“That might do,” he said; “though it will not be an easy matter to make Captain Daggett consent to such a thing.”

“Let him go two or three mornings without his warm meal and hot coffee,” answered Stimson, shaking his head, “and he will be glad enough to come into the scheme.  A man soon gets willing to set fire to anything that will burn in such a climate.  A notion has been floating about in my mind, Captain Gar’ner, that I’ve several times thought I would mention to you.  D’ye think, sir, any benefit could be made of that volcano over the bay, should the worst get to the worst with us?”

“I have thought of the same thing, Stephen; though I fear in vain, I suppose no useful heat can be given out there, until one gets too near the bad air to breathe it.  What you say about breaking up the other schooner, however, is worthy of consideration; and I will speak to Captain Daggett about it.”

Roswell was as good as his word; and the Vineyard mariner met the proposal as one repels an injury.  Never were our two masters so near a serious misunderstanding, as when Roswell suggested to Daggett the expediency of breaking up the wreck, now that the weather was endurable, and the men could work with reasonable comfort and tolerable advantage.

“The man who puts an axe or a saw into that unfortunate craft,” said Daggett, firmly, “I shall regard as an enemy.  It is a hard enough bed that she lies on, without having her ribs and sides torn to pieces by hands.”

This was the strange spirit in which Daggett, continued to look at the condition of the wreck!  It was true that the ice prevented his actually seeing the impossibility of his ever getting his schooner into the water again; but no man at all acquainted with mechanics, and who knew the paucity of means that existed on the island, could for a moment entertain the idle expectation that seemed to have got into the Vineyard-master’s mind, unless subject to a species of one-idea infatuation.  This infatuation, however, existed not only in Daggett’s mind, but in some degree in those of his men.  It is said that “in a multitude of counsellors there is wisdom;” and the axiom comes from an authority too venerable to be disputed.  But it might, almost with equal justice, be said, that “in-a multitude of counsellors there is folly;” for men are quite as apt to sustain each other in the wrong as in the right.  The individual who would hesitate about advancing his fallacies and mistakes with a single voice, does not scruple to proclaim them on the hill-tops, when he finds other tongues to repeat his errors.  Divine wisdom, foreseeing this consequence of human weakness, has provided a church-catholic, and proceeding directly from its Great Head on earth, as the repository of those principles, facts, and laws, that it has deemed essential to the furtherance of its own scheme of moral government on earth; and yet we see audacious imitators starting up on every side, presuming in their ignorance, longing in their ambition, and envious in these longings, who do not scruple to shout out upon the house-tops crudities over which knowledge wonders as it smiles, and humility weeps as it wonders.  Such is man, when sustained by his fellows, in every interest of life; from religion, the highest of all, down to the most insignificant of his temporal concerns.