“Hurrah!” shouted the exultant boy, flinging the mould up over his head with such force that it knocked two hens, who were just settling themselves for the night, from the roost, and excited a general uproar. “I’ve got something to start from now; it’s the rise from the keel that shapes the bottom. When anybody is going to build a boat, they always know the length, width, and depth, and from that they can get all the rest. If I am going to build a boat eighteen feet long, four feet wide, and eighteen inches deep, she would be at the forward frame three feet on top; aft, three feet eight inches; middle, four feet. A line drawn through these points to the stem and stern gives me her shape on top; a depth and a half forward and a depth and a quarter aft gives me her sheer; half of her width on top gives me her shape at the heads of the floor timbers. Then all I’ve got to do to shape her bottom is, to lay off my rise, making it greater or less according as I want her full or sharp, dividing it up on the timbers, till I have twice as much in the forward floor timber as amidships, and a little more than that aft. I have got the top and bottom; I can get the shape of the side between those points by my eye; if I can’t I must be a fool.” The forward and after floor timbers determine the shape of the boat forward and aft; the timbers after that are V shaped; they do not cross the keel; and all that is necessary is to have a true taper to the stem and stern. “I feel kind of satisfied now; there seems to be some foundation, something to go upon; it ain’t all mixed up: now I have got all these moulds, it wouldn’t be half the work to timber out another boat of the same dimensions. Boat-building is real nice work after you know how; but to build a vessel—that would be the best. Now I’ll go in swimming, then look at my birds and go and see how my grafts come on.”

The next night, as he was busily at work after supper, getting out his gunwale, a well-known voice exclaimed,—

“Halloo! What’s all this?—steam-box, boat-building. I guess Elm Island will be a city soon.”

“O, Joe! I’m so glad to see you.”

“You be? I thought you didn’t like to have critics round, when you were at work.”

“O, yes, I do, you.”

“Who timbered out that boat?”

“I did.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, all alone; no soul helped me, or told me anything.”

“Where did you get your moulds?”

“Took them from the West Wind;” and he showed Joe the moulds.

“Well, I never should have thought of that way. I should like to know how you got those streaks on, especially the garboards.”

Charlie showed him the patterns, and told him all about it, and how terribly he was puzzled.

“How long did it take you to get on them garboards?”

“Two days.”

“I should have thought it would have taken you a week. It is done handsome, my boy,”—patting him on the back; “nobody can better that. But, life of me, why didn’t you make a rule staff, and take spilings, instead of going to work in such a roundabout way as that? You couldn’t have done it any better; but you could have done it in a quarter part the time, and no fuss about it.”

“Then, there’s a rule?”

“To be sure there is.”

“What is a rule staff? What do you mean by taking spilings?”

“I’ll show you by and by.”

Charlie then told his friend the discovery he had made in relation to the floor timbers.

“That is what carpenters call the dead rise, and those middle timbers, that rise but little, are called dead flats. Now, my little boat-builder, I’ll show you how to take spilings. I suppose you wouldn’t be willing to take that garboard off again, because taking the spilings of a garboard is a little different from the rest.”

“Yes, I would; it isn’t nailed fast.”

“It is a little too narrow, though it is put on as well as I could do it.”

Joe took one of Charlie’s thin boards, planed and made one end of it as wide as the end of the streak he was to put on, and cut it something near the shape of the stem, and of the length he wanted his plank to be; this, he told Charlie, was a rule staff. He then put the end very near to the rabbet at the stem, and brought it along over the bow, close to the keel, just as it naturally came, without twisting sidewise, to the timbers, where he intended to make his butt, and fastened it; then took the rule, and measured, at frequent distances, from the outside edge of the rabbet at the stem, to the lower edge of the rule staff, till he had gotten round the sweep; then he measured only at the timbers, he made a scratch fit every measurement, and chalked down the measure on the rule staff.

He now took the rule staff and laid it on the board of which the streak was to be made, and with the compass set off all these distances, then took a ribband that would bend edgewise, put it on the compass pricks, and scratched the whole length of the plank.

“You see,” he said, “that this rule staff, being bent on, has followed exactly the twist of the timbers; so of course this line of pricks, taken from it, will do the same, and give the shape of the edge of the streak; that is all the rule staff does; now you must measure the width of your plank from them. I have made these measures at the end very near together, because I am working for a very particular body, and I want my work to compare.”

He now steamed the plank and put it on, when it fayed to a hair.

“Now, Charlie, before I fasten this plank, I want you to squint along the edge of it.”

“I see a bunch on the luff of the bow.”

“Now look at the counter.”

“It is the same.”

“We must take out a little there; I should have done it when I lined the plank, but I wanted you to see it; the twist throws the plank up: if you could take spilings of both edges, it would take it out.”

“How nice that is? Why couldn’t I have thought of it? I might by this time have had the boat all done and in the water. Are ships’ planks put on in this way?”

“Yes, somewhat; but they do not have to be so particular, except at the fore and after woods: they line them as crooked as they can, and then jam them down edgewise with wedges; and you can’t do that with boat plank, but must cut to a sixteenth of an inch, if you want your work to look well.”

“You are very good, Joe; now all my difficulties are over; but I’m glad you didn’t come before.”

“Why so?”

“Because, if you had shown me about the dead rise, I shouldn’t have found it out myself. Joe, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, if I get this boat off.”

“And she don’t split in two, you mean.”

“If she works well, I’m going to make one out of my own head, without any model to work from.”

“I tell you what it is, Charlie: there will be some staring when you appear out in this craft.”

“I guess there will; they all think what happened to the West Wind sickened and discouraged me; but I reckon they’ll find out to the contrary. I do hope that neither Uncle Isaac, nor Fred, your Hen, Captain Rhines, nor any of them, will find it out till I come out. Don’t tell; will you, Joe?”

“You will soon finish her now; you can take a spruce pole, split it in two with a saw, and it will make a grand gunwale: that’s what they use in Nova Scotia.”

“A spruce pole! I guess I shall. I’ll have a nice piece of oak, planed and rubbed with dog-fish skin. Do you know what I want to do, Joe?”

“It would be hard guessing; you have so many projects in your head.”

“I want two things, and then I shall be satisfied.”

“Then you are more easily satisfied than most folks.”

“I want to build a vessel. Think I ever can?”

“Yes; you can learn to build a vessel as well as a boat; it’s pretty much the same thing on a larger scale. But what is the other thing?”

“I want to own a piece of land: it’s what none of my folks ever did, to own a piece of land; a man must be rich to own a piece of land in England.”

“Well, you can certainly do that, for you have got money of your own, and can buy wild land for ten or fifteen cents an acre, and clear it yourself.”

“That’s what I mean to do, when I get my money back from Fred, and find some place that just fills my eye, right by the water. I wouldn’t take the gift of a piece of land that the salt water didn’t wash. Then I must have a brook; I couldn’t live without a brook.”

“Nor I either: by the way, we are going to run to the westward and fish off the cape; I think very likely I shall run into Portland, and see John.”

“Then I’ll write him a letter; he don’t know anything about this boat, for I hadn’t thought much about building her when I saw him last.”

Charlie finished his boat, putting four knees to each of the middle thwarts, and two to both the forward and after one. He was resolved this boat should not split in two. At the bow and stern he decked her over, and made a splendid locker forward and aft, with doors, and in which he could put powder, fishing-lines, and whatever he wished to take with him. Under the middle thwart he made a locker, just the shape of a gun, with a door hung on wire hinges, so as to keep his gun dry. He was already provided with spars, sails, rudder, and oars, as this boat was just the size of the West Wind. His paints were all gone, except a little vermilion that the English captain had given him, and there was none at the store. Indeed, there was seldom anything in the form of paint at the store, except lampblack, and red or yellow ochre, and they were used only on the inside of houses, or on vessels, and generally with fish oil. It was a rare thing that white lead or linseed oil was found there, it being so little called for. Captain Rhines’s house was the only one in the place that was painted outside. He and some others had one room painted lead-color; the general custom being to keep the walls and floors white, and scour them. But Charlie was determined to have paint for this boat, and sent to Portland by Joe for both paint and oil.

The iron-work of the other boat was suitable for this, and she was now calked and all done except painting. Charlie had oiled the planks to keep them from renting, as he had no paint to prime her. How he longed for that paint to come! Indeed, he thought so much about it, that none of his usual sources of enjoyment seemed to afford him any gratification, or to occupy his thoughts. The flowers were passed by unheeded, the song of birds won no regard, and even the baby received slight attention. He enjoyed himself most when occupied about that which was in some way connected with the boat. He passed a good many moments in thinking how he should paint her. As she was altogether too precious to lie aground even in the quiet harbor of Elm Island, he prepared a mooring for her. He borrowed Uncle Sam’s drill, and made a round hole in a large flat rock, then dug up a small tree by the roots, cut it off about fifteen feet from the roots, removed the bark, shaved the trunk smooth, ran it through the hole in the rock, till the roots prevented it from going farther, and then put it off in the harbor. Over this pole, standing upright in the water, he slipped an oak plank, which floated on the water, and travelled around the pole as the wind veered, and slipped up and down on it as the tide rose and fell. To this traveller he fastened a rope, with an eye-splice in it to slip over the boat’s stem, and then he could go to her in the Twilight.

When all these preparations were made, he began to think of a name. He didn’t like to give her the name of the old boat, because he thought she had been unlucky, and it would revive unpleasant memories.

“There’s only one thing about her I should like otherwise,” said he. “I wish she was pink-sterned and lap-streaked. These square sterns look chopped off to me. I think the eye requires that both ends should be alike. I wonder how a fish would look with a square stern? or a tree with a square top? Well, I’ll build another, when I shan’t be tied to the dimensions of a log, and can have her wider and deeper, with plenty of room to knock about in. This boat will be like old Captain Scott’s boat, in Halifax, that was so small and full of trumpery, he said there wasn’t room enough in her to swear. Well, I don’t want to swear. I think it’s real mean. So there’ll be room enough for me.”

All at once he thought of something to divert attention and occupy his leisure time, which was, to study surveying. The science of angles was congenial to his mechanical tastes, and he was soon so absorbed in the pursuit as well nigh to forget the paint, for which he had been longing. The evenings were growing longer, and he had a competent instructor in Ben. Ben also had another scholar, Seth Warren, who had come over to the island to study navigation.

“Mother,” said Charlie, one night, as they were milking, “do you suppose there will ever be a vessel built in this bay?”

“I don’t know. Not in my day, I guess.”

“Why not, mother? Didn’t father build the Ark on this island? and couldn’t he, and Captain Rhines, and Uncle Isaac build a vessel if they had a mind to?”

“Why, Charlie, the people here have hardly got their land cleared up, and got to living themselves. There are no carpenters but Joe Griffin and Robert Yelf, no blacksmith but Peter Brock, and he’s worn out. Besides, there’s nothing for a vessel to do, except to carry wood to Salem or Boston, or to fish. Your father and Captain Rhines had rather put their money into a vessel with Mr. Welch.”

“Mother, carpenters and blacksmiths go wherever there is work. I’m sure there’s lumber and spars enough here, and vessels come here to load. I don’t see why a vessel couldn’t be built here, where there’s timber to build her, and lumber to load her, and take it to the West Indies, and get molasses and sugar to sell in Boston or Portland, just as Captain Rhines did the cargo of the Congress. I heard him say he had half a mind to keep her, load, and run her.”

“I never saw such a boy as you are, Charlie! You’re always planning out something. What in the world put this in your head, just now?”

“Because I was thinking what a sight of ducks, chickens, geese, and turkeys there are around this barn. Why, you can’t step, hardly, without treading on a hen or a duck! I can’t hardly pitch a fork full of hay off the mow without disturbing a hen’s nest! And only see the beets, onions, and potatoes there are! I was thinking, if there was only some vessel here going to the West Indies, what a slap you and I could make by sending a venture, as we did in the Ark! Why, only think how much butter you could send! Then, I thought, here is Seth Warren, learning navigation. He ought to have a vessel built for him here, instead of going to Wiscasset; and Joe Griffin and Robert Yelf ought to help build her, instead of going out of town to work, as they often do.”

“Well, Charlie, you were born twenty-five or thirty years too soon! Such things may do to talk about, but they can’t be done in the woods, in a new country.”

“Captain Rhines was born and brought up in the woods; but he’s been all over the world, for all that.”

“Well, Charlie, you’d better leave alone building castles in the air, and take that calf away. He’s biting the cow’s teats all to pieces.”

“I tell you, mother, there will be a vessel built in this bay before five years. You mark my words for it.”

“Perhaps there may—a wood-coaster.”

“No; a vessel to go to the West Indies.”

“Well, when I see it, I’ll believe it, and I’ll send a venture in her.”