"The old cap'n," continued Lancaster, "said he might have made his jack if he had only brought bolts, locks, and cheap hinges for doors, cause sometimes they want to lock the darkies up; and also if he had brought handsome ones for the planters' houses, and nails, he might have thribbled his money; but that his wits allers come afterwards he seemed quite in a passion about it, cause he hadn't made more, when he'd made enough a'ready to satisfy any reasonable person."
"Thank you, Sewall; we'll try and not have our wits come afterwards."
"The greatest difficulty with me at the outset," said Walter, "is, where to find a vessel."
"I'll settle that matter at once—charter the Perseverance of Ben. I can rig her so that nothing of her size can catch her; and a better sea-boat never swam. No matter how hard it blows; she'll lay to like a duck, go dry, and work to windward all the time."
"She may do well in the bays and along shore, bit she is old, and must be rotten."
"Last fall Ben took her over to Pleasant Cove. He, John, and Charlie overhauled her thoroughly, made a winter's job of it, put in new ceiling, drove a lot of fastening into her, laid a new deck, and put in a new mainmast and bowsprit. All the rot they found was under the bowsprit and two timbers in the counter. While I am here, I am going to get new rigging and sails for her. Ben would have her name put on in gold leaf. I thought it was nonsense for a fisherman; but he sets his life by that craft because she belonged to his nearest friend, John Strout, who was drowned."
"But will Mr. Ben let us have her?"
"Tell him that James Peterson is a slave in Martinique, and that you want the schooner to go out there and rescue him, and see whether he won't let you have her."
"Don't it seem a pity, Captain Rhines," said Ned, "when such awful things are done as Aldrich did, that there couldn't be somebody like Lion Ben around, to give them just what they deserve?"
"There is somebody round."