"Why, in respect to cleaning, calking, or graving a vessel's bottom, repairing, or stopping a leak. See what a fuss we had here the other day, cleaning and putting tallow on this vessel's bottom; had to heave her out, and work and wade in the water at that. Now, if we had been at home, all we need to have done would have been to haul her on to the beach in Captain Rhines's Cove that you despise so much, at high water, ground her, and have eight or ten hours to work, on a good sand beach, too."
"I guess," said Ned, "I should have done better to have held my tongue."
Our readers will bear in mind that there were no railways in those days by which vessels are hauled out of the water, or dry docks into which they are floated at high water, and the water pumped out; but our forefathers grounded them across logs or blocks, or, if they wanted to get at the keel, hove them down on one side, by means of tackles made fast to the mast-heads, till the keel was out of water.
"That is not all, either, Ned," said the second mate. "If the tide didn't ebb, there wouldn't be any clams; and that would be a very serious affair indeed to the fishermen who want bait. Once it would have caused starvation in some cases, and might again."
"How could that be, sir?"
"I'll tell you, my boy. You were born and have grown up in Salem, and don't, perhaps, realize the value of clams; but I do. I've heard old Mr. Griffin, the mate's grandfather, say, that when he was cutting down the trees on his place, before he could raise anything, and met with bad luck in hunting, he had been, the first summer or two, so put to it for food, that he had to boil beech leaves, the ends of the branches and the tops of the pine trees (that are very tender in June, when they are growing fast), to preserve life, and that if it had not been for clams, he and his family must have starved. I'm sure they were a great help to us after my father died, for we were very poor. I was young, not strong enough to do much work; but I could dig clams, and my little sister picked them up. I could, with them for bait, catch fish and lobsters, and with a little rye and Indian bread and some bean broth, mother got along, and kept us all together. Had it not been for the clam flats, I don't know what we should have done."
"I can say amen to that," said Willard Lancaster; "and I know that when Peterson used to drink so bad, and brought little or nothing home to his family, that Luce and the children got most of their living out of the clam flats."
"It is not only the value of the clams as food," said Walter, "but a good part of the fish that are cured and exported to all parts of the world to feed thousands, are caught with clam bait."
"That, indeed," said the captain. "What vast quantities of fish are exported from Salem to the West Indies and other places! and that is but a trifle compared with the whole amount."
"Yes, indeed, sir. I didn't think of all these uses for the tide. I was thinking only how convenient it would be to have it always high water for a few things."