“That schooner must have the current with her, she comes down so fast.  She ’II be abreast of the Horn in half an hour longer, Stephen.  We will wait, and see what she would be at.”

Gardiner’s prediction was true.  In half an hour, the Sea Lion of Holmes’ Hole glided past the rocky pyramid of the Horn, distant from it less than a mile.  Had it been the object of her commander to pass into the Pacific, he might have done so with great apparent ease.  Even with a south-west wind, that which blows fully half the time in those seas, it would have been in his power to lay past the islands, and soon get before it.  A north-east course, with a little offing, will clear the islands, and when a vessel gets as far north as the main land, it would take her off the coast.

But Daggett had no intention of doing anything of the sort.  He was looking for his consort, which he had hoped to find somewhere near the cape.  Disappointed in this expectation, after standing far enough west to make certain nothing was in sight in that quarter, he hauled up on an easy bowline, and stood to the southward.  Roswell was right glad to see this, inasmuch as it denoted ignorance of the position of the islands he sought.  They lay much farther to the westward; and no sooner was he sure of the course steered by the other schooner, than he hastened down to the boat, in order to get his own vessel under way, to profit by the breeze.

Two hours later, the Sea Lion of Oyster Pond glanced through the passage which led into the ocean, on an ebb-tide.  By that time, the other vessel had disappeared in the southern board; and Gardiner came out upon the open waters again, boldly, and certain of his course.  All sail was set, and the little craft slipped away from the land with the ease of an aquatic bird, that is plying its web-feet.  Studding-sails were set, and the pyramid of the Horn soon began to lower in the distance, as the schooner receded.  When night closed over the rolling waters, it was no longer visible, the vessel having fairly entered the Antarctic Ocean, if anything north of the circle can properly so be termed.

Chapter XIV.

  “All gone! ’tis ours the goodly land——­
    Look round—­the heritage behold;
  Go forth—­upon the mountain stand;
    Then, if you can, be cold.”

  Sprague.

It was an enterprising and manly thing for a little vessel like the Sea Lion to steer with an undeviating course into the mysterious depths of the antarctic circle—­mysterious, far more in that day, than at the present hour.  But the American sealer rarely hesitates.  He has very little science, few charts, and those oftener old than new, knows little of what is going on among the savans of the earth, though his ear is ever open to the lore of men like himself, and he has his mind stored with pictures of islands and continents that would seem to have been