“I think as much,” said Fred. “We three boys have always been together, and have undertaken several things, and have never yet failed to accomplish what we have attempted.”
“But you never undertook anything like this, or to be compared with it. Building a vessel is quite another matter from making baskets.”
The reader will bear in mind that Isaac had been away during the period in which the boys had developed most rapidly, and was not so well aware of what they might be expected to accomplish as he otherwise would have been.
“But,” asked Isaac, “where are the carpenters coming from? There are none here but Yelf and Joe Griffin, and neither of them have ever been master workmen. You must go to Portland or Wiscasset for a master workman and blacksmith; and where is the money to pay them, fit up a yard, build a blacksmith’s shop, buy tools and iron?”
“Charlie,” replied John, “can be master workman.”
“John,” said Fred, “can do the iron-work.”
He then told Isaac of their capabilities, and what they had done since he had been gone, which greatly astonished him, and presented the subject under discussion in a very different light, especially when Charlie told him that he could cut the timber entirely on his own land, the spars, and also spars and lumber to load her.
“But,” said Isaac, “you must have carpenters. You can’t build her alone.”
“To build a vessel in the manner we shall build one, we don’t need but three good carpenters, and there are plenty of men round here that can hew, bore, drive bolts, and saw with a whip-saw. Yelf is a capital man with an adze, and so is Ralph Chase. They can do all the dubbing.”
“My uncle can make the spars,” said Isaac.