Charlie Bell, The Waif of Elm Island

by Elijah Kellogg

John Strout now came from the West Indies, and went to work with them. He brought home tamarinds, guava jelly, and other good things for Sally; a hat made of palm-leaf for Ben, and some shells for Charlie. He also brought Ben a cocoanut to keep liquor in; the end of it, where the eyes are, was made in the shape of a negro’s face; the two little round places, where we bore to let the milk out, serving the purpose of eyes, with eyebrows cut over them, and filled with some red matter; in the mouth was a lead pipe to drink from; large ears were also made, and a nose; the figure looked somewhere between a monkey and a negro, funny enough, and was full of rum. He also brought them home twenty-five pounds of coffee, and a hundred weight of sugar.

Charlie was very much puzzled to know how the meat was got out of the shell without breaking it. John told him that he bored the hole for the mouth, and then turned the milk out, filled it with salt water, and set it in the sun, when, the meat decaying, he washed it all out; then scraping the outside with a knife and piece of glass, oiled it, and made the face with an old file, which he ground to a sharp point.

Ben and Joe now commenced their craft, laying the keel on the beach, making the rough skeleton of a vessel. As their object was neither beauty nor durability, only to serve the present occasion, they used all the cedar possible, that she might be the more buoyant.

They took the iron from the spars, and Joe, who had worked in a blacksmith shop, took it over to the main land to a shop, and made their fastening. They, however, used but very little iron, making wooden treenails answer the purpose. They made a bow and stern frame, and set up two ribs on a side where the masts were to come, laid a rough deck at the mast-holes, and forward for the windlass and the heel of the bowsprit to rest on; the remainder was all open. They then put on two streaks of plank next the keel, to hold the ends of the timbers, and hung the wales.

As Uncle Isaac had finished his planting, he now came to work with them; they made the windlass, rudder, and spars; they also sheathed the bow and stern with boards, where she entered and left the water, so as to diminish the friction somewhat. The spars looked queer enough: they were beautiful sticks, as straight as a rush; but there was no labor expended upon them, except what was absolutely necessary. She was to be rigged into a schooner,—and an awful great one she was, carrying more than three hundred thousand of timber. The masts, where the hoops were to run, were as smooth as glass, but as to the part below the deck it was just as it grew; so with the other spars,—where there was no necessity of their being smooth, the bark was left on the stick.

Ben now ascertained that there was a large trade carried on from Wiscasset in spars and ton-timber, that was shipped to Europe. He accordingly took what he had, and making them into a raft, sold them there, and bought his rudder-irons, a second-hand jib and flying-jib, and provisions for his workmen.

She now sat on the beach ready for her sails and cargo, and the tide ebbed and flowed, and the winds blew through her frame. It must be confessed she was a craft of magnificent distances, and probably could not have been insured at Lloyd’s. It was not desirable to load her till near the time of starting, in order that the cargo might not water-soak, as the great object was to render her as buoyant as possible. Ben therefore discharged his men, while he and his father went to work on the rigging. Uncle Isaac went home, while Joe went on a fishing cruise with John Strout.

During all this period Charlie had been by no means idle; there were a great many things he could do to help along. When the men were hewing, he, with his narrow axe, could score in and beat off for them (that is, cut notches in the timber, close together, and then split out the wood between), which very much facilitated the labor of hewing. He could also drive treenails; and when the men were not using the broad axe, would hew out small sticks with a skill that called forth many compliments from Uncle Isaac, who took great pains to show him, and found a most apt scholar.

Charlie now became very anxious to see his mother. Every day or two he would say to Ben, “What does make mother stay so long? she never did before; she used to think she could not go to be gone a day, and now she has been gone almost a month.”

At length, one pleasant morning, Ben, to his great joy, took the canoe, and went to bring her home. If Charlie went down to the eastern point once that day with the spy-glass, he went fifty times.