“Don’t cry, wife. I don’t want to grieve you, and I’m sure I don’t want to leave you; but you know what a good child Ben has been to us; how nobly he stepped forward when I was in trouble, and helped me out, and is now feeling the want of the money he then gave me. There’s nobody can take charge of this craft, and help him now as I can, and I think I ought to do it.”
When Ben returned from his visit to his father, he told Sally and Joe the whole matter.
“Now I know,” said Sally, “what you have been thinking about so long, and talking about in your sleep all this winter.”
“And I,” said Joe, “know what all these boards stuck up to dry, and that cedar, mean; and what made you so delighted when all that rigging and iron-work came ashore. I should have thought you would. Good on your head, Ben! I’ll stand blacksmith, for I have worked most a year in a blacksmith’s shop; and when you get her ready for sea I’ll go in her; and, if I go, Seth Warren will go, too, for he can’t live without me, and there will be two good corn-fed boys at any rate.”
They now improved the few remaining days of winter in hauling the remainder of the logs from the woods, and then began with all despatch to raft them to the mill, bringing the boards back as fast as they were sawed, and sticking them up to season. They found the Perseverance, that lay in the cove, very convenient for towing their rafts.
CHAPTER XII.
THE MYSTERIOUS PIG.
It was now the last of March. The fish-hawks and herons began to return, and the whistlers and sea-ducks to come in on to the feeding-grounds.
Charles had business enough. He began to put in practice the lessons he had learned in the winter, and killed four whistlers out of the first flock that came. He launched his canoe, and began to catch rock-fish on the points of the Bull, and a reef that lay about half a mile from the island; he also carried a lot of baskets over to John and Fred to sell.
Often in the morning, just as the day was breaking, Ben and Sally would be awakened from sleep by the report of Charlie’s gun, as at that time the fowl began to come from outside, where they had passed the night sleeping on the water, to their feeding-grounds round the ledges.