The spring was now approaching. Ben had a large amount of lumber cut; but, as the spars had been pretty well culled out before, much the greater proportion of it was logs, fit only for boards. He might have cut more spars, but he did not mean to clear any more of the island than was needed for pasture and tillage, if he could possibly avoid it.
He had already realized a good deal of money by running some risk, when he took his spars to Boston, and saved nearly all the expense of transportation. But he now had determined upon a still more adventurous plan, which he had been revolving in his mind, and preparing for all the previous summer, and during the winter.
This was no less than to take his boards to the West Indies in a raft, or rather to make them carry themselves. For this reason he had brought his boards back from the mill, and stuck them up to dry, instead of selling them there, as he might have done. It was for this reason that he cut the cedar, and piled it up to dry, that it might be as light as possible.
But to encounter the tremendous seas of the Gulf Stream, and keep such an enormous body of timber together in a sea way, was quite a different matter from going to Boston on a raft. Still the gain was in proportion to the risk.
“If,” reasoned Ben, “men can go thirty miles up the rivers, cut logs, raft them down, manufacture them into boards, take them to Portland, Boston, or Wiscasset, sell them to another party, pay wharfage, pay for handling them over two or three times, freight them to the West Indies, and then make money, how much could a man make who cut them at his own door, made them into boards at a tithe of the expense, transported them at a trifling expense compared with the others, and sold them in the same market!”
Ben did not lack for mechanical ability and contrivance, and was equal to any emergency. He believed he had devised a plan to hold the timber together, and put it into a shape to be transported.
But another and more embarrassing question was, who would go as captain of the strange craft? He could think of no one who possessed sufficient capacity as a seaman and navigator, and who would be willing to take the risk, but John Strout; but John was liable to get the worse for liquor, and therefore would not do.
“What a fool a man is,” said Ben to himself, “to make a beast of himself with rum! Now, there is John Strout, as capable, noble-hearted a fellow, and as good a seaman and navigator, as ever stepped on a vessel’s deck, and likes to go to sea, which I never did (only went to get money), poking about these shores in a fisherman, when he might be captain of as fine a ship as ever swum, kept down by rum, and nothing else. I wish Sally would let me go. I am a good mind to ask her.”
Ben at length became so possessed with the idea, that, unable any longer to keep it to himself, he broached it to his father, fully expecting to be ridiculed, when, to his utter astonishment, the old seaman said, “I think it can be done, Ben. I see no difficulty but what can be got over;” and, as usual with him, forgetting all the risk in the profits of the adventure, exclaimed, “What a slap a fellow could make, hey! Ben, if he only gets there. The Spaniards are hungry for lumber, for they have been kept short through the war.”
“But the greatest difficulty of all is, who will go as master? You know I promised Sally not to go to sea. I won’t break it.”