cove. The water was of sufficient depth to enable them to approach with the boat to the edge of the basin, from which they dipped the clear, cool water—every instant renewed, and through which the white pebbles were gleaming—in buckets, and, passing them from hand to hand, filled the casks without taking them from the boat.

"We must be lively, boys," said Walter, "and get it in before the tide falls. O, I forgot; there is no tide here; so we can take our time."

Our young readers will recollect there is no tide in the Mediterranean, or but very little, except as influenced by storms.

As they were returning, Ned said, "Wouldn't it be nice if it was so at home, Mr. Griffin?" (putting on the Mr. before the crew.) "There's Captain Rhines's Cove: the water ebbs way out, quarter of a mile of mud. If you want to go out at low water, you must shove off a skiff, and wade in the mud. Only think how nice it would be to be able to go just when you pleased! no bother about the tide, and having to work in the night to save it; and only think what an everlasting sight of work and expense it would save in building those great long wharves, that vessels may lie afloat at low water!"

"I don't know about that, Ned. I think there's something to be said in favor of the tide. Just call to mind what an abominable dirty hole the port of Marseilles is; all the filth of the city pouring into it; no motion only in a gale of wind, and not much then; all that foul stuff stewing and simmering under a southern sun. If there was a tide to make a current, bring in a fresh supply of water, and carry off this slime every six hours, how much better it would be!"

"I never thought of that, Mr. Griffin."

"There's another thing I should think you would have thought of, Ned," said Mr. Hadlock.

"What is that, sir?"

"Why, in respect to cleaning, calking, or graving a vessel's bottom, repairing, or stopping a leak. See what a fuss we had here the other day, cleaning and putting tallow on this vessel's bottom; had to heave her out, and work and wade in the water at that. Now, if we had been at home, all we need to have done would have been to haul her on to the beach in Captain Rhines's Cove that you despise so much, at high water, ground her, and have eight or ten hours to work, on a good sand beach, too."

"I guess," said Ned, "I should have done better to have held my tongue."

Our readers will bear in mind that there were no railways in those days by which vessels are hauled out of the water, or dry docks into which they are floated at high water, and the water pumped out; but our forefathers grounded them across logs or blocks, or, if they wanted to get at the keel, hove them down on one side, by means of tackles made fast to the mast-heads, till the keel was out of water.

"That is not all, either, Ned," said the second mate. "If the tide didn't ebb, there wouldn't be any clams; and that would be a very serious affair indeed to the fishermen who want bait. Once it would have caused starvation in some cases, and might again."

"How could that be, sir?"

"I'll tell you, my boy. You were born and have grown up in Salem, and don't, perhaps, realize the value of clams; but I do. I've heard old Mr. Griffin, the mate's grandfather, say, that when he was cutting down the trees on his place, before he could raise anything, and met with bad luck in hunting, he had been, the first summer or two, so put to it for food, that he had to boil beech leaves, the ends of the branches and the tops of the pine trees (that are very tender in June, when they are growing fast), to preserve life, and that if it had not been for clams, he and his family must have starved. I'm sure they were a great help to us after my father died, for we were very poor. I was young, not strong enough to do much work; but I could dig clams, and my little sister picked them up. I could, with them for bait, catch fish and lobsters, and with a little rye and Indian bread and some bean broth, mother got along, and kept us all together. Had it not been for the clam flats, I don't know what we should have done."

"I can say amen to that," said Willard Lancaster; "and I know that when Peterson used to drink so bad, and brought little or nothing home to his family, that Luce and the children got most of their living out of the clam flats."

"It is not only the value of the clams as food," said Walter, "but a good part of the fish that are cured and exported to all parts of the world to feed thousands, are caught with clam bait."

"That, indeed," said the captain. "What vast quantities of fish are exported from Salem to the West Indies and other places! and that is but a trifle compared with the whole amount."

"Yes, indeed, sir. I didn't think of all these uses for the tide. I was thinking only how convenient it would be to have it always high water for a few things."

"There are many other things," said Walter, "that the ebb and flow of the tide are very convenient for. Three years ago, father was building a wharf in our cove: the logs were master great ones; it would have taken twenty men to place them where we wanted them; but father and I cut the scores in the other logs to receive them, rolled them into the water with the oxen, then tied a rope to them, floated them at high water to the spot, held them till the tide ebbed, and they settled into the grooves just as easy as a cat would lick her ear. We didn't lift an ounce; the tide lifted all those big logs for us. Did you ever see the Casco, Ned?"

"No, sir; she was always away when I was at Pleasant Cove, but I've heard say she is a monster."

"So she is—seven hundred tons; you may judge what her anchors must be. Well, I can tell you what they are: the best bower is 3000, and the small bower 2700."

"O, my! What a junk of iron that must be!"

"We rode out a gale of wind in Cadiz, with both anchors ahead and all the scope out. It blew a gale, I tell you, and the anchors were well bedded. When we came to get under way for home, we hove up the small anchor; but the other we hove, and hove, and hove, and couldn't start it. At last the captain said, 'Avast heaving; let the tide take it out.' We waited till low water, hove her down as long as we could catch a pawl on the windlass, and made all fast. At length the tide began to flow, the ship began to bury forward; down she went, till the water was coming into the hawse-holes, the cable sung, and the tar began to stand in drops on it with the strain, when all at once the anchor let go with a surge that threw every man from his feet. The tide was very convenient then; if it had not been for it, we must have gone ashore, got a grappling, and grappled to the fluke of the anchor, or left it. Again the tide is very convenient for a timepiece; if you keep the run of the tide, you have the time of day."

"It is about as well to take things as the Lord has arranged them," said the captain, "and be contented and thankful."

"That," said Ned, "brings to my mind a piece mother read to me once, about a man who thought, if the disposition of affairs had been committed to him, he could have arranged them a great deal better than they now are; that it was not at all proper that so large and noble a thing as a pumpkin should be attached to a vine lying upon the ground, while so insignificant a thing as an acorn or beech-nut grew upon a lofty tree: but falling asleep one day under an oak, an acorn falling on his nose awoke him, when he exclaimed, 'Wretch that I am! Had it been a pumpkin it would have dashed my brains out.' I don't know as I recollect it aright, but that was the amount of it."

"It is certainly better, Ned, to be in the hands of a wise and good Providence, than to be left to plan for ourselves. If the disposal of events had been committed to you or me, we never should have suffered the Madras to spring a leak, and endured what we did upon the raft; yet it carried us to Pleasant Cove, to Captain Rhines and Charlie Bell, and was the best thing that could have happened