John Strout now came from the West Indies, and went to work with them. He brought home tamarinds, guava jelly, and other good things for Sally; a hat made of palm-leaf for Ben, and some shells for Charlie. He also brought Ben a cocoanut to keep liquor in; the end of it, where the eyes are, was made in the shape of a negro’s face; the two little round places, where we bore to let the milk out, serving the purpose of eyes, with eyebrows cut over them, and filled with some red matter; in the mouth was a lead pipe to drink from; large ears were also made, and a nose; the figure looked somewhere between a monkey and a negro, funny enough, and was full of rum. He also brought them home twenty-five pounds of coffee, and a hundred weight of sugar.

Charlie was very much puzzled to know how the meat was got out of the shell without breaking it. John told him that he bored the hole for the mouth, and then turned the milk out, filled it with salt water, and set it in the sun, when, the meat decaying, he washed it all out; then scraping the outside with a knife and piece of glass, oiled it, and made the face with an old file, which he ground to a sharp point.

Ben and Joe now commenced their craft, laying the keel on the beach, making the rough skeleton of a vessel. As their object was neither beauty nor durability, only to serve the present occasion, they used all the cedar possible, that she might be the more buoyant.

They took the iron from the spars, and Joe, who had worked in a blacksmith shop, took it over to the main land to a shop, and made their fastening. They, however, used but very little iron, making wooden treenails answer the purpose. They made a bow and stern frame, and set up two ribs on a side where the masts were to come, laid a rough deck at the mast-holes, and forward for the windlass and the heel of the bowsprit to rest on; the remainder was all open. They then put on two streaks of plank next the keel, to hold the ends of the timbers, and hung the wales.

As Uncle Isaac had finished his planting, he now came to work with them; they made the windlass, rudder, and spars; they also sheathed the bow and stern with boards, where she entered and left the water, so as to diminish the friction somewhat. The spars looked queer enough: they were beautiful sticks, as straight as a rush; but there was no labor expended upon them, except what was absolutely necessary. She was to be rigged into a schooner,—and an awful great one she was, carrying more than three hundred thousand of timber. The masts, where the hoops were to run, were as smooth as glass, but as to the part below the deck it was just as it grew; so with the other spars,—where there was no necessity of their being smooth, the bark was left on the stick.

Ben now ascertained that there was a large trade carried on from Wiscasset in spars and ton-timber, that was shipped to Europe. He accordingly took what he had, and making them into a raft, sold them there, and bought his rudder-irons, a second-hand jib and flying-jib, and provisions for his workmen.

She now sat on the beach ready for her sails and cargo, and the tide ebbed and flowed, and the winds blew through her frame. It must be confessed she was a craft of magnificent distances, and probably could not have been insured at Lloyd’s. It was not desirable to load her till near the time of starting, in order that the cargo might not water-soak, as the great object was to render her as buoyant as possible. Ben therefore discharged his men, while he and his father went to work on the rigging. Uncle Isaac went home, while Joe went on a fishing cruise with John Strout.

During all this period Charlie had been by no means idle; there were a great many things he could do to help along. When the men were hewing, he, with his narrow axe, could score in and beat off for them (that is, cut notches in the timber, close together, and then split out the wood between), which very much facilitated the labor of hewing. He could also drive treenails; and when the men were not using the broad axe, would hew out small sticks with a skill that called forth many compliments from Uncle Isaac, who took great pains to show him, and found a most apt scholar.

Charlie now became very anxious to see his mother. Every day or two he would say to Ben, “What does make mother stay so long? she never did before; she used to think she could not go to be gone a day, and now she has been gone almost a month.”

At length, one pleasant morning, Ben, to his great joy, took the canoe, and went to bring her home. If Charlie went down to the eastern point once that day with the spy-glass, he went fifty times.

“I can’t do anything,” he said to Captain Rhines, “nor set myself about anything, till I know whether mother is coming.”

It was about the middle of the afternoon when Charlie saw the white sail of the canoe in Captain Rhines’s cove, and she soon came into view before a light southerly wind. Charlie saw through the glass his mother sitting in the stern, and, jumping into his canoe, went to meet them.

“Why, mother!” said he, “what makes you look so pale? are you sick?”

“No, Charlie; I never was better in my life.”

When they neared the shore Charlie pulled ahead, and landing, stood ready to hug his mother as soon as she should get out of the canoe.

“Don’t hug me hard,” said she, kissing him, “for you might do some damage.”

“O, mother! what is that under your shawl? do let me see. Is it the cloth for my breeches?”

“Look,” said she, opening the folds of her shawl.

“O, a little baby! Whose is it? Where did you get it? What a wee bit of a thing! what little mites of hands! I wish it would wake up and open its eyes. I do love babies so! and how I shall love your baby,—our baby. It will be my brother—won’t it, mother?”

“Yes, Charlie; but let us go up to the house, and let Captain Rhines and his wife see the grandchild.”

“Now, mother,” said Charlie (after the grandparents had seen and admired the baby, and they had drunk a cup of tea in honor of his arrival), “I want you to go and see my pig, and the rabbits. You don’t know how piggy has grown. Mrs. Rhines told me it would make him grow to wash him; so every Monday, when she had done washing, I put him in the tub, and washed him, and the black on him is just as black as ink, and the white as white as snow. I have made him a nest in the woods, and he goes there every night and sleeps.”

It was not the custom in those days to put pigs in pens and keep them there; they let them run about the door, and feed in the pasture with the cattle, only putting them up in the fall to fatten; or when they bought a strange one in the spring, they shut him up till he got tame.

“Mother, would you believe that a pig knew anything? I’ve taught him to follow me all round, just like a dog, and come running out of the woods when I call him. I’ve named him Rover; and don’t you think he knows when the tide is down just as well as I do; then he goes to the beach, and digs clams with his nose; he never goes a clamming at high water. When I am fishing for flounders he will sit by me till I pull up a fish, and then he will swallow it in no time; sometimes I say, ‘Rover, you can’t have that; it is for the house;’ and he will look so wishful I have to give it to him.”

“I never heard of such a pig before, Charlie; I expect you will learn him to play with sea ducks.”

“I never thought of that, mother; I don’t believe but I will. Mother, you know Fred Williams gave me some rabbits?”

“Yes.”

“Well, they have got young ones. O, they are the prettiest little things that ever were; come and see them;” and, getting her by the hand, he drew her out of doors.

“Mother,” he said, “it was not altogether to see the pig that I got you out here.”

“I thought as much, Charlie.”

“Well, sit down on this nice log; I want to tell you what good people Captain Rhines and his wife are; you don’t know how good they are.”

“Yes, I do, Charlie; they’re real estate—both of them. I never shall forget when my father died, and mother was left poor and broken-hearted, with a family of little children, and knew not which way to turn. Captain Rhines was at home that year; they were building a vessel for him; he came over every night to see her, and every time he seemed to lift some of the load from mother’s heart. Somehow, it seemed to me that he did more good than the minister, for when he came she would sit and cry all the while he was talking to her, and after he was gone; but when Captain Rhines came, he gave her life and courage, and she would go about the house quite cheerful; sometimes he would slip money into her hand.”

“I suppose,” said Charlie, “she needed that more than praying, because she could pray for herself.”

“I tell you what it is, Charlie; if Captain Rhines should live to be old, and needed some of his children to take care of him, wouldn’t I pay that debt up, principal and interest, as far as was in my power?”

“I’ll bet you would, mother; and I’d help you.”

“I’ve waked up at sunrise many times, and seen Captain Rhines and Ben ploughing for mother; they would plough till nine o’clock, then go home, eat their breakfast, and then do their own work, while mother and I, with Sam to drop the seed, would plant it, and the next day they would get more ready.”

“Now, mother, I want you to see the pig.” Charlie began to slap his hands on his sides, and cry, ‘Rover, Rover,’ when a great rustling was heard in the woods, and the pig came on the gallop, his black and white sides glistening in the sun as he ran. Living on grass, and in the woods, with the milk from the house, he had not that protuberance of belly which swine reared in sties possess, and really merited Charlie’s encomium of being handsome; he jumped up on his master and rubbed against his legs, with low grunts, expressive of satisfaction.

Ben and his father now built a shed just sufficient to shelter them from the sun and rain, and let in the cool summer breeze. Here they fitted the rigging, and altered the ship’s sails into those of a schooner; and so well versed were Captain Rhines and his son in all nautical matters, that, by dint of splicing and piecing, they managed to get all the standing rigging, and nearly all the running gear, out of the materials of the wreck. They now put the rigging over the mast-heads, and set it up, and all was ready, except bending the sails.

In the spring, soon after Ben had told his father of his plan, the captain said to Charlie, “Now you set all the hens you can, and raise chickens, and when I go to the West Indies you can send them out as a venture, and get coffee, sugar, and cocoa-nuts.”

Charlie told his mother, and they put their heads together, and set every hen that was broody, insomuch that Ben complained that he could not get an egg to eat. In addition to this, Charlie went and borrowed sitting hens of Uncle Isaac, Sam Yelf, and Joe Bradish.

“I tell you another thing you do,” said the captain: “negroes there use lots of baskets, that they carry on their heads, filled with oranges and other things; they also use them in loading and unloading vessels, and sometimes they carry them by straps of green hide that go over their shoulders. Now, you make some handsome square baskets, with flat bottoms, and they will be so much better than theirs that they, or their masters, will buy them.”

“How can the slaves buy them? Do they have money?”

“Money! yes.” “How do they get it?”

“Why, they have Sundays and holidays to themselves, and what they earn they have. Many of them have earned enough to buy their freedom, and are well off. Do you go over to our house, and ask John to give you some turnip-seed, and sow it on that ground you burned over when you was roasting Joe Griffin, and see what turnips will grow there; you can hack the seed in with the hoe; turnips will sell first rate in the West Indies; I’ll tell them they are Yankee yams.”

“But how will you get your things home? you will have no vessel to come in.”

“Let me alone for that, Charlie; I’m an old traveller.”

It may be well to inform our readers that in those days but comparatively few vegetables were carried there, and they brought a high price in the way of barter.

Charlie was by no means slack in acting upon these suggestions, and made baskets with all his might.

It was a most comical sight to see Ben holding his baby; his thumb was bigger than the infant’s leg, and his great hairy arms contrasted strangely enough with the white, delicate flesh of the new-born child. He held it, too, in such a funny way, with the tips of his fingers, as if afraid he should squat it to death, and with an expression of anxiety upon his face amounting almost to anguish.

“I mean to make a cradle for him,” said Charlie.

“You are too late,” said Ben; “for the cradle was made before he was born, long enough.”

He then told Charlie to go up chamber, and look under some boards in the north-east corner; and there he found the cradle that Sam Atkins made for the boy, whose birth Seth Warren, in a spirit of prophecy, foretold upon the day the house was raised.