Part 9

(the strength being strength of purpose) also a good head for planning, and a memory, it turned out that the chessmen fancy proved a good thing. Nothing outside of good, hard, school studies can better discipline some of the faculties than that game. It is indeed no light accomplishment to play even tolerably well. Besides, when those boys were absorbed in chess, their fathers and mothers did not have to worry about them when they were away in the evening.

One set had historic associations almost the next best thing to Sir Walter’s. Think of the king being made of a piece of wood from Mount Vernon; a castle (or rook) of a piece from Fort Ticonderoga (we have forts, or ruins of forts, enough); a knight from a piece of John Brown’s scaffold; and the pawns from a peach-tree that grew from a stone a soldier had thrown away on a Virginia battlefield.

Chessmen can be made from specimens of wood of our native trees; solid oak for king or castle, delicate poplar or birch for the queen, and so on; or of any curious and rare woods; and almost all have some beauty of grain or markings. They can be turned on a lathe, and then finished in grooves and otherwise, or wholly done with the knife. Many, as you know, are in two pieces; and the king and queen in some sets can be taken apart in two places, making three.

There are great opportunities in pieces of wood. The boy who went to the war brought home enough of Southern woods for several canes; and for convenience in packing, he cut it in sections about six inches long; purposing to fit them together on the same principle that a cap of rubber is fitted to the end of a pencil; by cutting away on one piece to slip into a hole made in the next, plug fashion, and there glued.

Relics in wood can be worked into a glove box or handkerchief box, skilfully joining the parts and as skilfully gluing them. Picture frames suggest another form. There is one here made by a clerk in a store while waiting for customers. It has over three hundred small strips, lapping in a fanciful way, and not a tack, or a brad is used in the work; but this is too complicated.

It is easier to turn out checker-men or napkin-rings, or make pen-holders, or paper-knives. Very elegant paper-knives can be fashioned, having one kind for the blade and two for the handle. But all this woodwork must be done with great care, accuracy and nicety, not only in the cutting and dovetailing or matching of the parts, but in the gluing and finishing off, including a delicate oiling to bring out the grain. It is nice work; to be sure it is. But if soldiers in prisons can do such things as some of our soldiers did, with not much besides a jack-knife to do with, pray cannot a smart Western or Eastern boy do as much?—between scroll saws and the variety of choice tools within his reach, he is not the boy I take him for if he cannot make himself a set of chessmen, or a work-box for his sister.

As for minerals, I lately saw at a State Fair a box on which broken-up specimens from that State were glued, crusting it all over with stone that sparkled in places like crystal. On each specimen was a mere speck of paper with a number on it, which corresponded to a number on a written list placed inside, telling what they were—beryl, tourmaline, quartz, etc., etc., and I thought it an admirable thing.

In a parlor, arranged in a border around the little iron fence in front of the coal grate I once saw a curious display of cobble-stones brought home from different beaches. The lady who put them there was artistic, and the effect was pretty. Sea-shells of delicate varieties can be used as necklaces or bracelets if pierced with a red-hot darning needle, or in some way bored to admit of being strung; some of those lovely, iridescent, foreign shells, strung in such a way, are greatly to be desired. You can think of so many ways to put them to pretty use!

Mosses and lichens you can group on card-board or glue them to a wooden cross. With leaves and pressed flowers you can do no end of things. You can mount them on card-board, or make a wreath of them around a piece of wire or rattan; or ornament a fan with them—a round, Japanese fan, recovering it with silk or paper of a neutral color, for background. One girl made a transparency with three or four bright autumn leaves (from a woodbine), which were gathered from among some that had fallen at Longfellow’s gate—just where the poet’s feet had passed in and out hundreds of times. She cut two pieces of coarse lace to fit the window-pane, glued her cluster of leaves in the centre between them, then overcast the outer edges and put on a deep binding of crimson velvet. As the light streamed through they were gorgeous as old stained glass.

If you collect relics, souvenirs, momentos, curiosities, they are worth arranging. If you get tired of them, give them to somebody else.

All these articles require much painstaking. They will be spoiled for any person of good taste if they are daubed, out of proportion, or awry. Don’t let them have a home-made look either. They need not. No reason why a boy of average skill should not do as well, after some experience, as those sailors in the light-ships; or why a girl should not, with care and all her trying, make as pretty things as the gypsy women or the nuns, of whom people like so well to buy.

XXIII.—KNOTS, HITCHES AND SPLICES.

WHEN I was a boy (which was not so very long ago), it was my fortune, one time, to make a trip from Bristol, Rhode Island, to New York, as a sort of working passenger in the sloop _Resolution_, Captain Israel Northup. One morning the captain called out to me from the wheel to bring aft a bucket of water, at the same time pointing to a wooden pail that stood on the deck near me. I therefore made fast (as I thought) to the handle of the pail the end of the peak halliards and dropped it over the side. It filled readily enough, and I was carelessly pulling it up again, when suddenly, to my great chagrin, the knot that I had made untied itself, and away went the pail drifting rapidly astern.

Captain Israel, although he had witnessed the whole of this performance, said nothing at the time. But a little later, chancing to walk past where I was sitting, he picked up the end of a rope, and, running it through a ringbolt near by, showed me the knot which you see in Fig. 1.

“The next time you throw a bucket overboard,” said he, “you’d better make it fast with an Anchor-bend.” Then in the kindness of his heart he sat down on the rail beside me and gave me a practical lesson (afterwards several times renewed) in the matter of rope-tying.

“There is some things about ropes that a boy _must_ know to be wuth anything at all,” observed he. “An’ there mought be times when a man would give all Cuby ter know how ter tie two ropes together so’t they’d _stay_.”

Believing that these words of Captain Israel are worth heeding, and wishing, so far as is possible in an article like this, to do for other boys what the worthy old sailor did for me, I shall ask the readers—both boys and girls, mind you—to take a rope and practise, according to the following directions, some few of the most important knots, hitches and splices.

The first thing to be sure of is the right way to fasten together two pieces of string or rope. That is a thing that some of us have to do twenty times a day; and it is quite probable that twenty times a day we do it wrong. Suppose that you wish to lengthen your fish-line, or add another ball to your kite-string: how will you do it? Shall you lay the two ends side by side and then twist them together into a knot just such as your sister would make in the end of her thread, as is seen in Fig. 2?

If you do, you may fairly expect that your fish (if you hook him) will get away with the main part of your line, or that presently your kite will go skurrying off to northward far out of your sight, until you find it again, half an hour later, after a hot chase, hanging tangled and torn in one of the trees of farmer Applewood’s orchard. Such a knot is at least as likely to slip as to hold, and, if tied in a rope, is liable sooner or later to cut the rope, because the strain is at right angles. What is really wanted is a Square-knot (Fig. 3, _a_).

Take the two ends and tie them together exactly as you would tie a “hard-knot” in your shoe-string. Only you must be careful and not tie a Granny (Fig. 3, _b_).

One _may_ slip, the other won’t.

Fig. 4 is a Becket-hitch, the proper knot for joining a large and a smaller rope. It will be useful, for example, when the keleg-line of your boat is too short, and the only line at hand to bend on to it is a stout piece of hemp twine.

A loop at the end of a rope—that is, a loop that will not draw up—is another knot that has frequently to be made. And yet few people know how to make it. I know a very bright young fellow living out at the Highlands, who the other day made a loop in the end of a rope which he _knew_ would not slip, and then, squeezing it over his dog’s head, tied him to the kennel and went off to school by himself. But the loop did slip, and poor Don almost choked to death before his plight was discovered. What is wanted in such a case is a Bowline.

Make a bight near the end of your rope, as in the first cut of Fig. 5. Seize this with the left hand at _a_, and then with the right hand pass the end _b_ up through the bight, around behind the main part of the rope at _c_ and down in front of it through the bight again as in _d_. Draw this tight and you have the much-talked-of Bowline. It is a very simple matter, as you see; but with it you can make a slip-noose that will give you no trouble in lacing up your box, or you can put your dog’s head in it without fear of coming home and finding him “dead at his post;” or the farmer’s daughter can safely tether a pet pony or the bleating calf out to feed upon the fresh grass.

While speaking still of the ends of ropes, let us stop and learn to “fasten them off” properly to prevent their untwisting or fraying out. The painter or main-sheet of your boat, Bridget’s clothes-line, your little sister’s jump-rope, and indeed _any_ rope whose end is not (like the Irishman’s) cut off altogether, may need such treatment. The simplest method is to “serve” or wind the end with small twine. A Single-wall (Fig. 6), or a Double-wall (Fig. 7), is better. But better still is the Boatswain’s-whipping, formed by making an inverted single-wall and then splicing the ends back over the rope itself (Fig. 8 and Fig. 9).

The most elegant of all such, however, is the Stopper-knot, seen complete in Fig. 14.

Place the end _a_ as in Fig. 10, holding it with the thumb at _d_; pass _b_ around under it, _c_ around under _b_ and through the bight of _a_, and pull tight; this forms a Single-wall (Fig. 11). Now lay _a_ over _d_, _b_ over _e_, _c_ over _b_ and through the bight of _a_, and draw tight (Fig 12).

Next pass _b_ down around _f_ and up through the bight _g_, and do the same with _a_ and _c_, forming Fig. 13.

Then pass each strand by the side of the strands in the crown down through the walling to form the “double-crown,” and cut close the ends _a_, _b_ (and _c_), producing Fig. 14.

A Sheepshank (Fig. 15) is a knot by which a rope may be made shorter, or (as a young yacht-woman of my acquaintance recently expressed it) “a tuck taken in it.” If the tide has come in and you wish to shorten the mooring-line of your boat, or if the line by which your campaign flag is suspended across the street is too loose, or your clothesline, or your swing, has sagged frightfully, the Sheepshank will gather up the slack for you and hold it firmly.

When one wants to make an artificial handle for an old jug or some other vessel, the True-Lover’s knot is used, as seen in Fig 16.

Tie two loose knots, _a_, _b_, as in the first cut of Fig. 17; pass the bight _a_ through the opening _f_, the bight _b_ through _g_, pull the loops equal, and, to complete the knot as in second cut of Fig. 17, join the ends _c_, _d_, by a long splice at _e_.

The Jar-sling, seen in Fig. 20, serves a similar purpose. You are out picnicking, perhaps, and you suddenly find it desirable to convert an empty gherkin bottle into a swing-vessel in which to take home alive some tadpoles or minnows. In a long piece of cord make a large loop as in Fig. 18, and hold the bight against the standing parts, _a, a_; pass the thumb and forefinger of the other hand down through _c_, lay hold of _b_ where the crook of the imaginary wire is seen, and draw it through _c_ down a little below _a, a_, as in Fig 19, _d_, and hold it there. Now pass the thumb and forefinger down through the opening _e_ (in the way the wire goes), lay hold of _g_, and draw it up through _e_, forming the complete knot as in Fig. 20.

One more knot, the Turk’s-head (Fig. 23), remains to be described before we pass to the briefer subject of hitches. Take a long piece of fishing-cord, place the end _a_ against the forefinger, wind the cord around the two fingers and hold it with the thumb, as in Fig. 21.

Now with the other hand lay the part _b_ _over_ part _c_, and while in that position pass the end _a_ down between them, over the first crossing, under left strand, up between, over second crossing, under right strand, up between; take the hitch off your fingers, and it will be as in Fig. 22.

Next pass the loose end through the opening _d_, laying it against the cord _a_; then with it follow that strand (_a_) over and under, over and under, until you have a complete plait of three cords. Pass the knot over a stick to make it taut, and cut the ends close.

The Turk’s-head knot, like the two preceding it, will tax your precision, deftness and patience, and is an ornamental rather than a useful knot. You may weave one from wire or cord about the handle of your cane or riding-whip, or you may pull a few hairs from old Dobbin’s tail and make them into a very pretty horsehair ring for your cousin Fanny when you two are out driving together along the forest road.

The knots in Figs. 24, 25 and 26 explain themselves; they are often useful to picnickers and campers-out. _Hitches_ are no less _knots_ than any of the foregoing; but they are knots used to fasten the end of a rope to any object in such manner as to be easily cast off when no longer needed. They are few in number, and all very simple and easily described.

A Blackwall hitch is merely a loop thrown about a hook, as in Fig. 27, in such a way that the main part of the rope, _c_, being pulled downward, the part a jams the part _b_ against the hook so firmly that while the strain is kept up the knot cannot possibly slip. Sailors use this hitch very frequently, but it can be used on land as well as at sea. If you have retreated, in a game of “Chase,” to the topmost branch of the oak-tree on the lawn, and have a rope in your hand just long enough to reach the ground and no longer, just make, in a single instant of time, a Blackwall hitch in the crotch of the limb, and, if you dare trust yourself to it, it will take you to the ground in perfect safety, long before your pursuer can climb down again by the way he came up; and you can carry off your rope with you.

Or possibly you might be “up a tree” in a different way. Old Tibbetts, your father’s gardener, not daring to trust himself away from mother earth, has sent you up into the elm tree to saw off for him the limb that is growing too near the house. But that limb must not be allowed to come crashing down; and so, with the rope you have taken up with you, you cast about it, while you saw, a Timber hitch, shown in Fig. 28.

Of all hitches, however, the one which any man or boy can least afford not to know is the Clove hitch. Make two bights or loops, as in Fig. 29; hold them between the thumbs and forefingers at _a_, _b_; slide the left loop over the right loop; then slip the double loop thus formed over the table-leg, or your brother Willie’s finger, or anything that will represent a post, and draw tight by the end (Fig. 30). Practise this until your fingers can do it swiftly and _of themselves_, just as your tongue can say the alphabet; for a Clove hitch, when it is used, needs to be made quickly and handsomely. I once saw a young cadet from Annapolis, who had been out on a sailing party with some ladies and had jumped ashore with a rope, hesitate at least half a minute before he could think how to make the proper knot, while a number of old sea captains sitting by were watching him and laughing among themselves. A Clove hitch may be used, too, when, while out fishing, you extemporize an anchor by tying a rope to a stone. And in Fig. 31 you see again how this knot, _e_ (with a half-hitch, _f_ in front of it), is used to tow a floating spar or drag a piece of timber across the field.

Two other hitches, a Rolling hitch and a Cat’s-paw, are shown in Fig. 32.

Splicing is a process by which ropes are joined together so as to leave no knot. I appreciated its importance the other morning when I saw an intelligent man of fifty work for an hour to splice a hammock rope. Where it is specially important that the joining be a very nice and smooth one, the “short” splice is used. It is made by passing the strands of one piece in and out between those of the other. The short splice always leaves the spliced part thicker and clumsier than the rest of the rope. If it is desirable that the joining be a very neat one, so as to admit of the rope’s running readily through the sheave-hole of a block, the “long” splice is necessary. This is made by unwinding each end about two inches, placing the strands as in the short splice, then unwinding one strand further back, and winding the corresponding strand of the other piece in its place; proceeding in the same way with the other strands, and then fastening the ends in such a way that it is almost impossible to detect the splice. We have not space to describe here the exact mode of procedure; but there is scarcely a town or village anywhere but has its “old sailor,” and there is no old sailor anywhere but will be glad to come and give you all a lesson in splicing.

A splice that you can very easily learn for yourselves, however, is the Eye-splice. First make yourself a marling-spike—if you have not the genuine article by whittling down to a point a piece of hard wood. I have found that the half of a clothes-pin, so treated, answered the purpose exceedingly well. Then take a piece of good three-strand rope, unwind the strands, and place them as you see _a_, _b_, _c_, in Fig. 33. Open the strand _d_ and pass _a_ through it, as in Fig. 34; then open _e_ and pass _b_ _over_ _d_ and _under_ _e_, as in Fig. 35. Turn the eye over, Fig. 36, open _f_ and pass _c_ through it, as in Fig. 37, and pull the strands tight. Now pass _a_ _over_ the strand next it, _under_ the next one, and so on with the others. Proceed in the same way until the splice is about an inch long. Then stretch the eye (holding by the rope) to tighten everything, and cut the ends close. If you will make a neat Eye-splice all by yourself and take it to the old sailor aforementioned, he will be sure to think it worth while to teach you all he knows, and he will be likely to tell you many things about knots, hitches and splices which are of necessity omitted here.

Transcriber’s Notes

Minor punctuation errors have been corrected.

Some inconsistencies in hyphenation have been left as printed.

In the text version underscores have been used to indicate _italics_, and equals signs to show =bold= text.

Figure numbering is not consistent through the book.

p 79. The figure here is mislabelled as Fig 2 and has been corrected to Fig. 1.

p 107. Fig14 is out of order and repeated further on, left as printed.

p. 58. “Half the length of brass piece” has been corrected to “Half the length of the brass piece”.

p. 106. “50 feet, ⅞ inch pien” changed to “50 feet, ⅞ inch pine”.

p. 144. Fig. 3 appears to be upside down. It has been left as printed.

p. 166. “No we have a pile of books” changed to “Now we have a pile of books”.

p. 167. “The back cloth is always at beast an inch longer”

changed to “The back cloth is always at best an inch longer”.

p. 174. “hindrances that I had to encouter” changed to “hindrances that I had to encounter”.