“Yes; but it’s going to take me almost a year to earn that in a shipyard, and I can be earning all the time while they are cutting the wood.”
“If you cut the wood off that island, which lies right off the mouth of your harbor, and shelters it from the winds, it will leave it much exposed. It isn’t large enough to make much of a sheep pasture: you can’t keep sheep there in winter; for, besides there not being dulse, Irish moss, and kelp, as there is on Griffin’s, and the outer islands, the bay freezes in the winter, and the wolves would go over on the ice and kill them. I wouldn’t cut it off, and expose my harbor, for anything.”
“Potash brings cash: couldn’t I cut the white oaks and rock maples at the shore, and make potash?”
“What a way that would be!—to cut down good ship timber and sugar trees, that would make keels for ships, burn them up for potash, and that is the end of it. If we get to building vessels here, you will want it all for ship timber, because it is right on the spot. Let the folks back in the country, where ship timber isn’t worth anything, burn it up for potash: that would be saving at the tap and losing at the bunghole.”
“But I shall never build another vessel if I don’t get this one done, and I want the money.”
“I see what you want,—to raise the money quicker than you can earn it in the yard or shop, and be together, too. You’d be willing to do almost anything to bring that about.”
“That’s it, exactly, Uncle Isaac,” said John.
“Well, then, listen to me. You’ve got money enough to buy the bolt-rope for your sails—haven’t you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, then, start right off for Portland and Stroudwater as fast as you can go. Don’t lose a minute. Send down the bolt-rope and twine for Captain Rhines and Ben to make the sails with at their leisure. Be back here by Christmas; and you, Joe Griffin, and myself will go back to the Canada line, spend the winter, and hunt bears, beavers, otters, and moose. If we don’t get furs enough to bring you out clear, and something more, then my name ain’t Isaac Murch.”