“There’s the shape of the mackerel, anyhow,” said Charlie, contemplating his work with great satisfaction; “but how I’m going to get a model from it is the question; however, there is time enough to think of that between this and spring.”
He deposited his model in his house under the great maple, and devoted all his time to helping his father improve the appearance of the house.
Our readers will recollect that the logs, of which the house was built, were hewed square at the corners and windows; so Ben and Charlie just built a staging, and, stretching a chalk line, hewed the whole broadside from the ridge-pole to the sill square with the corners. They accomplished this quite easily at the ends, but on the front and back it was more difficult to hew the top log under the eaves; but they worked it out with the adze.
Originally the house had but two windows on a side, and, as these were on the corners to admit of putting in others, it looked queer enough. They now cut out places for two more in a side, and intended, after having smoothed the walls, to clapboard them; but their work was interrupted for the time by the arrival of Uncle Isaac, Joe Griffin, Uncle Sam, and Captain Rhines, to go on the long-talked-of gunning excursion.
“I don’t see,” said Uncle Isaac, “how you do so much work; I think it is wonderful, the amount you and this boy have done since we were here.”
“There’s one thing you don’t consider,” said Ben: “a person here is not hindered; there’s not some one running in and out all the time, and he is not stopping to look at people that go along the road; he’s not plagued with other people’s cattle, and don’t have to fence against them; he’s not out evenings visiting, but goes to bed when he has done work, and the next morning he feels keen to go to work again. It’s my opinion, if a man is contented, he will stand his work better, live longer, and be happier, on one of these islands than anywhere else.”
As they were to start at twelve o’clock at night, they went to bed at dark. Captain Rhines slept on board the vessel, as he could wake at any hour he chose. He was to call the others if the weather was good; if not, they were to wait for another chance. It was bright moonlight; a little wind, north-west, just enough to carry them along, and perfectly smooth. The place to which they were bound was an outlying rock in the open ocean, more than seven miles beyond the farthest land, upon which, even in calm weather, the ground swell of the ocean broke in sheets of white foam, and with a roar like thunder; but when a strong northerly wind had been blowing for a day or two, it drove back the ground swell, and when the northerly wind in its turn died away, there would be a few hours, and sometimes a day or two, of calm, when there was not the least motion, and you might land on the rock; but it was a delicate and dangerous proceeding, requiring great watchfulness, for although there might be no wind at the spot, yet the wind blowing at sea, miles distant, might in a few moments send in the ground swell and cut off all hope of escape. As the north wind made no ground swell, the rock could be approached on the south side, even when a moderate north wind was blowing.
They were familiar with all these facts, and had accordingly chosen the last of a norther, that had been blowing two days, and was dying away.
Some hours before day they arrived at the place—a large barren rock, containing about three acres, with a little patch of grass on the highest part of it, and a spring of pure water, that spouted up from the crevices in the rock; a quantity of wild pea vines and bayberry bushes were growing there, among which, in little hollows in the rock, the sea-gulls laid their eggs, without any attempt at a nest.
As they neared the rock, they sailed through whole flocks of sea-birds; some of them, asleep on the water, with their heads beneath their wings, took no notice of them; others, as they heard the slight ripple made by the vessel’s bows, flew or swam to a short distance, and then remained quiet.