“We have more cargo now than we shall be able to take with us.  Quite one half of all our skins must be left behind us, and all of the oil.  The hold of the schooner is too shallow to carry enough of anything to make out a voyage.  I shall ballast with water and provisions, and fill up all the spare room with the best of our skins.  The rest of the property must be abandoned.”

“Why abandoned?  Leave a hand or two to take care of it, and send a craft out to look for it, as soon as you get home.  Leave me, Gar’ner, I am willing to stay.”

Roswell thought that the poor man would be left, whether he wished to remain or not, for the symptoms that are known to be so fatal in cases like that of Daggett’s, were making themselves so apparent as to leave little doubt of the result.  What rendered this display of the master-passion somewhat remarkable, was the fact that our hero had, on several occasions, conversed with the invalid, concealing no material feature of his case, and the latter had expressed his expectation of a fatal termination, if not an absolute willingness to die.  Stimson had frequently prayed with Daggett, and Roswell had often read particular chapters of the bible to him, at his own request, creating an impression that the Vineyarder was thinking more of his end than of any interests connected with this life.  Such might have been, probably was, the case, until the seeming return of what had once been deemed good luck awakened old desires, and brought out traits of character that were about to be lost in the near views of a future world.  All this Roswell saw and noted, and the reflections produced by his own perilous condition, the certain loss of so many companions, the probable death of Daggett, and the humble but impressive example and sympathy of Stimson, were such as would have delighted the tender spirit of Mary Pratt, could she have known of their existence.

But the great consideration of the moment, the centre of all the hopes and fears of our sealers, was the rebuilding of the mutilated Sea Lion.  Although the long thaw did so much for them, the reader is not to regard it as such a spell of warm weather as one enjoys in May within the temperate zone.  There were no flowers, no signs of vegetation, and whenever the wind ceased to blow smartly from the northward, there was frost.  At two or three intervals cold snaps set in that looked seriously like a return to winter, and, at the end of the third week of pleasant weather mentioned, it began to blow a gale from the southward, to snow, and to freeze.  The storm commenced about ten in the forenoon; ere the sun went down, the days then being of great length, every passage around the dwelling was already blocked up with banks of snow.  Several times had the men asked permission to remove the sails from the house, to admit air and light; but it was now found that the tent-like verandah they formed was of as much use as it had been at any