It was an important day on the Reef when the keel of the pinnace was laid.  On examining his materials, Mark ascertained that the boat-builders had marked and numbered each portion of the frame, each plank, and everything else that belonged to the pinnace.  Holes were bored, and everything had been done in the boat-yard that could be useful to those who, it was expected, were to put the work together in a distant part of the world.  This greatly facilitated our new boat-builders’ labours in the way of skill, besides having done so much of the actual toil to their hands.  As soon as the keel was laid, Mark set up the frame, which came together with very little trouble.  The wailes were then got out, and were fitted, each piece being bolted in its allotted place.  As the work had already been put together, there was little or no dubbing necessary.  Aware that the parts had once been accurately fitted to each other, Mark was careful not to disturb their arrangement by an unnecessary use of the adze, or broad-axe, experimenting and altering the positions of the timbers and planks; but, whenever he met with any obstacle, in preference to cutting and changing the materials themselves, he persevered until the parts came together as had been contemplated.  By observing this caution, the whole frame was set up, the wailes were fitted and bolted, and the garboard-streak got on and secured, without taking off a particle of the wood, though a week was necessary to effect these desired objects.

Our mariners now measured their new frame.  The keel was just four-and-twenty feet long, the distance between the knight-heads and the taffrail being six feet greater; the beam, from outside to outside, was nine feet, and the hold might be computed at five feet in depth.  This gave something like a measurement of eleven tons; the pinnace having been intended for a craft a trifle smaller than this.  As a vessel of eleven tons might make very good weather in a sea-way, if properly handled, the result gave great satisfaction, Mark cheering Bob with accounts of crafts, of much smaller dimensions, that had navigated the more stormy seas, with entire safety, on various occasions.

The planking of the Neshamony was no great matter, being completed the week it was commenced.  The caulking, however, gave more trouble, though Bob had done a good deal of that sort of work in his day.  It took a fortnight for the honest fellow to do the caulking to his own mind, and before it was finished another great discovery was made by rummaging in the ship’s hold, in quest of some of the fastenings which had not at first been found.  A quantity of old sheet-copper, that had run its time on a vessel’s bottom, was brought to light, marked “copper for the pinnace.”  Friend Abraham White had bethought him of the worms of the low latitudes, and had sent out enough of the refuse copper of a vessel that had been broken up to cover the bottom of this little craft fairly up to her bends.  To work,