CHAPTER XI.

BEN REVEALS HIS LONG-CHERISHED PLAN TO HIS FATHER.

The spring was now approaching. Ben had a large amount of lumber cut; but, as the spars had been pretty well culled out before, much the greater proportion of it was logs, fit only for boards. He might have cut more spars, but he did not mean to clear any more of the island than was needed for pasture and tillage, if he could possibly avoid it.

He had already realized a good deal of money by running some risk, when he took his spars to Boston, and saved nearly all the expense of transportation. But he now had determined upon a still more adventurous plan, which he had been revolving in his mind, and preparing for all the previous summer, and during the winter.

This was no less than to take his boards to the West Indies in a raft, or rather to make them carry themselves. For this reason he had brought his boards back from the mill, and stuck them up to dry, instead of selling them there, as he might have done. It was for this reason that he cut the cedar, and piled it up to dry, that it might be as light as possible.

But to encounter the tremendous seas of the Gulf Stream, and keep such an enormous body of timber together in a sea way, was quite a different matter from going to Boston on a raft. Still the gain was in proportion to the risk.

“If,” reasoned Ben, “men can go thirty miles up the rivers, cut logs, raft them down, manufacture them into boards, take them to Portland, Boston, or Wiscasset, sell them to another party, pay wharfage, pay for handling them over two or three times, freight them to the West Indies, and then make money, how much could a man make who cut them at his own door, made them into boards at a tithe of the expense, transported them at a trifling expense compared with the others, and sold them in the same market!”

Ben did not lack for mechanical ability and contrivance, and was equal to any emergency. He believed he had devised a plan to hold the timber together, and put it into a shape to be transported.

But another and more embarrassing question was, who would go as captain of the strange craft? He could think of no one who possessed sufficient capacity as a seaman and navigator, and who would be willing to take the risk, but John Strout; but John was liable to get the worse for liquor, and therefore would not do.

“What a fool a man is,” said Ben to himself, “to make a beast of himself with rum! Now, there is John Strout, as capable, noble-hearted a fellow, and as good a seaman and navigator, as ever stepped on a vessel’s deck, and likes to go to sea, which I never did (only went to get money), poking about these shores in a fisherman, when he might be captain of as fine a ship as ever swum, kept down by rum, and nothing else. I wish Sally would let me go. I am a good mind to ask her.”

Ben at length became so possessed with the idea, that, unable any longer to keep it to himself, he broached it to his father, fully expecting to be ridiculed, when, to his utter astonishment, the old seaman said, “I think it can be done, Ben. I see no difficulty but what can be got over;” and, as usual with him, forgetting all the risk in the profits of the adventure, exclaimed, “What a slap a fellow could make, hey! Ben, if he only gets there. The Spaniards are hungry for lumber, for they have been kept short through the war.”

“But the greatest difficulty of all is, who will go as master? You know I promised Sally not to go to sea. I won’t break it.”

“No difficulty at all, Ben. I’ll go myself.”

“You go, father!”

“I go? Yes; why not? I guess I haven’t forgot the road; I’ve travelled it often enough. I never promised my wife that I’d stay at home, only that I’d try; and I have tried bloody hard, and I can’t. I thought I was worn out, but I find I ain’t. I’m live oak and copper-fastened. I’ve got rested and refitted, and am about as good as new. She can’t sink, that’s a sure case; and I’m sure she can’t spring a leak. She’ll be like the Mary Dun Dover the old salts tell about,--three decks and nary bottom, with a grog-shop on every jewel-block, and a fiddler’s-green on every yard-arm. She’ll be like the Irishman’s boots,--a hole in the toe to let the water in, and another in the heel to let it out; so there will be no pumping.”

It is often the case in our plans that one prominent difficulty prevents for the time all considerations of others, which being removed, the lesser ones present themselves. It was thus with Ben. At first the great difficulty was to find a master; now others presented themselves.

“Can you sell a cargo of lumber for money? Won’t you have to take sugar or molasses? They all do; and then you will have no way to get it home, without costing more than it is worth, for you will have to pay just what freight they have a mind to ask.”

“The Spaniards have got money enough; your lumber is of an extra quality, and if you offer it a little less for cash, there will be no trouble. They will jump at it like a dolphin at a flying-fish. You can afford to sell it a good deal less, and then make your jack.”

“Do you think you can get men to go in such a craft?”

“Go? yes. These boys round here will go to sea on a shingle with me. John Strout will go for mate, to begin with. I tell you, my boy,” slapping him on the back, “you’ve hit the nail on the head this time. Only think what the doubloons will be worth here, where it takes five dollars of our Continental money to buy a mug of flip. If you offered Mr. Welch the gold, he would discount the interest on your debt, and part of the principal, and be glad of the chance. Suppose you should take the gold, and go to the farmers, who haven’t seen any hard money this ten years,--think you wouldn’t get your corn, wheat, and meat cheap!”

Our readers will bear in mind, that in the war of the Revolution the Continental Congress issued bills that became depreciated, so that at the close of the war they were not worth much more than the rebel money in the Secession war; and Captain Rhines’s statement that it took five dollars of it to buy a mug of flip, was literally true.

Some of the soldiers, who were paid off in this currency, were so enraged when they found how worthless it was, that they tore it up and threw it away; but wealthy and far-seeing men bought it of the soldiers for a song, kept it till it was redeemed, and thus became immensely rich.

This will explain to our young readers why it was that the people were put to such shifts to get along; had to use withes for chains and ropes, make their own cloth and dye-stuffs, and resort to all kinds of contrivances to get along; because, although the country after the war was filled with foreign goods of all kinds, none but the wealthiest had any money to buy them with; and the wealthy people were very few indeed.

Almost all the trade was by barter--swapping one thing for another. Rum, coffee, and sugar were more plenty on the seaboard than anything else, because they could exchange lumber for them in the West Indies. Lumber, too, was sold to the English vessels for money, in the form of spars, and ton-timber ten inches square, which led the people to work in the woods to the neglect of the soil--a thing which, as we shall see by and by, Ben took advantage of.

“I can tell you, my boy,” continued the captain, “your going to Boston with the spars wasn’t a priming to this; there’s money in it; I know there is.”

Ben then told his father about the wreck of the masts and spars that came ashore. “Isn’t that a God-send, now?”

“What sails were they?”

“A fore-course, fore-topsail, fore-topmast staysail, and fore-topgallant yard, with the sail on it, and almost the whole of the topsail halyards, with both blocks.”

“They will make glorious throat-halyards. Were the shear-poles wood or iron?”

“Iron.”

“They will be first rate to cut up for bolts. Now, Ben, you get your logs to the mill, and get them sawed, and the boards home; and when the weather comes a little warmer, I’ll hire somebody to work on the farm with John, and I’ll come over to the island, and we will put her right through. I can hew and bore, but you must be master-carpenter. When it comes to making sails and fitting rigging, I can do that, or we’ll do it between us.”

Ben now dismissed all misgivings. He knew that his father was at home in all kinds of craft, from a canoe to a ship; had stowed all manner of cargoes; and having from boyhood been flung upon his own resources, was fertile in expedients. The quickness of decision manifested by the captain was by no means an indication of superficial knowledge, but his mind was quick in all its movements; and all seafaring matters had been with him subjects of mature thought and practical experience from early life, and his judgment was equal to his resolution.

In short, he belonged to that class of men called lucky, which was one reason why men liked to go with him. In all his going to sea, he had never lost a man overboard.

“The greatest difficulty I see,” said Ben, “is keeping the timber together, and high enough out of water to keep the sea from breaking over her; but I think I have found a way, for I have been studying upon it more than six months.”

He then told his father how he meant to build the raft, or craft, whichever it might be called, which he highly approved. In maturing his plan, Ben had fixed upon the summer as the best time in which to make the voyage, as the winds were then moderate; but his father dissented from this entirely. “In the first place,” said he, “if the winds in the summer are light, they are more likely to be ahead; and such a thing as that will not work to windward; and, if you heave her to, she will make leeway at a great rate; all her play will be before the wind, or with the wind on the quarter. October is a better month than July or August; then we always have northerly or north-west winds. We might take a norther that would shove us across the gulf. The summer is a bad time on account of the yellow fever, and men will not be so willing to go.”

“I see, father, it’s just as you say; besides, there is another thing I did not consider; we cannot get canvas to put sail enough on her to do much without a fair, or nearly fair, wind.”

“Just so, Ben.”

“There is another reason, father. The boards that are sawed this spring, having all summer to season, will be dry and light, and the craft will not be half so deep in the water, which will be a great thing.”

“I guess it will; for the most danger will be of the sea overtaking and breaking on her. In the fall of the year,” said the captain, “there will be fowls, potatoes, and other things we can carry as a venture, that will help pay expenses.”

When their deliberations became known to Mrs. Rhines, she was by no means pleased with the turn matters had taken. “I thought, Benjamin,” she said, with a reproachful look, “that after you had been gone almost all the time since we were married, you would stay at home with your family, and make my last days happy, and not go beating about at sea in your old age, when you’ve got a good home, and enough to carry you down the hill of life. I declare, I think it is a clear tempting of Providence, after you have been preserved so many years. I shouldn’t wonder if something should happen to you, and I don’t thank Ben for putting it into your head. He won’t go himself, and leave Sally, but he’ll send his old father.”

“Goodness, wife! don’t take it so serious. What’s a trip to the West Indies? just to cheat the winter, and get home to plant potatoes in the spring. I’ll bring you home a hogshead of sugar, and you can make all the preserves you like. I’ll bring you home guava jelly, and tamarinds, and pine-apple preserves; and you know you like to have such things to give to sick folks. Most all the neighborhood is sick when you have them.”

“These things are all well enough in their way,” replied his wife, while a tear stole down her cheek, “but they cannot make up for your absence; but I suppose it must be.”

“Don’t cry, wife. I don’t want to grieve you, and I’m sure I don’t want to leave you; but you know what a good child Ben has been to us; how nobly he stepped forward when I was in trouble, and helped me out, and is now feeling the want of the money he then gave me. There’s nobody can take charge of this craft, and help him now as I can, and I think I ought to do it.”

When Ben returned from his visit to his father, he told Sally and Joe the whole matter.

“Now I know,” said Sally, “what you have been thinking about so long, and talking about in your sleep all this winter.”

“And I,” said Joe, “know what all these boards stuck up to dry, and that cedar, mean; and what made you so delighted when all that rigging and iron-work came ashore. I should have thought you would. Good on your head, Ben! I’ll stand blacksmith, for I have worked most a year in a blacksmith’s shop; and when you get her ready for sea I’ll go in her; and, if I go, Seth Warren will go, too, for he can’t live without me, and there will be two good corn-fed boys at any rate.”

They now improved the few remaining days of winter in hauling the remainder of the logs from the woods, and then began with all despatch to raft them to the mill, bringing the boards back as fast as they were sawed, and sticking them up to season. They found the Perseverance, that lay in the cove, very convenient for towing their rafts.