“I know you think, Gar’ner, that it will be impossible for us ever to get our craft off; but you overlook one thing that we may do—­what is there to prevent our breaking her up, and of using the materials to make a smaller vessel; one of sixty tons say—­in which we might get home, besides taking most of our skins?”

“I will not say that will be impossible; but I do say it will be very difficult.  It would be wiser for you, in my judgment, to leave your cargo in the house, under the keeping of a few hands if you see fit, and go off with me.  I will land you at Rio, where you can almost always find some small American craft to come south in, and pick up your leavings.  If you choose that the men left behind should amuse themselves in your absence, by building a small craft, I am certain they will meet with no opposition from me.  There is but one place where a vessel can be launched, and that is the spot in the cove where we beached your schooner.  There it might possibly be done, though I think not without a great deal of trouble, and possibly not without more means than are to be picked up along shore in this group.  But there is a very important fact that you overlook, Daggett, which it may be as well to mention here, as to delay it. Your craft, or mine, must be used as fuel this winter, or we shall freeze to death to a man.  I have made the calculations closely; and, certain as our existence, there is no alternative between such a death and the use of the fuel I have mentioned.”

“Not a timber of mine shall be touched.  I do not believe one-half of these stories about the antarctic winter, which cannot be much worse than what a body meets with up in the Bay of Fundy.”

“A winter in the Bay of Fundy, without fuel, must be bad enough; but it is a mere circumstance to one here.  I should think that a man who has tasted an antarctic summer and autumn, must get a pretty lively notion of what is to come after them.”

“The men can keep in their berths much of the time, and save wood.  There are many other ways of getting through a winter than burning a vessel.  I shall never consent to a stick of this good craft’s going into the galley-fire as long as I can see my way clear to prevent it.  I would burn cargo before I would burn my craft.”

Roswell wondered at this pertinacity; but he trusted to the pressure of the coming season, and changed the subject.  Certainly the thought of breaking up his own craft did not cross his mind:  though he could see no sufficient objection to the other side of the proposition.  As discussion was useless, however, he continued to converse with Daggett on various practical subjects, on which his companion was rational and disposed to learn.