act that is thus to be exercised.  Roswell had set one or two limbs already, and had a tolerable notion of the manner of treating the case.  Daggett was now seated on a rock at the base of the mountain, with his legs still hanging down, and his back supported by another rock.  No sooner was he thus placed, than Stimson was despatched, post-haste, for assistance.  His instructions were full, and the honest fellow set off at a rate that promised as early relief as the circumstances would at all allow.

As for our hero, he set about his most important office the instant Stimson left him.  Daggett aided with his counsel, and a little by his personal exertions; for a seaman does not lie down passively, when anything can be done, even in his own case.

Baring the limb, Roswell soon satisfied himself that the bone had worked itself into place.  Bandages were instantly applied to keep it there while splints were making.  It was, perhaps, a little characteristic that Daggett took out his knife, and aided in shaving down these splints to the necessary form and thickness.  They were made out of the staff of the broken lance, and were soon completed.  Roswell manifested a good deal of dexterity and judgment in applying the splints.  The handkerchiefs were used to relieve the pressure in places, and rope-yarns from the ratlin stuff furnished the means of securing everything in its place.  In half an hour, Roswell had his job completed, and that before there was much swelling to interfere with him.  As soon as the broken limb was thus attended to, it was carefully raised, and laid upon the rock along with its fellow, a horizontal position being deemed better than one that was perpendicular.

Not less than four painful hours now passed, ere the gang of hands from the vessels reached the base of the mountain.  It came prepared, however, to transport the sufferer on a hand-barrow that had been used in conveying the skins of seal across the rocks.  On this barrow Daggett was now carefully placed, when four men lifted him up, and walked away with him for a few hundred yards.  These were then relieved by four more; and, in this manner, was the whole distance to the house passed over.  The patient was put in his bunk, and some attention was bestowed on his bruises and other injuries.

Glad enough was the sufferer to find himself beneath a roof, and in a room that had its comforts; or what were deemed comforts on a sealing voyage.  As the men were in the dormitory very little of the time except at night, he was enabled to sleep; and Roswell had hopes, as he now told Stimson, that a month or six weeks would set the patient on his feet again.

“He has been a fortunate fellow, Stephen, that it was no worse,” added Roswell, on that occasion.  “But for the luck which turned the lance-pole beneath him, every bone he has would have been broken.”

“What you call luck, Captain Gar’ner, I call Providence,” was Stephen’s answer.  “The good book tells us that not a sparrow shall fall without the eye of Divine Providence being on it.”