growth around them, for he was in
possession of ideas of taste and beauty, of which neither Captain
Rhines, Uncle Isaac, or John had the least conception. It was a
pleasant sight, as you sailed away in the summer, to obtain indistinct
glimpses of the water between the tree trunks as it poured off the
dam, listen to the click of the saw, and catch through the leaves
the gleams of the carpenters’ axes; while far beyond, as the land
gradually rose, large fields of corn and grain, with their vivid green,
presented a most singular and beautiful contrast to the black limbs
and barkless trunks of the girdled trees among which they lay, their
hollow trunks—some standing upright, others fallen—affording a most
excellent roost for the crows, who paid their respects to Charlie’s
corn when it was in the blade.
At the lower edge of an immense forest of maple and birch, from which
every vestige of underbrush had been removed, were seen the walls of
a sap camp; while, instead of a path leading to the house, marked by
spotted trees, a carriage road had been made, so that Captain Rhines
could ride back and forth in his wagon, and Parson Goodhue in his
chaise—for he had arrived to that dignity. It was not, however, much
like the vehicle bearing that appellation at the present time. The
wheels and arms were large enough for a modern team wagon; the frame
of the top was made of iron; instead of leather, it was covered with
painted canvas, and on the sides were projections, like the wings of a
bird, to throw off the mud.
Charlie and Joe cut a footpath through the forest, between their farms,
and put logs across the gullies and sloughs, so that they could go back
and forth conveniently.
Two other notable events occurred this year. You know Uncle Isaac
was not a whit like most elderly people, any more than chalk is like
cheese. There was nothing stereotyped about him. He made a cider
mill, to replace his white oak beam and wooden maul. When he went to
Thomaston to see General Knox’s mills, he saw a cider press, in which
the cheese was pressed with wooden screws. The apples, also, instead of
being pounded to pieces in a trough, with a wooden maul, were ground
between nuts, made with grooves and projections fitting into each
other, and turned by a horse. Uncle Isaac took the pitch of the thread
of the screws, and when he came home made press and mill.
Ben also, that fall, brought over to his father and Charlie a bushel of
apples apiece, which he had raised from his young orchard.
“What do you think now about making cider on Elm Island?”
Charlie said, “I think, when you get ready, there will be a mill for
you;” and told him what Uncle Isaac had done.
Uncle Isaac didn’t stop here. He made his wife and Sally Rhines a
cheese-press, with screws. The way they pressed cheese before this was,
to put a lever under the sill of the house, place the cheese under it,
and then put rocks on the other end of the lever. At Ben’s suggestion,
he also made a press to press hay. Before this, they carried it loose
on board vessels, and couldn’t take any great amount, although, in
Massachusetts, presses had come in use, and Ben had seen them.