CHARLIE LEARNING A NEW LANGUAGE.
When Charlie first sat down to his oars, he was not in so happy and jubilant a frame as when leaving the barn, after having completed the timbering out of his boat; but as he pulled away from the island, the calm hour, the beauty of the sea and shore, the glassy surface of the bay touched by the rays of the setting sun, gradually tranquillized his perturbed feelings.
“I have learned to graft, at any rate,” he soliloquized, “and I can get some more scions of Mr. Welch.” And by the time he was half way to the island he had begun to sing and talk aloud to himself.
Charlie’s love for the soil had by no means become weakened through his devotion to boat-building; and now that the distress was over, and he felt that he could do it, he bethought himself of other matters that required looking after.
The garden must be seen to right away, the beets and carrots must be weeded, the honeysuckle nailed up, the beans and squashes hoed, and sticks put to the peas.
“There,” said he, “is that cabbage rose-bush, Mary Rhines gave me, ought to have a hoop to hold it up. I’ll make one, like a Turk’s head, out of willow, and stain it, and plane out three stakes of oak to hold it up; and I’ll stain them; it’s the last green dye I’ve got; but I don’t care.”
Charlie now had two objects in view: one was, to shoot a seal, and the other, and more important one, to learn to growl like them. In summer evenings, seals are very fond of resorting to the ledges at half tide, and to the sand spits, where they lie and suckle their young, where they feel safe, and much at home, growl, and are very sociable. The many ledges lying off Griffin’s Island were frequented by seals; but one in particular, called the Flatiron from its shape, was a favorite resort, because, while the others were within gunshot of the island, this was far beyond the range of any ordinary gun. Charlie, knowing this, had brought, in addition to his own gun, Ben’s great wall piece, the barrel of which was seven feet in length, and the stock looked as if it had been hewed out with an axe. Uncle Isaac had often threatened to make a new stock for it. Notwithstanding its bad looks, it was a choice gun for long distances, and threw the charge where it was pointed.
This ledge also possessed another attraction for the seals, as it was flat, smooth, covered with a soft mat of sea-weed, and at the edges slanted off into deep water; thus they could put their watchman on a little ridge that rose up in the middle very much like the handle of a flatiron, and when he gave the alarm, the whole band could, in an instant, souse into the water.
Charlie knew that Uncle Isaac and Joe Griffin could imitate the noise of seals so exactly as to draw them on to the ledge, they supposing it to be another seal; and that Uncle Isaac had a seal stuffed, which he would set on a ledge, as though alive, and then, concealing himself, make a noise like them. The seals, hearing the noise, and seeing the stuffed one, would endeavor to crawl up, and thus afford a shot. Charlie was an excellent singer, and a pretty good mimic, and hoped by practice to obtain sufficient accuracy to deceive a seal; and he wanted to kill one to stuff, that he might try Uncle Isaac’s plan.
Landing, and crossing the island, he approached the bank abreast the ledge. Near this bank was a ridge of shelly rock, rising, about two feet from the grass ground, to a sharp edge, from which the land sloped gradually towards the centre of the island—just the place to lie and rest the big gun over the edge of the rock.