"Well, sir, that may have been her play! Men bound the same way often wish to fall into good company, to make the journey seem the shorter, by making it so much the pleasanter."
"Those fellows can never suppose the two schooners will keep in sight of each other from forty-one degrees north all the way to seventy south, or perhaps further south still! If we remain near each other a week, 't will be quite out of the common way."
"I don't know that, sir. I was once in a sealer that, do all she could, couldn't get shut of a curious neighbour. When seals are scarce, and the master don't know where to look for 'em, he is usually glad to drop into some vessel's wake, if it be only to pick up her leavin's."
"Outfits are not made on such chances as that. These Vineyard people know where they are going as well as we know ourselves; perhaps better."
"There is great confidence aboard here, in the master, Captain Gar'ner. I overheard the watch talking the matter over early this morning; and there was but one opinion among them, I can tell you, sir."
"Which opinion was, Mr. Hazard----"
"That a lay aboard this craft would be worth a lay and a half aboard any other schooner out of all America! Sailors go partly on skill and partly on luck. I've known hands that wouldn't ship with the best masters that ever sailed a vessel, if they didn't think they was lucky as well as skilful."
"Ay, ay, it's all luck! Little do these fellows think of Providence--or of deserving, or undeserving. Well, I hope the schooner will not disappoint them--or her master either. But, whaling and sealing, and trusting to the chances of the ocean, and our most flattering hopes, may mislead us after all."
"Ay, ay, sir; nevertheless, Captain Gar'ner has a name, and men will trust to it!"
Our young master could not but be flattered at this, which came at a favourable moment to sustain the resolutions awakened by the competition with the rival schooner. Although so obviously competitors, and that in a matter of trade, the interest which above all others is apt to make men narrow-minded and hostile to each other, though the axiom would throw this particular reproach on doctors, there were no visible signs that the two vessels did not maintain the most amicable relations. As the day advanced the wind fell, and after many passages of nautical compliments, by means of signals and the trumpet, Roswell Gardiner fairly lowered a boat into the water, and went a "gamming," as it is termed, on board the other schooner.