This will explain to our young readers why it was that the people were put to such shifts to get along; had to use withes for chains and ropes, make their own cloth and dye-stuffs, and resort to all kinds of contrivances to get along; because, although the country after the war was filled with foreign goods of all kinds, none but the wealthiest had any money to buy them with; and the wealthy people were very few indeed.
Almost all the trade was by barter—swapping one thing for another. Rum, coffee, and sugar were more plenty on the seaboard than anything else, because they could exchange lumber for them in the West Indies. Lumber, too, was sold to the English vessels for money, in the form of spars, and ton-timber ten inches square, which led the people to work in the woods to the neglect of the soil—a thing which, as we shall see by and by, Ben took advantage of.
“I can tell you, my boy,” continued the captain, “your going to Boston with the spars wasn’t a priming to this; there’s money in it; I know there is.”
Ben then told his father about the wreck of the masts and spars that came ashore. “Isn’t that a God-send, now?”
“What sails were they?”
“A fore-course, fore-topsail, fore-topmast staysail, and fore-topgallant yard, with the sail on it, and almost the whole of the topsail halyards, with both blocks.”
“They will make glorious throat-halyards. Were the shear-poles wood or iron?”
“Iron.”
“They will be first rate to cut up for bolts. Now, Ben, you get your logs to the mill, and get them sawed, and the boards home; and when the weather comes a little warmer, I’ll hire somebody to work on the farm with John, and I’ll come over to the island, and we will put her right through. I can hew and bore, but you must be master-carpenter. When it comes to making sails and fitting rigging, I can do that, or we’ll do it between us.”
Ben now dismissed all misgivings. He knew that his father was at home in all kinds of craft, from a canoe to a ship; had stowed all manner of cargoes; and having from boyhood been flung upon his own resources, was fertile in expedients. The quickness of decision manifested by the captain was by no means an indication of superficial knowledge, but his mind was quick in all its movements; and all seafaring matters had been with him subjects of mature thought and practical experience from early life, and his judgment was equal to his resolution.