"What I have to say is better worth hearing than fifty Marys. As to my niece, Gar'ner, you are welcome to her, if she will have you; and why she does not is to me unaccountable. But, you see that chart--look at it well, and tell me if you find anything new or remarkable about it."
"It looks like old times, deacon, and here are many places that I have visited and know. What have we here? Islands laid down in pencil, with the latitude and longitude in figures! Who says there is land, thereaway, Deacon Pratt, if I may be so free as to ask the question?"
"I do--and capital good land it is, for a sealing craft to get alongside of. Them islands, Gar'ner, may make your fortune, as well as mine. No matter how I know they are there--it is enough that I do know it, and that I wish you to carry the Sea Lion to that very spot, as straight as you can go; fill her up with elephant's oil, ivory, and skins, and bring her back again as fast as she can travel."
"Islands in that latitude and longitude!" said Roswell Gardiner, examining the chart as closely as if it were of very fine print indeed--"I never heard of any such land before!"
"'Tis there, notwithstanding; and like all land in distant seas that men have not often troubled, plentifully garnished with what will pay the mariner well for his visit."
"Of that I have little doubt, should there be actually any land there. It may be a Cape Fly Away that some fellow has seen in thick weather. The ocean is full of such islands!"
"This is none of them. It is bony fidy 'arth, as I know from the man who trod it. You must take good care, Gar'ner, and not run the schooner on it"--with a small chuckling laugh, such as a man little accustomed to this species of indulgence uses, when in high good-humour. "I am not rich enough to buy and fit out Sea Lions for you to cast 'em away."
"That's a high latitude, deacon, to carry a craft into. Cook, himself, fell short of that, somewhat!"
"Never mind Cook--he was a king's navigator--my man was an American sealer; and what he has once seen he knows where to find again. There are the islands--three in number and there you will find 'em, with animals on their shores as plenty as clam-shells on the south beach."
"I hope it may be so. If land is there, and you'll risk the schooner, I'll try to get a look at it. I shall want you to put it down in black and white, however, that I'm to go as high as this."