"There are many other things," said Walter, "that the ebb and flow of the tide are very convenient for. Three years ago, father was building a wharf in our cove: the logs were master great ones; it would have taken twenty men to place them where we wanted them; but father and I cut the scores in the other logs to receive them, rolled them into the water with the oxen, then tied a rope to them, floated them at high water to the spot, held them till the tide ebbed, and they settled into the grooves just as easy as a cat would lick her ear. We didn't lift an ounce; the tide lifted all those big logs for us. Did you ever see the Casco, Ned?"
"No, sir; she was always away when I was at Pleasant Cove, but I've heard say she is a monster."
"So she is—seven hundred tons; you may judge what her anchors must be. Well, I can tell you what they are: the best bower is 3000, and the small bower 2700."
"O, my! What a junk of iron that must be!"
"We rode out a gale of wind in Cadiz, with both anchors ahead and all the scope out. It blew a gale, I tell you, and the anchors were well bedded. When we came to get under way for home, we hove up the small anchor; but the other we hove, and hove, and hove, and couldn't start it. At last the captain said, 'Avast heaving; let the tide take it out.' We waited till low water, hove her down as long as we could catch a pawl on the windlass, and made all fast. At length the tide began to flow, the ship began to bury forward; down she went, till the water was coming into the hawse-holes, the cable sung, and the tar began to stand in drops on it with the strain, when all at once the anchor let go with a surge that threw every man from his feet. The tide was very convenient then; if it had not been for it, we must have gone ashore, got a grappling, and grappled to the fluke of the anchor, or left it. Again the tide is very convenient for a timepiece; if you keep the run of the tide, you have the time of day."
"It is about as well to take things as the Lord has arranged them," said the captain, "and be contented and thankful."
"That," said Ned, "brings to my mind a piece mother read to me once, about a man who thought, if the disposition of affairs had been committed to him, he could have arranged them a great deal better than they now are; that it was not at all proper that so large and noble a thing as a pumpkin should be attached to a vine lying upon the ground, while so insignificant a thing as an acorn or beech-nut grew upon a lofty tree: but falling asleep one day under an oak, an acorn falling on his nose awoke him, when he exclaimed, 'Wretch that I am! Had it been a pumpkin it would have dashed my brains out.' I don't know as I recollect it aright, but that was the amount of it."
"It is certainly better, Ned, to be in the hands of a wise and good Providence, than to be left to plan for ourselves. If the disposal of events had been committed to you or me, we never should have suffered the Madras to spring a leak, and endured what we did upon the raft; yet it carried us to Pleasant Cove, to Captain Rhines and Charlie Bell, and was the best thing that could have happened to either of us. Way enough, men; fend off, Jacques."