Elijah Kellogg

“ I had rather be on an island with my husband, working hard, and carrying my share of the load, than to be in the best society, and have every comfort, and at the same time know that my husband is beating about at sea, in sickly climates, perhaps dying, with nobody to do for him, in order to support me in luxury and laziness, or in circumstances of comfort which he cannot enjoy with me; and I say that any woman, that is a woman, will say amen to it. ”

“ Genius comes in with ‘Little Prudy.’ Compared with her, all other book-children are cold creations of Literature only; she alone is the real thing. All the quaintness of childhood, its originality, its tenderness and its teasing,—its infinite, unconscious drollery, the serious earnestness of its fun, the fun of its seriousness, the natural religion of its plays, and the delicious oddity of its prayers,—all these waited for dear Little Prudy to embody them. Sam Weller is not more piquant; Hans Andersen’s nutcrackers and knitting-needles are not more thoroughly charged with life. ”

“ Wednesday morning the axes were flying merrily, as Ben and his crew were busy at their timber, when they were startled by a tremendous cheer, and, to their utter amazement, beheld thirty-five men, in military order, emerging from the woods, led on by Seth Warren, with a three-cornered cap, in which were the tail feathers of a turkey, with a skein of yarn for a sash, and shouldering an adze. Each man was armed,—some with broad-axes, others narrow-axes, saws, augers, and other tools. ”

“ PETE, IN QUEST OF REVENGE, COMES TO GRIEF.
“Sam Hadlock,” said his mother, “they say Ben’s gone to Boston on a raft, all alone. I don’t believe it; but go right over and see what it all means, and take Sally’s hens on.”
Sam arrived at Elm Island about dusk, with the hens and a crower. The first thing a rooster does, upon finding himself in a strange place, is to flap his wings and crow, in order that it may be known he is round. The next morning, as the daylight shone in between the logs of the hovel, he raised his cry of defiance to all things in general, and everybody in particular. ”

“ I’m a married man, Ben, and know what a woman is. When a woman really sets her heart on a man, he is almost like God Almighty to her; and the more she can put herself out for him, the more contented she is; that is, if she’s morally sartin he loves her. Now, Sally loves you with her whole soul, for she might have had her pick of half the young men in town, and she knows it. She is also sure that you love her, or you would never have given up the business prospects that you had, and undergo all that you must undergo on this island just on her account ”

“ Well, Sally, I’ve had troubles, and bitter ones; the sea has been a devourer to me; but not hardships, because I married and lived at home; but you have the chance, girl, to know something about it. Don’t be afraid of being poor; people here don’t know what poverty is. Go to Liverpool, if you want to see what real poverty is, as I have been many a time with your poor father, who is dead and gone. A man with a farm is sure of a living, and a good one, too; the farmers feed the world, and they are great fools if they don’t lick their own fingers. Two thirds of the merchants fail ”

“ With a cool daring and skill, perfectly characteristic, he rolled his masts and spars on to the beach, where, by the help of the tide, he could handle them as he pleased, and built them somewhat into the shape of a vessel, securing the whole firmly together with cross-ties and treenails. He then made a large oar to steer with, which no one but himself could lift, that worked in a port, so that it could not slip out and float up. ”

“ It was not like the gunning nowadays, when a great lazy fellow goes all day to shoot a sandpiper or a sparrow; but there was profit as well as sport in it. Nevertheless, he manfully resisted temptation, and plied the axe.
“I’ll not live another spring without a gunning float,” said he to Joe, and dismissed the matter from his thoughts.
“What fools we are!” said Joe; “we’ve not had a drink of sap yet.” As he spoke, he struck his axe with an upward blow into the body of a rock maple, and stuck a chip in the gash; he then cut down a small hemlock, took off a length, and from it made a trough. ”

“ Finding Sally not inclined to break the silence, she said, “I think you could not have done better than to be engaged to Ben; and I’m sure you could not have done anything so pleasing to me; that is, if you love him, for that is the main thing.
“I’ve always told you it is very wrong for a girl to marry a man whom she doesn’t love; it isn’t right in the sight of God, and always leads to misery. Ben isn’t so good-looking as some young men, nor rich in this world’s goods; but he has good learning and good manners: he is of a good family; can do more work than any three young men in town ”

“ As they came to the landing, John jumped out to haul the boat ashore, while Fred pushed with an oar; the boat, striking a rock, stopped so suddenly, that he fell down into the bottom of her, and stuck one of the hooks into his thigh. The remorseless steel buried itself in the flesh beyond the barb. There was the miserable boy, with both hands behind him, holding himself up, afraid either to get up or sit down, as he could not move an inch without taking with him the great stick to which the hook was fastened. ”

“ Yelf was seventy, Smullen seventy-five. The old men wanted to share in the clam bake, have a little milk punch, and, above all, to witness the wrestling: they had both been champions of the ring in their day.
All hands, except the carpenters, now joined in putting on the sheets of bark; they were lapped like shingles, and, being four feet in length, were laid with great rapidity.
“There are more of you here than can work to advantage,” said Uncle Isaac; “some of you, dig clams.” ”

“ The last time I was in Rowley, I saw rich men’s sons; whose fathers scorned your grandfather because he was a farmer, going about killing hogs and cutting wood for folks. For a farmer to kill his own hogs, or to change work with his neighbors to kill theirs, then they help him kill his, or to cut his own wood, is a very different thing from what it is for people, who felt as large as they did once, and, in their pride and prosperity, looked down on every one that labored, to have to do it for a living. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It was now early winter, and the proper time to work in the woods.
“Do you think,” said Ben to Uncle Isaac, “I’d better hire Joe?”
“He asks great wages, but he’s the cheapest man you can hire, for all that. I’ve seen a man fall spars, so that they all had to be hauled out top foremost; it was like twitching a cat by the tail. ”

“ It’s a risk, that’s certain; but then it’s a risk that’s well worth the running, to get such a tremendous raft of spars as that to market, as you may say, for nothing. The wind often holds easterly, this time of year, a fortnight; it’s our trade-wind; he is going every bit of four knots. I’ll risk Ben; he’s one of the kind that always come on their feet. There’s not another man in the world that looks as bad as he does, that would have got Sally Hadlock. Nobody else could have got Elm Island from Father Welch. ”

“ While Joe pulled on the rope, Ben stepping overboard, put his little shoulders to the stern of the “gundelow,” and shoved her so high up on the beach that Isaac Murch stepped out without wetting his feet.
“I say, Ben,” exclaimed Joe, “suppose you take an ox under each arm, and bring them out. I never was here before, but if this ain’t just the handsomest place I ever set eyes on. Such a nice little harbor to keep a craft; and a brook, and this little green spot in the lee of the woods; then such a master growth of timber; there’s a pine that’ll run seventy feet without a limb. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I don’t like to feel that people obey me just because they are afraid of me, and to go stalking round the decks like some of those giants we read of in the old story books. I do love the land better than the sea. ”

“ Ben persuaded Joe Griffin to go home with him, stay all night, and help eat the coon. Though one of the most kind-hearted creatures that ever lived, Joe’s proclivity for practical jokes was both instinctive and inveterate. If the choice lay between making a mortal enemy for life and a good joke, he could not prevail upon himself to forego the joke. ”

“ There were but four pieces of rope on the whole raft, for rope was high in those days: these were the cable, the canoe’s painter, and the sheet and halyards of the sail.
The logs were lashed with withes, as also the canoe, water, and other things. These withes were of enormous strength, though stiff and hard to handle; for many of them were as thick as a man’s wrist, which Ben twisted as though they had been willow switches. ”

“ Welch don’t want his money any more than a cat wants two tails; he told you to take your own time, and I’d take my time. I believe you can pay for this island by clearing only what you need for pasture and tillage. That will make quite a hole in your debt, and the rest you can pull out of the water.”
“But I don’t want to be a fisherman; I detest it; work all summer, and eat it all up in the winter; so much broken time, when it’s so windy you can’t fish, and can’t do anything else, for fear it will come good weather, and you will have to leave it.” ”

“ You’ll never be much of a gunner till you can, because there’s ten chances to shoot flying or running game where there is one to shoot that which is still. Take a fox, for instance; ’tain’t one time to a hundred you can shoot one, except on the clean jump, going twelve or fifteen foot at a leap, and looking just like a little streak. All these sea-fowl fly out of the bays every night. Now, there’s a place between Smutty Nose and the Sow and Pigs, not more than half a gun-shot in width, which they fly through about sunrise, when they come into the bay. ”

“ Isaac Murch is an independent, wealthy farmer,—a mechanic by nature,—who has acquired the property he holds with his own hands, and would scorn to be a hired servant, like an Irish navvy; but for accommodation, he will hire some one to get in his own harvest, and in the cold, frosty nights, when he might be comfortable at home in the blankets, he will go on to Elm Island, sweat and work, live rough, and sleep on the ground, to build a house for his neighbor ”

“ A most silly and hurtful notion, often entertained by young people in respect to religion, is, that it has a tendency to make people narrow-minded, or, as they phrase it, meeching. Such a feeling was effectually repressed, as they listened to ideas of that nature from one who hesitated not to grapple with the fiercest beasts of the forest, and bore on his person the scars of many wounds. ”

“ About twelve o’clock Ben came. He felt round for a candle, expecting to find it where his mother usually left it—on the mantel-piece; but Joe had taken very good care to remove both candle and matches; so, feeling for the crane, he clapped in his foot and pulled; down came the crane on to the floor. Ben went over backwards, full length on the floor, 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; his mother awaked from a sound sleep, and screamed murder ”

“ 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. ”

“ But Sally declared she would as lief have Ben at sea as have him on this island, running back and forth in the cold winter; that after a man had been at work a whole week, he didn’t want to pull a boat six miles, and be wet all through with spray; that there would be a great many days, when, if he was off, he could not get on, and if he was on, he could not get off, and there would be a great deal of time lost. Man and wife ought not to be separated; ’twas no way to live; she would go to the island and live with him. ”

“ The gunners take advantage of this trait in their character; they teach a little dog to play with a stone on the beach: he’ll roll it along the ground, stand up on his hind legs with it in his fore paws, and when he gets tired of it, his master’ll throw him another from his ambush. The birds swim in to see what he is doing, and are killed, and the little dog swims off and brings them ashore. All dogs cannot be taught this, only those who have a genius for it. ”

“ 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,35 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. ”

“ Now, although the squawks had been in possession of the island from time immemorial, they had never heard a rooster crow, or even seen one. The instant that shrill, defiant voice rose on the morning air, saying, “I’m somebody; who are you?” every squawk on the island uttered his loudest yell. This startled the herons and fish-hawks; the246 crows joined the chorus, and Sailor exerted his lungs to the utmost. Sally woke up in alarm, and was for some time unable to account for the terrible uproar. It was a week before the Elmites would permit the rooster to crow, or a hen to cackle, in peace. ”