“All that is true enough, but I’ve a notion, notwithstanding.  Now, as you’ll be off so soon, and as I shall not see you again, for some time at least, I will give you a piece of advice.  If you fall in with a consort, don’t fall out with her, and make a distant v’y’ge a cruise for an enemy, but come to tarms, and work in company:  lay for lay; and make fair weather of what can’t be helped.”

The men on board the sloop laughed at this speech, while those on board the schooner wondered.  To Roswell Gardiner and his people the allusions were an enigma, and the former muttered something about the stranger’s being a dunce, as he descended from the rigging, and gave some orders to prepare to receive the boat.

“The chap belongs to the Hole,” rejoined the master of the schooner, “and all them Vineyard fellows fancy themselves better blue-jackets than the rest of mankind:  I suppose it must be because their island lies further out to sea than anything we have here inside of Montauk.”

Thus ended the communications with the stranger.  The sloop glided away before a light south wind, and, favoured by an ebb tide, soon rounded the spit of sand that shelters the anchorage; and, hauling up to the eastward, she went on her way towards Holmes’ Hole.  The skipper was a relative of half of those who were interested in fitting out the rival Sea Lion, and had volunteered to obtain the very information he took with him, knowing how acceptable it would be to those at home.  Sooth to say, a deep but wary excitement prevailed on the Vineyard, touching not only the sealing-islands, but also in respect to the buried treasure.  The information actually possessed by the relations of the deceased mariner was neither very full nor very clear.  It consisted principally of sayings of Daggett, uttered during his homeward-bound passage, and transmitted by the master of the brig to him of the sloop in the course of conferences that wore away a long summer’s afternoon, as the two vessels lay becalmed within a hundred fathoms of each other.  These sayings, however, had been frequent and intelligible.  All men like to deal in that which makes them of importance; and the possession of his secrets had just the effect on Daggett’s mind that was necessary to render him boastful.  Under such impulses his tongue had not been very guarded; and facts leaked out which, when transmitted to his native island, through the medium of half a dozen tongues and as many fancies, amounted to statements sufficient to fire the imaginations of a people much duller than those of Martha’s Vineyard.  Accustomed to converse and think of such expeditions, it is not surprising that a few of the most enterprising of those who first heard the reports should unite and plan the adventure they now actually had in hand.  When the intelligence of what was going on on Oyster Pond reached them, everything like hesitation or doubt disappeared; and from the moment of the nephew’s return in quest of his