“White oak, of course.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“What would you make them of?”
“Spruce limbs.”
“Spruce limbs? That’s a funny thing to make a treenail of!”
“They are better than white oak. They are hard, stiff, all heart, and full of pitch. They’ll never rot.”
CHAPTER XV.
DIFFICULTIES WHET THE EDGE OF RESOLUTION.
While Charlie and his men were hewing the timber, John Rhines and his apprentice were getting ready to do the iron-work.
They built a blacksmith’s shop of logs,—the floor was of earth,—made a bench, and shove-windows. Leaving the rest to complete in rainy days, they began to prepare coal. Very little coal, except charcoal, was then used by blacksmiths, small quantities being imported from England into the seaports, but none at all used in the country shops.
The boys could not afford to buy it. John and Henry went into the woods, and cut birch and maple into proper lengths for their purpose. Then, on a flat piece of ground they built up a little cobwork of small sticks of dry wood, forming a little chimney about six feet high. They then set green sticks of cord-wood up around this chimney in a slanting direction, filling the interval between with short sticks. When a sufficient quantity of wood was set up, they rounded the top with shorter sticks. They dug green, strong turf, and covered the pile all over with it, grass-side down, except the top of the chimney, and some air-holes at the bottom, to make draught enough to keep the fire steadily burning. Then they threw earth all over it, and stopped the cracks where the pieces of turf came together, filled the chimney full of shavings and dry stuff, and kindled it at top. When it had burned down into the body of the kiln, and the whole mass of wood was hot and fairly on fire, they put turf on top, and made all tight, the air-holes at the bottom affording just draught enough to make the wood coal, without burning to ashes, as it would in an open fire. By these air-holes they could regulate the draught. If the wind blew hard, and the draught was too great, stop them up on the windward side; if too weak, open them.