"Will it not be best and safest," Raed argued, "to have her strengthened with cross-beams and braces? A few strong beams of this sort might save the vessel from being crushed."
As we were held to pay half the cost of the schooner in case of such an accident, to say nothing of our personal peril, we judged it prudent to neglect no means to render the voyage as safe as possible. Accordingly, we went out to Gloucester, and arranged for having it done; also for getting in water and fuel. In short, there seemed no end to the items to be seen to. If ever four fellows were kept busy, we were the four from the 20th of May to the 6th of June. Our ship-stores we bought in Boston, and had them sent to Gloucester by rail. It seemed desirable for us landsmen to have our food as nearly like that we had been in the habit of having as possible. We accordingly purchased five barrels of flour (not a little of it spoiled) at eight dollars per barrel; three of salt pork at sixteen dollars per barrel; two of beef at twelve dollars; six of potatoes at two dollars and fifty cents; two fifty-pound tubs of butter at thirty-five cents per pound; coffee, tea, sugar, and "preserves" to the tune of sixty dollars; and two hundred pounds corn-meal, four dollars.... Then there were a score of other little necessaries, amounting to near fifty dollars; in all, a bill of two hundred and seventy-four dollars. These stores were bought at our own suggestion. It would have been better to have taken the advice of some experienced shipmaster: it might have cost us less, and we should afterwards have fared better, to have done so.
I remember that we took along a lot of confectioneries, both for our own delectation and also to "treat" the Esquimaux on! That was a wild shot. As well offer an Esquimau cold boiled parsnip as a stick of candy. We also had two boxes of lemons! Which of us was responsible for the proposition for lemonade in Hudson Straits has never been satisfactory settled. We none of us can remember how the lemons came on board. Wade says they were bought as an antidote for sea-sickness. A far more sensible article of traffic was twenty dollars' worth of iron in small bars; four dozen large jack-knives; twenty butcher-knives, and the same number of hatchets. We had also a web of red flannel at twenty dollars; in all, ninety dollars.
For mattresses, blankets, "comforters," and buffalo-skins, there was expended the sum of a hundred and twenty-three dollars. Ten Springfield rifles at ten dollars each (bought at an auction-sale), with a quantity of cartridges, one hundred and twelve dollars. For an old six-pound howitzer, purchased by Capt. Mazard from a schooner supposed to have been engaged in the slave-trade, nineteen dollars; and for ammunition (powder, iron shot, and a lot of small bullets), thirty-seven dollars.
For firing at seals or bears from the deck of the schooner, we had made, at Messrs, R. & Co.'s machine-shop, a large rifle of about an inch bore, and set like a miniature cannon in a wrought-iron frame, arranged with a swivel for turning it, and a screw for elevating or depressing the muzzle. This novel weapon was, as I must needs own, one of my projection, and was always a subject for raillery from my comrades. Its cost, including the mounting, was ninety-seven dollars. In all, three hundred and eighty-eight dollars.
Then there were other bills, including the cost of several nautical telescopes, also ice-anchors, ice-chisels, sounding-line, hawsers, &c., to the sum of a hundred and three dollars.
The lumber and carpenter work on "The Curlew" at Portland made a bill of a hundred and nine dollars; seamen's wages to Gloucester, with car-fare back, nineteen dollars; bracing and strengthening the schooner, sixty-seven dollars; cost of getting in fuel and water, thirty-three dollars; and other bills to the amount of forty-nine dollars: in all, two hundred and seventy-seven dollars. We had thus to pay out at the start over eleven hundred dollars. Capt. Mazard, too, was kept as busy as ourselves superintending the work, putting the vessel in ballast, &c. Indeed, it's no small job to get ready for such a cruise. We had no idea of it when we began.