uncle’s assets, the equipment of the “Humses’ Hull” craft had been pressed in a way that would have done credit to that of a government cruiser.  Even Henry Eckford, so well known for having undertaken to cut the trees and put upon the waters of Ontario two double-bank frigates, if frigates they could be termed, each of which was to mount its hundred guns, in the short space of sixty days, scarce manifested greater energy in carrying out his contract, than did these rustic islanders in preparing their craft to compete with that which they were now certain was about to sail from the place where their kinsman had breathed his last.

These keen and spirited islanders, however, did not work quite as much in the dark as our accounts, unexplained, might give the reader reason to suppose.  It will be remembered that there was a till to the chest which had not been examined by the deacon.  This till contained an old mutilated journal, not of the last, but of one or two of the earlier voyages of the deceased; though it had detached entries that evidently referred to different and distant periods of time.  By dint of study, and by putting together sundry entries that at first sight might not be supposed to have any connection with each other, the present possessor of that chest had obtained what he deemed to be very sufficient clues to his uncle’s two great secrets.  There were also in the chest several loose pieces of paper, on which there were rude attempts to make charts of all the islands and keys in question, giving their relative positions as it respected their immediate neighbours, but in no instance giving the latitudes and longitudes.  In addition to these significant proofs that the reports brought through the two masters were not without a foundation, there was an unfinished letter, written by the deceased, and addressed as a sort of legacy, “to any, or all of Martha’s Vineyard, of the name of Daggett.”  This address was sufficiently wide, including, probably, some hundreds of persons:  a clan in fact; but it was also sufficiently significant.  The individual into whose hands it first fell, being of the name, read it first, as a matter of course, when he carefully folded it up, and placed it in a pocket-book which he was much in the habit of carrying in his own pocket.  On what principle this letter, unfinished and without a signature, with nothing indeed but its general and comprehensive address to point out its origin as well as its destination, was thus appropriated to the purposes of a single individual, we shall not stop to inquire.  Such was the fact, however, and none connected with the equipment of the Sea Lion, of Holmes’ Hole, knew anything of the existence of that document, its present possessor excepted.  He looked it over occasionally, and deemed the information it conveyed of no trifling import, under all the circumstances of the case.