OLIVER OPTIC

AUTHOR OF “YOUNG AMERICA ABROAD,” “THE GREAT WESTERN SERIES,” “THE ARMY AND NAVY SERIES,” “THE WOODVILLE SERIES,” “THE STARRY-FLAG SERIES,” “THE BOAT-CLUB STORIES,” “THE ONWARD AND UPWARD SERIES,” “THE YACHT-CLUB SERIES,” “THE LAKE-SHORE SERIES,” “THE RIVERDALE STORIES,” “ALL ADRIFT,” ETC., ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

BOSTON LEE AND SHEPARD, PUBLISHERS NEW YORK CHARLES T. DILLINGHAM 1884

Copyright, 1883,

By WILLIAM T. ADAMS.

All rights reserved.

TO MY YOUNG FRIEND

HARRY CLINTON WHITE

This Book

IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED.

PREFACE.

“Snug-Harbor” is the second volume of “The Boat-Builder Series.” Though it contains its fair proportion of story and adventure, there is less of these elements than in its predecessor; though the writer believes there is enough to keep up the interest of his young readers. Dory Dornwood, the hero of the initial volume of the series, is again presented, and about a quarter of a hundred others; though all of them cannot be heroes. Like the former volume, the scene is laid on Lake Champlain and its shores.

In accordance with the hint thrown out in the preface of the first volume, the Beech-Hill Industrial School makes a beginning in this book; and its pupils are gathered together in the schoolroom and the workshop. The boys are instructed only in those branches of learning which will be of the greatest practical utility to them as mechanics. They are taken into the shop, and set to work as carpenters and machinists; and some idea is given of their operations at the bench. But in a work of this kind the author finds it hardly practicable to describe in detail the work done by the Champlain mechanics; though he has done so to some extent, as a suggestion rather than as a system of instruction for boy-workmen. Without a vast number of drawings, the tools and machinery used by the carpenter and machinist cannot be described and explained so as to be of any great practical service. The book is rather to create an interest in these trades than to furnish a guide to young mechanics.

The author regrets that there is no American work of the kind mentioned. Our English cousins have sent us over some excellent works on the subject, which are very useful, though not fully adapted to the needs of American boys. A new friend suggests that such a book be prepared, and with his aid it may yet be done.

Captain Gildrock, the founder and patron of the Beech-Hill Industrial School, has some radical ideas on the subject of education; and probably many of the older readers of this book will disagree with him: but the question he argues is worthy of attention and discussion, however it may be finally settled.

Though the author is not a mechanic by trade, he has worked in his own shop for many years. With the carpenter’s bench, the turning-lathe, and the various implements for working in wood and metals, he finds not only his needed exercise, but a degree of pleasure which makes it all the more healthy and exhilarating; and he commends the work to his young friends, both for their amusement and instruction.

Dorchester, Mass., Aug. 20, 1883.

SNUG-HARBOR;

OR,

THE CHAMPLAIN MECHANICS.

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CHAPTER I.

THE SLOOP THAT WENT TO THE BOTTOM.

“Starboard your helm! hard a-starboard!” shouted Dory Dornwood, as he put the helm of the Goldwing to port in order to avoid a collision with a steam-launch which lay dead ahead of the schooner.

“Keep off! you will sink me!” cried a young man in a sloop-boat, which lay exactly in the course of the steam-launch.

“That’s just what I mean to do, if you don’t come about!” yelled the man at the wheel of the steamer. “Why didn’t you stop when I called to you?”

“Keep off, or you will be into me!” screamed the skipper of the sloop, whose tones and manner indicated that he was very much terrified at the situation.

And he had reason enough to be alarmed. It was plain, from his management of his boat, that he was but an indifferent boatman; and probably he did not know what to do in the emergency. Dory had noticed the sloop coming up the lake with the steam-launch astern of her. The latter had run ahead of the sloop, and had come about, it now appeared, for the purpose of intercepting her.

When the skipper of the sloop realized the intention of the helmsman of the steamer, he put his helm to port; but he was too late. The sharp bow of the launch struck the frail craft amidships, and cut through her as though she had been made of card-board.

The sloop filled instantly; and, a moment later, the young man in her was struggling on the surface of the water. The boat was heavily ballasted, and she went down like a lump of lead. It was soon clear to Dory that the skipper could not swim, for he screamed as though the end of all things had come.

Very likely it would have been the end of all things to him, if Dory had not come about with the Goldwing, and stood over to the place where the young man was vainly beating the water with his feet and hands. With no great difficulty the skipper of the Goldwing, who was an aquatic bird of the first water, pulled in the victim of the catastrophe, in spite of the apparent efforts of the sufferer to prevent him from doing so.

It was a very warm day towards the end of August, and a bath in the cool waters of Lake Champlain was not the worst thing in the world to take. The victim of the collision was more scared than hurt; and he lay in the bottom of the yacht, puffing and blowing like a black bass just stolen from his native element. He did not seem to be able to speak, and Dory thought he was making a great fuss about a very small affair.

The Goldwing had been headed across the lake when her skipper picked up the victim; and, when he was safely on board, she continued on her course. Dory had come out to cool off and take a sail, and it made no difference to him where he went. The Beech-hill Industrial School had not yet commenced operations, and he had nothing on earth to do the greater part of the time.

His father had died a few weeks before; but he had found a snug harbor at Beech Hill, where he resided with his mother and sister in the elegant mansion of his uncle, Captain Royal Gildrock. The captain had acquired an immense fortune by his operations in various parts of the world; but as his wife was dead, and he had no children, it had bothered him a good deal to determine what to do with all his money.

For many years there had been a feud between the head of the Dornwood family and the owner of Beech Hill. Mr. Dornwood was an intemperate man, and never more than half supported his family; though he had good wages as a pilot on the lake. He had married the captain’s only sister in spite of the opposition of all her friends, and especially of her brother.

When the captain attempted to assist his sister in taking care of her two children, her husband ordered him out of his house; for a great many sharp words had passed between them. The wife was afraid of her inebriate husband, and the attempts of the wealthy brother to help the family had ended in the complete estrangement of the brother and sister.

But as soon as Mrs. Dornwood was a widow, the captain hastened to her assistance. Though Dory had made an earnest effort to support the family, he had finally consented to reside with his mother at Beech Hill. The pilot’s wife and children had always lived in the humblest tenements, worn the meanest garments, and lived upon the plainest and cheapest food.

Their lot at the new home was in tremendous contrast with their former condition. Captain Gildrock was a plain man himself, and inclined to regard the elegancies and luxuries of life with contempt. Though his house was large, it was plainly furnished. If his table was not garnished by the skill of a French cook, it was loaded with the best that could be procured. To the Dornwoods every thing about the house was luxurious.

Captain Gildrock was a thinking man, and he had ideas as well as money. The two go well together, for ideas are often barren things when one has not the means to carry them out. The worthy shipmaster had studied society and human nature in many lands and climes. After he retired from the sea and business generally, he had given his attention wholly to the affairs in his own country. After he had done so for a year or two, he was disposed to exclaim with the inspired writer, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity!”

Perhaps the standard of the captain was too high for this world, but he felt that the American people were slipping away from first principles. The nation had prospered by toil,—by inducing and compelling the earth to yield her increase. Life had been something more than a pleasure-excursion.

“When I was young,” he used to say, “the boys worked on the farm, learned a trade, or went to sea. Now all the young men go into stores, become counter-jumpers and man-milliners. Men get rich now by making corners, betting on futures, and in speculation of all sorts. A big thief is a gentleman: a little one is a criminal, after he is caught. The boys and girls have been educated too much: they get above their station in life, and then half starve themselves in order to be genteel.”

The captain did not believe that the young people were educated too much; only that they were trained in useless accomplishments, as he regarded them. He did not think that the Genverres high-school, though a very successful institution in the opinion of the school-board and the citizens generally, was really a blessing to the town. He was confident that he had discovered the philosopher’s stone in education, though he found himself almost alone in his opinions.

“That school only spoils good farmers and mechanics, good seamen and engineers. It gives them altogether too high notions of themselves. It turns its pupils out on the world fit only to be genteel. The education which the fathers of New England meant, when they planted the schoolhouse alongside the church, was simply a common-school education, without any high-school bosh on the tail-end of it. It’s all well enough for rich people: it is a luxury they can afford, and one they ought to pay for.”

Very likely the captain was too ultra in his views, but the question he argued is one which must be settled before the lapse of many years.

The shipmaster was a practical man, and he did not talk without acting. He believed in industrial education, not in the grammar-school, but in place of the high-school. He had talked his views in town-meeting, and printed them in the papers; but the people were not inclined to adopt them.

A year before, he had taken a number of young men, and instructed them in seamanship and the construction and management of the marine engine. It was only a partial experiment, but he regarded it as an eminently successful one. Most of his pupils had obtained situations as engineers, and they were competent to fill them.

Captain Gildrock hoped to convince the people that his views were correct, and he was ready to spend his money in demonstrating the truth of what he preached. His class of the preceding year had been rather too old when he took them in hand. He wanted boys from the grammar-school, twelve or fourteen years old, before they had “bowed down to the vanity of this world,” before they had learned to be genteel, before they oiled their hair, and spent half an hour a day in adjusting their neckties.

After the death of his brother-in-law, the pilot, he had captured his nephew, after a hard struggle, and found he was the leading spirit of the Goldwing Club, which had taken its name from Dory’s boat. These boys were rather wild, but not bad. The captain succeeded in gathering them all into the Beech-hill Industrial School, as he decided to call the new institution. But the boys in Genverres were shy of the new school, or their parents were shy for them. Not a few of the latter regarded the retired shipmaster as a sort of harmless lunatic, liberal with his money, but, like all reformers, an unsafe leader to follow.

Several boys from the high-school had made excellent records out in the world, and each fond parent expected his own son would join the galaxy of bright stars from its graduates. The captain could find only three boys in the whole town who would join the new school, while thirty went to the high-school. Possibly the requirement that the pupils should reside at Beech Hill had some influence with the parents.

It looked as though the school was to begin with eight pupils,—hardly enough to man the Sylph, the captain’s elegant steam-yacht, the largest and finest craft of the kind on the lake. All the boys in the high-school would have liked to flirt about the lake in the magnificent steamer; but to do it as seamen, firemen, engineers, waiters, and cooks, was not wholly to the taste of the parents, if it suited that of the boys.

Dory Dornwood was waiting for the school to begin. Great boxes of tools, machinery, and other material for the workshops, had arrived at Beech Hill; but the captain would not allow them to be opened until the boys came. Besides, he was very busy in looking up pupils for the new institution. He wanted twenty-four to begin with, and he was searching for them in some of the interior towns where he was acquainted.

Dory was very impatient for the school to begin, though he was very happy in the midst of his new surroundings. He was a natural mechanic, and tools of any kind suited him better than books. He was fond of adventure, and wondered if he should ever have another time as lively as that on the lake before he was captured by his uncle.

The young man he had picked up on the lake was about sixteen years old, and was a stranger to him. His wet garments, though poor enough, betrayed an effort at some style. After a while he recovered his breath, and seemed to be in condition to give an account of himself.

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CHAPTER II.

THE YOUNG MAN WITH A LONG NAME.

“You had a narrow squeak that time,” said Dory Dornwood, as soon as he thought the victim of the disaster was in condition to do a little talking. “It is lucky you didn’t get tangled up in the rigging of your boat. She went to the bottom like a pound of carpet-tacks; and she would have carried you down in a hurry if you hadn’t let go in short metre.”

“I think I am remarkably fortunate in being among the living at this moment,” replied the stranger, looking out over the stern of the Goldwing. “That was the most atrocious thing a fellow ever did.”

“What was?” inquired Dory, who was not quite sure what the victim meant by the remark, or whether he alluded to him or to the man in the steam-launch.

“Why, running into me like that,” protested the passenger with no little indignation in his tones.

“Let me see, ‘atrocious’ means something bad or wicked, don’t it?” continued Dory.

“Something very bad and very wicked,” replied the stranger, with a sickly smile, as he bestowed a patronizing glance upon his deliverer.

“I thought it was something of that sort. I suppose you don’t use such big words as that before breakfast, do you?”

“Why not before breakfast as well as after? It is a common word, in use every day in the week.”

“I didn’t know but it might put your jaws out of joint, and spoil your appetite,” added Dory, as he glanced behind him to see what had become of the steam-launch.

“My appetite is not so easily spoiled.”

“I suppose you came up from Burlington?” said Dory suggestively, as though he considered an explanation on the part of the stranger to be in order at the present time.

“I have just come from Burlington,” answered the victim, who appeared to be disposed to say nothing more. “Do you suppose I can get that boat again?”

“I should say that the chance of getting her again was not first-rate. She went down where the water is about two hundred and fifty feet deep; and it won’t be an easy thing to get hold of her,” replied Dory. “If you had let him run into you between Diamond Island and Porter’s Bay, where the water is not more than fifty or sixty feet deep, you could have raised her without much difficulty. I don’t believe you will ever see her again.”

“That’s bad,” mused the stranger. “She did not belong to me.”

“Then you are so much in. Perhaps, if she had belonged to you, you would not have let the steam-launch run into you,” added Dory, who did not quite like the way the victim was taking things; for he did not seem to remember that he had been pulled out of the water by the skipper of the Goldwing when he was in great danger of drowning.

“I did not let the steam-launch run into me. The man in her did it on purpose. It was not an accident,” answered the stranger.

“I heard the fellow say that he meant to sink you; and, after he said that, I thought you were a little out of your head to let him do it.”

“I didn’t let him do it.”

“I thought you did. If I had been at the tiller of that sloop, he wouldn’t have done it.”

“Probably you are a better boatman than I am: I don’t pretend to know much about the management of a yacht,” replied the victim meekly, as he finished wiping the water from his face.

“Then you ought not to be sailing a boat in a fresh breeze, such as we are having to-day. Why didn’t you put your helm down when you saw that he was going to run into you?”

“Down where?” asked the victim with a vacant stare.

“Down cellar!” exclaimed Dory, disgusted at the ignorance of the skipper of the sunken sloop. “No fellow ought to sail a boat if he don’t know how to put the helm down.”

“A fellow can’t know every thing in the world.”

“Then, I suppose you know every thing else: but how to put the helm down was the one thing you ought to have known, when that fellow was kind enough to tell you beforehand that he meant to sink you.”

“Don’t be too rough on me, Mr.— I don’t know your name. I am under very great obligations to you for the signal service you have rendered me, and I shall be glad to know you better.”

“My name is Theodore Dornwood,—Dory for short. What is yours?”

“Dory Dornwood!” exclaimed the victim, bestowing a look of astonishment upon the modest skipper. “I have heard of you before, and I am particularly glad to meet you.”

“I should think you might be, since I picked you up in deep water. But you did not give me your name.”

“My name is Bolingbroke Millweed.”

“Is that all the name you have?” asked Dory, as he opened his eyes till they were as big as a pair of saucers—very small saucers. “I didn’t quite make it out, for it fairly snarled up my intellect.”

“Bolingbroke Millweed,” repeated the stranger with a slight frown upon his brow. “It’s all the name I have.”

“It’s name enough, I should say.”

“It is hardly worth while to make fun of my name: I am not responsible for it, and it is the best I have.”

“I beg your pardon, Mr.— I don’t know what your name is now, for really I did not take it in,” pleaded Dory, who was sometimes very brusk in his manner, though he did not mean to hurt anybody’s feelings. “Honestly, I did not understand you.”

“You cannot have read English history very much, or you would have recognized the first name.”

“I never did read English history much: in fact, I never did much reading of any kind.”

“My first name is Bolingbroke, and my surname is Millweed. The whole of it is Bolingbroke Millweed,” added the victim, mollified as he pitied the ignorance of his deliverer.

“All right, Mr. Millweed: I won’t tackle the first name until I get a little better acquainted with it.”