“I have; the Russians build all their frigates of fir, that ain’t one quarter as good. There was a brig built at Salem of pine before the war, and I’ve heard she’s a capital vessel; she has been to India three or four times, and they say, though she is sharp, she is so light she carries first rate. This old-growth, thin sap, pumpkin pine will outlast any oak, and won’t eat up the iron, nor cost near as much to work it.”
“That’s so: there would be a great difference between dubbing pine and oak, or in sawing out plank with a whip-saw.”
“So there would in hewing, and all through; there’s nothing better for beams than a heart of hemlock.”
“O, father, folks think hemlock ain’t worth anything.”
“They will think differently one of these days: see how long a hemlock stub will stand, or a windfall last, in the woods. There’s hemlock rails in our fence, that my grandfather put there more than a hundred years ago; they are worn thin in the weather, but are just as sound as ever. It’s all a notion about oak. Unless you want to build a vessel of six or seven hundred tons, to carry iron, salt, or stone, pine is just as good only make it larger.”
“I’m sure, father, it would be a great deal better for us to build her here, and we are all very much obliged to you.”
The others all expressed their gratitude to Ben.
“There are other things,” said he, “that will be quite an object with you: here is a good work-shop to shoot treenails, keep your tools in, and to work in rainy days. There’s the barn floor, where you can use the whip-saw in the winter if you want to; then here are six great fat oxen, doing nothing, that you can take to haul your timber, which will all come down hill, and you can haul it as well on bare ground as on the snow. Here is a whip-saw, a cross-cut saw, and a threefold tackle; thus, you see there are many advantages in building here rather than in the woods; besides, if I am round, you can call on me when you have a hard lift or a wale piece to lug; you can give me a lift in haying or hoeing, and that will be a mutual benefit.”
“We’ll do that, father; we’ll put the haying through.”
After the boys went up to bed, they expressed in no measured terms, to each other, their surprise at the readiness with which Ben had entered into their plans, and our readers may also feel the same; but the fact was, the boys had merely anticipated purposes which had for some time occupied the thoughts of Captain Rhines, Uncle Isaac, and Ben, and, indeed, been a matter of conversation between them.