“We are short, sir, and only wait for orders to go on, and get clear of the ground.”

“Trip, at once, sir; and so farewell to America—­or to this end of it, at least.”

“Then the keys, they tell me, are dangerous navigation, Gar’ner, and a body needs have all his eyes about him.”

“All places have their dangers to your sleepy navigator, deacon; but the man who keeps his eyes open has little to fear.  Had you given us a chronometer, there would not have been one-half the risk there will be without one.”

This had been a bone of contention between the master of the Sea Lion and his owner.  Chronometers were not, by any means, in as general use at the period of our tale as they are to-day; and the deacon abhorred the expense to which such an article would have put him.  Could he have got one at a fourth of the customary price he might have been tempted; but it formed no part of his principles of saving to anticipate and prevent waste by liberality.

No sooner was the schooner released from the ground than her sails were filled, and she went by the low spit of sand already mentioned, with the light south-west breeze still blowing in her favour, and an ebb tide.  Everything appeared propitious, and no vessel probably ever left home under better omens.  The deacon remained on board until Baiting Joe, who was to act as his boatman, reminded him of the distance and the probability that the breeze would go down entirely with the sun.  As it was, they had to contend with wind and tide, and it would require all his own knowledge of the eddies to get the whale-boat up to Oyster Pond in anything like reasonable time.  Thus admonished, the owner tore himself away from his beloved craft, giving “young Gar’ner” as many ‘last words’ as if he were about to be executed.  Roswell had a last word on his part, however, in the shape of a message to Mary.

“Tell Mary, deacon,” said the young sailor, in an aside, “that I rely on her promise, and that I shall think of her, whether it be under the burning sun of the line, or among the ice of the antarctic.”

“Yes, yes; that’s as it should be,” answered the deacon, heartily.  “I like your perseverance, Gar’ner, and hope the gal will come round yet, and I shall have you for a nephew.  There’s nothing that takes the women’s minds like money.  Fill up the schooner with skins and ile, and bring back that treasure, and you make as sure of Mary for a wife as if the parson had said the benediction over you.”

Such was Deacon Pratt’s notion of his niece, as well as of the female sex.  For months he regarded this speech as a coup de maitre, while Roswell Gardiner forgot it in half an hour; so much better than the uncle did the lover comprehend the character of the niece.