Haste and Waste; Or, the Young Pilot of Lake Champlain. A Story for Young People by - (top 100 books to read txt) 📗

upon him. His older brother was away from home, and was indolent and dissipated. The ferry and the little farm must be cared for, as from them came the entire support of his mother and his brothers and sisters. Though he was oppressed by the burden of sorrow which his father's crime cast upon him, he did not yield to despair.

Half a mile below the ferry-landing he could see the smokestack of the Woodville projecting above the water. She was his property; and if she had seemed to be a prize to him before the calamity had fallen upon his father's household, she was doubly so now. As he crossed the ferry, he gazed up at the Goblins, with less of exultation, but more of hope, than before. In his opinion, as he expressed it to his mother, there was "money in her." Mrs. Wilford was in great tribulation lest the man who now held the mortgage upon the little farm should insist upon being paid, as there was now no hope that, the debtor, in prison, would be able to do anything. Lawry told her that the steamboat would enable them to pay all claims upon his father.

Mrs. Wilford had but little confidence in her son's schemes, but she did not discourage them; and Lawry racked his brain for expedients to accomplish the task he had imposed upon himself. He had no money, and he was too proud to ask Mr. Sherwood for the assistance which that gentleman would so gladly have rendered. Ethan French came down to see him every day, and the prairie boy was so kind and considerate that they soon became fast friends.

"When are you going to work on the steamer, Lawry?" asked Ethan. "I suppose you don't feel much like meddling with her yet."

"I don't; but she ought to be raised as soon as possible," replied Lawry. "I am going to work upon her right off. I went down to see how she lies this morning, and I have got my plans all laid."

"Have you?"

"I have."

"Do you think you can get her up?"

"I know I can."

"Well, how are you going to do it?" inquired Ethan.

"Do you know Mr. Nelson, over at Pointville? I suppose you don't. Well, he is a great oil man; he has got some oil-wells down on the St. Johns River. He is getting together all the barrels and hogsheads he can find, to send down to his works. He has as many as a hundred at his place in Pointville. I'm going to borrow a lot of these casks, if I can, and raise the Woodville with them."

"How are you going to manage with them?" asked Ethan, deeply interested in the plan.

"Sink them round the boat, and fasten them to her hull, till there is enough to float her."

"But how are you going to sink them?"

"There's some one to go over the ferry," replied Lawry, as a blast of the tin horn was heard. "If you will go over with me, I will tell you all about it, and we will call and see Mr. Nelson while we are at Pointville."

Ethan embarked with his friend, and when the boat started the subject was resumed.

CHAPTER VIII RAISING THE "WOODVILLE"

Ethan French, during the two years he had been a resident of the State of New York, had been an earnest and diligent student. His mind was even more improved than his manners. His taste for mechanics had prompted him to study the various subjects included in this science, and as he stood by his companion, the pilot, he talked quite learnedly about the specific gravity of wood and iron, about displacement, buoyancy, and similar topics.

"The hull of the steamer—that is, the woodwork—will not float itself, but it will sustain considerable additional weight," said he.

"Yes, I understand all that," replied Lawry. "If there had been no iron in the Woodville she would not have gone down."

"The iron in her engines is seven or eight times as heavy as the same bulk of water. Its weight carried the hull down with it."

"Then we must put down empty casks enough to float the engine," added Lawry.

"No; the woodwork of the hull will hold up a portion of the weight of the engine, and we must furnish buoyancy enough to sustain the rest of it."

"It will not take a great many casks, then—will it?"

"Not a great many; but the difficulty is to get them down to the bottom, and fasten them to the hull."

"I can do that," replied Lawry confidently.

Ethan approved the method, and promised to ascertain what weight each of the casks would sustain in the water, when he had obtained their dimensions. The ferry-boat reached the other side of the lake, and the young men went to see Mr. Nelson, the owner of the casks. He did not wish to use the hogsheads till October, and was willing they should be employed for the purpose indicated, if Lawry would give him security for their safe return.

"Mr. Sherwood will do that for you, Lawry," said Ethan.

"That's a good name," added the oil speculator. "If he will guarantee the safe return of the casks, that is all I ask. I wonder if Mr. Sherwood don't want some shares in the Meteor Oil Company."

"I don't know; I'll ask him," replied Ethan.

"If you will, I won't charge you anything for the use of the casks," added Mr. Nelson.

Mr. Sherwood was consulted in the evening. He was very willing to furnish the required security for the use of the oil-casks, but he did not seem to have the same confidence in the "Meteor" which Mr. Nelson exhibited, though he promised to consider the matter.

It required three days to complete the preparations for raising the Woodville. All the ropes and rigging in the neighborhood, including many hay-ropes and clothes-lines, had been collected; the oil-casks had been conveyed over the lake in the ferry-boat, and secured within a "boom" composed of four long timbers, lashed together at the ends, forming a square, which was moored close to the Goblins; and a raft had been built, upon which the operations were to be conducted.

Mr. Sherwood had offered to furnish as many men as could be employed to assist in the work; but the young engineers had so arranged their plans that no help was needed. At sunrise in the morning the boys ran down to the Goblins in the ferry-boat, which was necessary for the transportation of sundry heavy articles. The raft was already there, moored in the proper place for commencing the labors of the day. The engineers were deeply interested in the operations before them, for there was a difficult problem to be solved, which required all their skill and ingenuity; and Lawry felt that his future prosperity and happiness depended upon the success of the undertaking.

Their plans and their machinery were yet to be tried, and there was a degree of excitement attending the execution of the project which was as agreeable as it was stimulating to their enthusiastic natures. People had laughed at the idea of two boys raising a steamer burdened with heavy machinery, and both of them felt that their reputations were at stake.

"Now, Lawry, we shall soon find out what we can do," said Ethan, as they made fast the ferry-boat to the raft.

"I know what we can do," replied the young pilot confidently. "If the casks will float her, she shall come to the top of the water before to-morrow night. Now, Ethan, the first thing is to get a rope under her."

"That's easy enough."

"It's all easy enough, if you only believe in yourself."

A rope of six fathoms in length was selected from the mass of rigging on the raft, and a stone just heavy enough to sink the line attached to the middle of it. Lawry took it in the wherry, sculled to the stern of the sunken steamer, and dropped it into the water. He then carried one end to Ethan, on the raft, while he returned with the other in his boat, which he moored to the opposite side of the Woodville. The middle of the rope was kept on the bottom of the lake by the stone, while the two ends were carried forward by the boys until the bight was drawn under the keel of the steamer, as far as her position on the rocks would permit it to go. Lawry's end was made fast around the smokestack, and Ethan's to the raft.

One of the hogsheads was next floated out of the boom enclosure, and hauled upon the raft, Lawry adjusted the hogshead slings to the cask. In the middle of the raft an aperture had been left, large enough for a hogshead to pass through, over which a small derrick had been built. A stone post, about the length of the casks, and just heavy enough to sink one of them, had been brought down on the bateau. This "sinker," as the young engineers called it, had been weighed, and it exactly conformed to the requirement of Ethan's figures; it was just sufficient to overcome the flotage power of the cask.

"Now, keep cool, Ethan, and we shall find out whether your figures are correct, or not," said Lawry.

"Figures won't lie," replied Ethan; "I know they are correct, and that hogshead will go to the bottom as quick as though it were made of lead."

"We shall soon see," added Lawry, as he placed a couple of skids across the "well." "Now we must place the sinker on those skids."

By the aid of the derrick, which was provided with a rude windlass, constructed by Ethan, the stone post was hoisted up, and then dropped down on the skids. The sinker had been rigged with slings, and the hogshead was attached to it by a contrivance of Lawry, upon which the success of the operation wholly depended, and which it will be very difficult to describe with words. The sinker would carry the cask to the bottom of the lake, where its buoyancy was to assist in bringing the steamer to the surface of the water; but it was necessary, after the cask had been sunk and fastened to the hull, to detach it from the sinker; and this had been a problem of no little difficulty to Lawry, who managed the nautical part of the enterprise.

Fastened to the slings on the sinker was a rope ten fathoms in length. A loop was formed in this line, close to the sinker, and the bight passed through the slings on the hogshead. The loop was then laid over the two ropes, one of which was fast to the sinker, and the other was the unattached end of the line, and "toggled" on with a marline-spike. If the young reader does not quite understand the process, let him take a string, with one end fastened to a flatiron; double it, and pass the loop—which sailors call a bight—upward between the thumb and forefinger; bring the loop down to meet the two parts of the string on the palm of the hand; then take the two lines into the loop, and put a pencil under the two parts drawn through the loop. The flatiron will correspond to the stone sinker, and the thumb to the slings on the hogshead. Lift up the flatiron, so that the weight will bear on the thumb; then pull out the pencil, and the iron will drop.

The marlinespike was thoroughly greased, and a small line attached to the head of it, so that it could be easily drawn out of the loop, when the cask had been secured to the hull of the steamer.

"There, we are all right now," said Lawry, after he had tried the marlinespike several times to satisfy himself that it could be easily drawn from its place. "Now we will make fast the rope which runs under the keel to the hogshead."

"Here it is," added Ethan.

"We want to have the cask under the guard of the steamer when we get it down."

"That will be easy enough."

"Perhaps it will; but I'm afraid the rope will bind on the keel."

"If it does, we must take the raft round to the other side of the Woodville, and pass it round the windlass; we can haul it up in that way."

"That will take too much time. I think you and I both will be strong enough to haul the cask into place."

"Now, give us a turn at the windlass, Ethan," said