Roswell Gardiner saw that arguments would avail nothing against a cupidity so keenly aroused.  He abstained, therefore, from urging any more of the objections that suggested themselves to his mind, but heard all that the deacon had to tell him, taking full notes of what he heard It would seem that Daggett had been sufficiently clear in his directions for finding the hidden treasure, provided always that his confidant the pirate had been as clear with him, and had not been indulging in a mystification.  The probability of the last had early suggested itself to one of Deacon Pratt’s cautious temperament; but Daggett had succeeded in removing the impression by his forcible statements of his friend’s sincerity.  There was as little doubt of the sincerity of the belief of the Martha’s Vineyard mariner, as there was of that of the deacon himself.

The day that succeeded this conference, the Sea Lion hauled off from the wharf, and all communications with her were now made only by means of boats.  The sudden disappearance of Watson may have contributed to this change, men being more under control with a craft at her moorings than when fast to a wharf.  Three days later the schooner lifted her anchor, and with a light air made sail.  She passed through the narrow but deep channel which separates Shelter Island from Oyster Pond, quitting the waters of Peconic altogether.  There was not an air of departure about her, notwithstanding.  The deacon was not much concerned; and some of Roswell Gardiner’s clothes were still at his washerwoman’s, circumstances that were fully explained, when the schooner was seen to anchor in Gardiner’s Bay, which is an outer roadstead to all the ports and havens of that region.

Chapter VII.

 “Walk in the light! so shalt thou know
    That fellowship of love,
  His spirit only can bestow
    Who reigns in light above. 
  Walk in the light! and sin, abhorr’d,
    Shall ne’er defile again;
  The blood of Jesus Christ, the Lord,
    Shall cleanse from every stain.”

  Bernard Barton.

About an hour after the Sea Lion, of Oyster Pond, had let go her anchor in Gardiner’s Bay, a coasting sloop approached her, coming from the westward.  There are two passages by which vessels enter or quit Long Island Sound, at its eastern termination.  The main channel is between Plum and Fisher’s Islands, and, from the rapidity of its currents, is known by the name of the Race.  The other passage is much less frequented, being out of the direct line of sailing for craft that keep mid-sound.  It lies to the southward of the Race, between Plum Island and Oyster Pond Point, and is called by the Anglo-Saxon appellation of Plum Gut.  The coaster just mentioned had come through this latter passage; and it was the impression of those who saw her from the schooner, that she was bound up into Peconic, or the waters of Sag Harbour.  Instead of luffing up into either of the channels that would have carried her into these places, however, she kept off, crossing Gardiner’s Bay, until she got within hail of the schooner.  The wind being quite light, there was time for the following short dialogue to take place between the skipper of this coaster and Roswell Gardiner, before the sloop had passed beyond the reach of the voice.