Skipper John of the Nimbus

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I Alders and Hemlock 1

II Boyhood Dreams 10

Chapter I Alders And Hemlock

S CHOOL let out a little early on the afternoon in April from which this narrative takes its beginning. It usually did on Fridays whenever we spoke pieces instead of reciting lessons. None of us, especially the boys, had a particular fondness for speaking pieces; yet the day was always looked forward to with a certain amount of eagerness in the hope that we might be dismissed a half-hour early. We boys had arranged our part of the afternoon’s program with deliberation; it must have been a genial shock that the teacher experienced as one after another of the boys, usually so reluctant to mount the platform and always ill at ease, spoke his piece with zest and accuracy. To be sure the pieces were short but they passed muster without question.

I started up the road in great glee, swinging my dinner pail and Monteith’s “ Comprehensive ” through the air to balance me as I ran. My destination was John Deane’s woodpile. Now it must be admitted at the outset that woodpiles are never attractive to young boys while spring is growing or to growing boys while spring is young, old or middle-aged. So you will have guessed rightly that John Deane, not his woodpile, was the object of my hustling. Where the woodpile was, there John Deane could be found until the wood was sawed, split and piled in regulation tiers.

Even at that the boy’s job is not finished. Firewood stands around in the way like a swollen conscience, eternally reminding some one of its presence ; you are never proud of it, still it must receive due consideration and your final wish is that there were no such things as consciences to become distended or woodpiles to receive attention. The woodpile remains constant through every change of spring. Fences have to be mended and fields plowed; yet the wood pile ever remains m statu quo to be the sandwich between hours at the fence and days behind the plow.

Even after the boy gets the pile tiered up like library stacks, so high and wide and long, buttressed at each end with a cob-pile, there is no end to the matter. In the midst of the haying season a dull day comes to prevent work in the fields. Stick by stick the wood is laid in the wheel-barrow until both barrow and boy groan under the load. It requires no small degree of skill to wheel the load up the long plank into the woodshed. So many times, too, the plank is the scene of disaster, for the long-suffering barrow decides to jettison its deck cargo which falls off in the path of the barrow and blocks further progress. The boy, with more persistence than good judgment learned from experience, backs the barrow down the plank, gets a fresh start and plunges the load into the midst of the debris, with the result that all the front row sticks which act as a key to the stability of the load, fall off and let the remaining sticks come rattling down over the handles of the barrow.

Hardly is the woodpile laid horizontal in the funereal cavity of the woodshed than it has to be ferreted out for use in the kitchen stove. This time it is “ hand picked ”

ALDERS AND HEIVfLOCK from the pile and carried in great armfuls to the wood-

box, that mysterious hole in the wall that is always empty, however often it may be filled. At night the box is heaped to overflowing; in the morning an empty box opens wide in Moloch ravenousness for a fresh supply of victims to be sacrificed in an endeavor to boil the recalcitrant kettle. So there’s an end of the wood, anyway !

By no means. The life history of firewood is not completed with the dying embers that flicker a long time before giving up the ghost. The ashes of firewood — • and we have to admit that they serve a more utilitarian purpose than our own — after dropping through the grate are taken up and treasured in the ash-barrel in the back shed until some pleasant morning in May. Then the good housewife, assisted always by the omnipresent

boy, pours scalding water down through the barrel of ashes. The water is touched by the last bit of life that the ash contains and trickles through the spigot as amber lye ; the lye, in turn, to be used in making the family soap for a twelve-month, except part of the last run, which is saved for hulled corn.

Trees, logs, firewood, ashes and soap! From dust to dirt again. What object of nature ever went through so many changes and processes or, in every single metamorphosis, came so intimately into contact with the daily life of the boy.?^ What wonder that youth has rebelled against the use of soap since its invention! It is a racial instinct on the boy’s part asserting itself from one generation to the next. Where the woodpile is, there the boy may be found, not from choice but because in the course of time every adult expects every boy to do his duty. This accounts for John Deane’s apparent faithfulness to the Nemesis of boyhood. Attending to the woodpile in some form or other had been John Peane’s mission in life so long that he could not remember when there was not firewood to be chopped or sawed or piled up or lugged into the house.

This was John Deane’s place in life at the opening of our narrative. He was only five years old when his parents attempted to cross the narrows » at Pretty Marsh. Their boat was capsized in a squall and although rescuers were prompt in reaching the scene of the disaster only the boy was saved. Since that day he had lived with his uncle, Captain Seth Hinds, now retired from the sea. The captain was a rough man whose early life had been filled with hardship. He still possessed at the noonday of life great bodily strength and vigor and was impatient that the rising generation should be growing up in easier paths than his had been. He carried on a thriving fishing business in Comberton with capital that he had saved from his struggles with the sea; although some of his neighbors were bold to suggest that the captain’s money had received no small accretions from crafty eluding of the customs officials when his vessel would return from voyages to the West Indies or South America. Nobody ever accused him of being kind hearted to the boy, or doubted that the balance of the account between him and the boy, now going on ten years, was in favor of John Deane.

The boy had had no childhood. He had received little enough attention during the years of his residence in the household of his uncle. He had been permitted to attend the winter term of district school, where he proved an apt pupil. Yet even this boon was denied him after his fourteenth birthday, since his time was too valuable to be wasted inside the schoolhouse. So he had reached his fifteenth year with muscles hardened before their time, and of unusual size and strength for a lad of his years.

Long before I reached the woodpile I could hear him splitting wood. I caught occasional gleams of his a^

ALDERS AND HEMLOCK as it flashed above the woodpile and hung in midair a moment before he drove it into a stick of wood with a resounding plock. He was surrounded by wood in various stages of manufacture — logs of sled-wood length untouched as yet by the saw and still firmly imbedded in ice and snow at the bottom of the pile; heaps of round sticks piled in a semi-circle and awaiting the time of their dismemberment by the remorseless ax; and the freshly split firewood that had been flung back against the shed out of the way of the worker.

“ Hello, John,” I cried, suddenly appearing from behind the larger pile of wood ; ‘‘ what are you doing? ”

John rested his ax against his foot and pushed back his cap before replying.

“ What do you think, David ? Does it look as if I was peeling apples ? ” He answered as if he was in a half-way mood from his absorption in the work to a happier fate of chatting with me.

“ It looks as if I was splitting wood, doesn’t it? ” he resumed. “ Well, I am and I am not. When you think about the thing you are doing, it is work ; and when you do the thing you want to it is more like play ; but when you do one thing and think about another you don’t know in the end whether you have been working or thinking. I’ve split wood all day with my hands and done something else with my head. They can make a boy split wood but they can’t tell what he will think about all the time.”

As he paused for a moment I took the ax from his hand to relieve him at splitting, for I knew too well that the inmates of the Hinds’ household would expect to hear saw or ax going much of the time. John sat down against the big pile of wood.

I split several sticks in silence, not knowing just what was proper for me to say. I understood John Deane’s case probably as no other person in Comberton did; it seemed pitiable to me, as indeed it was. I did venture to hearten him by suggesting that he got a good bit of work done for a boy of his age.

“ You bet I do,” he responded quickly. I know what ‘ birch tea ’ is when he serves it. Do you know how I manage to do so much work? No? Well, it’s spite. Spite, do you hear? I don’t do it for love of him or her or anything about the old ranch. When I saw up a log of wood it is somebody with a dozen heads that I’m sawing off and kicking in the face as they fall off the horse into the sawdust. Almost every stick I split I’m smashing in somebody’s skull and wondering what kind of looking brains they’ve got inside. Sometimes it’s him, sometimes it’s A’nt Abbie. I don’t believe it is a good thing for a boy to be thinking about such things.”

He mopped the sweat from his forehead before taking the ax out of my hand to resume his splitting. From time to time he paused in his work to talk with me.

“ An’t Abbie is bad enough but in a different way from him. I’d rather take two of his lickings than one of her tongue-lashings. He just riles you up and makes you feel like fighting him when you get growed up. She makes you feel small and mean and no-account, and she keeps it up all day long when she gets started. Lickings hurt pretty much but they don’t last long; the jawing hurts something inside of you that won’t heal up quick.”

He stopped for a moment to gaze at the ground as if his mind was running over sore places that had not been healed. I held my counsel but I was sure my companion knew that he had a sympathetic listener ; as a matter of fact he had still another of whom neither of us was aware, one who was not sympathetic, however.

“ Some days she is as good as pie to me,” he resumed. “ When I go up in the porch chamber at night and crawl into my strawbed I just have to cry, I’m so

ALDERS AND HEMLOCK

*7 happy that she has been good to me or unhappy that it won’t last long, I never know which. He never does anything like that. No, sir! He’s the same all the time only worse, watching to see if he can get more work out of me or get a phance to beat me. And all the time he keeps flinging out how he used to work when he was a boy.”

I held my peace. When the heart speaks out it is useless for the head to attempt reply. John went on, tapping with his ax-handle upon different sticks of wood as he spoke.

‘‘ Firewood is a good deal like men and women, David. Some is good for one thing, some for another, and some no good at all. Here’s the maple, straight and fine to make ax-handles and pudding-sticks out of, the same as some folks are square and good to you and useful about the home. There’s a yellow-birch. It is tough but good for whiffle-trees and sled-bunks and runners though it looks rough on the outside ; makes me think of some sea-capta’ns who have had lots of knocks in the world but are not too nice to help other folks. Fir! Why, that reminds me of these meeting-house folks at the Corner. When they’re cool they are all right, but let them warm up a little and the pitch sticks all over you so you have to use kerosene and soft soap to get it off.”

He paused and lowered his voice before proceeding further. “ Alders is like A’nt Abbie, crooked and small and all over the lot. They are never straight like other wood and you can’t get them to do what you want ; but they make a fine blaze, hot as huldy while it lasts and gone out in five minutes. Alders grow where other wood won’t and you cut them out of the pasture so the cows will have a better chance to feed. Folks don’t usually cut them for firewood, they are such a nuisance,” and he emphasized his disgust by picking up a crooked alder stick and flinging it over the woodpile. It struck, inaking a big commotion for so little a stick, but the significance of the noise did not occur to me until the next afternoon.

“ As for hemlock,” he said, slashing the ax spitefully into a big knotty stick, “ that’s him, big and knotty and bristling all over with needles to stick into you. As crossgrained as a bear; you try to split it when it is frosty and like as not it will snap a piece out of your ax blade ; try it when the wood is warm and the ax will stick in so hard you cannot drive it out with a clout of wood.

“ Ever notice a hemlock board } ” he inquired, straightening up. “ Usually it is the widest in the whole pile, pretending to be good lumber; but it is the meanest, shakiest slab that ever came from a sawmill. They use hemlock bark for tanning leather, you know. Well, that’s his game exactly, using himself to tan my hide. The way to handle hemlock sticks is to hit them right in the middle of a knot, for the knots reach down into the heart of the stick. Alders is mean enough, but hemlock is grandfather to meanness.

‘‘ Alders and hemlock ! That’s what I call these folks. They make me think of Sam Austin’s oxen, each one blind in the eye next his mate. They look out for themselves with their well eye and when they are yoked up they sort of sidle along to each other as they go — and both of them are ugly enough.”

I had to laugh out loud as he finished his tirade on wood and people. My sudden outburst of laughing and the freeing of his mind of thoughts over which he had been brooding during the day set him in a better humor. We fell to discussing other matters and I had a chance to mention the subject for which I had come for an interview.

“ I suppose you are going to the launching to-morrow.^ ” I inquired nervously, fearing he would declare his

ALDERS AND HEMLOCK inability to attend that important event in Comberton’s history.

“ That’s so, it is to-morrow, sure enough. I hadn’t given it much thought. Don’t see how I can go very well. I’ll have my stent to do and even if I got it done they wouldn’t let me off for a half day.”

“ Oh, that’ll be all right,” I hastened to reassure him. “ I’ll come over and help you in the morning and we can slip away all right after dinner. The sun doesn’t set until half past six, anyway. We’re sure to be back from launching by four. Plenty of time for us to finish the pile after that.”

“Yes, but how will I manage with the folks?” he ventured, pondering the question a while before replying. “It will be Saturday and I guess he’ll be too busy at the store to keep track of me. A’nt Abbie never bothers me out here unless the woodbox gets empty. I’ll load it to the muzzle in the morning.”

Thus we planned for the future, innocently and without misgivings. A quarter-day holiday meant big things to John Deane. As the results proved it meant more than either of us had imagined.

Chapter II

N O activity of Comberton interested me so much as the shipbuilding. Every one of the Comberton fleet was hand-made, like Comberton wharves and houses and warm woolen frocks that menfolks wore in cold weather. In these later days shipbuilding is a rarer industry along the Maine waterfront. Forty years ago, however, when the American merchant marine consisted of wooden ships, manned by men of iron, the metallic click of the oakum mallet could be heard resounding from a hundred bays and inlets of the coast. Ships that were to engage in merchant marine service were constructed in the larger shipyards. The deep-sea fishing fleet for the most part consisted of twomasted schooners ranging in tonnage from seventy to a hundred tons.

The fishing boats, which included all craft below twenty tons, aff*orded abundant opportunity for the novice to try his skill in design and workmanship. Often a crude boat would be built during the winter months in barn or shed and hauled to the water’s edge in the early spring by a dozen yokes of oxen. It was a day for the whole community, the day of the hauling bee, participated in by the men with their beasts of burden and by the women with their contributions of doughnuts and hot coffee; in the evening the owner of the boat would give a party at his home. They were slow days, those oxen days, but they were mostly unspoiled ones.

It is an interesting game to watch the building of a 10 ship. You see huge timbers laid straight and true for the keel ; ribs, carved and curved by the adz and broad ax, fitted securely in place and fairly welded to the keel under the terrific blows of iron sledges ; the oak planking, warm and pliant from its steam bath, spiked to the curving ribs ; the fantastically carved hackmatack “ knees ” used for inner braces ; the planking of the hold that is destined to conceal the lurking place of that most distressing marine product, bilge-water; the stem and stern-posts set in place, standing for a time alone like totem poles until they are finally joined to one another by indissoluble bands “ so long as the ship shall live ” ; braces, deck timbers, planks and rails all welded together and held firmly in place by long wooden pins or stout iron spikes. Of such stuff is the body of the ship made, out in the open sunlight where all may view her daily growth and witness the strength of her parts.

Still the ship is not complete. Like a new statute, it is useless without its proper seal and official sanction. Oakum and hot tar put the seal of durability upon the new hull, — oakum that is driven into every crack and crevice under the merciless blows of the long-headed mallets, tar that is poured boiling hot upon the oakum to keep it in place and protect it from the water; this is the official seal of the shipbuilder’s art. Afterwards come masts and spars and sails and cordage and paint, all important and necessary to the equipment of a sailing craft. But the hull is the ship, the other parts are accessories ; when the hull is finished, even before it is wrapped in the swaddling clothes of spars and sails and cordage, it is time for the ship to be born.

No boy with red blood in his veins will miss a launching if he can help it. It was only a few minutes past one o’clock when John Deane and I, all out of breath from running, came to a halt under the bow of the new schooner. My forenoon had been divided between duties at home and part fulfillment of my promise to help him finish his daily stint at the woodpile. When the noon hour arrived we had come to the conclusion, with youth’s alluring confidence in our own judgment, that the small pile of wood left unfinished could be split in the later afternoon.

“ Ain’t she a dandy ! ” exclaimed the excited boy, fondly running his hand over the curving bow. “ This is the lower bobstay,” he continued, touching the new steel rope that was firmly imbedded in the lower part of the stem, “ and that is the cutwater.”

Little did I realize then that the time would come when I would thank my lucky stars for this same bobstay and cutwater. Fortunately it is not revealed to youth which way the wheels of destiny will turn. A glorious time we had that afternoon going over the hull of the schooner almost literally foot by foot. The workmen were still busily engaged in preparing her for the launching; but two spry boys are not in the way of workmen very long at a time.

We followed the water-line from stem to stern, noting especially the sharp bow that was then leading up to the ‘‘ toothpick ” type of schooner later developed at the Essex yards. John knew much more about hulls and ships than I had supposed a boy of his age could. He had been a keen observer and an interested listener in Comberton for a decade. Later in the afternoon I learned why he was especially interested in shipbuilding.

When we reached the schooner’s stern a happy surprise awaited us. Under the taffrail had been painted in white letters the name of the schooner and her port, “ Nimbus — Comberton” We fell to conjecturing what the name meant and where we had heard it used before.

“ It sounds familiar and I almost have it on the tip of my tongue,” said John, at length. ‘‘ Oh, I have it ! Don’t you remember in the physical geography where it tells about storms and clouds Nimbus is a cloud. Mr. Littlefield had us study about the different kinds and tell what the weather would be to-morrow. Nimbus ! That’s the storm cloud, David. Look out for a storm to-morrow.”

He ended with a sweep of his arm toward the blue of the western sky. It did not look the least bit stormy to either of us, although there was a “ lee-set ” in the atmosphere of which neither of us had a suspicion.

We clambered aboard the vessel and delved into every cranny and corner we could find. Then is the time to see a ship, while it is still fresh from the hands of the ship-carpenters, while heaps of curly shavings are lying about, the woodwork is unstained either by paint or dirt, the berths and lockers are empty, and the long “ run ” near the rudder-post invites one to explore its mysterious recesses before cordage and rigging and fishing tackle effectually block the passage. The great, echoing hold is a grand playhouse, with sloping sides for walls ; the cook’s Tom Thumb quarters become a boy’s camp of the Robinson Crusoe type; and the wide, triangular berth way up in the bow of the schooner, with the weird dead-eye thrusting its sharp point down through the deck planking and watching you suspiciously from every angle you may turn, is Captain Kidd’s secret cavern where his ill-gotten treasures are concealed. We kicked the white shavings about the poop, we climbed over the cabin and fore-castle houses, pumped the windlass arms up and down, made a circuit of the decks by walking the rail, shinned out to the tip of the bowsprit only to return by the swaying footropes, and ended our sport by taking charge of the wheel and directing the Nimbus in an imaginary voyage to Le Have bank.

U SKIPPER JOHN OF THE NIMBUS

Afterwards there was time to explore the shipyard. We first fortified ourselves with huge pieces of tar from the barrel in the storehouse, broke off pieces of the luscious blackness and, after filling our mouths, stuffed our pockets with chunks of the same. We had the greatest fun down by the water’s edge, for the tide, a neap tide that had been selected for the launching of the schooner, was near the height of the flood. We skipped flat stones on the water and counted our accumulated wealth, each “ skip ” representing a dollar. On occasion a stone would scale upward instead of striking the water ; after a long sweep through the air it would turn downward again and “ cut an egg ” as it cleaved the water without making a splash. Sometimes a rock would skip until the wealth of circles mounted to twelve or fifteen, each of which would enlarge and overrun neighboring ciucles until the maze of circles and lunes created a plethora of wealth in our fertile imagination.

We were called from the excitement of this sport by the bustle of people near the Nimbus. Already a crowd of men and larger boys was aboard the schooner. The props and posts had been removed from either side and the vessel rested upon its cradle. The heavy timbers upon which the cradle rested had been swabbed with grease to help the schooner slip more easily into the water, once she had been raised from her bed. When all was in readiness the workmen took their stations with long-handled mallets in hand to drive the wedges under the ship and start her down the ways. At a command from the boss-carpenter a dozen hammers swung in the air and struck the wedges under the framework. The blows fell quickly and with force. Slowly the vessel responded to the effort. The hull gave a tremor as if waking to life and, while every breath in the crowd was momentarily held, the new Nimbus started slowly down the ways to the waters that were straining higher every moment to meet their bride.

“ There she goes ! She’s off ! ” exclaimed some overanxious person in the crowd. The workmen upon seeing the tremor of the. hull and hearing the cry from the crowd ceased their efforts with the mallets and ran from under the hull. It was a false start. Not two feet did the schooner move before she came to a dead stop. Another cry came from the excited throng. ‘‘ She’s stuck ! She’s stuck on the ways ! ” And the more superstitious gazed anxiously and fearfully upon the black hull that loomed between earth and sky but was destined for neither place.

The boss-carpenter shouted for the workmen to continue their work, to stand under until the schooner was in the water. Once more the sledges resounded from under the keel, the swabbers spread grease more liberally upon the ways and, in the excitement of the moment, eager men braced their shoulders against the stem and shoved with the strength of Samsons against the unyielding wall of wood. Their combined efforts were not in vain. The hull again started; it moved down the plane faster and faster until it had gained a momentum that no force could stop.

It was a pretty launching, as they always are. The back-wash of the wave came far up the beach to wet the feet of the too venturesome and caused a ripple of laughter that dispelled the moment of gloom which had settled upon the on-lookers when the Nimbus had stuck on the ways. Fifty yards from the shore the port anchor was released and, as it sank into the river, splashed water for the firs-t time upon the cat-heads of the Nimbus , — that port anchor about which we shall learn interesting details later.

The crowd on deck rushed from rail to rail rocking the vessel as children rock a boat. Down she went on the port side and hung there for a time even after a part of the crowd had scrambled up the steep deck to the opposite rail. Down in turn upon the starboard side, and again the same unwillingness to right herself quickly.

“ See how she rocks ! She’s got a big list when she goes down,” exclaimed an old sea-captain near whom we were standing. “ She sets up in the water fine. What a high bow she has got and see how that stick ” — indicating the bowsprit — “ is poked out forward. But I don’t like the way she stays down by the scuppers ; looks as if she would need a pile of ballast in her hold to keep her on an even keel in a gale of wind.”