Both the enterprises of which we have given an opening account were perfectly characteristic of the state of society in which they were brought into existence.  Deacon Pratt, if he had any regular calling, was properly a husbandman, though the love of money had induced him to invest his cash in nearly every concern around him, which promised remunerating returns.  The principal owners of the Sea Lion, of Holmes’ Hole, were husbandmen also; folk who literally tilled the earth, cradled their own oats and rye, and mowed their own meadows.  Notwithstanding, neither of these men, those of the Vineyard any more than he of Oyster Pond, had hesitated about investing of his means in a maritime expedition, just as if they were all regular ship-owners of the largest port in the Union.  With such men, it is only necessary to exhibit an account with a fair prospect of large profits, and they are ever ready to enter, into the adventure, heart, hand, and pocket.  Last season, it may have been to look for whales on the coast of Japan; the season before that, to search for islands frequented by the seals; this season, possibly, to carry a party out to hunt for camelopards, set nets for young lions, and beat up the quarters of the rhinoceros on the plains of Africa:  while the next, they may be transporting ice from Long Pond to Calcutta and Kingston—­not to say to London itself.  Of such materials are those descendants of the Puritans composed; a mixture of good and evil; of the religion which clings to the past, in recollection rather than in feeling, mingled with a worldly-mindedness that amounts nearly to rapacity; all cloaked and rendered decent by a conventional respect for duties, and respectable and useful, by frugality, enterprise, and untiring activity.

Roswell Gardiner had not mistaken the persons of those in the boat.  They proved to be Phil Hazard, his first officer; Tim Green, the second mate; and the two sealers whom it had cost so much time and ingenuity to obtain.  Although neither of the mates even suspected the truth, no sooner had they engaged the right sort of man than he was tampered with by the agents of the Martha’s Vineyard concern, and spirited away by means of more tempting proposals, before he had got quite so far as to sign the articles.  One of the motives for sending Watson across to Oyster Pond had been to induce Captain Gardiner to believe he had engaged so skilful a hand, which would effectually prevent his attempting to procure another, until, at the last moment, he might find himself unable to put to sea for the want of a complement.  A whaling or a sealing voyage requires that the vessel should take out with her the particular hands necessary to her specific object, though, of late years, the seamen have got so much in the habit of ‘running,’ especially in the Pacific, that it is only the craft that strictly belong to what may be termed the whaling communities, that bring back with them the people they carry out, and not always them.