Lion Ben of Elm Island
Page 10
CHAPTER IX.
TOO GOOD A CHANCE TO LOSE.
Ben persuaded Joe Griffin to go home with him, stay all night, andhelp eat the coon. Though one of the most kind-hearted creatures thatever lived, Joe’s proclivity for practical jokes was both instinctiveand inveterate. If the choice lay between making a mortal enemy forlife and a good joke, he could not prevail upon himself to forego thejoke. He was very shrewd withal, and would extricate himself fromdifficulties, and accomplish his ends by pleasantry, where others wouldbe compelled to fight their way out, or miss of their object.
One autumn, the blacksmith, having great quantities of axes to make forthe loggers, hired Joe a couple of months, as there was a great dealof striking with the sledge, and his apprentice was young and light.The smith was a very driving man, but kept his men well, and was veryhospitable. He was obliged to be absent occasionally to deliver hisaxes. At such times his wife, who was penurious in the extreme, keptthe boys very short. Joe, knowing that his master did not approve ofthis, resolved to put a stop to it. They worked evenings. One night thesmith came home full of grit, as he had been riding and resting, andprepared to forge an axe. Placing a hot iron on the anvil, he cried,“Strike, Joe, strike.” Joe struck a few feeble blows, when exclaiming,“It’s going! it’s going! it’s all gone!” dropped his sledge on thefloor, and seemed ready to faint away.
“What’s gone?” cried the smith, in a rage at having lost his heat.
“That water porridge we had for supper.”
The master then took them to the house, and gave them a hearty meal.
Once more the iron was laid upon the anvil; Joe struck tremendousblows, making the sparks fly all over the shop, crying, “It’s coming!it’s coming! it gives me strength! I feel it! I feel it!”
“What’s coming, and what do you feel?”
“That good beefsteak I had for supper.”
Joe could talk like anybody under heaven, and look like them too. Hecould talk more like Uncle Sam Yelf than Uncle Sam could himself. Thisgift, however, he used very sparingly, for he could take a joke as wellas give one; felt that ’twas mean to turn the peculiarities of othersinto ridicule, and in a way in which they could not retaliate.
Yelf had a sort of hitch in his voice, which was very ludicrous, but,like many people who have an impediment, could sing distinctly andshout tremendously; he was also very hot in his temper. Sometimes, whenthey met at the store, Joe would begin to talk with him, and just likehim.
The old man would fly in a passion in a moment, begin to sputter, andJoe would “take him off,” while no human being could help laughing. Itwas fine sport for the young folks, and the more so on account of itsrarity, as it was but seldom that Joe could be persuaded to do it, andwas sure to give the old man some tobacco soon after. He could alsoimitate the cry of any beast, wild or tame, to perfection, from a mooseto a muskrat; and of birds, except the squawk; Joe said the squawkswere too many for him.
This power was of great value to him in hunting. He could call a mooseor muskrat within range, by imitating the notes of either.
In the evening Ben went over to the widow Hadlock’s. He was in thehabit of making a bootjack of the crane; standing on one leg, andsteadying himself by the mantel-piece, he put the other foot into thecrotch of the crane, and pulled off his boot. Joe had often seen him dothis, and laid his plans accordingly. After the family were all asleep,Joe got up, and with a crowbar pulled out the dogs that held the crane,and then put them back again in such a manner that the least touchwould loosen them, and bring crane and all on to the floor. He thentook a cow-bell from a cow’s neck in the barnyard, and putting somestones in an old tin pail, hung them and a bottle of sour milk on thecrane, and went back to bed.
About twelve o’clock Ben came. He felt round for a candle, expectingto find it where his mother usually left it--on the mantel-piece; butJoe had taken very good care to remove both candle and matches; so,feeling for the crane, he clapped in his foot and pulled; down camethe crane on to the floor. Ben went over backwards, full length on thefloor, with a force that shook the whole house from garret to cellar;the cow-bell and tin pail rattled; the sour milk ran all over Ben; hismother awaked from a sound sleep, and screamed murder; and old CaptainRhines came rushing out in his night-shirt, with a pistol in each hand,blazed away at the sound, putting one bullet through the window, andthe other into a milk-pan of eggs, which stood upon the dressers, whilethe children, roused by the frantic screams of the mother and thepistol shots, came shrieking from their beds.
“Don’t shoot any more, father,” cried Ben; “it’s me.”
“My God!” exclaimed Captain Rhines, feeling the milk, which, by hangingover the fire, had become warm, as it touched his bare feet, andmistaking it for blood; “have I shot my own son?”
“No, father,” said Ben; “it’s some of that confounded Joe Griffin’swork. I’ll fix him.” He ran up stairs to take summary vengeance. Inthis he was disappointed, for the moment Joe heard the crash, he sliddown on a pole, which he had previously placed at the window, and ranhome.
We must remember that Ben had been courting; had on his bestbroadcloth, purchased on the last voyage, and in which he was to bemarried.
Broadcloth suits in those days were limited to a very few. The ministerhad a coat and breeches for Sabbath; so of a few of the seafaringpeople and their families; but the clothing of the people in generalwas both manufactured and made up at home, there being no such thing asa tailor.
Here, then, was Ben’s best suit, made in Liverpool by a professionaltailor, soaked with sour milk, and covered with ashes; his light buffwaistcoat all over smut, from the pot, crane, hooks, and trammels, thatfell over him. Thus, though Ben’s temper was not easily roused, andsoon subsided, he was now thoroughly mad, and, had he caught Joe, wouldprobably have crippled him for life. Perhaps some such thought crossedhis mind, as he said to his father on coming down, “He’s gone, and I’mglad of it; but I’ll be even with him before snow flies.”
Aunt Molly Bradish’s declaration that Ben Rhines had helped everybodythat needed help, and that she should think somebody might give hima lift, was not lost. Seth Warren happened to be in there, and heardthe old lady’s remarks. Seth was a kind-hearted, jovial fellow, whohad been many a time with Ben on his errands of mercy, and loved anykind doings. He went directly to the store, where, as he expected, hefound, as it was Saturday night, a good portion of the young men ofthe place assembled. He took them aside, and said, “You know what agood fellow Ben Rhines is; how he has always been getting up ‘bees’ tohelp everybody that was behindhand: now, what say for going on to theisland next week, the whole crew of us, and giving him a lift with hishouse?”
Seth’s proposition was received with acclamations. “Now, boys,” hecontinued, “you know how such things always leak out, and that spoilsthe whole. Now, don’t say a word about it to neither sister, mother,or sweetheart, till they have gone back to the island Monday morning,and then we can talk as much as we please, and they cannot possibly getwind of it.”
This was solemnly assented to.
“I,” said Seth, “will go over and sleep with Joe Griffin Sunday night,and, without letting him suspect anything, find out how far they’vegot along with their work, that we may know when our help will be mostneeded.” This he did, when Joe told him what he did the night before atCaptain Rhines’s.
“What do you suppose Ben’ll do to you? He’ll murder you after he getsyou on to the island. I shouldn’t want to be in your shoes.”
“Poh! he won’t, neither; he’s like a bottle of beer, soon up and soonover. I think it is like enough he’ll throw me overboard; if he does, Idon’t care; I’d be willing to be ducked twenty times for the sake ofthe fun I had that night, and for the better fun I shall have thinkingabout it and telling of it.”
The next morning Seth accompanied Joe to the shore; but no sooner wasthe gundelow fairly off, than getting on the horse with Hannah Murch,who had come to bring her husband, he let out the whole matt
er to her.Hannah, by no means backward in the good work, told everybody she meton the road, and went to the school-house and told the mistress.
The result of this was, that thirty-five young men agreed to go,--amongwhom were ten ship-carpenters from Massachusetts, who were therecutting ship timber, with their master workman, Ephraim Hunt; also, SamAtkins, from Newburyport, who was at home on a visit.
The girls, under the direction of Hannah Murch, were to cook andfurnish the provisions, while John Strout engaged to set them on in hisfishing schooner, the Perseverance, an Essex pink-stern, of sixty tons.