HOMEWARD BOUND.

NED had of late recovered rapidly, could walk quite well, and was on board the vessel very often, and went about the city some; but the doctor advised that he should not go on board the vessel to live till she was ready to sail. Ned had not seen Walter since his promotion, but Peterson had been up and informed him of it.

“Well, Ned,” said Walter, as he entered the room, “it has turned out just as I told you it would; the basket-maker is Charlie’s father, and no mistake.”

“I am so glad, Mr. Griffin! and he will go back with us—won’t he?”

“Ned, my boy, just leave that handle off, and call me Walter, as you always did. It makes me sick.”

“But you are mate now; Peterson told me so.”

“What of that? When we are on board ship, call me what you like; but not when we are alone, as we are now, you little monkey,” patting his cheek.

“We shan’t sleep together any more,” said Ned, in a desponding tone.

“No, Ned, I shall have to live aft; and that is not the worst of it; we shall now be in different watches.”

“I know it. I shall be in Mr. Baxter’s watch. And we used to have such good times in our watch on deck, talking about home, Pleasant Cove, and all the folks there. Walter, who do you like best of all the folks there, out of your own family?”

“Charlie Bell.”

“So do I, and well I might. He saved my life. Ain’t he handsome?”

“Yes; and just as good as he is handsome. A first rate wrestler—there’s none of the young ones can throw him but John Rhines and Ben Peterson.”

“What, this Ben aboard here?”

“Yes.”

“I’m afraid, if I call you Walter all the time when we are alone, that I shall forget to put the Sir on sometimes before the men.”

“If you do, I shan’t hit you on the head with a belaying pin.”

“I tell you what I could do, Walter.”

“What?”

“I might swap watches with Enoch Hadlock. He is in your watch.”

“Yes, you could, but I wouldn’t.”

“Why not? Then we should be in the same watch again, and we could walk the deck, and talk, and have good times together, as we used to.”

“I’ll tell you, Ned; if you should swap watches with Hadlock, and get into my watch, it would make trouble. If I happened to give you a soft job, and somebody else a hard one, they would say I was partial—made fish of one, and flesh of another.”

“I never thought of that.”

“We shouldn’t be together any more for being in the same watch. You would be forward, and I should be aft.”

“Shouldn’t we be together when it was my trick at the helm?”

“Yes, but we couldn’t talk. It is against the rules of the ship, and very unseamanlike, for an officer, or anybody, to make talk with a man at the helm. You couldn’t come aft to talk with me, and if I should go forward to talk with you, it would make growling directly, and set all the men against you.”

“I see how it is,” said Ned, sadly. “The good times are all over. There’s going to be a great, high, solid wall, reaching clear up to the sky, built right up between us.”

“O, not so bad as that, Ned. There will be cracks and chinks in it, where we can peek through, and boys must change into men some time or other.”

“I suppose so, Walter; but I wish the change had not come quite yet.”

“I wish so, too. There’s time enough for me these some years yet. But it would never have done for me to refuse the berth when it was offered me. It would have looked as though I did not know how to appreciate kind treatment, and I should never have had another offer. We can’t have everything and keep everything.”

The ambitions, cares, and responsibilities of practical life lay a ruthless hand upon the sympathies and yearnings of young hearts, and the conversation of the boys may, to the minds of older persons who read these pages, recall similar experiences, when the relations of master and servant were rudely thrust between playfellows and near friends.

“Cheer up, Ned,” said Walter, noticing the downcast looks of his friend; “we will sleep together once more, at any rate. I’m going to stay here to-night, and take you aboard with me in the morning; that’s the order.”

When they were snug in bed, Ned lay for a long time silent. Walter thought him asleep, and had just begun to doze himself, when he was roused by Ned exclaiming, abruptly, “I’m sure I shouldn’t want to be a king.”

“Nor I either; I don’t believe in ‘em; but what in the world has put that into your head just now?”

“Well, I have been thinking over all the good times we’ve had when we were in the same watch, slept in the same berth, and ate out of the same kid. In good weather we could sit side by side under the lee of the boat, or under the rail, and talk and enjoy ourselves. In our forenoon watch below, we could comb each other’s hair, tie our cues, read and study navigation; then, being in the same watch, we always got liberty ashore together. Right in the midst of all these good times comes up this chief mate’s affair, takes you right away from me, and sticks you up on the quarter-deck. It’s no longer Ned and Walter; O, no; it’s Mr. Griffin and Gates. I can’t speak to you, for fear the men should think I was currying favor; you can’t speak to me, lest there should be growling about partiality. O, I shouldn’t want to be a king, to be stuck up for everybody to look at, and nobody to love. If people obeyed me, I should know it was because they couldn’t help it; if they pretended to love me, I should be sure they lied.”

“But I ain’t a king, Ned.”

“No; but you are a mate, and if just being a mate is going to make such an awful gap, what must being a king make? It must be a lonesome thing to be a king.”

“What a queer fellow you are, Ned! I always thought you were about as spunky and ambitious a boy as I ever knew. You wouldn’t want to be a boy always—would you?”

“No; I don’t know as I should want to be always a boy; but I don’t like stepping over the edge all of a sudden; at any rate, I don’t like to see everybody else stepping over, and leaving me to be boy alone.”

“Perhaps you’ll get to be second mate next voyage, and then we can be together again.”

“I might if I was older, or if I was only a Griffin, or a Murch, or a Rhines, who are as big when they are seventeen as others when they are men grown. Here you are, a great fellow, your feet sticking out of bed, while my toes are only down to your knees.”

“But you are growing all the time; you can steer a good trick now, and do anything that your strength is equal to, as well as any man in the vessel; you must be patient, Ned.”

“O, if I was only a little bigger, so that I could furl the royal in wet weather, or when it blows hard! I didn’t use to care so much for you, but I should so hate to have any of the crew come up to help me!”

“I’ll have a bunt-line rove for it.”

“O, thank you; then I can handle it any time.”

“Ned, do you think it is the beef makes the man?”

“Not altogether; but I think there must be more beef than I’ve got.”

“That is a fault that will be daily mending: see how much you’ve done since you left home; you have obtained a very good knowledge of navigation.”

“I shouldn’t have done so much, if I had not been wounded. I have had lots of time to study since I have been getting better; so there’s some good come out of it. That’s just what mother’s always saying—every thing is for the best. I wonder if she’d been here the night I was hit, if she would have thought that was for the best.”

“I’ll warrant she’ll think it is all for the best, Ned, when you get home safe and sound.”

“That she will, when she gets me in that old bed again, prays with me and kisses me. Ain’t I a great baby, Walter?”

“Not a bit of it, Ned; you’re just right.”

“I wish I was good, Wal, just to please my mother, it’s all she thinks about.”

“I wish I was, just to please Charlie Bell; at any rate, we’ll do the best we can.”

“O, Wal, it’s nothing at all to be good here, with such a crew as this, all nice, steady men, well brought up. You never sailed in an old country vessel—did you?”

“No; I have only sailed with just such a crew as we have here, and part of them are the same men.”

“Then you don’t know anything about it. Such a set of reprobates as we had in that ship I was cast away in, cursing, swearing, fighting all the time; the captain never came on deck without his pistols in his pockets; half the crew didn’t know who their father or mother was; the crew were fighting among themselves, and the captain quarrelling with his mates, full of liquor all the time; and such deviltry as they tried to put into my head! I tell you, Walter, there was not the least need of that ship being lost (and I heard Mr. Brown tell Captain Rhines the same thing); the men might have kept her free just as well as not; we were not far from land.”

“Why didn’t they, then?”

In the first place, the men were harassed to death, kept out of their watch, working up jobs all the time, and half starved; the captain’s idea seemed to be to keep them so used up that they wouldn’t have strength or pluck to rise and take the ship from him, and it came back on his own head; they hadn’t strength enough, when the ship sprung a-leak, to work the pumps; and besides, they were so worn out, and hated him so, that they were desperate, thought it was their turn now, and if they could only drown him, they didn’t care what became of themselves. I tell you, Wal, I think, when a boy is away from home, and thrown into bad places and bad company, it makes a good deal of difference how he’s been brought up, and whether he’s come of nice folks.”

“I guess it does, Ned, because he has a good character to sustain, and thinks, when he’s tempted, ‘How can I disgrace my folks? what would my parents, brothers and sisters say? and how would they feel if I should do this thing?’ Then there’s another thing comes of being well brought up.”

“What is that, Wal?”

“A boy that has been well brought up, and has learning, has hopes; he knows he can make something of himself, and means to; whereas those poor fellows, who, as you say, didn’t know who their fathers and mothers were, had no ambition or hope of ever rising, and so made up their minds to enjoy themselves after their own fashion.”

“That’s so, for I’ve heard them say so. There was one of them, my watch-mate, Dick Cameron, a very decent fellow when the rum was out of him, and I used to talk with him; but all he would say was, ‘It’s all well for you, who have learning, and friends, and a chance to be something; but it’s no use for me.’”

“How big a man was Dick Cameron?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Why, I mean, how much did he weigh?”

“O, he was a stout, thick-set man—the strongest man in the ship, and always took the bunt of a sail. I shouldn’t wonder if he weighed nearly two hundred.”

“Now, see; it’s just as I told you a while ago. It isn’t beef that makes a man, but it’s pluck, knowledge, and good principles.”

“And friends.”

“He’ll have friends if he has those things. They will raise him up friends anywhere. Here you are, fretting because you don’t weigh two hundred, like Dick Cameron, and are not twenty-one. But if anything should happen to the officers of this vessel, all this crew of twenty great, stout men, second mate and all, couldn’t get this vessel home. They would have to fall back on Ned Gates, if he hasn’t got any cue to speak of, and can’t furl the royal when it blows hard, and the sail is wet and heavy.”

“I won’t whine any more, Walter.”

“It wouldn’t make one farthing’s difference as to age or size, with such a crew as this, all neighbors. If you are only modest, and know your duty, they would take pride in seeing you go ahead.”

“Well, I won’t feel so any more. Let us talk about something else.”

“I’ll tell you when we can get together, and it will be nobody’s business.”

“When?”

“When the voyage is up, then you can go home with me to my house.”

“But shall we have time before the vessel goes again?”

“Plenty. They will have to pick up a cargo. The articles to carry, many of them, have to be imported from other countries—the salt-petre from England or the East Indies.”

“Wouldn’t I like it? Wouldn’t I have the best time that ever was in this world?”

“You better believe it.”

“I shall see Charlie Bell and his wife, and the baby, Lion Ben, Uncle Isaac, and old Tige.”

“Yes, and I’ll get Uncle Isaac, our Joe, and Charlie Bell to go hunting with us. It will be right in bear time, and about town-meeting time, and they’ll have a wrestling match. Our Joe is champion, but father can throw him; only he’s done wrestling in the ring. But I suppose, if any stranger came along, as Ricker did, he’d take hold, for the credit of the place. But father never saw the day he was so stout as grandfather. Did you ever see my grandsir?”

“No, I never saw any of your folks but Joe.”

“Well, he’s an old man now, but you can see, by his great bones and cords, as big as an ox’s, what he was once. When Hen, and I, and Will were little boys, he used to get us up in the floor, and set us to wrestling.”

“I shouldn’t think an old man would care about wrestling and such things.”

“He ain’t old inside; no older than ever he was. O, I’ll tell you the funniest thing. You must know, we milk seven cows, and have awful big churnings. One rainy day mother had our great churn, full of cream, sitting in the chimney corner, because it was a rainy day, and father was going to churn for her. Grandsir he ties a string to the churn handle, sat in his chair, and held the end of it, and told us boys to jump over it, and see which could jump the highest. Every little while he would put the string up a little higher. It was Hen’s turn to jump, and just as he was going over, grandsir twitched up the string, and caught his feet. Over went the churn, the cover came out, and there was that cream all over the floor. Grandsir was too old to get out of the way; it filled his shoes full, ran into the fireplace, and soaked Hen all through in front before he could get up. The dog lay asleep before the fire. It ran all over him. He jumped up, and went all round the room, switching his tail, and flinging the cream over everything. We laughed; it frightened the baby; he began to scream, and you never saw such a scrape.”

“What did your mother say?”

“She didn’t say much. She is one of the best mothers that ever was, always one way. She isn’t religious, like your mother, ‘cause there ain’t any religion in our folks. She is too good to have such a tearing set of boys round her.”

“Will you go in the woods, and camp out? I never was in the big woods. There ain’t any woods round Salem.”

“Well, there’s woods enough round our way. It’s all woods. You can get bear’s grease enough to make your cue grow three inches a night, and eat bear’s meat till you grow big enough to fill up the boots of a second mate. Come, let’s go to sleep.”

When they went on board in the morning, the wind was blowing fresh, and the sea beginning to heave into the roadstead.

The captain made his way to the observatory (taking Walter with him), from which he enjoyed a view of the roadstead and all in it. Here he sat, watching the blockading fleet with all the interest with which a beleaguered rat contemplates the movements of his enemy, the cat. Ned Gates had been despatched to find Mr. Bell, and tell him to get his things on board the vessel, accompanied by the fisherman’s boy as pilot. Ned traversed alleys and by-ways, till, in the dark, damp basement of a squalid tenement he found the object of his search. It was a wretched place, the walls low and dripping with moisture; in one corner was a large trough, nearly full of water, in which the willow rods lay soaking, in order to make them pliable to work; the floor was littered with pieces of willows, of all colors, which had been trimmed off; the walls were hung all round with willows, stripped into thin shavings, and made into skeins. In another corner was a rough berth, built up like those on shipboard, where the old gentleman slept, and on a shelf, at the head of it, his Bible; evincing that, in his loneliness and sorrow, he found consolation in the Word of God. There was also a rusty stove, a few cooking utensils, a rickety table, and some rough chairs, made of willow with the bark on.

The old gentleman was seated on a wooden platform, a little inclined, with his back against the wall, employed in finishing a basket of such delicate workmanship, such tastefully arranged and beautiful colors, as to elicit the most unbounded expressions of admiration from Ned.

The old gentleman was evidently highly gratified with the praise bestowed upon his work.

“I am glad you like it,” said he; “I have spent a vast deal of time and work upon it; indeed, it is all I have done since I heard my son was living. I design it as a present for my daughter, if I am ever permitted to see her. It is said, self-praise goes but little ways; yet, when I was working at my trade in England, I had the reputation of doing the best work of any man in the fens, and that is saying a good deal. I used to think, when Charles was growing up, he would make a first-rate workman; but he has found better business than making baskets.”

“He can do anything,” said Ned. “He can make a ship, a bedstead, or a fiddle.”

“He takes that from his mother’s folks. They were shipwrights and joiners; but mine were all basket-makers, from the beginning. I’m going to take my tools, some basket-rods, and dye-stuffs; the rest I have given to a young man who learned his trade of me.”

He then drew from a chest a pair of nice broad-cloth breeches, silk hose, and other things to correspond, a nice pair of shoes, with silver buckles, and, arraying himself, accompanied Ned on board the vessel.

The gale increased as the day wore away.

“There they go,” said the captain, as one of the frigates loosed her topsails and made sail.

“I reckon,” said Walter, “they’ll find that when the cat’s away the mice will play.”

The frigate was soon followed by another, till at length only the line-of-battle ship remained. Long she held on against a tremendous sea, till, at length, Walter, who had taken her bearings over a projecting point, exclaimed, “She drags; she will have to go.”

In a few moments the men were seen mounting the rigging, and she also joined the rest. She, under short sail, drifted very fast to leeward. The frigates, carrying all the sail they could smother to, and sharper built, made desperate efforts to keep to windward, and did better, especially one which had been taken from the French, that outsailed all the rest; but they all gradually fell to leeward, leaving a clear offing.

“Good by, dear friends,” said Captain Brown, highly elated with the turn matters were taking; “sorry to part, but your room is better than your company.”

When the basket-maker made his appearance with Ned, he was scarcely recognized by the captain and Walter, so changed was his appearance, and so sprightly were his looks. Noticing their astonishment, he observed to the captain, “I had contrived to lay by a little, by prudence and hard work, for I couldn’t bear the thought of being a pauper in a foreign land, and that I might have somewhat to give me Christian burial; and I thought I would fix myself up a bit, that my son might not be ashamed of me, should I be spared to see him.”

By twelve o’clock at night the gale moderated, the brigantine got under way, and as the sun rose was far beyond the reach of her enemies.