CHAPTER V.

CHARLES RETURNS JOHN’S VISIT.

The orphan boy, whom his mother in her dying moments committed in faith to God, had fallen into good hands. He, who through storm and tempest directs the sea-bird to her nest amid the breakers, and hears her young ones when they cry in their lonely nest on the ocean rock, had numbered his steps. Ben knew how to treat a boy, because he liked them, and understood their feelings.

The reason John was so much attached to his brother Ben, who was so much older, arose, not merely from his being his brother, but because Ben not only loved him, but always made due allowance for a boy’s nature and feelings. The amusements and employments of men, and boys also, in those old times, were not so far apart as they are now; they could fish and hunt in company, and the boy could be very useful to the man, and this brought them together, and kept their mutual sympathies alive and fresh. He did not, therefore, because Charles had caught three hundred weight of fish, tell him he must be up by daylight the next morning and catch four hundred; he knew boys better than that; knew that while Charles needed no other stimulus than his own noble, grateful heart to urge him on to exertions, yet he was aching to let John know what he had done. He said to him, “Well, Charles, we’ll have a chowder out of the heads of some of these biggest cod (there’s nothing equal to a cod’s head for a chowder), and save a couple to fry, and take the rest over to the main land in the morning; you can go to the house and get John to go to the store with you, and sell them, and get half money and the rest in groceries. You can stay all night with John, and come off the next morning.”

Charles’s eyes flashed with delight at this, and he could hardly contain himself till Ben was out of sight; and then he got behind a bush and jumped right up and down with delight. He lost no time in going to tell the good news to Sally, between whom and himself there were no secrets, but the most perfect sympathy.

“O, mother!” he cried, “don’t you think father’s going to let me take the fish to the store, and stay all night! _only think!_ stay all night with John, mother!”

Sally added (if possible) to his happiness by saying, “I’m glad of it, Charlie, for I want some errands done; and I want you to take over some eggs and butter, and get some coffee, sugar, and flax, and carry some yarn to Hannah Murch, for her to weave for me. Now you see how much help you can be.”

“Yes, mother; and what a good thing it is to have my canoe to go in, and catch fish to sell, and get things; it pays--don’t it?”

“I guess it does pay; for, if you didn’t go, Ben would have to leave his work and go.”

“And I shall see Mr. Murch?”

“Yes; John will go over there with you; and I’ll get breakfast by daylight, so that you can make a long day of it.”

“Mother, I like Mr. Murch; he’s such a pleasant way, and he says such cute things, somehow you can’t help liking him; when I hear him, it seems just as if something was drawing me right to him. Don’t you like him, mother?”

“Like him! I love him, Charlie! After my father died, I don’t know what my mother would have done, if it had not been for Uncle Isaac. He used to come over and tell her to trust in God, and encourage her; tell Sam what to do, and plough for us, sow our grain, shear the sheep, and help us every way.”

“Perhaps he’ll like me, and let me call him Uncle Isaac, same as John does, when he’s acquainted with me.”

“I dare say he will.”

“Mother, does John ever come over here alone?”

“He never has; his folks don’t like to have him.”

“Then I shall do to-morrow more than he’s ever done; leastways, I’ll try.”

“I don’t know as it is hardly the thing for you to go; ’tis a good ways.”

“It is not much farther than I go a fishing. I wish you could see how I can make my canoe _hum_, if I have a mind to; come down to the shore just a minute, and see how quick I can pull over to the White Bull and back.”

Sally went down. Charlie got into the canoe, took his oars, spit on his hands, and stretched himself for a mighty effort. The canoe went through the water in fine style; but, when about half way to the Bull, one of the thole-pins broke short off, Charlie went over backwards into the bottom of the canoe, and had to paddle back with one oar.

“Never mind, Charlie,” said she; “I can see that you make her go like anything.”

“I’m glad it broke now, and not when I was off in the bay,” said he, to hide his mortification, and resolved next time he undertook to show off to look well to his thole-pins. He didn’t sleep much that night. I’ll let John know, thought he, as he lay in bed anticipating the morrow, that I can do something besides make baskets; he didn’t seem to think much of that. He thought I had a great deal to learn, but I’ll let him know I’ve learned something already. The next morning was fair, and he was off by sunrise. When he came to the other side, John received him with great pleasure; and as they were just at breakfast, Captain Rhines insisted on having Charlie sit up with them, saying that a boy who was growing could eat any time, especially when he had pulled six miles.

“Did you come in Ben’s big canoe?”

“No, sir; the oars are so large I can hardly lift them.”

“So I thought; but what did you come in?”

“My own canoe, sir.”

“Has Ben made you a canoe so quick?”

“No, sir; I made it myself; but he showed me.”

“Whew! Who cut the tree down?”

“I did, sir.”

“What do you think of that, John?”

John and Charles went to the store, and sold the fish and other things; then John showed Charles his gun, and yoke of steers he was raising; then they yoked them up, and put them on to a light sled, that they could haul on the bare ground, and gave Charles a ride. He also showed him his powder-horn, and all his playthings, and a tame gray squirrel, and hens. Then they went to the shore and saw John’s gunning float; and John made Charles lie down in the bottom of her, and showed him how to scull. Putting the sail up, they sailed round the bay; and going round a little point, they saw some birds; they then lay down in the float, and John sculled up to them, and shot two. This excited Charlie very much. As he took the dead birds in his fingers, the passion for shooting, for which he had never felt the least inclination, seemed to be inspired by the very contact.

“We will have them for dinner,” said John; “let us go home, so that mother will have time to cook them.”

This was all new to Charlie, for Ben had been too busy to gun since he came.

“Are they good to eat?” asked Charlie.

“First rate; and you can sell them at the store. The feathers fetch a first-rate price at the westward, and you can sell them at Witchcassett (Wiscasset) to the English vessels.”

“I never knew that before. If I could shoot, I might kill some on the island.”

“I guess you could; there ain’t such a place for gunning along shore.”

“I might earn something to help along.”

“Yes, indeed! Come, let us hurry home; I’ll show you how to load and fire; and there are guns enough on the island; you can practise there; Ben will show you.”

When they got home, Charlie fired John’s gun five or six times, and learned to load it. “John,” said his father at the dinner-table, “where is that little gun of yours?”

“Up chamber.”

“Why don’t you give that to Charles?”

“I will, father.”

This was a gun that Ben had cut off, in order to make it lighter, and got Uncle Isaac to make a light stock for it, and given it to John; but his father having given him a larger and better one since he had become accustomed to gunning, he didn’t use it.

“I’ll give you a real nice horn, Charles,” said the captain, “and you can scrape it and put the bottom in yourself.”

After dinner they set out for Uncle Isaac’s. They both rode on one horse; John got into the saddle, and Charles sat behind him on the pillion that Mrs. Rhines rode on when she went with her husband; he put his arms round John’s waist just as the women did when they rode. They had fun enough going over, and when they arrived found Uncle Isaac making cider.

“Well, boys,” said he, “you’ve come in the nick of time; I’m just going to lay up a cheese, and want some help to squat it.”

“We’ll help you,” said John; “we’re just the boys for that, and we can drink the cider, too.”

A very few of our readers may know how they made cider in those days in the new settlements, and a good many may not even know how it is made now. We will describe his cider mill and press. At the end of his orchard was a large white oak tree, more than four feet through; under this he had placed a large trough, dug out of a log; in this he put the apples. He then took an oak log about six feet in length, and six inches through, in the middle of which a hole was bored, and a round stick put through for a handle. A rope was attached to the top end, which reached, and was fastened, to a large branch of the tree. When he took hold of the handle, and struck the pounder down on the apples in the trough, the spring of the limb helped to lift it up, which was the hardest part of the work. Uncle Isaac had been pounding apples all the forenoon, and was now about to press them. Fred Williams now came along, whom John introduced to Charles as one of his playmates, and a real good boy. Fred blushed at this, for he felt that it had been but a very short time that he had deserved such a character.

Between the tree and the trough was an elevated platform of plank, jointed together, and watertight; on this was a square frame of boards, about four feet across, and six inches high; he laid some long straw on the edge of this frame, and then put in the apples; when the frame was full he turned the straw over the edge, and tucked it into the mass of bruised apples; he then lifted the hoop up the width of it, put on more straw, and piled it up again, till he had a square pile four feet high. The straw was to bind the edge, and keep the pomace from squatting out sidewise when he came to press it. This was called the cheese.

The boys helped him lift up the hoop, tuck in the straw, and shovel in the apples, with right good will. Planks were now placed upon the cheese, and some short blocks of timber on them, when the cider began to run from the edges through the straw, and was led by a gutter, which ran round the platform, into a half-hogshead tub.

Uncle Isaac now sat down to rest, and eat an apple, while the boys, providing themselves with straws, began to suck the cider from the gutter as though their lives depended on their diligence. Every once in a while you would hear a long-drawn sigh as they stopped to take breath. As the cheese had now settled together, and become a little firm, Uncle Isaac prepared to press it.

This is done nowadays with a screw, but it was not the fashion then. He had a white oak beam forty feet in length and ten inches square; one end of this enormous stick was placed in a mortise cut in the tree, the other on a horse. The stick extending over the middle of the cheese, a pair of shears and a tackle were placed at the end, and Uncle Isaac and the boys hoisted up the end of the great beam, took the horse away, and let the beam come down on the cheese, not very hard at first, but gradually; this set the cider running at a great rate. As the cheese settled, he lifted the beam and put under more blocks, and at length he and the boys piled great rocks on the end of the beam, and got on themselves, till they squat it dry.

Nothing would do but they must stop to supper; Uncle Isaac would not hear to their going home.

“Only think,” whispered Fred to John, “if we had succeeded in killing Uncle Isaac’s orchard last spring, I shouldn’t have been sucking cider and eating apples to-day.”

“I’ve heard mother say,” was the reply, “that a person couldn’t injure another without injuring himself, and I believe it.”

John told Uncle Isaac that Charles had cut down one of the biggest pines on the island, and made a float, oars and all, made an axe-handle, and caught three hundred weight of codfish.

When they went home, Uncle Isaac told the boys to fill their pockets with apples, and gave Charles a bag full and a jug of cider to carry to the island.

John and Charles slept together, and lay awake and talked half the night, laying plans for the future.

“I’ll tell you what you can do, Charles; you can make a paddle, and cut a scull-hole in your canoe, and she’ll make a first-rate gunning float.”

“So she will; I never thought of that.”

It seemed to the boys the shortest day they had ever spent; it certainly had been a very happy one. In the morning they separated, John going half way home with Charles in his float.