"These are all friends, Gar'ner," he said; "come to visit me in a little sickness that I've been somewhat subject to, of late, and who will all be glad to hear of our good fortune. So you've brought the schooner back, a'ter all, Gar'ner, and will disapp'int the Sag Harbour ship-owners, who have been all along foretelling that we should never see her ag'in:--brought her back--ha! Gar'ner?"
"Only in part, Deacon Pratt. We have had good luck and bad luck since we left you, and have only brought home the best part of the craft."
"The best part--" said the deacon, gulping his words, in a way that compelled him to pause; "The best part! What, in the name of property, has become of the rest?"
"The rest was burned, sir, to keep us from freezing to death," Roswell then gave a brief but very clear and intelligible account of what had happened, and of the manner in which he had caused the hulk of the deacon's Sea Lion to be raised upon by the materials furnished by the Sea Lion of the Vineyard. The narrative brought Mary Pratt back to the side of the bed, and caused her calm eyes to become riveted intently on the speaker's face. As for the deacon, he might have said, with Shakspeare's Wolsey,
"Had I but served my God with half the zeal I served my king, he would not, in mine age, Have left me naked to mine enemies."
His fall was not that of a loss of power, it is true, but it was that of a still more ignoble passion, covetousness. As Roswell proceeded, his mind represented one source of wealth after another released from his clutch, until it was with a tremulous voice, and a countenance from which all traces of animation had fled, that he ventured again to speak.
"Then I may look upon my ventur' as worse than nothing?" he said. "The insurers will raise a question about paying for a craft that has been rebuilt in this way, and the Vineyard folks will be sartain to put in a claim of salvage, both on account of two of their hands helping you with the work, and on account of the materials--and we with no cargo, as an offset to it all!"
"No, deacon, it is not quite as bad as that," resumed Roswell. "We have brought home a good lot of skins; enough to pay the people full wages and to return you every cent of outfit, with a handsome advance on the venture. A sealer usually makes a good business of it, if she falls in with seals. Our cargo, in skins, can't be worth less than $20,000; besides half a freight left on the island, for which another craft may be sent."
"That is suthin', the Lord be praised!" ejaculated the deacon. "Though the schooner is as bad as gone, and the outlays have been awfully heavy, I'm almost afraid to go any further. Gardner,--did you--I grow weak very fast--did you stop--Mary, I wish you would put the question."
"I am afraid that my uncle means to ask if you stopped at the Key, in the West Indies, according to your instructions, Roswell?" the niece said, and most reluctantly, for she plainly saw it was fully time her uncle ceased to think of the things of this life, and to begin to turn all his thoughts on the blessed mediation, and another state of being.