Little Bobtail; or, The Wreck of the Penobscot.

by Oliver Optic

"That suits my case exactly," said the explorer, as he took down the bacon. "I shall treat myself to a slice of fried ham before I bother my head any more about this craft or any other."

In a locker on which the cook sat while engaged in his duties was a supply of wood; and in five minutes Little Bobtail had a good fire in the stove. A frying-pan lay by the side of the locker. Indeed, our hero could want nothing which he did not immediately find ready for use, just as though a multitude of fairies stood at his elbows to meet his every wish. In another locker he found a kid of cold potatoes, and there was an abundance of hard-tack in a keg on the transom. The slice of bacon hissed and sizzled in the pan on the stove, and the odor was delightful to the hungry boy. It was soon "done to a turn," and the fried potatoes were as brown and nice as those prepared by his mother. He might have had tea or coffee, but he did not care for them. At his age they are not reckoned among the substantials for a good meal. Procuring a plate, knife, and fork from the cabin, he helped himself from the pan on the stove.

"That's what I call first rate!" exclaimed he, when he had duly tested the bacon and the potatoes. "I shall be ready to hire out as a cook after this. That's tip-top bacon, and I respect the pig that left this leg I see to me."

Little Bobtail glanced up at the leg of bacon in the corner, and thought he had made a good pun; but it was fearfully old and stale to be printed in a book, and we do so only out of deference to his feelings. No right-minded and highly moral person will make puns; and our hero is only excusable on the ground that he was alone, and did not force it upon other people. He ate all he wanted; nay, more—all he could. He devoured the entire slice he had cooked, leaving none for a lunch, in case he wanted one, when he had not time to cook. He was entirely satisfied, and that is saying a great deal of a boy of sixteen, growing, and sailing on the salt water, too. He could not eat any more, or he would; and, being too full for utterance, he made no more speeches to himself. Doubtless he had endangered the peace of his dreams by overloading his stomach at that hour in the evening, for by this time it was ten o'clock; but it so happened that he had time to digest his supper before he put himself in the way of dreaming.

Having satisfied his hunger, he felt entirely satisfied with himself, and especially with the person or persons who had fitted out the yacht in the commissary department. Taking his lantern, he crawled over the boxes to the after part of the cabin, where there was space enough for him to sit comfortably. He looked at the boxes, and wondered what was in them. We do not know that he had more curiosity than boys in general; but he felt that a knowledge of their contents might enable him to establish another theory in regard to the previous history of the yacht. He had seen a shingling hatchet in the cook-room, used for splitting up the kindling wood. He went for it, and, with no great difficulty, opened one of the boxes. It was filled with bottles, packed in straw, and each one enclosed in a curious case made of the same material. He slipped one of the bottles out of its casing. It was labeled "James Hennessy & Co.—Cognac." The name of the firm, so well known to old topers and moderate drinkers, afforded him no light; but he knew that "Cognac" meant brandy.

"Oho! aha!" said Little Bobtail, knowingly; "I smell a mice now. This boat wasn't used for a pleasure party."

He had heard about those mysterious custom-house inspectors and detectives, who poke their noses into grocery stores, cellars, and all the sly places where contraband goods were supposed to be concealed. Promptly he arrived at the conclusion that the brandy in the yacht had come "thus far into the bowels of the land" without paying its respects to the custom-house, or any of the heavy duties which go to support the army and navy, and a host of beneficent institutions which make our country "the land of the free and the home of the brave," and the collection of which affords a multitude of officials an opportunity to steal. But Little Bobtail did not trouble himself to discuss any of the vexed questions about free trade and tariff, or even to weigh carefully the immorality of smuggling.

Our hero did not believe in brandy, abstractly or concretely. It was liquor, and liquor had been a curse to his home, a curse to his mother, and a curse to himself; and he was tempted to take the boxes on deck, open them, and spill the contents of the bottles into the sea. Possibly—not probably—he would have done so, if he had not been afraid the liquor would destroy the fish, or drive them away to prohibition waters. The problem of the yacht had become intricate, and he was puzzled to determine what to do with her. If he had been properly instructed in regard to the duty of the citizens to his government, and properly inspired to discharge this duty, he would have sailed the yacht and her cargo over to Camden, and delivered her to the deputy collector in charge of the port. He knew what smuggling meant; but his views were very indefinite. According to the fishermen, and most of the traders, to whose conversation on this subject he had listened, smuggling was hardly to be regarded as a sin, or, if a sin, it was one of the most trivial character.