“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.