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Then I took two more of the weightiest hammers, and lashed them fast to the back of mine, not so as to strike, but to burden the fall. Having made this firm, and with room to grasp the handle of the largest one only for the helves of the others were shorter I smiled at Uncle Ben, and whirled the mighty implement round my head, just to try whether I could manage it.
So we sat with our heads together talking helves and axes, axes with single blades and axes with double blades, and hand axes and great choppers' axes, and the science of felling trees, with the true philosophy of the last chip, and arguments as to the best procedure when a log begins to "pinch" until a listener would have thought that the art of the chopper included the whole philosophy of existence as indeed it does, if you look at it in that way.
With these words, Uncle Ben led the way along a narrow passage, roofed with rock and floored with slate-coloured shale and shingle, and winding in and out, until we stopped at a great stone block or boulder, lying across the floor, and as large as my mother's best oaken wardrobe. Beside it were several sledge-hammers, battered, and some with broken helves.
Without waiting to give the fellow a chance to change his mind, Ned hurried off, and summoning the boatswain and his gang to his assistance, soon had the topsail on deck; after which he procured the keys of the arm-chest and selected not ten but a dozen rifles, fitted with bayonets, a goodly stock of ammunition, three new axes with helves complete, a couple of shovels, two hammers, half a dozen bags of nails, mostly large, a coil of inch rope, an adze, and a quantity of tinware as less liable to breakage than crockery.
So he made two extra helves and had a dozen cornel-wood pegs ready to drive out the bit of broken handle next time I broke it; as I did, according to his laughing forecast. The incessant labor of our days hardened both of us. Our muscles were like steel rods. We slept on our mattresses by that ash-covered fire as I had never slept at Villa Andivia or at my mansion in Rome.
Percy Noakes received the visitors, and bowed to the strange gentleman, as if he should like to know who he was. This was just what Mrs. Taunton wanted. Here was an opportunity to astonish the Briggses. ‘Oh! I beg your pardon,’ said the general of the Taunton party, with a careless air.—‘Captain Helves—Mr. Percy Noakes—Mrs. Briggs—Captain Helves.’ Mr.
When two suitable helves had been selected with great care and the ends of the hafts notched to prevent the hand from slipping, the axe-heads were fixed on them as firmly as possible, and the weapons immersed in a bucket of water for half an hour. The result of this was to swell the wood in the socket in such a fashion that nothing short of burning would get it out again.
‘Stop her!’ repeated the boy; whizz went the steam, and all the young ladies, as in duty bound, screamed in concert. They were only appeased by the assurance of the martial Helves, that the escape of steam consequent on stopping a vessel was seldom attended with any great loss of human life.
‘Perhaps,’ he said in a very insinuating manner, ‘Captain Helves will oblige us?’ Mrs. Taunton’s countenance lighted up, for the captain only sang duets, and couldn’t sing them with anybody but one of her daughters. ‘Really,’ said that warlike individual, ‘I should be very happy, ‘but—’ ‘Oh! pray do,’ cried all the young ladies. ‘Miss Emily, have you any objection to join in a duet?’
A fire so bright and cheerful blazed on an enormous hearth in a sort of upper kitchen, as to render candles or torches unnecessary. Around it were seated six or seven hardy and athletic young men, some drawing coarse tools carefully through the curvatures of ox-bows, others scraping down the helves of axes, or perhaps fashioning sticks of birch into homely but convenient brooms.
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