“Yes.”
“Well, make a pair of gates to open and shut in that gap, dam the water, and flow it back, till the brook is deep enough to float the timber, then twitch and roll it into the pond, float it down to the gates, open them, and down it will go into the cove, right alongside your vessel. I know all about that work. I never did much else.”
“That will be just the thing,” said Charlie, “for some of the largest trees grow within half a gunshot of the pond.”
“You’ll have to stir yourselves,” said Captain Rhines. “The way he’s rigged that vessel, according to his letter, he won’t be much longer than common on the passage.”
“I wish Joe Griffin was here,” said Charlie.
“I guess he’s done you more good where he is.”
Charlie obtained men, got his gates made, his mast cut and made, and part of the spars cut, when the sloop arrived in Boston.
When she was again ready for sea, she presented quite a different appearance. They finished her cabin, put a billet-head on her, painted her hull and spars, put studding-sail booms on her yards. The decks were worn smooth, and the sails bleached white. She had a square-sail, and looked like another vessel.
Pluck and principle win the day. The cargo which they carried out in this rough craft, built of white pine, and half fastened, amounted to eleven thousand seventy-five dollars, bought their homeward cargo, and left them three hundred dollars in cash. The mast Isaac sold to the Frenchman paid all the expenses of the voyage within fifty dollars, and, after selling their molasses, left them cash and sales twenty-six thousand six hundred and five dollars, six thousand six hundred fifty-one dollars and twenty-five cents apiece, Charlie having one hundred dollars more, the price of the boat, half of which he gave to Joe, Captain Rhines, and Ben, put glass windows in the meeting-house, and clapboarded it. Uncle Isaac and others built a steeple. The boys gave a bell, and Isaac brought a bag of coffee and a barrel of sugar for Parson Goodhue.
During the fall and winter Charlie cut spars enough to freight the sloop again, and built a few boats.