"Unchanged!" repeated the uncle, slowly; "you sartainly would not wish to marry him, Mary, if he was changed!"
"I do not mean changed, in the sense you are thinking of, uncle. But we will not talk of this now. Why should Roswell stop in the West Indies at all? It is not usual for our vessels to stop there."
"No, it is not. If Gar'ner stop at all, it will be on a very unusual business, and one that may make all our fortunes--your'n, as well as his'n and mine, Mary."
"I hope that sealers never meddle with the transportation of slaves, uncle!" the girl exclaimed, with a face filled with apprehension. "I would rather live and die poor, than have anything to do with them!"
"I see no such great harm in the trade, gal; but such is not Roswell's ar'nd in the West Ingees. It's a great secret, the reason of his call there; and I will venture to foretell that, should he make it, and should it turn out successful, you will marry him, gal."
Mary made no reply. Well was she assured that Roswell had an advocate in her own heart, that was pleading for him, night and day; but firm was her determination not to unite herself with one, however dear to her, who set up his feeble understanding of the nature of the mediation between God and man, in opposition to the plainest language of revelation, as well as to the prevalent belief of the church, since the ages that immediately succeeded the Christian era.
Chapter XIX.
"Poor child of danger, nursling of the storm,
Sad are the woes that wreck thy manly form!
Rocks, waves, and winds the shatter'd bark delay;
Thy heart is sad, thy home is far away."Campbell.
It was about midday, when the two Sea Lions opened their canvass, at the same moment, and prepared to quit Sealer's Land. All hands were on board, every article was shipped for which there was room, and nothing remained that denoted the former presence of man on that dreary island, but the deserted house, and three or four piles of cord-wood, that had grown on Shelter Island and Martha's Vineyard, and which was now abandoned on the rocks of the antarctic circle. As the topsails were sheeted home, and the heavy fore-and-aft mainsails were hoisted, the songs of the men sounded cheerful and animating. 'Home' was in every tone, each movement, all the orders. Daggett was on deck, in full command, though still careful of his limb, while Roswell appeared to be everywhere. Mary Pratt was before his mind's eye all that morning; nor did he even once think how pleasant it would be to meet her uncle, with a "There, deacon, is your schooner, with a good cargo of elephant-oil, well chucked off with fur-seal skins."
The Oyster Pond craft was the first clear of the ground. The breeze was little felt in that cove, where usually it did not seem to blow at all, but there was wind enough to serve to cast the schooner, and she went slowly out of the rocky basin, under her mainsail, foretopsail, and jib. The wind was at south-west,--the nor-wester of that hemisphere,--and it was fresh and howling enough, on the other side of the island. After Roswell had made a stretch out into the bay of about a mile, he laid his foretopsail flat aback, hauled over his jib-sheet, and put his helm hard down, in waiting for the other schooner to come out and join him. In a quarter of an hour, Daggett got within hail.