was too large to admit of intercourse until next morning, when that which had been a small gale had dwindled to a good steady breeze, and the seas had gone down, leaving comparatively smooth water all along the coast.  The line of white water which marked the breakers was there, and quite visible; but it no longer excited apprehension.  The jury-masts on board the disabled craft were got up, and what was very convenient, just at that moment, the wreck came floating out on the ebb, so near to her as to enable the boats to secure all the sails and most of the rigging.  The main-boom, too, an excellent spar, was towed alongside and saved.

Chapter X.

  “The shadow from thy brow shall melt,
  The sorrow from thy strain;
  But where thy earthly smile hath dwelt,
  Our hearts shall thirst in vain.”

  Mrs. Hemans.

As soon as it would do to put his boats in the water, or at daylight next morning, Captain Daggett came alongside of his consort.  He was received with a seaman’s welcome, and his offers of services were accepted, just as frankly, as under reversed circumstances, they would have been made.  In all this there was a strange and characteristic admixture of neighbourly and Christian kindness, blended with a keen regard of the main chance.  If the former duties are rarely neglected by the descendants of the Puritans, it may be said, with equal truth, that the latter are never lost sight of.  Speculation, and profit, are regarded as so many integral portions of the duty of man; and, as our kinsmen of Old England have set up an idol to worship, in the form of aristocracy, so do our kinsmen of New England pay homage to the golden calf.  In point of fact, Daggett had a double motive in now offering his services to Gardiner; the one being the discharge of his moral obligations, and the other a desire to remain near the Sea Lion of Oyster Pond, lest she should visit the key, of which he had some very interesting memorandums, without having enough to find the place unless led there by those who were better informed on the subject of its precise locality than he was himself.

The boats of Daggett assisted in getting the wreck alongside, and in securing the sails and rigging.  Then, his people aided in fitting jury-masts; and, by noon, both vessels got under way, and stood along the coast, to the southward and westward.  Hatteras was no longer terrible, for the wind still stood at north-west, and they kept in view of those very breakers which, only the day before, they would have given the value of both vessels to be certain of never seeing again.  That night they passed the formidable cape, a spit of sand projecting far to seaward, and which is on a low beach, and not on any main land at all.  Once around this angle in the coast, they had a lee, hauling up to the south-west.  With the wind abeam, they stood on the rest of the day, picking up a pilot.  The next night they