The Sea Lions eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 610 pages of information about The Sea Lions.

The Sea Lions eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 610 pages of information about The Sea Lions.

Mary made no reply.  Well was she assured that Roswell had an advocate in her own heart, that was pleading for him, night and day; but firm was her determination not to unite herself with one, however dear to her, who set up his feeble understanding of the nature of the mediation between God and man, in opposition to the plainest language of revelation, as well as to the prevalent belief of the church, since the ages that immediately succeeded the Christian era.

Chapter XIX.

  “Poor child of danger, nursling of the storm,
  Sad are the woes that wreck thy manly form! 
  Rocks, waves, and winds the shatter’d bark delay;
  Thy heart is sad, thy home is far away.”

  Campbell.

It was about midday, when the two Sea Lions opened their canvass, at the same moment, and prepared to quit Sealer’s Land.  All hands were on board, every article was shipped for which there was room, and nothing remained that denoted the former presence of man on that dreary island, but the deserted house, and three or four piles of cord-wood, that had grown on Shelter Island and Martha’s Vineyard, and which was now abandoned on the rocks of the antarctic circle.  As the topsails were sheeted home, and the heavy fore-and-aft mainsails were hoisted, the songs of the men sounded cheerful and animating.  ‘Home’ was in every tone, each movement, all the orders.  Daggett was on deck, in full command, though still careful of his limb, while Roswell appeared to be everywhere.  Mary Pratt was before his mind’s eye all that morning; nor did he even once think how pleasant it would be to meet her uncle, with a “There, deacon, is your schooner, with a good cargo of elephant-oil, well chucked off with fur-seal skins.”

The Oyster Pond craft was the first clear of the ground.  The breeze was little felt in that cove, where usually it did not seem to blow at all, but there was wind enough to serve to cast the schooner, and she went slowly out of the rocky basin, under her mainsail, foretopsail, and jib.  The wind was at south-west,—­the nor-wester of that hemisphere,—­and it was fresh and howling enough, on the other side of the island.  After Roswell had made a stretch out into the bay of about a mile, he laid his foretopsail flat aback, hauled over his jib-sheet, and put his helm hard down, in waiting for the other schooner to come out and join him.  In a quarter of an hour, Daggett got within hail.

“Well,” called out the last, “you see I was right, Garner; wind enough out here, and more, still further from the land.  We have only to push in among them bergs while it is light, pick out a clear spot, and heave-to during the night.  It will hardly do for us to travel among so much ice in the dark.”

“I wish we had got out earlier, that we might have made a run of it by day-light,” answered Roswell.  “Ten hours of such a wind, in my judgment, would carry us well towards clear water.”

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The Sea Lions from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.