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Elm Island
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Title: Lion Ben of Elm Island
Author: Elijah Kellogg
Release date: January 22, 2016 [eBook #50993]
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LION BEN OF
ELM ISLAND ***
LION BEN
OF
ELM ISLAND.
The cover was created by the transcriber using
elements from the original publication and placed in the
public domain.
ELM ISLAND STORIES.
LION BEN
OF
ELM ISLAND.
BY
REV. ELIJAH KELLOGG,
AUTHOR OF “SPARTACUS TO THE GLADIATORS,”
“GOOD OLD TIMES,” ETC.
BOSTON:
LEE AND SHEPARD.
1869.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by
LEE AND SHEPARD,
In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.
ELECTROTYPED AT THE
BOSTON STEREOTYPE FOUNDRY,
19 Spring Lane.
ELM ISLAND STORIES.
1. LION BEN OF ELM ISLAND.
2. CHARLIE BELL, THE WAIF OF ELM ISLAND.
Others in preparation.
PREFACE.
If the writer ever tasted unalloyed happiness, it has been when
exciting to manly effort a noble boy, whose nature responded to the
impulse as a generous horse leaps under the pressure of the knee.
Hours and years thus spent have brought their own reward. The
desire to meet a want not as yet fully satisfied, to impart pleasure,
and, at the same time, inspire respect for labor, integrity, and every
noble sentiment, has originated the stories contained in the “Elm
Island Series,” in which we shall endeavor to place before American
youth the home life of those from whom they sprung; the boy life of
those who grew up amid the exciting scenes and peculiar perils and
enjoyments incident to frontier life, by sea and land; in fine, that
type of character which has transformed a wilderness into a land of
liberty and wealth, and replaced the log canoe of the pioneer by a
commerce, the marvel of the age;—to the intent that, as insects
take the color of the bark on which they feed, they also may learn to
despise effeminacy and vice, and sympathize with, and emulate, the
virtues they here find portrayed.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Elm Island. 9
II. The Rhines Family. 25
III. Tige Rhines. 39
IV. Ben’s Courtship. 50
V. Sally tells her Mother all about it. 64
VI. Ben buys Elm Island. 70
Captain Rhines riding out a Gale before the
VII. 77
Fire.
VIII. Breaking Ground on Elm Island. 88
IX. Too good a Chance to lose. 107
X. The Surprise Party. 115
XI. The Christening. 122
XII. The Pull-up. 127
XIII. Injured People have long Memories. 135
Ben confides in Uncle Isaac, and is
XIV. 145
comforted.
XV. Encouraging Native Talent. 153
XVI. Ben outwitted, and Uncle Isaac astonished. 164
XVII. They marry, and go on to the Island. 172
XVIII. The Bridal Call. 184
XIX. An Ungrateful Boy. 193
XX. Peter Clash and the Wolf-trap. 201
XXI. Why the Boys liked Uncle Isaac. 210
XXII. Ben’s Novel Ship. 224
XXIII. Pete, in Quest of Revenge, comes to Grief. 245
LION BEN OF ELM ISLAND.
CHAPTER I.
ELM ISLAND.
In one of the most beautiful of the many romantic spots on the
rugged coast of Eastern Maine lived Captain Ben Rhines. The
country was just emerging from the terrible struggle of the
revolution, and the eastern part of the state had settled very slowly.
The older portion of the inhabitants, now living in frame houses, had
been born and passed their childhood in log camps.
Captain Rhines’s house stood at the head of a little cove, on the
western side of a large bay, formed by a sweep in the main shore on
the one side, and a point on the other, called (from the name of its
owner, Isaac Murch) “Uncle Isaac’s Point.”
A small stream, that carried a saw and grist mill, found an outlet
at the head of it, while the milldam served the inhabitants for a
bridge. A number of islands were scattered over the surface of the
bay, some of them containing hundreds of acres; others, a mere
patch of rock and turf, fringed with the white foam of the breakers.
At a distance of six miles, broad off at sea, in a north-westerly
direction, lay an island, called Elm Island, deriving its name from the
great numbers of that tree which grew on its southern end.
As we shall have a great deal to do with this island, it is necessary
to be particular in the description of it. It was about three miles in
length, rocks and all, by two in width, running north-east and south-
west, and parallel to the main land. From the eastern side, Captain
Rhines’s house and the whole extent of the bay, and Uncle Isaac’s
Point, were visible. Nature seemed to have lavished her skill upon
this secluded spot.
The island was formed by two ridges of rock forming the line of
the shore, the intervening valley dividing the island nearly in the
middle. These ridges sloped gradually, on their inner sides, into
fertile swales of deep, strong soil. The shores were perpendicular,
dropping plump down into the ocean, being in some places forty feet
above the level of the water. They were rent and seamed by the
frost and waves; and, in the crevices of the rocks, the spruce and
birch trees thrust their roots, and, clinging to the face of the cliff,
struggled for life with waves and tempests.
The island would have been well nigh inaccessible, had not nature
provided on the south-western end a most remarkable harbor. The
line of perpendicular cliffs on the north-west ran the whole length of
the island, against which, even in calm weather, the ground-swell of
the ocean eternally beat. The westerly ridge, which was covered
with soil of a moderate depth, gradually sloped as it approached the
south-western end, till it terminated in a broad space occupying the
whole width between the outer cliffs, and gradually sloping to the
water’s edge. This portion of the island was bare of wood, and
covered with green grass. The eastern ridge terminated in a long,
broad point, covered with a growth of spruce trees, so dense that
not a breath of wind could get through them, and, curving around,
formed a beautiful cove, whose precipitous sides broke off the
easterly sea and gales.
Into the head of this cove poured a brook, which, like a little boy,
had a very small beginning. It came out from beneath the roots of
two yellow birch trees that grew side by side in a little stream not
more than two inches deep. As it ran on, it was joined by two other
springs, that came out from the westerly ridge. The waters of these
springs, together with the rains which slowly filtered through the
forest, made quite a brook, which was never dry in the hottest
weather.
At certain periods of the year the frost-fish and the smelts came
up from the sea into the mouth of this brook. The cove, also, was
full of flounders and minnows, eels and lobsters, and abounded in
clams. The fish attracted the fish-hawks and herons, who filled the
woods with their notes. Sometimes there would be ten blue herons’
nests on one great beech. The fish-hawks attracted the eagles, who
obtained their principal living by robbing the fish-hawks. The wild
geese, coots, whistlers, brants, and sea-ducks also came there to
drink. This was not the natural habitat of the large blue heron, their
food not being found there to any great extent, as the shores were
too bold, and the waters too deep; their favorite feeding grounds are
the broad shallow coves, where they can wade into the water with
their long legs, and catch little fish as they come up on the flood
tide; but they prefer to go after their food, rather than abandon this
secluded spot, where they are secure from all enemies, and where
the tall trees afforded these shy birds such advantages for building
their nests. As for the fish-hawks, who dive and take their food from
the water, it was just the place for them.
There was also on the eastern side of the western ridge a swamp,
a most solitary place, so thickly timbered with enormous hemlocks
and firs, mixed with white cedar, that it was almost as dark as
twilight at noonday. Here dwelt an innumerable multitude of herons,
where they had bred undisturbed for ages. Much smaller than the
great blue heron, they built their nests in the low firs and cedars;
and as they fed upon frogs, grasshoppers, mice, tadpoles, and
minnows, they were not obliged to leave the island for their food:
they were perfectly at home and happy.
They belonged to that species called, by naturalists, ardea
nycticorax. The inhabitants called them squawks and flying foxes,
from the noise they made. Like all the heron tribe, they are
extremely quick of hearing, and feed mostly in the morning and
evening twilight, half asleep through the day among the branches of
the firs, standing on one leg. They make shallow nests of sticks, and
lay three or four green eggs. You may walk through their haunts: all
is still as death, apparently not a heron on the island, while
thousands of them are right over your head, and all around you,
listening to every step you take, the slightest noise of which they will
hear, when you do not notice it yourself. Crack goes a dry stick
under your foot; you catch your toe under a spruce root, and tumble
down; instantly the intense stillness of the woods is broken by a
flapping of wings and rustling of branches, succeeded by quaw,
quaw, squawk, squawk, producing a chorus almost deafening. The
sound they emit, which is a union of growl, bark, and scream, comes
from their throat with such suddenness, breaking upon the deep
silence of the woods, like the whirr of the partridge, that it will make
you jump, though you are prepared for it and accustomed to it.
Then you will see them, after flying to a safe distance, light on the
tips of the fir limbs, holding themselves up with their wings on the
bending branch, like a bobolink on a spear of herds-grass, from
which they will in an instant crawl down into the middle of the tree,
sitting close to the trunk, where it is impossible to see them. You
must therefore shoot them when they are on the wing, or at the
moment they light.
They will bear a great deal of killing, and even make believe dead.
I knew a boy once who shot four squawks, and after beating them
with an iron ramrod, left them tied up in his pocket-handkerchief at
the foot of a tree while he was clambering up after eggs: when he
came down, two of them had crawled out of the handkerchief and
run away. They will show fight, too, when they are wounded, bite
and thrust with their bill, and scratch terribly with their claws. As if
to compensate for the horrible noise they make, the full-grown male
is a very handsome bird. The top of the head and back are green,
the eyes a bright, flashing red, and just above them a little patch of
pure white. The bill is black, the wings are light blue, the back part
and sides of the neck lilac, shading on the front and breast to a
cream color, and the legs yellow. From the back part of the head
depend three feathers, white as snow and extremely delicate, rolled
together, and as long as the neck.
The mouth of the little brook of which we have spoken was a very
busy place when the fish-hawks were fishing, or carrying sticks to
build their nests, and screaming with all their might, the herons
fishing for minnows, squawks catching frogs, the wild geese making
their peculiar noise, the sea-fowl diving, the ducks quacking, and the
fish jumping from the water in schools. It shows how God provides
for all his creatures, for though there are thousands of these islands
scattered along the coast of Maine, on the smallest of them, and
some that are mere rocks, you will find springs of living water.
On this island was a spring, that whenever the tide was in was six
feet under water; but when the tide ebbed, there was the spring
bubbling up in the white sand, as good fresh water as was ever
drank.
Old Skipper Brown said he knew the time when it was a rod up
the bank; that when he used to go fishing with his father, he had
filled many a jug with water out of it; but the frost and the sea had
undermined the bank and washed it away, till the tide came to flow
over it.
There is another thing in relation to this little harbor, of great
importance; for though the high rocks and the thick wood sheltered
the little cove from all but the south and south-west winds, yet it
would have been (at any rate the mouth of it) very much exposed to
the whole sweep of the Atlantic waves in southerly gales; and
though the cove was so winding that a vessel in the head of it could
not be hurt by the sea, yet it would have been very hard going in,
and impossible to get out in bad weather, had it not been for a
provision of nature, of which I shall now speak, consisting of some
ragged and outlying rocks.
One of these was called the White Bull, deriving its name from the
peculiar hoarse roar which the sea made as it broke upon it, and
also the white cliffs of which it was composed. It was a long granite
ledge, perpendicular on the inside, and far above the reach of the
highest waves. On the seaward side it ran off into irregular broken
reefs, covered with kelp, the home of the rock cod and lobster, and
the favorite resort of all the diving sea-fowl, who fed on the weeds
growing on the bottom.
In the centre of these reefs was a large cove. Between this rock
and the eastern point of the island was another, of similar shape, but
smaller dimensions, called the Little Bull: they were connected by a
reef running beneath the water, against which the sea broke, in
storms, with great fury; and even in calm weather, from the ground
swell of the ocean, it was white with the foaming breakers.
On the western side was a long, high, narrow island, called, from
its shape, the “Junk of Pork,” with deep water all around it, and
covered with grass. The two ends of this island lapped by the
western point of the White Bull and the western point of the main
island, thus presenting a complete barrier against the sea. The
whole space between the main land and these outlying rocks and
islands was a beautiful harbor, the bottom of which was clay, and
sand on top, thus affording an excellent hold to anchors.
There were two passages to go in and out, according as the wind
might happen to be, with deep water close to the rocks. This harbor
was a favorite resort of the fishermen, who came here to dig clams
in the cove, and catch menhaden and herring for bait; they also
stopped here in the afternoons to get water, and make a fire on the
rocks, and take a cup of tea, before they went out to fish all night
for hake; they also resorted to it in the morning to dress their fish
and make a chowder, and lie under the shadow of the trees and
sleep all the afternoon, that they might be ready to go out the next
night.
The bottom of the cove on the White Bull was of granite, sloping
gradually into deep water, and smooth as ice. Beneath this formation
of granite was a blue rock of much softer texture than granite. The
sea, in great storms, rolled the fragments of blue stone back and
forth on this granite floor, and wore away and rounded the corners,
making them of the shape of those you see in the pavements of the
cities. The action of these stones for hundreds of years, on this
granite floor, had worn holes in it as big as the mouth of a well, and
two or three feet in depth. Sometimes a great square rock would get
in one of them, too big for the summer winds to fling out, and the
sea would roll it round in the hole all summer, wear the corners off,
and then the December gales would wash it out. Among the quartz
sand in the bottom of this cove you could pick up crystals that had
been ground out of the rocks, from an eighth of an inch to an inch in
diameter.
It was a glorious sight to behold, and one never to be forgotten,
either in this world or the next, when the waves, which had been
growing beneath the winter’s gale the whole breadth of the Atlantic,
came thundering in on these ragged rocks, breaking thirty feet high,
pouring through the gaps between them, white foam on their
summits and deep green beneath, and when a gleam of sunshine,
breaking from a ragged cloud, flashed along their edges, displaying
for a moment all the colors of the rainbow. But when in the outer
cove of the White Bull the great wave came up, a quarter of a mile
in length, bearing before it the pebbles, some weighing three
hundred pounds, others not larger than a sparrow’s egg, all alive
and moving in the surf, and rolling over each other on the smooth
granite bottom, how solemn to listen to that awful roar, like the voice
of Almighty God!
Amid all this commotion, the little harbor, protected by its granite
ramparts, was tranquil as a summer’s lake. The surface of it was
indeed flecked with the froth of the breakers that drifted in little
bunches through the gaps of the rocks, and there was a slight
movement caused by the last pulsation of some dying wave; but
that was all, and way up in the cove there was no motion whatever.
It may be interesting as well as instructive, having the old
traditions of the island to guide us, to consider the manner in which
this picturesque and most useful harbor was formed.
Captain Rhines said his father told him, that when he was a boy
(nearly seventy years before the date of our tale) these outer rocks
were all connected with the main island. Between the eastern end of
the island and the Little Bull, and between the Little Bull and the
White Bull, was a strip of clay loam, covered with a growth of fir,
hemlock, and spruce; and between the White Bull and the Junk of
Pork, and the western point of the main island, were sand-spits
mixed with stones, and salt grass growing on them. What is now the
harbor was then a swamp, into which the brook and all the rain-
water from the higher portions of the island drained. In the middle
of this swamp was a pond, margined with alder bushes, cat-tail
flags, and rotten logs. In high courses of tides the salt water came
into it, and this brackish water bred myriads of mosquitos.
When people went on there, they had to pick a smooth time, and
go right on the top of the tide, and haul their boat over a sand-spit
into the swamp. It was impossible to land, or get away from there,
when it was rough. Captain Rhines went on there once a gunning, in
December, and had to stay a week. Having no axe to build a camp,
he turned his boat bottom up to sleep under, and getting fire with
his gun, cooked and ate sea-fowl; but he got awful tired of them.
He said, moreover, that the land on the outside kept caving off
every spring when the frost came out, and falling into the sea, till
there was only a little strip of land, with three old hemlocks upon it,
left; and he used to pity them as they stood there shivering in the
gale, their great roots sticking out drying in the wind, and dripping
with salt spray, for he knew they were doomed, and must go.
At length there came a dreadful high tide and south-east gale; the
sea broke in and swept the whole soil off, and in the course of ten
years turned it into a clam bed. It was the greatest place to get
clams, for a clam chowder, that ever was in the world. He said that it
kept gradually scouring out and deepening, till it became a first-rate
harbor.
This island was owned by a merchant of Boston, in whose employ
Captain Rhines had sailed for many years, who gave him liberty to
pasture it with sheep, as a recompense for taking care of and
preventing squatters from plundering it of spars and timber. As
sheep are very fond of sea-weed and kelp, they would make a very
good living on a place like this island, where most of our domestic
animals would find pretty hard fare.
An island like this of which I have spoken is a very pretty spot to
describe or visit; but I should like to ask my young readers if they
think they could be happy in such a place, especially after they have
enumerated with me the things, those we suppose to be living there
would be deprived of, and which they often imagine they could not
live without.
There was not a road on the island, nor a side-walk, only foot-
paths; not a horse, a store, church, school-house, post-office,
museum, or toy-shop; not a piano, nor any kind of musical
instrument, except the grand diapason of the breakers; no circus,
caravan, soldiers, nor fireworks; no confectionery nor ice-creams.
The island stood alone in the ocean; and though you could land at
any time when you could get there, yet there were weeks together
in winter, when, in case of sickness or death, not a boat could live to
cross from the main land; they were completely shut out from all the
rest of the world. But you say, perhaps, these people must have
been very poor.
O, not at all. If you mean, by being poor, that they had not much
money, or horses, or carriages, or rich dresses, and servants to wait
on them, why, then they were poor; but if you mean by the term
poor, such poverty as you see in the cities or in the large country
towns, where you may see aged women in rags begging from door
to door; children with their little bare feet as red as the pigeons’ with
the cold, picking the little bits of coal out of the ashes that are
thrown out of the stores and houses; gathering pieces of hoops and
chips around the wharves and warehouses to carry home to burn;
with the tears running down their little cheeks, crying, “Please give
me a cent to buy some bread,”—O, there was no such poverty as
that there: they never knew what it was to want good wholesome
food, and good coarse warm clothing to keep out the frost and
snow.
“But how did they get it, if they had not much money to buy it?”
“Get it? Why, they worked for it; and if any one had called these
island people beggars, they would have broken his head, or flung
him overboard.”
You may think as you like, my young friends; but people did live
on this island, and were happy as the days are long, though they
had their trials and “head flaws,” as we all must.
CHAPTER II.
THE RHINES FAMILY.
In order that you may know all about them, we will resume the
thread of our story, and trace the history of Captain Rhines and his
family.
The captain was a strong-built, finely proportioned, “hard-a-
weather” sailor, not a great deal the worse for wear, and seasoned
by the suns and frosts of many climates. In early life he had
experienced the bitter struggle with poverty.
His father came into the country when it was a wilderness, with
nothing but a narrow axe, and strength to use it. His first crops
being cut off by the frosts, they were compelled to live for months
upon clams, and the leaves of beech trees boiled. There were no
schools; and the parents, engaged in a desperate struggle for
existence with famine and the Indians, were unable to instruct their
children. Fishing vessels from Marblehead often anchored in the
cove near the log camp, and little Ben, anxious to earn somewhat to
aid his parents in their poverty, went as cook in one of these vessels
when so small that some one had to hang on the pot for him. He
was thus engaged for several summers, till big enough to go as boy
in a coaster. During the winters, arrayed in buckskin breeches,
Indian moccasons, and a coon-skin cap, he helped his father make
staves, and hauled them to the landing on a hand-sled.
At nineteen years of age he went to Salem, and shipped in a brig
bound to Havana, to load with sugar for Europe. He was then a tall,
handsome, resolute boy as ever the sun shone upon, without a
single vicious habit; for his parents, though poor, were religious, and
had brought him up to hard work and the fear of God.
He was passionately fond of a gun and dogs, and what little
leisure he ever had was spent in hunting and fowling. As respected
his fitness for his position, he could “steer a good trick,” had learned
what little seamanship was to be obtained on board a fisherman and
coaster, but he could not read, or even write his name.
The mate of the vessel conceived a liking for him the moment he
came over the ship’s side, and this good opinion increased upon
acquaintance. They had been but a fortnight at sea, when he said to
the captain, “That long-legged boy, who shipped for a green hand,
will be as good a man as we have on board before we get into the
English Channel; he will reeve studding-sail gear, already, quicker
than any ordinary seaman. I liked the cut of his jib the moment I
clapped eyes on him. If that boy lives he’ll be master of a ship
before many years.”
“I hardly see how that can be,” replied the captain, “for he can’t
write his own name.”
“Can’t write his own name! Why, that is impossible.”
“At any rate he made his mark on the ship’s articles, and he is the
only one of the crew who did.”
“Well,” replied the mate, “I can’t see through it; but he’s in my
watch, and I’ll know more about it before twenty-four hours.”
That night the mate went forward where Ben was keeping the
lookout.
“Ben!”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“Where do you hail from?”
“Way down in the woods in Maine, Mr. Brown.”
“What was you about there?”
“Fishing and coasting summers, and working in the woods in the
winter.”
“Why didn’t you ship, then, for an ordinary seaman, and get more
wages?”
“Because, sir, I was never in a square-rigged vessel before, and I
didn’t want to ship to do what I might not be able to perform.”
“I see you made your ‘mark’ on the brig’s articles. Were you never
at school?”
“No, sir.”
“Why not?”
“There’s no such thing where I came from.”
“Couldn’t your parents read and write?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then why didn’t they learn you themselves?”
“There were a good many of us, sir, and they were so put to it to
raise enough to live on, and fight the Indians, they had no time for
it.”
The mate was a noble-hearted man; all his sympathies were
touched at seeing so fine a young man prevented from rising by an
ignorance that was no fault of his own. He took two or three turns
across the deck, and at length said,—
“I tell you what it is, youngster: I’ll say this much before your face
or behind your back: you’re just the best behaved boy, the quickest
to learn your duty, and the most willing to do it, that I ever saw, and
I’ve been following the sea for nearly thirty years; and before I’ll see
an American boy like you kept down by ignorance, I’ll do as I’d be
done by—turn schoolmaster, and teach you myself.”
Mr. Brown was as good as his word. While the rest of the crew in
their forenoon watch below were mending their clothes, telling long
yarns, or playing cards, and when in port drinking and frolicking, Ben
was learning to read and write, and putting his whole soul into it. He
stuck to the vessel, and Mr. Brown stuck to him. When he shipped
the next voyage as able seaman, he wrote his name in good fair
hand.
They went to Charleston, South Carolina, to load with pitch, rice,
and deer-skins, for Liverpool. The vessel was a long time completing
her cargo, as it had to be picked up from the plantations. Ben
improved the time to learn navigation. From Liverpool they went to
Barbadoes. While lying there, the captain of the ship James Welch,
of Boston, named after the principal owner, died. The mate taking
charge of the ship, Ben, by Mr. Brown’s recommendation, obtained
the first mate’s berth. He was now no longer Ben, but Mr. Rhines,
and finally becoming master of the ship, continued in the employ of
Mr. Welch as long as he followed the sea. He then married, built a
house on the site of the old log camp, and surrounded it with fruit
and shade trees, for, by travel and observation, he had acquired
ideas of taste, beauty, and comfort, quite in advance of the times, or
his neighbors. He then took his parents home to live with him, and
made their last days happy.
Although he was compelled by necessity thus early to go to sea,
he had a strong attachment to the soil, and would have devoted
himself to its cultivation in middle life, had he not met with losses,
which so much embarrassed him, that he was compelled to continue
at sea to extricate himself.
Captain Rhines’s fine house, nice furniture, and curiosities which
he brought home from time to time, excited no heart-burnings
among his neighbors, because they knew he had earned them by
hard work, and did not think himself better than others on account
of that.
Thus, when he became embarrassed, instead of saying, “Good
enough for him,” “He will have to leave off some of his quarter-deck
airs now,” everybody felt sorry for him, and told him so.
Indeed, everything about the Rhines family was pleasant, and
excited cheerful emotions. The old house itself had a most
comfortable, cosy look, as it lay in the very eye of the sun, with an
orchard before it, green fields stretching along the water, sheltered
on the north-west by high land and forest. The shores were fringed
with thickets of beech and birch, branches of which, at high tide,
almost touched the surface of the water.
Some houses are high and thin, resembling a sheet of gingerbread
set on edge; they impress you with a painful feeling of insecurity, as
though they might blow over. Such houses generally have all the
windows abreast, so that when the curtains are up, and the blinds
open, you can look right through them. They seem cold, cheerless,
repellent; you shrug your shoulders and shiver as you look at them.
But this house was large on the ground, and looked as if it grew
there, with an ell and long shed running to the barn, a sunny door-
yard, a spreading beech before the end door, with a great wood-pile
under it, suggestive of rousing fires.
There was a row of Lombardy poplars in front of the house, and a
large rock maple at the corner of the barn-yard, which the children
always tapped in the spring to get sap to drink and make sap coffee.
There was a real hospitable look about the old homestead; it
seemed to say, “There’s pork in the cellar, there’s corn in the crib,
hay in the barn, and a good fire on the hearth: walk in, neighbor,
and make yourself at home.”
But the popularity of Captain Rhines among his neighbors had a
deeper root than this. A great many of the young men in the
neighborhood had been their first voyage to sea with him; he had
treated them in such a manner, had taken so much pains to advance
them in their profession, that they respected and loved him ever
after.
When it was known in the neighborhood that Captain Rhines was
going to sea, the question was not, how he should get men, but how
he should get rid of them, there were so many eager for the berth.
It would have done your heart good to have seen the happy faces
of the men grouped together on that ship’s forecastle, waiting, like
hounds straining in the leash, for the order to man the windlass; not
an old broken-down shellback among them, but all the neighbors’
boys, in their red shirts, and duck trousers white as the driven snow,
which their mothers had washed.
As each one of them had a character to sustain, was anxious to
outdo his shipmate, and the greater portion of them were in love
with some neighbor’s daughter, and expected to be married as soon
as they were master of a ship, it is evident there was very little to do
in the way of discipline. It was a jolly sight, when there came a gale
of wind, to see them scamper up the rigging, racing with each other
for the “weather-earing.”
Captain Rhines, though a large and powerfully built man, was a
pygmy to his son Ben. Ben measured, crooks and all, six feet two
inches in height, weighing two hundred and thirty pounds. He was
possessed of strength in proportion to his size, and, what was more
remarkable, was as spry as an eel, and could jump out of a
hogshead without touching his hands to it. His neighbors called him
“Lion Ben.” He obtained the appellation from this circumstance.
One day when the inhabitants of the district were at work on the
roads, they dug out a large rock. Ben, then nineteen years of age,
took it up, carried it out of the road, dropped it, and said it might
stay there till they raised another man in town strong enough to
take it back.
He was now twenty-six years of age, of excellent capacity, and
good education for the times, his father having sent him to
Massachusetts to school. It was very difficult to provoke him; but
when, after long provocation, he became enraged, his temper broke
out in an instant, and he knew no measure in his wrath. His
townsmen loved him, because he used his strength to protect the
weak, and were at the same time excessively proud of him, as in all
the neighboring towns there was not a man that could throw him, or
that even dared to take hold of him.
He had a large chair made on purpose for him to sit in, and tools
for him to work with; and if anybody lent a crowbar to Captain
Rhines, they always said, “Don’t let Ben use it,” as in that case it was
sure to come home bent double, and had to be sent to the
blacksmith’s to be straightened.
He was passionately fond of gunning, and would risk life and limb
to shoot a goose or sea-duck. Though he had followed the sea since
he was seventeen years of age, yet he was greatly attached to the
soil, and when at home loved to work on it. It was a curious sight to
see this great giant weeding the garden, or at work upon his sister’s
flower-bed.
He was a generous-hearted creature; when anybody was sick or
poor he would get all the young folks together, make a bee, get in
their corn, do their planting, or cut their winter’s wood for them. He
had often done this for the widow Hadlock, who was their nearest
neighbor. The widow Hadlock’s husband, a very enterprising sea
captain, had died at sea, in the prime of life, leaving his widow with
a young family, a farm, a fine house well furnished, but nothing
more. The broken-hearted woman had struggled very hard to keep
the homestead for her children, and the whole family together. Being
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