"This is answering like a man, Gar'ner, and I like you all the better for it. Forty or fifty barrels of ile shan't break friendship between us. I helped you into port at Beaufort, and gave up the salvage; and now I'll help tow your whale alongside, and see you fairly through this business, too. Perhaps I shall have all the better luck for being a little generous."
There was prudence, as well as art, in this decision of Daggett's. Notwithstanding his ingenious pretensions to a claim in the whale, he knew perfectly well that no law would sustain it, and that, in addition to the chances of being beaten on the spot, which were at least equal, he would certainly be beaten in the courts at home, should he really attempt to carry out his declared design. Then, he really deferred to the expectation that his future good fortune might be influenced by his present forbearance. Superstition forms a material part of a sailor's nature; if, indeed, it do not that of every man engaged in hazardous and uncertain adventures. How far his hopes were justified in this last respect, will appear in the contents of a communication that Deacon Pratt received from the master of his schooner, and to which we will now refer, as the clearest and briefest mode of continuing the narrative.
The Sea Lion left Oyster Pond late in September. It was the third day of March, in the succeeding year, that Mary was standing at a window, gazing with melancholy interest at that point in the adjacent waters where last she had seen, nearly six months before, the vessel of Roswell disappear behind the woods of the island that bears his family name. There had been a long easterly gale, but the weather had changed; the south wind blew softly, and all the indications of an early spring were visible. For the first time in three months, she had raised the sash of that window; and the air that entered was bland, and savoured of the approaching season.
"I dare say, uncle"--the deacon was writing near a very low wood-fire, which was scarcely more than embers--"I dare say, uncle," said the sweet voice of Mary, which was a little tremulous with feeling, "that the ocean is calm enough to-day. It is very silly in us to tremble, when there is a storm, for those who must now be so many, many thousand miles away. What is the distance between the Antarctic Seas and Oyster Pond, I wonder?"
"You ought to be able to calculate that yourself, gal, or what is the use to pay for your schooling?"
"I should not know how to set about it, uncle," returned the gentle Mary, "though I should be very glad to know."
"How many miles are there in a degree of latitude child? You know that, I believe."
"More than sixty-nine, sir."
"Well, in what latitude is Oyster Pond?"
"I have heard Roswell say that we were a little higher, as he calls it, than forty-one."