“It would not have looked well,” said Sally, “after Uncle Isaac offered to buy the land for you not to have accepted the offer.”
“You could not have found a better piece of land, or a more pleasant spot,” said Ben. “That flat next to the beach is splendid wheat land, and there’s an excellent boiling spring on the eastern side of the cove.”
“I didn’t see that, but I saw the brook.”
The evenings were now quite long, and Charlie made rapid progress in surveying. Uncle Isaac’s boat also grew apace under the new impulse he had received. Every stroke of the hammer was so much towards buying land.
Ben’s prediction in respect to increase of business was abundantly verified. After Uncle Isaac’s boat was finished and gone, Charlie set up another, without any model or guide except his eye, and the knowledge of proportions which he had gained from the other boats. He endeavored to unite the sailing qualities of the West Wind with a greater capacity of burden, and ability to carry sail with a less quantity of ballast.
Charlie did not intend to sell this boat, but to make her large and able for rough weather and heavy seas, and keep her for a family boat to go to the main land in. He had of late been smitten with a very great desire to go to meeting on the main land, and to dine at Captain Rhines’s, and he knew that his mother would like to go with him, as she never was afraid of anything. But although he did not intend to sell this boat, he designed her for a permanent model of others to be sold. He perceived that the other boats, though infinitely better than the dug-outs to get about in, were not what was required for fishing; that, though great sailers, they were not capacious enough to hold fish and ballast both, and required too much ballast to keep them on their legs. It is by no means an easy attainment to unite in one boat all the elements of a good fishing-boat, that will sail well, row easy, and save life in bad weather. A fisherman wants a boat that will row easy, for he often starts away at two o’clock in the morning, when it is generally calm, and rows seven or eight miles, perhaps more, to reach his ground. He cannot go without ballast, and he can get none after he is outside, except he gets fish, which is by no means certain. On the other hand, if he gets a large quantity of fish, he can throw some of his ballast overboard, and he doesn’t want to row half a ton of ballast eight or ten miles. But if his boat is stiff, and will carry reefed sails, or a whole foresail, with a moderate quantity of ballast that he can keep in all the time, not sufficient to overload her when fish are plenty, and yet sufficient to make her safe, he is suited.
It is not a great deal, to be sure, to row four or five hundred weight of ballast more, for once or twice, but when you have got to do it year in and year out, when tired and hungry, it is a good deal. A fisherman wants a boat, too, that is smart, stiff to bear a hard blow, buoyant, will mind her helm, and work quick to clear an ugly sea, and sail well on a wind. They often go twenty miles from land, tempted by weather that appears “hard and good,” to particular shoals, where they get large fish, when the weather suddenly changes, and in an open boat they must beat in, and they do beat in. There are boats now built at Hampton or Seabrook that would beat into Boston Bay, with a man in them that knew how to handle them in a gale of wind, when a ship couldn’t do it; for, when a big ship gets down to close-reefs, she won’t do much on a wind. The people then knew where the fish were as well as we do now; but they couldn’t go off to those places except in pinkies, and, when they ventured to the inner shoals, reefs, and hake ground in their canoes, it was real slavery. They had to row in if the wind came ahead, or it was calm, and were liable to be blown to sea and lost.
Charlie meant to build a boat that would answer these requirements as far as he was able. Then he meant to take moulds of every timber and every streak of plank as he went along, so that he might work from them, and build another of the same size, with one half the labor.
This he did, and built a boat twenty-two feet long on top, sharp under water, and deeper in proportion to her length than the others, with a pink-stern and lap-streak. It was less work to put on the planks with a lap than with a calking-seam; there was less need of accuracy; for, if the plank lapped too much in any place, you had only to take it off with a plane or chisel.
When his boat was finished, he painted her by the streaks, and she looked as neat as a pin. He thought she was a great deal handsomer than a square stern; so did everybody.