One would naturally suppose that Charlie, returning to the quiet of Elm Island after the exciting week he had passed, would have experienced at least a transient feeling of loneliness; but he manifested no such sentiment, and went to work at his cart-wheels with the greatest assiduity and evident enjoyment.

In the course of the week he was most agreeably surprised by a visit from John and Fred, bringing Isaac Murch, Jr., with them, now a tall, strong young man, swarthy from long exposure to the East India suns and sea-winds, bearing a very strong resemblance to his uncle, with intelligence and energy in every feature.

It was past the middle of the afternoon when the boys arrived at the island. After Isaac had spent some time with Ben and Sally, the four friends strolled up to the old maple. They told Isaac the history of the holes bored in it, and of all that had transpired in respect to temperance while he had been away, and then listened with great interest to an account of his life at sea, and the scenes he had witnessed in the East. John at length inquired if he intended to continue in the same employ; to which he replied that he did not.

“I see no prospect,” said he, “of being anything more than mate. Mr. Welch has a great many relatives who follow the sea, and so have the captains who have long sailed in his employ, and are at the same time owners in the vessels they go in. Captain Radford, I’m with, is an old man. If there was nobody in the way, he would give me the vessel in a year or two, for he wants to retire. But he has a son who is going second mate this voyage. The next voyage, or the next after, he’ll put him in captain over my head if I am willing to remain; and so it is all through. Now, if I had a vessel,—any kind of a thing, if it was like the Ark,—to get a cargo of spars to Europe, or lumber, spars, and other truck to the West Indies, I could pay for it, and build a better one in a short time; with good luck, make more in one year than I can going mate in five.”

“I believe that,” said John; “for I know by what I’ve heard captains in Portland say, and what Mr. Starrett, that I learned my trade of, who is concerned in several of these lumber vessels, has told me.”

“Some of those Portland captains have coined money; but it is a good deal as you happen to hit. If you get to a West India port when the market is empty, you get your own price; if not, you won’t make much.”

“Only see,” said Fred, “what Captain Rhines did in the Ark!”

“That was an exception. He arrived off the harbor of Havana in a peculiar time. Lumber was scarce, they had no beef for their slavers, they gave him a license to trade, and the captain-general remitted the duties. He saved by that remission more than two thousand five hundred dollars. The Federal Constitution was not formed then, and he had no duties to pay in Boston. However, I’m going to stick where I am this voyage, and perhaps another, till I get money enough to take a part of some kind of craft, if it’s only a pinkie, go round among the neighbors, scare up owners, and try my luck. I’d rather be a king among hogs than a hog among kings. I’d rather be skipper of a chebacco boat than mate of a ship,—to sail the vessel, take all the responsibility, endure all the anxiety for somebody’s son or nephew, who runs away with all the credit, and the money to boot, and don’t know how to knot a rope-yarn, or handle a ship in a sea-way.”

There was now a pause in the conversation, when Charlie, who, though an attentive listener, had not uttered a word, said, speaking deliberately, “We will build you a vessel, Isaac.”

“We!” replied Isaac in astonishment. “Who’s we?”

“We three sitting here.”

“Three boys build a vessel!”

“We may be boys, but we are all able to do a man’s work. I think, as you say you are in no hurry, give us time, we could build a cheap vessel, that would be strong and serviceable to carry heavy cargoes for a few voyages, which you say is all you want.”

“I think as much,” said Fred. “We three boys have always been together, and have undertaken several things, and have never yet failed to accomplish what we have attempted.”

“But you never undertook anything like this, or to be compared with it. Building a vessel is quite another matter from making baskets.”

The reader will bear in mind that Isaac had been away during the period in which the boys had developed most rapidly, and was not so well aware of what they might be expected to accomplish as he otherwise would have been.

“But,” asked Isaac, “where are the carpenters coming from? There are none here but Yelf and Joe Griffin, and neither of them have ever been master workmen. You must go to Portland or Wiscasset for a master workman and blacksmith; and where is the money to pay them, fit up a yard, build a blacksmith’s shop, buy tools and iron?”

“Charlie,” replied John, “can be master workman.”

“John,” said Fred, “can do the iron-work.”

He then told Isaac of their capabilities, and what they had done since he had been gone, which greatly astonished him, and presented the subject under discussion in a very different light, especially when Charlie told him that he could cut the timber entirely on his own land, the spars, and also spars and lumber to load her.

“But,” said Isaac, “you must have carpenters. You can’t build her alone.”

“To build a vessel in the manner we shall build one, we don’t need but three good carpenters, and there are plenty of men round here that can hew, bore, drive bolts, and saw with a whip-saw. Yelf is a capital man with an adze, and so is Ralph Chase. They can do all the dubbing.”

“My uncle can make the spars,” said Isaac.

“Peterson,” said John, “can calk and rig her, and father and Ben can make the sails.”

“The next question,” said Charlie, “is, What kind of a vessel do you want?”

“I want her built to lug a load and to steer well. Speed is no object to what the carrying part is. The voyages will be short, and wages and provisions are not high in comparison with the value of cargoes. I don’t want one cent laid out for looks. We must go on the principle of the man who goes on to new land. He lives in a log cabin, built as cheap as possible, because he expects to have a better one.”

“But you wouldn’t have her look too bad,” said Charlie.

“That’s just the way I want her to look. All I’m afraid of is, you can’t make her look bad enough. I want a sloop, with good spars, rigging, cables, and anchors.”

“What makes you want a sloop?”

“Because she is cheaper rigged and handled.”

“How large?”

“Two hundred tons.”

At this all the boys expressed their astonishment.

“A sloop of two hundred tons! Why, who ever heard of such a thing!” said Charlie. “The most of brigs are not more than that, many less. I never saw a sloop bigger than eighty-five tons.”

“I saw one last week, in Boston, that had just arrived from Liverpool with a load of salt, that was one hundred and fifteen. If you want to carry timber, you must have some bigness, and if spars, some length.”

“But what an awful mainsail! How could you ever handle it?”

“I’ll take care of that part of it. Shorten the mast, and put a good part of the canvas into a topsail, top-gallant sail, and jibs.”

“I never saw a sloop with a topsail,” said Fred.

“They are common enough,” said Isaac, “though not round here.”

“Now,” said Charlie, “it is best to have a fair understanding. I think we can build this vessel, although you want a larger one than I had expected. We are used to working together, are of one mind, and, as Fred says, never undertook to do anything we didn’t accomplish; but it will be a hard, trying thing, and we may have to leave off two or three times, and go to work at something else to earn money to go on again.”

“I will go mate till you get her done, no matter how long it is. I shall be contented if I have something to look forward to.”

“I suppose,” said Fred, “Captain Rhines or Mr. Ben would help us out if we got stuck.”

“Not with my consent,” said John. “If we’ve got to fall back on the old folks, I’ll have nothing to do with it.”

“That is just the way I feel. I only wanted to see what you would say.”

“My idea is just this,” said Charlie. “If we conclude to build her, go to work and set her up, pay our bills as we go along, and before the money quite runs out, stop and earn more. I’m one of those chaps that want to know just how I stand every Saturday night.”

“If we begin,” said John, “we’ve got to go ahead, for everybody within twenty miles will know it; and if we slump, we might as well leave the country.”

“I know just what they’ll say,” replied Charlie. “They’ll say, there’s a parcel of boys thinking they are going to build a vessel, and a nice piece of work they’ll make of it! lose what little they’ve earned, and find out they don’t know as much as they thought for. I wonder Captain Rhines and Ben allow them to do it!”

“That,” said John, “is just what was said when we undertook to carry on the farm; but they didn’t laugh when harvest-time came.”

“You say you want her two hundred tons, but you have said nothing about the dimensions.”

“I want her a great carrier, and as good a sea-boat as she can be and carry. I know enough to know that a vessel can’t be full and fast both; but there’s a medium, to hit which you know more about than I do; if you don’t, you know where to get information. I don’t care how rough she is. We can’t afford to do anything for looks. She can’t look worse than the Ark. I wish you could have heard all that was said when she went into Havana! Why, the darkies laughed and opened their mouths till I thought they never would shut them again. I couldn’t understand Spanish, but Flour told me what they said. All I have to say about dimensions is, I want her one hundred feet long, twenty-six feet beam, eight and a half feet deep. There is length enough for spars, depth enough for two tier of molasses. If you can make her any other than a great carrier with that breadth of beam, you’re welcome to. Where would you build her?”

“At my shore,” said Charlie. “The timber is at the water’s edge. Never was a better place to set a vessel.”

“But there’s no house where you could live.”

“Build a log house,” said Fred.

“Ten men would build her,” said Charlie, “especially such men as Joe Griffin, Peterson, and Yelf. Peterson can use a broadaxe or whip-saw as well as a calking-iron. Uncle Isaac would work after haying, and Black Luce could cook for us.”

“What would you do for a blacksmith’s shop?”

“Build a log one,” said John, “and burn our own coal.”

“The hardest nip,” said Isaac, “will be the sails, rigging, and anchors.”

“I know that,” said Charlie; “but if I find the timber, and turn in my work on the vessel, John turns in his, Fred pays the men in part out of his store, then we shall economize what little money we have to pay the men, buy sails and rigging.”

“Mine will be all cash. I’ll leave what I’ve got in Captain Rhines’s hands, part of my two months’ advance, and I can leave a draw-bill on the owners.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“About two years. We shall trade out there, or perhaps go from there to Europe and back.”

“The iron will be a heavy bill,” said John, “for it will have to be imported.”

“If we make the timbers large, timber her close, put in plenty of knees and treenails, we can save on the iron,” said Charlie. “There’s a vast deal to be saved in a vessel if you don’t stand for looks, especially if you have time, and the vessel will answer the purpose just as well. If a man contracts to build a vessel for so much a ton, in so many days, he has got to work right through, short days as well as long, perhaps in bitter cold weather, when it will take a man one quarter of the time to thrash his hands, and another quarter to stamp his feet, and very often the timber has to be dug out of the snow; then, if iron, wages, or pitch goes up, he must pay the price; he can’t wait. But building as we shall, we can take advantage of all these things, and work in the long days, especially if we pay as we go along. I’ve known ship-builders who were afraid to discharge a man, lest he should ask for his money.”

“We are great fellows!” said Isaac. “Here we are talking about where we will build, and what we will build, fixing our yard, boarding our men, making all our calculations, and nobody has even asked what she’s going to cost. That’s neither according to reason nor Scripture.”

“Speaking about Scripture,” said Charlie, “just brings to my mind one thing, that, now we are all together, I must speak about. Here are three of us that have professed religion, and Isaac, I know, respects it.”

“To be sure I do. I wouldn’t have any Murch blood in me if I didn’t.”

“Well, here we are, laying plans, as I may say, for life, just starting out to do for ourselves, and we haven’t one of us done anything for the Lord, or the support of his gospel.”

“I should think,” replied Fred, “that if we build this vessel, we shall have about load enough to carry. When we are twenty-one we shall be called upon.”

“I think it would be a great deal better not to wait to be called upon. When we were so hard put to it, while father was paying for this island, and had to live mostly on clams and sea-fowl, before we got any news from the Ark, and didn’t know as we ever should, he, in his poverty, paid something for the support of the gospel. I think, when we are not pressed in any way, only pressing ourselves, we ought to do something.”

“So do I,” replied John. “Don’t you know, Fred, how hard we worked to make that garden, and cut the hay on Griffin’s Island, just to let Ben and Sally know that we had hearts and consciences, knew when we were well used, and who our friends were? I would like to show my heavenly Father the same thing.”

“That’s the talk, John,” said Isaac. “I’ll do my part.”

“So will I,” said Fred, “and I’m ashamed I said what I did; but you know I always was meaner than the rest of you.”

“I don’t know any such thing,” said John. “You’ve had your parents to help, while we’ve had all we’ve earned, and all our clothes given us. I didn’t mean we should give much, nor all alike, but we’ll make a beginning. By and by, perhaps, we can do more.”

“Now I feel right,” said Charlie, “and we’ll talk vessel. I didn’t say anything about the price, because this is all talk. We shouldn’t feel like doing anything,—at least I shouldn’t,—before asking father, Captain Rhines, and Uncle Isaac. They are the best friends we’ve got in the world, know every crook and turn, and ain’t like some old folks, who think everybody must be forty years old before they can do anything.”

“We might as well talk about price,” said Isaac, “as about the rest. What do you imagine she would cost?”

“The man I worked for in Portland sold a vessel of two hundred tons, hull and spars, for sixteen dollars per ton. He bought the stump leave of the timber, and hired it hauled six miles.”

“That would be three thousand two hundred dollars for the hull and spars.”

“Yes; what it would cost for rigging, sails, and the rest, you know better than I do.”

“It would cost about half as much more.”

Timber, labor, and board were cheap then—canvas, rigging, and iron extremely high.

“But then it ain’t a going to cost us near that to build the same number of tons.”

“Neither is it going to cost so much to rig and spar a sloop as a brig.”

“Nor so much for iron-work,” said John. “The more spars, the more chain-plates, blocks, bolts, bands, boom-irons to make, and caps to iron.”

“I believe she could be built in the way we should build her for twelve dollars per ton, and I don’t know but less, hull and spars. The timbers and spars are not much account here; the hauling is nothing. But she will be an awful looking thing, though!”

“Then she would cost two thousand four hundred dollars, six hundred to a share, hull and spars, and half as much more to rig her.”

“Yes, I know she can be built for that; but there won’t be a brush full of paint on her, and I don’t know but the name will have to be put on with chalk. I wouldn’t go to a foreign port in her.”

“I will, though. I’m fire-proof. I’ve been in the Ark. Let us calculate. Twelve dollars per ton. I can take a quarter at that rate, and more on a pinch; for in addition to my wages, I have made something by ventures.”

“I can take a quarter,” said Fred, “if I can have orders to pay some of the men out of the store.”

“I,” said Charlie, “can take a quarter by turning in my labor. If I hadn’t bought my land, I could have taken more.”

“Well,” said John, “I can take a quarter, and turn in my work.”

“What we want to know,” said Isaac, “is, how much cash we can raise to pay the men, buy iron, rig her, and for other materials. I can pay my part in cash by the time it is wanted, and six hundred dollars of it now.”

“I,” said Fred, “can pay in cash one hundred dollars.”

“I,” said John, “two hundred.”

“I,” said Charlie, “one hundred.”

“Well, there’s so much to begin with. Now the question is, can we begin with that?”

“We will carry all these calculations to father,” said Charlie, “and ask him.”

It was dark when they arrived at the house.

“Why, boys,” said Ben, “where have you been all this time?”

“I should have thought,” said Sally, “hunger would have brought you home before this. I told Ben you must have camped again in the top of the old maple. I’m afraid you’ll have but a cold supper.”

“I declare,” said Charlie, “I never once thought about supper.”

“I thought I’d been to supper,” said John.

“You must have had some interesting matter on hand.”

“The most interesting thing in the world,” said Charlie.

“Do let me know what it is.”

“I’m going to after supper.”