“Mother, carpenters and blacksmiths go wherever there is work. I’m sure there’s lumber and spars enough here, and vessels come here to load. I don’t see why a vessel couldn’t be built here, where there’s timber to build her, and lumber to load her, and take it to the West Indies, and get molasses and sugar to sell in Boston or Portland, just as Captain Rhines did the cargo of the Congress. I heard him say he had half a mind to keep her, load, and run her.”
“I never saw such a boy as you are, Charlie! You’re always planning out something. What in the world put this in your head, just now?”
“Because I was thinking what a sight of ducks, chickens, geese, and turkeys there are around this barn. Why, you can’t step, hardly, without treading on a hen or a duck! I can’t hardly pitch a fork full of hay off the mow without disturbing a hen’s nest! And only see the beets, onions, and potatoes there are! I was thinking, if there was only some vessel here going to the West Indies, what a slap you and I could make by sending a venture, as we did in the Ark! Why, only think how much butter you could send! Then, I thought, here is Seth Warren, learning navigation. He ought to have a vessel built for him here, instead of going to Wiscasset; and Joe Griffin and Robert Yelf ought to help build her, instead of going out of town to work, as they often do.”
“Well, Charlie, you were born twenty-five or thirty years too soon! Such things may do to talk about, but they can’t be done in the woods, in a new country.”
“Captain Rhines was born and brought up in the woods; but he’s been all over the world, for all that.”
“Well, Charlie, you’d better leave alone building castles in the air, and take that calf away. He’s biting the cow’s teats all to pieces.”
“I tell you, mother, there will be a vessel built in this bay before five years. You mark my words for it.”
“Perhaps there may—a wood-coaster.”
“No; a vessel to go to the West Indies.”
“Well, when I see it, I’ll believe it, and I’ll send a venture in her.”