AsBen had shown no disposition to retaliate for the joke played upon him, had never mentioned it to any one, or ever alluded to it, Joe supposed that, with his usual good nature, he had forgotten it.
Ben, on the contrary, had resolved to pay Joe in his own coin, with usury, whenever a fitting opportunity presented itself.
Some weeks before he had mown some tall grass, which grew on the beach, made it into hay, and enclosed it with a brush fence, to protect it from the sheep. Adjoining the stack was a honey-pot. Honey-pots are mires, sometimes twenty feet or more in depth, composed of a blue, adhesive mud, which, by the constant soaking of some hidden spring, and the daily flow of the tide, is kept in a half fluid state, except upon the surface, where the clay, being somewhat hardened by the sun at low water, is stiff, and will bear a man to walkover it quickly; but, if he stands a moment, down he goes.
Joe, who had never been on the island before, was ignorant of the existence of this mire. Ben, while the rest were asleep the night before, had removed all the sand and drift stuff, and scraped the hard clay from the surface of the honey-pot, till it would hardly bear a dog.
While the boys were stretched upon the grass, laughing and talking after dinner, Ben asked Joe to help him bring some hay on the poles for the oxen. When two persons carry hay on poles, the one behind cannot see where he steps, but must follow his leader, who picks the road for him. Ben went as near to the edge of the honey-pot as he dared. The moment he got a little by, he turned short off, bringing Joe right into the middle of it. In he went, carried down both by his own weight and that of the load, clean to his breast, when Ben, twitching the poles away, sat down on the bank to laugh at him.
“O, Ben,” cried Joe, “we’re square now; help me out.”
Ben took out his knife, and began to whittle.
Getting frightened, as he found himself gradually sinking, Joe roared for help, drawing the wholeparty to the spot. This was just what Ben wanted. He knew that Joe had told everybody in the neighborhood of the trick he put on him, and it was his turn now.
The moment Joe saw Uncle Isaac, he cried out, “Do help me; I’m going down.” As there was now real danger of his smothering in the mud, Ben ran the poles under his arms. Joe made desperate efforts to extricate himself by means of the poles, but the mire so sucked him down, that he only succeeded in getting out his shoulders.
At this juncture Tige came rushing along, and, seizing him by the collar, endeavored to lift him out; but sinking down into the slime, which Joe’s struggles had wrought into a complete porridge, his mouth and nose were filled with mud and water: giving a vigorous snort, he completely plastered Joe’s face and eyes with it, who, not being in the most amiable of moods, hit him a cuff on the side of the head. Tige, enraged at being thus rewarded for his good intentions, was going to bite him, when Ben pulled him away by the tail.
“Pity I wan’t a dog,” whined Joe; “then there’d be some feeling for me.”
He now appealed again to Uncle Isaac; but the old man had thought the matter all over, and cometo the deliberate conclusion that it was time Joe’s wings were clipped; that, if not checked, he would become unbearable; that there could be no better time to administer reproof, and one stringent enough to be remembered.
“You know, Joseph,” said he, in a severe tone, “that the trick you played last week on Ben was not by any means the first you’ve played on him and others. Who was it put on a bear-skin, got down on all fours, followed the widow Hadlock when she was going home from my house through the woods, and growled, and frightened the poor woman so that she was sick for three months, and the whole town turned out the next day to kill the bear?”
“I cut all her winter’s wood, to pay for it.”
“Who,” said Joe Riggs, “stopped up the chimney, when the young folks had a New Year’s party in the chamber over the store, and put peas on the stairs, so that Seth Warren fell from top to bottom, and broke his leg?”
“Joe Griffin,” cried Seth.
“He’d done the same to me, if he’d had the chance, and wit enough.”
Joe Griffin in the Honey Pot.Page 139.
Joe Griffin in the Honey Pot.Page 139.
“It makes my heart ache, Joseph,” said Uncle Isaac, “to see a young man in your situation in such an unreconciled frame of mind; we never should do wrong to others because they have done, or would do, wrong to us. So far from manifesting any contrition, you justify yourself in your evil courses. Instead of resignation under trial, you appear to me to be ‘gritting your teeth,’ and thrashing about like unto a seal in a herring net.”
“Who was it,” asked John Strout, “when Mose Atherton was all dressed up, going to walk round the head of the bay, to see Sally Bannister, offered to show him a shorter cut over the marsh, and led him into a honey-pot, then went to John Godsoe’s, told them there was a man’s hat on Moll Graffam’s honey-pot, and he guessed somebody must be in trouble? When Godsoe’s people got there, the tide was flowing around him, and the water up to his chin.”
Joe made no reply to this.
“Don’t be sullen, Joe, for you must perceive we’re measuring you by your own bushel. I begin to fear it may become our duty to leave you here till you’re in a more submissive frame of mind.”
“O, Uncle Isaac, you won’t leave me in this mire, six miles from any human being, to perish?”
“Not to perish, young man, but to repent. Let me see: to-day’s Thursday; we can give you a littlelight food, and leave you over the Sabbath; it’s a good day, and should bring serious reflections. The water don’t come up here, except when it’s a storm. I don’t see any signs of a storm—do you, boys?”
The others didn’t see much signs of one; some thought that ’twas a little “smurry.”
“Reflection is profitable, Joseph. Monday we might find you more reconciled.”
“I’ll do anything you want me to, if you will only take me out.”
“That is better. Will you promise not to play any more tricks upon any of this company, or anybody else?”
“Don’t make him lie,” said Ben; “he can’t help it.”
“Well, then, will you promise not to play any more upon any one here, and say that you are sorry for what you did to Ben?”
“I will.”
“Then we will take you out; and I trust it will be a warning to you in future. Boys, build up a fire; he must be half perished with cold.”
Ben got some boards, and laying them two-thick upon the surface of the honey-pot, walked to the place, and pulled him out; and a miserable plight he was in.
“Jump into the water, Joe,” said John Strout, “and wash yourself; and I will go to my chest in the schooner and get you a shift of clothes.”
Joe washed the mud off in the water, and then stood by the fire till John came with the clothes; then, putting them on, he washed his own, and hung them on a tree to dry.
“Joe,” said Uncle Isaac, “did you see anything of Sam Atkins in that honey-pot? for I’m blest if I know what has become of him.”
“Here he comes,” said Joe; and, sure enough, he was now seen coming up from the shore, with something on his shoulder.
“What is that, Sam?” asked Uncle Isaac.
“A cradle for that bouncing baby Seth told about.” He had got out the stuff unnoticed by the rest of them, and then went on board the schooner and put it together. This was examined by all, and caused abundant jests at Ben’s expense.
It was now proposed that they should end the day with a ring wrestle, both at close hugs and arms’ length. While the wrestling was going on, the two old gentlemen, for whom a comfortable seat had been provided near the fire, sat looking on, criticising the proceedings, and entering into every detail with intense interest.
The presence of these distinguished veterans, with their great bony frames,—for they had been men of vast pith and power, and famed through all the region,—acted as a mighty incentive to the young men.
“I think, Uncle Jonathan,” said Yelf, “you and I have seen the day we could show these boys some things they haven’t learned yet. Do you remember that wrastle we had when Captain Rhines’s house was raised—there was stout, withy men around these bays in them days;—how you threw Sam Hart, that came forty miles to wrastle with you, and said God Almighty never made the man that could heave him? But he found the man—didn’t he?” giving his friend a nudge in the ribs with his elbow.
“They said,” replied Smullen, “he was so mortified because he’d bragged so much, that he went home and hung himself. Ah, my toe was so sartin in those days, when I put it in! You know I had a particular trip with my left foot.”
“Hoora!” said Uncle Sam, as John Strout crotch-locked Sam Pettigrew, and threw him; “a fair fall that, and no mistake. Both shoulders and both hips on the ground.”
The plaudits of the veterans were like fuel tothe fire. The young men exerted themselves to the utmost in the presence of such competent judges.
At length their aged blood began to circulate more briskly, under the combined influence of the warm fire, milk punch, and old associations.
“Uncle Sam,” said Smullen, “what do you say to me and you trying a fall; we’ve had hold of one another afore to day?”
“Agreed,” was the reply; “but it must be at arm’s length. I’ve had the rheumatics so much that my back’s got kinder shackly.”
The young people laughed till the tears ran down their cheeks as they stepped into the ring, their upper garments removed, heads bare, and the white locks flowing round their shoulders. Uncle Yelf, producing his snuff-box,—a sheep’s bladder,—after taking a pinch, offered it to Smullen, and the contest began.
They exhausted every feint known to the art, and it was soon evident to the young people that these veterans possessed a skill unknown to them, and that it was only in the strength of youth they were lacking.
Beside them was an elm, that separated at the root into two parts. Between the forks Smullenthrew Yelf with such force, that he was firmly-wedged, and had to be pulled out.
“Well,” said Uncle Sam, “he ought to throw me; he’s the oldest.”
Just before sunset they took leave of Ben, and, with hearty cheers, made sail.
It was a current saying, in respect to Uncle Isaac, that he could keep more men at work, bring more to pass, with less fuss, and have everybody good-natured, than any man in the district; and nobly had he justified the general verdict.