CHAPTER XII.

WADE BROOKS MAKES A TRADE.

Wade Brooks felt like a new boy. The breakfast was a meal to be remembered; for there was nothing like it in the past, and the future at the house of Obed Swikes was equally blank in prospect. His meals there were hardly better than the pigs had, and were often short at that.

“I hate to go back to the home of Obed Swikes,” said he to himself, as he walked from the house of the kind lady to the river. “I have to work like a dog, and sometimes I can’t get enough to eat; and he and the old woman say I don’t earn my salt. Both of them are growling at me all the time, and I have no peace of my life. They haven’t any claims on me; and they say I belong in the poorhouse. I don’t believe I should be any worse off if I were in the poorhouse. I shouldn’t have to work any harder, and I couldn’t be fed any worse. But then, I don’t like the name of it.”

By the time he reached the river, he had about made up his mind not to return to the house of Obed Swikes. It was a big thought; and, seating himself in the standing-room, he gave himself up to it. The runaways were going to New York, and he had expected to go with them. He believed he could find work there, and earn his own living.

But how could he get to New York? He had the old boat, and it was not more than sixty miles distant. It might take him two days to get there; but the boat would certainly take him to his destination if he kept her going. The dollar Capt. Trustleton had given him would supply all the provision he needed, and even leave him something to spend after he reached the great city. The question was settled in the boy’s mind.

Some folks in Midhampton would miss the old boat; but Wade felt that he had the best right to her, for she had belonged to his father. Hoisting the mainsail, he stood down the river; and, when he had passed the bridge, he set the jib. He expected to find a town before he reached the Sound, where he could buy the food for the cruise; but no such place appeared. Wade Brooks had heard of the Sound, but he had no clear idea what it was. He had been to school in the winter since he was old enough to do so, and had studied geography. He had seen the Sound on the map, and thought it was like a very wide river. He knew that he must go west to reach New York, and he had no doubt that he should find it.

The wind was fresh and fair, and in less than half an hour the “Mud-turtle” reached the mouth of the river. The Sound looked like the trackless ocean to Wade, for at this point he could not see across it. He did not like the idea of going out on such a broad sea; for he had never sailed anywhere except on the river, and had never been out of Midhampton before. But he could keep near the shore, and if a storm came up he could put in at some of the towns he had seen on the map.

After he got out of the river, he found a point of land extended over a mile to the south, and had a light-house at the end of it. He doubled this cape, and found that a great bay stretched inland. It was seven or eight miles across the mouth of this bay, and he did not like to venture out so far. Besides, several vessels and a small steamboat were bound up the bay, which indicated that there was a large town at the head of it.

The water was alive with craft of all sorts farther out in the Sound; and, if the old sail-boat did break down, there were vessels enough near to save him. After he had run a couple of miles more, he could see the town at the head of the bay. He could just discern a light-house at the point where the bay began to be very narrow; and he headed for this, as all the other craft were doing. But the wind was dead ahead, and he had to beat all the way; but it was not more than three miles from him.

“What town is that?” asked Wade of a man in a boat loaded with oysters, which he was rowing towards the town, as the “Turtle” passed near him.

“That’s the city of Bridgeport,” replied the oyster man. “Don’t you know where you are?”

“No, sir, I don’t: I never was here before,” answered Wade, with candor and simplicity. “I want to go to some place where I can get some crackers and things to eat.”

“Where did you come from?”

“From Midhampton, up the river.”

“Where are you bound?”

“To New York.”

“If you are bound up to town, and will take my boat in tow, I will pilot you up. It’s a crooked channel up to the city, and you will have a head wind part of the way,” added the oysterman.

Wade agreed to this arrangement, and ran the “Turtle” alongside the oyster-boat. The man passed his painter to the stern of the sail-boat, and then took his place at the helm.

“Whose boat is this?” asked the new skipper, as he looked the “Mud-turtle” over with a critical eye.

“She belongs to me,” replied Wade.

“You are rather young to own a boat,” added the oysterman.

“If she don’t belong to me, I don’t know who owns her.”

“Where did you get her?”

Wade had no secrets, and he related the history of the boat. The man wanted to know something more about the young boatman’s history, and he kept looking the boat over all the time as he asked question after question. Wade told his story without any reserve, except that he did not mention the fire.

“I don’t see as that man has any claims upon you,” said the pilot. “If he did not use you well, I don’t blame you for leaving him.”

“Obed Swikes said I belonged in the poorhouse; and he and his wife kept saying they should send me there,” added Wade.

“What are you going to do in New York?” asked Loud; for that was his name.

“I expect to find work when I get there.”

“What are you going to do with this boat?”

“I don’t know: I hadn’t thought of that,” replied Wade blankly. And he did not think the boat was of much consequence any way.

“I think this boat will do me more good than she will you,” said Loud, feeling his way to the subject that had been uppermost in his mind from the beginning.

“It don’t seem to me that I should want to row that load of oysters as far as you have to go,” replied Wade, though he did not yet see what the oysterman was driving at.

“You can’t do any thing with the boat in New York,” added Loud, looking into the locker astern of the tiller. “She isn’t much of a boat; but you couldn’t even sell her there, if you wanted to.”

This was a new idea to the young boatman. It had never occurred to him before, that there was any value in the old “Mud-turtle,” which had been used in Midhampton by everybody who wanted her, without hire or even thanks. He saw that the man wanted to buy her for use in bringing in his oysters. She was just the thing for that. She was old; but she was still sound, and scarcely leaked at all. He was a New-England boy, and he had an instinct for trade; and he made up his mind that Loud should not get her for nothing.

“I should say that New York was a better place than this to sell a boat,” said Wade, when the man began to run down the boat, and to make it appear that she was useless to her owner.

“I don’t think so. They have so many nice boats there, that an old thing like this don’t stand much chance.”

“If she were only painted up, she would be as nice as any of them,” replied Wade, who remembered how handsome he thought she was when his father had put her in first-rate order two or three years before he died.

“It would cost a good deal of money to fix her up; and I don’t know as she is worth it. She will do to bring up oysters from the beds in; and, if you will sell her for any fair price, I should like to buy her,” continued Loud, looking her over more carefully than before.

“I didn’t think of selling her; but I will let her go, if you will give me what she’s worth,” said Wade, deeming it wise not to appear too anxious to drive a trade.

“Well, what will you take for her?” asked Loud, in an indifferent way.

This was a hard question for Wade to answer; but he recalled a time when his father talked of selling the boat, and he had heard the conversation on the subject. Mr. Brooks had asked seventy-five dollars for the boat; but then she had just been painted and repaired.

“I will take fifty dollars for her,” replied Wade, after some hesitation; and this, he thought, would be a good figure at which to begin the trade.

“Oh, get out!” exclaimed Loud, with great contempt in his manner. “She is not worth half that.”

Wade did not think she was, but he did not say so: that was not the way to trade.

“I know my father would not sell her for less than seventy-five; but I didn’t want to be hard, and I made her cheap to you.”

“I should think you did,” said Loud with a laugh,--“fifty dollars for this old tub! I can buy a bigger and better boat here in Bridgeport for half the money.”

“Well, if you can, there isn’t any law to keep you from doing so,” added Wade good-naturedly.

“This boat will answer my purpose very well; and I thought, as she will be of no use to you, she might be bought cheap.”

“And so she can be: what will you give for her?”

“I made up my mind, if you would let her go for ten dollars, I should take her; but I didn’t mean to give much more than that for her.”

“Oh, get out! ten dollars for this boat!” exclaimed Wade: “there is old iron enough to bring more than that.”

For an hour they haggled about the price. Wade saw that the oysterman wanted the boat, in spite of the indifference he tried to assume. Loud said there was some risk in buying a boat of a boy; but the trade was finally closed at twenty dollars. When they landed at the city, Loud went for the money, and paid Wade the cash, requiring him to sign a receipt for it.

Wade was glad to have the boat off his hands; and he would have sold her for ten dollars rather than keep her, if he could have got no more. Just now, with twenty dollars in his pocket, he was a wealthy young man; and he felt better off than the rich showman in the place where he was. But the boat was gone; and the question now was, how he should get to New York.